NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE               DATE: 10/12/07 CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162 UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES HOSTS THIRD ANNUAL COLLOQUIUM ON SOCIAL CHANGE "FIFTY YEARS OF RADICAL ACTIVISM: AN EVENING WITH TOM HAYDEN" Amherst, MA – Political activist, Tom Hayden, will give a talk “Fifty Years of Radical Activism: An Evening with Tom Hayden” on October 30, 2007, at 7:30 p.m. at UMass Amherst as part of the Third Annual Colloquium on Social Change sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and University Archives.  The colloquium will include a panel discussion, “The Sixties: The Way We Really Were,” from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.  Both events will take place in the Cape Cod Lounge in the Student Union Building at UMass Amherst.  The events are free and open to the public. One of the most important figures in the antiwar movement of the 1960s, Tom Hayden was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1961, the author of the famous Port Huron Statement expressing the idealism of the New Left in 1962, head of the Newark Community Union Project launched in 1963 as part of an effort to create a national poor people's campaign for jobs and empowerment, active in the civil rights movement as a Freedom Rider, and one of the Chicago Seven arrested for protesting at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. In the 1970s, Hayden organized the grass-roots Campaign for Economic Democracy in California, which won dozens of local offices and shut down a nuclear power plant through a referendum for the first time.  He was elected to the California state assembly in 1982 and the state senate ten years later, serving 18 years in progressive politics within the Democratic Party.  He has twice served on the national platform committee of the Democratic Party. Hayden is national co-director of No More Sweatshops!, a coalition of labor, clergy, community and campus advocates of  “sweat-free” guidelines on public procurement and enforceable labor standards for corporate behavior.  His most recent book is Ending the War in Iraq. Panel Discussion: “The Sixties: The Way We Really Were” From 3:00–5:00 pm, five panelists will take part in a discussion and readings from a new book, Time it Was: American Stories from the Sixties, a set of short memoirs written by people who participated in a wide variety of Sixties-era movements and events.  The panelists include Johnny Flynn (a member of the American Indian Movement), Sheila Lennon (Woodstock), Tim Koster (Draft Lottery “Winner” and Conscientious Objector), Leah O’Leary (Red Cross volunteer, Vietnam) and Karen Manners Smith (a member of a religious cult).  For students, the readings and discussion provide an opportunity to hear stories that move beyond Sixties mythology towards an appreciation of the real -- but no less exciting -- experiences of young people in that tumultuous era. Non-students and members of the Five College and surrounding communities will find this panel discussion a chance to reconnect with their own memories of the period. For more information, contact Robert Cox, rscox@library.umass.edu; 413-545-6842.