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42-513: Its original Preamble focused on the criticism of education found in SDS's Port Huron Statement . Later, as its courses and interests expanded to include the full range of 1960s counterculture—especially the burgeoning human potential movement —the MFU adopted a revised Preamble reflecting a more expansive vision—a document which one commentator characterized as "a compelling and almost classical manifesto" of

84-570: A "program against poverty." The document provided ideas of what and how to work for and to improve, and also advocated nonviolent civil disobedience as the means by which student youth could bring forth the concept of "participatory democracy." The statement also presented SDS's break from the mainstream liberal policies of the postwar years. It was written to reflect their view that all problems in every area were linked to each other. The statement expressed SDS's willingness to work with groups whatever their political inclination. In doing so, they sought

126-554: A Democratic Society (SDS). The Port Huron Statement was adopted at the organization's first convention in 1962, and was based on an earlier draft by staff member Tom Hayden . The Port Huron Statement was a broad critique of the political and social system of the United States for failing to achieve international peace and economic justice. In foreign policy, the statement took issue with the American government's handling of

168-518: A base for their assault upon the loci of power." In the movie The Big Lebowski , the main character Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski says, "I was one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement. The original Port Huron Statement. Not the compromised second draft." Venceremos (political organization) Venceremos ( Spanish for "We will be victorious") was an American far-left and primarily Chicano political group active in

210-536: A few. The Free You newsletter was first edited by Jim Warren and later by Fred Nelson, Ed McClanahan , Gurney Norman , and Jon Buckley. Bob Palmer was its master printer; Nina Wolf, Joan Larimore, Emil Pierre, Lee Reeves, and Phil Trounstine were responsible for most of its graphics and much of its photography. From 1968 through 1971, the FBI—as a part of its nationwide COINTELPRO operation directed at dissident political organizations—conducted extensive surveillance of

252-509: A major drive in the South. In the North, reform clubs (either independent or Democratic) should be formed to run against big city regimes on such issues as peace, civil rights, and urban needs. Demonstrations should be held at every Congressional or convention seating of Dixiecrats. A massive research and publicity campaign should be initiated, showing to every housewife, doctor, professor, and worker

294-536: A plan to gain Beaty's escape. According to police and Beaty, who became the prosecution's star witness, two unarmed prison guards were taking Beaty to a court appearance in San Bernardino when their vehicle was ambushed near Chino . Beaty was freed when Venceremos member, 23-year-old Robert Seabok , shot both guards at point blank range , killing Jesus Sanchez and wounding his partner George Fitzgerald. After

336-450: A series of street concerts featuring local rock bands. Not long after, the MFU was denied the right to hold one of its regular be-ins at a city park. It further antagonized the already hostile city fathers and the conservative Palo Alto Times by going to court, having Palo Alto's park ordinance declared unconstitutional, and holding its Be-In as scheduled. All of this occurred as opposition to Stanford's involvement in war-related research

378-597: A variety of categories: Encounter/Sensitivity (26%), Arts (15%), Philosophy & Religion (13%), Crafts (12%), Politics & Economics (12%), Leisure (10%), Whole Earth Studies (8%), Education (4%). It was known for its intriguing and disparate mix of classes. The MFU strove for full participatory democracy . All significant decisions were made by the membership, either at monthly membership meetings or weekly Coordinating Committee meetings open to any member who wished to participate and presided over by an elected Coordinator. The MFU brought together in classes and at meetings

420-709: A verbal aggressiveness rarely seen before in the city's politics. Member Jeffrey Youdelman was known for offensive shouting down of council members and presenting petitions for radical left causes. Venceremos members ran for local office in Palo Alto, including Jean Hobson and Youdelman who unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 1971 and 1973, respectively. Doug Garrett ran for the School Board. During this period, Venceremos held weekly rallies at Lytton Plaza in Palo Alto, which they dubbed "The People's Plaza." In May 1971, Venceremos's Easter Division drifted away from

462-439: Is open to participation by individuals of nearly any viewpoint". However, it stated that this "will involve national efforts at university reform by an alliance of students and faculty" who "must wrest control of the educational process from the administrative bureaucracy", ally with groups outside the university, integrate "major public issues into the curriculum", "make debate and controversy". In short, "They must consciously build

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504-444: Is to demand a Democratic Party responsible to their interests. They must support Southern voter registration and Negro political candidates and demand that Democratic Party liberals do the same (in the last Congress, Dixiecrats split with Northern Democrats on 119 of 300 roll-calls, mostly on civil rights, area redevelopment and foreign aid bills; and the breach was much larger than in the previous several sessions). Labor should begin

546-695: The Cold War , both the existential threat of nuclear war, and the actual arms race. In domestic matters, it criticized racial discrimination, economic inequality , big businesses, trade unions, and political parties. In addition to its critique and analysis of the American system, the statement also suggested a series of reforms: it proclaimed a need to reshape into two genuine political parties to attain greater democracy, for stronger power for individuals through citizen's lobbies, for more substantial involvement by workers in business management, and for an enlarged public sector with increased government welfare, including

