Port Huron Statement

The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of the North American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written primarily by Tom Hayden, a University of Michigan student and then the Field Secretary of SDS, with help from 58 other SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers retreat in Port Huron, Michigan (now Lakeport State Park), for the group’s first national convention. A few years later, however, the SDS shifted away from labor unions and more towards the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In December 1964, with the political climate drastically changing, a second printing of the manifesto was issued which included an introductory disclaimer which indicated that "while few of its original writers would agree today with all of its conclusions," the manifesto retained its importance as an "essential source of SDS direction" and "one of the earliest embodiments of the feelings of the new movement of young people which began in the sixties.

The 25,700-word statement "articulated the fundamental problems of American society and laid out a radical vision for a better future". It issued a nonideological call for participatory democracy, "both as a means and an end", based on non-violent civil disobedience and the idea that individual citizens could help make "those social decisions determining the quality and direction" of their lives. Also known as the “Agenda for a Generation”, it "brought the term 'participatory democracy' into the common parlance".

It has been described as "a seminal moment in the development of the New Left" and a "classic statement of [its] principles", but it also revealed the 1960s' tension between communitarianism and individualism. In particular, the statement viewed race ("symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry") and Cold War–induced alienation ("symbolized by the presence of the Bomb") as the two main problems of modern society.

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