After being arrested for his role in the Freedom Rides, Hayden began writing the SDS manifesto from jail in Albany, Georgia.

Refined and adopted at the first Students for Democratic Society (SDS) convention in June 1962, the Port Huron Statement called for a "new left" committed, in the spirit of participatory democracy, to "deliberativeness, honesty [and] reflection.

Although The Statement did express regret at the "perversion of the older left by Stalinism," it omitted the LID's standard denunciation of communism.

She later recalled that in contrast to the interminable debates she had witnessed in Ann Arbor, in SNCC discussions the focus was on action and women had a voice.

That year, with other SNCC women, Casey Hayden coauthored "Sex and Caste"[9] since regarded as a founding document of second-wave feminism.

[10] Convinced, in the words of the Statement, that students must "look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice," and with $5000 from United Automobile Workers, Hayden's first SDS initiative was the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP).

[13] President of the United Packinghouse Workers of America Ralph Helstein arranged for Hayden to meet with Saul Alinsky.

For three years in Newark, he worked with a community union to organize poor black residents to take on slumlords, city inspectors and others.

"[18] In 1965, while still committed in Newark, Hayden, along with Communist Party USA member Herbert Aptheker and Quaker peace activist Staughton Lynd, undertook a controversial visit to North Vietnam.

The three toured villages and factories and met with an U.S. Air Force Major Ron Byrne, an American POW whose plane had been shot down and was being held prisoner.

[23] Six months after the convention, he and seven other protesters including Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and incitement to riot as part of the "Chicago Eight", a.k.a.

[24] Hayden made several subsequent well-publicized visits to North Vietnam as well as Cambodia during America's involvement in the Vietnam War, which had expanded under President Richard M. Nixon to include the adjoining nations of Laos and Cambodia, although he did not accompany his future wife, actress Jane Fonda, on her especially controversial trip to Hanoi in the summer of 1972.

In the same year, while the Vietnam War was still ongoing, the documentary film Introduction to the Enemy, a collaboration by Fonda, Hayden, Haskell Wexler and others, was released.

The IPC, operating in Boston, New York, Detroit and Santa Clara, mobilized dissent against the Vietnam War and demanded unconditional amnesty for U.S. draft evaders, among other aims.

"[29] Staughton Lynd, though, was critical of the Port Huron and New Left concept of "participatory democracy", stating: "We must recognize that when an organization grows to a certain size, consensus decision-making is no longer possible, and some form of representative government becomes necessary.

He and Fonda later initiated the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), which formed a close alliance with then-Governor Jerry Brown and promoted solar energy, environmental protection and renters' rights policies, as well as candidates for local office throughout California, more than 50 of whom would go on to be elected.

[35] During this time, he was frequently protested by conservative groups, including Vietnamese refugees, military veterans, and members of Young Americans for Freedom.

He mounted a bid in the Democratic primary for California Governor during 1994 on the theme of campaign finance reform and ran for Mayor of Los Angeles in 1997, losing to incumbent Republican Richard Riordan.

During January 2008, Hayden wrote an opinion essay for The Huffington Post's website endorsing Barack Obama's presidential bid in the Democratic primaries.

He was the author or editor of 19 books, including The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama, Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader, and his memoir, Reunion, and served on the editorial board of The Nation.

His book Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement, completed in the months before his death in October 2016, was published on January 31, 2017, by Yale University Press.

In a discussion about the book with Theodore Hamm published in the Brooklyn Rail, Hayden argues, "The apparatus of occupation is never going to turn into a peacekeeping economic development agency.