Tom Hayden

Former California State Senator Tom Hayden talked about his book, Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader, published by City Lights Publishers. The book collects Mr. Hayden’s pieces on various social

and political issues that he has engaged in since the early 1960s. As a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society, Mr. Hayden was a prominent figure in the movement against the Vietnam War and was one of the eight people charged with conspiracy after leading street demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Later he served 18 years in the California State Assembly and Senate, and more recently has been active in preventing gang violence and ending the war in Iraq. He was interviewed on the C-SPAN BookTV Bus while at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

The guest interviewer was Jon Wiener, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Wiener’s books include Historians in Trouble and Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files. Most recently he is the editor of Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Eight, for which Tom Hayden wrote the foreword. close