‘Chicago 7’ defendant dies at 76

Trial after DNC riots was one stop on Hayden’s path from radical to liberal statesman

FILE - In this June 6, 1988 file photo, Tom Hayden talks about his new book, "Reunion," during a interview at his office in Santa Monica, Calif. Hayden, the famed 1960s anti-war activist who moved beyond his notoriety as a Chicago 8 defendant to become a California legislator, author and lecturer, has died. He was 76. His wife, Barbara Williams, says Hayden died on Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016, in Santa Monica of a long illness. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 17, 1980 file photo, anti-nuclear activist Tom Hayden as he meets with the Energy Development Caucus, a group of lawmakers who share Hayden's enthusiasm for alternative energy, at the Statehouse in Boston. Hayden, the famed 1960s anti-war activist who moved beyond his notoriety as a Chicago 8 defendant to become a California legislator, author and lecturer, has died at age 76. His wife, Barbara Williams, says Hayden died on Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016, in Santa Monica of a long illness. (AP Photo/Joanne Rathe, File)

Tom Hayden

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By John Rogers and Linda Deutsch (Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES — In one of the most dramatic personal transformations in American political history, Tom Hayden went from being a famed 1960s and 1970s student radical to a mainstream elected official and elder statesman of the country’s left. He died Sunday at age 76 after a lengthy illness.

Hayden will be forever linked to riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vietnam War protests of the 1970s and his onetime marriage to actress Jane Fonda.

Those events, however, ultimately represented just a small slice of a life dedicated to, as he put it, trying to change the world.

Elected to the California Assembly in 1982, Hayden served 10 years, followed by eight more in the state Senate.

During that time he put his name on some 100 pieces of legislation — including laws aimed at holding down college tuition costs, preventing discrimination in hiring and safety controls on guns.

Former President Bill Clinton praised Hayden, saying “his eventful life in pursuit of peace and justice ran the gamut from protesting to legislating, with lots of writing and teaching along the way.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown said Hayden “took up causes that others avoided. He had a real sense of the underdog and was willing to do battle no matter what the odds.”

It was a battle that began at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the early 1960s where Hayden, then barely out of his teens, co-founded the Students For a Democratic Society and wrote its “manifesto,” the often-quoted Port Huron Statement.

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit,” the lengthy screed railing against racial discrimination, war and wage disparity proclaimed in its introduction.

While critics of the time dismissed it as nonsense and Hayden’s group as a band of ragtag malcontents threatening the American way of life with their left-wing ideas, its author would be invited to colleges for decades to come to lecture about its significance.

Youth International Party co-founder Paul Krassner, who also participated in the Chicago demonstration, told The Associated Press on Monday that the manifesto was a cornerstones of the 1960s radical movement because it spelled out precisely what protesters hoped to accomplish.

“People were always saying, ‘Oh, what do they really stand for?’ And this laid it out,” Krassner said.

An early opponent of the Vietnam War, Hayden made his first visit to North Vietnam in 1965 in unauthorized trip that enraged a segment of the American public at the time. He returned in 1967 and was asked by North Vietnamese leaders to bring three prisoners of war back to the United States.

In 1968, he helped organize anti-war demonstrations outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Vice President Hubert Humphrey was being nominated for president.

After the demonstrations turned violent, he and six others were put on trial as the infamous “Chicago 7.”

After a circuslike proceeding, with the defendants openly mocking the judge, Hayden and three others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riot. The convictions were eventually overturned, and an official report on the violence concluded it was the result of “a police riot.”

Still an anti-war activist, Hayden met Fonda in 1971 and they eventually married, following a “first date” in which he presented her a slideshow of an anti-war teach-in he was conducting. Fonda had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim, by her marriage to film director Roger Vadim, and she and Hayden would have a son, Troy Garity.

Backed by heavy financial support from Fonda, Hayden plunged into California politics in the late 1970s. With the disdain he’d attracted during his anti-war years fading, he was elected to the Assembly as a representative of the liberal city of Santa Monica and its surrounding area.

During his years in office he and Fonda split up and he later married actress Barbara Williams. The couple had a son, Liam.

Before launching his successful Assembly bid, Hayden had made an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate. He later made unsuccessful bids to become governor of California, mayor of Los Angeles and Los Angeles city councilman.