Z-Net Interview with Tom Hayden on the publication of Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader
(read the full interview here)

What issues do you feel are being under-discussed, ignored, or just off point in the speeches and debates between Obama and Clinton?

a. What “ending the war” in Iraq actually means has been ignored, primarily by the media. Obama at least has a timetable for withdrawing combat troops, but seems to want to leave a counter-insurgency force of tens of thousands. Clinton only says she wants to “begin” withdrawals, and seems to propose an even larger “counter-terrorism” force behind. This will turn Iraq into something like Central America in the Seventies. It’s never talked about.

b. the mass incarceration strategy toward inner-city youth, masked as the war on gangs and war on drugs, with the U.S. now holding 20 percent of the world’s inmates.

c. Latin America. Not a word.

d. the economic crisis causes a lot of chatter and a few important issues to surface, like reversing the Bush tax cuts. But the terrible effects of the privatization and deregulation policies are not much discussed, mainly because both candidates favored or flirted with those very policies in recent years.

It is a progressive populist moment in terms of a frustrated public opinion. The voters are to the left of the Democrats.

from the his recent book:

“Is the only value in rebellion itself, in the countless momentary times when people transcend their pettiness to commit themselves to great purposes? If so, then radicalism is doomed to be extraordinary, erupting only during those rare times of crisis and upsurge which American elites seem able to ride. The alternative, if there is one, might be for radicalism to make itself ordinary, patiently taking up work that has only the virtue of facing and becoming part of the realities which are society’s secrets and its disgrace. . . . Radicalism would then give itself to, and become part of, the energy that is kept restless and active under the clamps of a paralyzed imperial society. Radicalism then would go beyond the concepts of optimism and pessimism as guides to work, finding itself in working despite the odds. Its realism and sanity would be grounded in nothing more than the ability to face whatever comes.”

—Tom Hayden