Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

social activist Malcolm X, Communist Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, and formerPresident John F. Kennedy, whose vision of a “Great Society” inspired thousands ofyoung people to join the Peace Corps and volunteer abroad, or to work for social justicein civil rights campaigns at home. These four men were all considered “outsiders” atsome point in their lives, for their religious or political beliefs. And all four representidealism and action, social activism grounded in political philosophy, and revolutionaryhope for a better world. With these figures as their inspiration, the students of the NewLeft identified themselves as similar outsiders, and followed their activist lead.The student activists of SDS outlined their own philosophy of social activism inthe “Port Huron Statement,” a document widely-circulated throughout the New Left. SDSin the early 1960s felt the need to articulate values that set them apart from the old Left,and so at a summer retreat in 1962 produced the “Port Huron Statement” (PHS). Writtenmostly by Tom Hayden, a former SNCC worker turned SDS leader, the PHS outlined thecontradictions in American society that troubled the activist student population, such asracial and class inequality and nuclear armament in the name of peace (330). In anargument similar to Marcuse, the PHS notes that “we ourselves are imbued with urgency,yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present” (330).Living in a culture that offered little hope for change, yet conscious of the contradictionsthat surrounded them, the student authors of the PHS believed that students andintellectuals could form the vanguard of change by advocating for increased independentdecision-making by ordinary Americans, which in turn would foster communities of likemindedactivists. They write:75