Tom Hayden? Tom Hayden?” I said to myself when I saw The Nation today. If you asked me who were the least likely activists to support Hillary, Tom Hayden would have been on the list — especially since he was already supporting Bernie. But here’s what he writes today: “I intend to vote for Hillary Clinton in the California primary for one fundamental reason. It has to do with race. My life since 1960 has been committed to the causes of African Americans, the Chicano movement, the labor movement, and freedom struggles in Vietnam, Cuba and Latin America.”
Tom Hayden was one of the highest-profile student radicals of the sixties, and an author of the Port Huron Statement, [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Huron_Statement ] calling for the complete reformation of the Democratic party. (On a more mundane level, he was married to Jane Fonda at the height of her activist years.) He also ran successfully for the state legislature in California, and is on the board of Progressive Democrats of America. He is an anti-fracking activist.
As Hayden points out, Bernie’s fracking ban doesn’t include a strategic plan for implementing his policy.
The key decision point for Hayden is race, described in this moving passage:
I, for one, am impressed that Tom Hayden not only switched, but did so in a very public forum. Hillary is already building a broad and expansive coalition, one big enough to include Tom Hayden.
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