588-611: The HUAC and Army-McCarthy hearings . Without being Marxist or pro-communism, the Port Huron conference denounced anti-communism as being a social problem and an obstruction to democracy. They also criticized the United States for its exaggerated paranoia and exclusive condemnation of the Soviet Union, and blamed this for being the reason for failing to achieve disarmament and to assure peace. The Port Huron Statement, ultimately,

630-566: The Palo Alto, California area from 1969 to 1973. The organization was founded in 1966 by Aaron Manganiello (a former Brown Beret ) as a largely Latino left-wing group; it evolved to an increasingly Maoist/Communist brigade. Katerina Del Valle was its chairperson. In 1971 they were joined by a faction of the Maoist organization Revolutionary Union (RU), led by H. Bruce Franklin , a Stanford University English professor. More whites joined

672-470: The American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat outside of Port Huron , Michigan (now part of Lakeport State Park ), for the group's first national convention. Under Walter Reuther 's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of

714-469: The MFU and many of its leaders. The available FBI file runs about 200 pages, with numerous redactions. Informants were utilized. Individual names were noted, and a number of members were included or considered for inclusion in the FBI's "Security Index" of persons to be detained without a warrant should a crisis occur. Port Huron Statement The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of

756-463: The MFU model was egalitarian, much of its success was due to a core group of leaders and a dedicated staff, all of whom taught classes and most of whom held elected positions: Robb Crist, Vic Lovell, Robert Cullenbine , Kim Woodard, Larry Tesler , Marc Porat , Jim Warren , John McCarthy , Graham and Rene Lewis, Tom Reidy, Roy Kepler, Kathy Kirby, Tom Crystal, Gail Teel, Grace Olsen, Mark Jensen, Docey Baldwin, Dorothy Bender, and Jim Wolpman, to name

798-635: The MFU, repudiated its preamble and re-organized its newsletter. Enrollment fell to 700 in 1970 and to 70 by 1971; in July the MFU was disbanded. Course leaders came primarily from the community. Some were well known and some were prominent visitors: Paul Goodman was the principal speaker at an early organizational meeting; Herbert Marcuse taught a seminar; Joan Baez lectured on non-violence; Norman O. Brown , Stewart Brand , Richard Alpert (later, Ram Dass ), Alexander Lowen , Robert Hass , and David Harris all taught classes at one time or another. While

840-525: The Midpeninsula and throughout the Bay Area. The character of the MFU was defined as much by the concrete struggles and controversies it confronted as by its declared aims and goals. There was, first of all, its unsuccessful quest for a much-needed community center. A site was found, but at the last moment the landlord, a prominent Palo Alto lawyer, reneged. That led to a peaceful demonstration and

882-835: The Peking House commune, but commune members were concerned about police surveillance. They moved DeFreeze to a lower-profile location east of the hills in Concord . Calling himself General Field Marshal Cinque, he co-founded the Symbionese Liberation Army with Patricia Soltysik , a white woman, and a few mostly white associates he met as a prisoner and member of the Black Cultural Association at Vacaville Prison , including former Venceremos members Joe Remiro and Willie Wolfe. The Communist Party USA (Provisional) also traces its origins to

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924-679: The UAW summer retreat in Port Huron. A state historical marker will be erected on the site in 2025. SDS developed from the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). LID descended from the Intercollegiate Socialist Society , started in 1905. Early in 1960, the SLID changed its name into Students for

966-410: The United States. The 25,700-word statement issued a non-ideological call for participatory democracy , based on non-violent civil disobedience and the idea that individual citizens could help make the social decisions which determined their quality of life. Also known as the "Agenda for a Generation", it popularized the term participatory democracy . It has been described as "a seminal moment in

1008-568: The aspirations of 1960s counterculture. In so far as the MFU had a concrete political philosophy, it was the belief that the counterculture harbored the potential for a new politics—open, more humane, and more creative—one that could lead to a true community and a better society. Eventually, the MFU came to focus on the encounter group and the psychodrama as the primary vehicle for that transformation. In its most active and successful years—1968-1969—enrollment varied between 1,000 and 1,275. Between 150 and 300 courses were offered each quarter, covering

1050-466: The campuses. [...] The new combined organization was multi-national, extremely diversified in its activities and base, and quite militant." Venceremos publicly advocated armed self-defense by the citizenry, community control of the police, and reform of the prison system. To these ends, the group's members engaged in a number of legal activities, such as working to educate prisoners and defend Vietnam War protesters. The organization's ultimate stated goal

1092-473: The center and began organizing through the United Farm Workers union. A small group of Venceremos members attempted to free a federal prisoner on October 6, 1972; several members were involved in the murder, which hit the headlines. Member Jean Hobson had been romantically linked to federal prison inmate Ronald Beaty, who was incarcerated at Chino Prison . She and other Venceremos members made

1134-686: The damage done to their interests every day a racist occupies a place in the Democratic Party. Where possible, the peace movement should challenge the "peace credentials" of the otherwise-liberals by threatening or actually running candidates against them." The Port Huron Statement argued that because "the civil rights and peace and student movements are too poor and socially slighted, and the labor movement too quiescent", it should rally support and strengthen itself by looking to universities, which benefit from their "permanent position of social influence" and being "the only mainstream institution that

