Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, With a New Preface by the Author - Softcover

Miller, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674197259 ISBN 13: 9780674197251

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1994

Synopsis

On June 12, 1962, sixty young student activists drafted a manifesto for their generation―The Port Huron Statement―that ignited a decade of dissent. Democracy Is in the Streets is the definitive history of the major people and ideas that shaped the New Left in America during that turbulent decade. Because the 1960s generation is now moving into positions of power in politics, education, the media, and business, their early history is crucial to our understanding. James Miller, in his new Preface, puts the 1960s and them into a context for our time, claiming that something of value did happen: “Most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness―political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new―are with us still.”

About this title

About the Author:

James Miller, Professor of Political Science and Director of Liberal Studies at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, is the author of The Passion of Michel Foucault and Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy.

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1962, at Port Huron, Mich., Tom Hayden led members of Students for a Democratic Society in drafting a manifesto advocating participatory democracy. "The Port Huron Statement" became a beacon to student activists and civil rights workers during the 1960s. Miller, an ex-SDS member and author of Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy, argues here that the Port Huron proclamation owes as much to Quaker practices, John Dewey's pragmatism and civic republican philosophy as it does to Karl Marx. In charting the history of the New Left through the lives of a handful of SDS leaders, this highly personal chronicle sometimes lacks balance and loses sight of the broader political context. The participatory spirit of Port Huron lives on, maintains Miller, in current efforts to democratize all areas of life, from the workplace to the family. An appendix reprints the 63-page "Port Huron Statement."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0674197259
• ISBN 13: 9780674197251
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448