Port Huron Statement

					SDS
					Port Huron, Michigan
					June 11-15, 1962


1.

White boys arguing late.

AGENDA FOR A GENERATION they said

scarred by modernity the most beautiful world a heap of rubble 
tossed down in confusion whole cities

their disillusion. Yet of & comforted by their modest
comforts. 

	
The invisible, they argued, had become indifferent. Peril
	had become indifferent, had become
perhaps 
      a type of
emptiness?

		Such is the effect of philosophy on the well-fed.

Still: thought fired and glazed
thought bled on point & such earnestness 
perhaps never again 

&

yes, black bodies bouyant in muddy currents
	mouths slackened and near shore seen
		spilling with mud crabs weed
 

We must admit they understood that.

o, where you are going and why? they asked
	freedomequality
	freedomequality is where we're going
	the engine of engines of
		change

        Class. 
	Control.
	An image to them.

As in, I look for the simplest way to sow and reap my nature. 

As in, our comfort was penetrated by events. Spark & spark & engine
	of change.

Perhaps two of them have starved or are starving.


_____
	 

In prison, she is good. She studies and writes books. All the illness of the world there for
her to comfort. In prison. In prison she does  not drive armed cars filled with black men
and weapons, white men and weapons. In prison she does not run barefoot from the
sounds of gunfire. As we grow, we inherit. As we grow, we are surrounding America. In
prison she looks like an old woman with no sense of fashion. While these and other
problems develop. When the word is insufficient, we are surrounding America. Blown to
bits along the borders. Naked in the streets after explosions we are good Americans, we
are surrounding America. The cities of the North. The workplaces where the free are
slotted into the sockets of a great machinery. The South and its graveyards. Our search is
for the world we inherit.We declare what we have witnessed. We have seen the invisible
made manifest. We have witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. 
	

_____


AGENDA FOR A GENERATION
	they sd

well you can't

	ideologies are exhausted
		 
                     today
		dreams of the older categories
			have been purchased
				by investors
		
We must use the partial and
	fragmentary as
		guideposts
			the mind compulsively	

driven

_____

On May Day the men went out into the street. All of the men, a piece
here, a piece there. A swirling of the men with no personal histories. The goal was to
inconvenience people. Hence the berets and chanting. No one could find the right
corner. Much stepping on feet. A sense of stepping into a sphere. 

_____


Our way? they sd
Russian loneliness, the soft
	sell.
To have one's way one's way so much as it is.
The decline of utopia and tentative determination. 
A first task of any but worthwhile. 

But loneliness.


_____


AGENDA FOR A GENERATION
[all the opposites, this is the meaning]; he undergoes economic manipulation;
encouraging independence; overcomes the idolatrous; character is his daimon;
apathy toward apathy begets a privately-constructed universe. It contains,
however, bowls.

Brightest and hottest is the students involved
 

To God all things public.


Fragment 114: A river he says that is in you and brought apart, which is
sundered, our mind. There is not much rainy weather. Cutting and
burning.

Many live as though they had a private understanding of the continuous flow of

the river. 

Sundered, our mind casts off its former power.


Donkeys prefer rubbish to gold.


Finally he became critical history.


_____

--beer, a girl or two, and early (1) independence; a respect for others, a sense of
mostly polluted water; decisions determining the quality and direction of Further,
they pray to these statues, don't even give a damn about the apathytimes. They
moved actively and control, no matter how unsatisfying otherwise. 





2.

 
THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE WARFARE STATE     they sd

By '66, no more arguments.
We ALL got it.

That is --Next!
Step up! That means you, boy!
Recite after me!
	(insert confucian ideogram here)


All ends and beginnings 
	are horrors. 
This is the Higher Learning. 

Use your "Back" button, for example. 
Contemplate the Way, the common peril. 


Be serene / but have your comforts
--hence, "hippies"


What we sd then concentrated on military ends. It belittled the profound. Still we
sd, set straight your heart. Gaining knowledge depends on investigating things.
And little comforts. Deterrence advocates.

_____

Daddy, why is there
	illuminating splendid virtue?
		For traditional
			concepts
				of power relations
have shown a slowness, sometimes a sheer inability
	to set the heart straight.

							i.e. American "megatonnage"


Forced private worry / callousness /  breeds the STATE
	--hence, Humphrey
		& other fat liberals
	

senselessness permits present brutality; present brutality is 
	both
		essential
and 
	non-essential
		--hence, NIXON

First set straight their hearts and minds
	Blame only Communism for the present menace

The possibility of limits, i.e. a "poverty" mentality, is the source of public silence
Serenity is the basis of power and profit
Hourly wages  / all is subordinated


Who is the emperor?
Who are the emperor's advocates?
Confusion, fear.

In less than a generation, from the emperor 
	all the way down 
		to the multitudes.
	
Translated by make their thoughts sincere first devoted themselves to part of the
military effort is then you'll come close to the Way. 
be capable of contemplation. Contemplate the Way, and

THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE WARFARE STATE

_____