1176-629: 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. "An imperative task for these publicly disinherited groups, then,

1218-404: The diverse, overlapping and sometimes divergent, strains of the local counterculture—artists, crafts-people, writers, leftists, pacifists, dissatisfied liberals, disaffected street-people, environmentalists, people involved or interested in mysticism, computers, encounter, drugs, rock music and sexual freedom. It also supported, publicized, and collaborated with other countercultural organizations on

1260-453: The organization through this period. Franklin was fired in 1972 on charges of violating his commitment to the university by "inciting to riot" in 1971. Venceremos and Franklin favored a militant strategy based on protracted urban guerrilla warfare. According to Franklin, "... these collectives had been heavily involved in youth organizing within white proletarian communities, in factory organizing and in anti-imperialist struggles on

1302-432: The police captured Beaty and Hobson nearly a month later, Beaty named Venceremos members Hobson, Seabok, Andrea Holman Burt, and Benton Burt as the perpetrators of the fatal assault on the prison guards. Former professor H. Bruce Franklin, four Venceremos members, and three Arizona residents were arrested in this case in late December 1972. A total of fourteen people were arrested; twelve were charged either with murder or, as

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1344-555: The political and life-style tensions latent in the counterculture had emerged, and the leadership of the MFU—weary and frustrated in their attempts to realize its aims and aspirations—looked for a new generation of leaders and another path. That new leadership came from a group of members affiliated with the Revolutionary Union, a Marxist–Leninist-Maoist organization, which later became Venceremos . In 1970, it took control of

1386-514: The recently developed IBM Selectric Composer . Like the catalogs, which used the same technology, it was widely distributed. Its editorial policy was, like the MFU's classes, wide-open. Any member of the community could submit an article, story, poem or other piece of work and it would be published with minimum editing by the staff. It also published original work by well-known writers and poets— Ken Kesey , Wendell Berry , Robert Stone , Thom Gunn , Ed McClanahan , Gurney Norman . By late 1969,

1428-399: The rejection of the extant anti-communism of the time. In the concurrent Cold War environment, such a statement of inclusion for the heretofore "evil" Communist ideology, and by extension, socialist concepts, was definitely seen as a new, radical view contrasting with the position of much of the traditional American Left. The latter had developed a largely anti-communist orthodoxy in the wake of

1470-460: The target of a series of firebombings, conducted by a right-wing group calling themselves the Society of Man. Besides the usual announcements and in-house news, The Free You published stories, poems, essays, humor, reviews, travel pieces, re-prints, commentary, and even recipes. The text was accompanied by photographs, illustrations and artwork, often in color, in a magazine-like format, utilizing

1512-469: The unimaginable." The ideals that led those gathered outside Port Huron, Michigan in 1962 to issue this call to action not only added to the discussion of what became the Great Society of the mid-60s, but helped frame the issues that fueled the rising anti-war movement , college campus activism, and the broader social movement known then as the counterculture that carried into the early 1970s in

1554-476: Was Franklin, with harboring Beaty, classified as a federal fugitive. While charges were dropped against some, the chief perpetrators were tried. Jean Hobson, 19 year-old Andrea Holman Burt, and her husband 31-year-old Douglas Burt were all convicted of second-degree murder in 1973 and 1974. Seabok was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Beaty had become a prosecution witness; he pleaded guilty for being part of Sanchez's death and

1596-411: Was a document of idealism, a philosophical template for a more egalitarian society, a call to participatory democracy where everyone was engaged in issues that affected all people - in civil rights, in political accountability, in labor rights, and in nuclear disarmament. It closed with the following: "If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid

1638-521: Was convicted of first degree murder ; while Jean Hobson, Andrea Holman Burt, and Benton Burt were convicted of second degree murder . In March 1973, Donald DeFreeze , a prison inmate who was on somewhat familiar terms with Bay Area radicals through visits from the UC Berkeley Prison Outreach Project, escaped from Soledad Prison and made his way to Oakland. He found shelter with members or associates of Venceremos at

1680-680: Was crystallizing. MFU members participated in the protests and sit-ins which ultimately—after injunctions, mass arrests and trials—resulted in Stanford divesting itself of the Stanford Research Institute and eliminating ROTC . While all that was happening, the MFU—along with Kepler's Books, the local Kennedy Action Corps headquarters, the Resistance, and the home of a Palo Alto Councilmember who supported gun control—became

1722-432: Was sentenced to life as well. By September 1973 Venceremos had officially disbanded. Some members went on to other leftist groups, such as Joe Remiro , who joined the small Symbionese Liberation Army in its early days. Venceremos disintegrated under the duress of legal troubles, recriminations over the Beaty incident, and general factionalism . By September 1973 it had ceased to function as an organization. Robert Seabok

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1764-626: Was the overthrow of the government. In 1970, Venceremos opened its own community college in a Redwood City storefront; it operated for two years until running out of money. The House Committee on Internal Security considered Venceremos a serious political threat, as described in its 202-page report America's Maoists: the Revolutionary Union, the Venceremos Organization (1972). Venceremos members often participated in City Council and School Board meetings in Palo Alto with

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