Jeff McDonald

HIST 6394

Dr. Buzzanco

April 14, 1999

A Review of Democracy Is In The Streets

By James Miller

"James Miller takes us back to the 1960s to revisit the student activism of the day in his book, Democracy Is In The Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. The book tells the story of the student movement toward a system of participatory democracy. Miller follows the growth of the student political movement focusing on their commitment to civil rights and a participatory democracy to supplement the existing political structure. The story presents not only the students’ vision for society, but also their commitment to organizing for social change.

The story begins with the notion of the New Left as a movement of college students who wanted a new kind of democracy. Tom Hayden and Alan Haber began to connect issues like the Cold War and the arms race with poverty, education, and racism; to show that money and energy that kept the Cold War going could better be used on ending poverty. A key issue was how to get the word out about this problem. "An organization that pointed this out could mobilize students as a pressure group able to stimulate debate on a variety of issues." (Miller, 23) Students for a Democratic Society – SDS – could become such and organization.

Hayden and Haber both attended the University of Michigan, a multiversity that reflected the national trends of the Fifties and early Sixties. Emphasis was placed on resources for the Cold War, scientific research, maintaining the status quo, and military applications. These were difficult years for the left. The activities of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee had created a feeling of fear. Communism, socialism, and their youth movements were shattered. In spite of negative feelings, Haber organized and brought new converts, such as Sharon Jeffrey, into his fold.

SDS first protest was support for the Greensboro sit-ins. Students in the North organized boycotts of the chain stores that were targeted in the South. The Southern civil rights movement entered a new phase in 1961 when James Farmer of CORE led a group of blacks and whites onto a bus in Washington D.C., and headed south on a Freedom Ride. After violence in Alabama, SNCC joined the protesters. Martin Luther King voiced his sympathy and President Kennedy finally offered federal protection for the riders. Tom Hayden and his wife Casey headed for Atlanta to support SNCC. Casey Hayden had already done some work with SNCC through Ella Baker and a YWCA human relations project. What they learned was that a grass roots movement was the best way to accomplish their goal of a participatory democracy.

In June of 1962, Haber, the Haydens, and Sharon Jeffrey, were among a group of people who came to Port Huron, Michigan, to draw up a manifesto for a new kind of politics. Most were young students; many were veterans of civil rights work in the South, a few trade union activists and Socialist Party leaders also attended. They had come to write up the framework and goals of SDS, at the time, an offshoot of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). The result of the conference was The Port Huron Statement.

The importance of the Port Huron Statement is that it moved SDS to national prominence and popularized the idea of participatory democracy, which had a profound effect on the politics of the 1960s. "We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." (329) Over and over the document covers themes that carry out through the Sixties: utopian ideals, human potential, importance of the individual, community, politics, and social change.

The first half of the book deals with an introduction of SDS and putting the movement together while the remainder of the book tells of the movement in action, its splintering and decline. The greatest grass roots success of SDS was the ERAP, established by Jeffrey, one of the great organizers of the group. ERAP stood for Economic Research and Action Project and was a program of direct action. In the summer of 1964 SDS workers went into the slums of nine American cities in an effort to organize the poor, pressure established liberals, and stimulate "the new insurgency." (185) ERAP was a quasi city version of SNCC’s Mississippi Freedom Summer, where college students worked in the poorest counties of Mississippi to educate and register African-Americans for voting. There was plenty of optimism for such projects across the country. In his first State of the Union address in 1964, President Johnson, who had been influenced by Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America, proclaimed that his administration was declaring an unconditional war on poverty.

In the summer of 1965 a series of internal crises began to fragment the SDS leadership. President Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin resolution escalated the war in Vietnam, thus garnering more support for SDS and the anti-war movement. At the same time, the Free Speech Movement exploded at Berkeley bringing about new ideas for protesting, especially the war . The Free Speech movement suggested that more militant techniques, including sit-ins, the occupation of buildings, and strikes could be more effective on campuses. SDS members began to move away from Johnson and the Democratic platform. They think LBJ is moving to slowly and committing too much energy toward the war. Also, they are still upset over the Party’s refusal to seat members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the August convention.

At the December conference, new tensions came up within the Movement, the most salient focused not on democracy, but on the role of women. "One of the biggest problems, ‘wrote Jeffrey,’ is teaching women to accept ourselves, to accept our limitations, abilities and needs, as WE define them, not as men define them."(257) In a closed door meeting the women wrote of their criticism of men for their exploitation. They were tired of a participatory democracy monopolized by men, especially when the successful ERAP projects were organized and run by women.

After 1965 SDS began to concentrate more on the anti-war movement. Their membership grew to 100,000 by 1968 and the idea of a participatory democracy seemed to center more on violence. In 1967 black ghettos were a symbol of violence. Residents looted and smashed windows of white-owned businesses in Newark, Watt, and Detroit. Stokely Carmichael and SNCC were moving away from their non-violent beginnings in the wake of urban riots. Tom Hayden became convinced that conditions were being created for a form of guerrilla warfare, similar to what he had seen on a recent trip to Hanoi, based in the slums of America.

Tom Hayden, Stokely Carmichael of SNCC, and others began to look towards the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago as a massive protest but the movements were in disarray and lacked any real leadership. The point of protest in Chicago was blurred. The Yippies were eagerly planning to provoke street violence. Hayden still hoped to unite all critics of the war. Mayor Richard Daley made it clear that he was going to turn Chicago into a safe city. The city’s police force was placed on 12-hour shifts, armed with helmets, revolvers, and shotguns. Over ten thousand Army troops and National Guardsmen would be on call. There was violence as the convention went on, protestors were beaten, gassed, and fire hosed, while shouting, "the world is watching." The New Left was at its peak of membership and at the same time moving toward self-destruction. SDS collapsed in 1969, in 1970 National Guardsmen opened fire on student demonstrators on the campus of Kent State University, and the guerrilla tactics of the Weathermen, an underground offshoot of SDS, came to an end when several of their members were killed when a bomb they were making exploded.

Democracy Is In The Streets is a reminder of issues that faced us in the 1960s and are still facing us today. LBJ’s Great Society did not end poverty; the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 did not stamp out racism. Miller shows the importance of organizing, especially at the local level, where people can come together and speak of their beliefs. Miller brings to life the hopes; struggles, triumphs, and tragedies of a group of students and organizers who drew up a manifesto for a participatory democracy and took their goals to the streets.