Annotations for Framing Elements: Intro

This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

[Music] Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the topic of participatory democracy.

How have and how can people be more involved in our democracy, not just when it comes to voting, but to day-to-day activities to make our democracy more full, more rich, and more real for people. We're going to focus on a particular moment in our history when a young group of citizens came forward with a statement about the importance of participatory democracy, a statement that inspired hundreds of thousands of people and continues to inspire many people. This is the Port Huron Statement of 1962, written by Students for a Democratic Society.

And we have with us one of the foremost scholars of participatory democracy and Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement, Dr. Vanessa Cook. Dr. Cook received her PhD in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. She wrote a fantastic dissertation that I in part supervised and had the opportunity to learn from.

It's a dissertation that's been published as a really wonderful book that I encourage everyone to read. The book is titled Spiritual Socialists, Religion and the American Left, and it's about those issues and much, much more with some fascinating figures who contributed to our democracy in all kinds of ways. She's written articles in the Washington Post, Dissent Magazine, Religion and Politics, and she's currently the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency Historian, in residence, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Missing in Action Project.

Vanessa, thank you for joining us this morning.

Oh, good morning. Thank you for having me.

Before we turn to our discussion of participatory democracy and the Port Huron Statement, we have, of course, Mr. Zachary Suri's scene-setting poem. Zachary, what is the title of your poem this morning?

"Port Huron Revisited."

Let's hear it.

"We are people of this generation, housed now in, we are people of this generation, do not forget the oceans of incalculable transgressions and the memory of the maimed millions. We are people of this generation, housed now in absurdity and the phosphorescent orbs of radioactive civility. We are people of this generation, standing by obelisks we're not sure make any sense to us now in a sea of so many sanctimonious automobiles. Mark them as the godly idols of our time. We are people of this generation, housed now in, and the black-white haze of centuries of ambiguous certainty. We are people of this generation, sleep, float, remember. We are people of this generation, housed now in absurdity and the windswept deserts of parking lot dystopias. We are people of this generation, standing now on a bluff overlooking the harbor, observe the Lady of Liberty, wonder what oxidized horror she holds beneath the crown. Thus is the spirit of white giant at the reflecting pool, the names in white crawling along the black marble wall."

I love all the imagery there, Zachary, from the parking lots to the Statue of Liberty. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the sort of dissatisfaction with American society and the current sort of American political discourse that drove so many young people to the radical political movements of the 1960s. And I think what's so startling today is how relevant many of their concerns and their criticisms of American society are to young people like myself today. And...that was really what my poem was about, was connecting those two generations and those two time periods.

I love the intergenerational element of that, Zachary. Our podcast is designed to be intergenerational.

Well, and the first line of the Port Huron statement is, we are people of this generation, which is such a poignant and powerful statement in and of itself.

Well said.

Vanessa, can you give us some background on this Port Huron statement of 1962? Who wrote it and what was the message that they were trying to promote?

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the Vietnam War and its legacies, its continuing legacies in American society, in global policy, and particularly in light of a recent set of conflicts that produced similarly controversial outcomes for American society and global policy, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are very fortunate to be joined by a friend, colleague, distinguished author, and distinguished scholar, Mark Lawrence.

Mark is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum here in Austin, Texas, which is the best presidential library, and I say that without any bias at all. Mark is also a professor in the UT Department of History, and he has taught courses on American and international history and various other topics. He's written three fantastic books.

His first book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. His second book is a wonderful narrative history of the Vietnam War as a whole, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and it's the only history of the Vietnam War I've seen that is truly concise. It's very hard to write a concise history of the Vietnam War.

And Mark's most recent book, the book that has just come out that we're going to talk about today, is on the Vietnam War and its legacies. It's called The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. Mark, congratulations on your book, and thanks for joining us.

This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy, our first new episode of 2020 of the new decade. And we are so fortunate this morning, we are discussing Congress and war powers, an issue that's been in the news really for 240 years in American history, and an issue that's certainly at the center of American attention today. And we have with us, probably the person who's studying these issues most deeply as a historian, Clay Katsky. Clay, welcome.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Nice to have you on with us. Clay is finishing his PhD here at the University of Texas, and he's writing his dissertation on Congress's role in managing and dealing with presidential war powers, particularly in the 1970s and 80s. And so we're so fortunate to have him here. He knows more about this subject than anyone else. He's also a fantastic teacher. And so we're delighted to have you here, Clay. Before we turn to our discussion with our expert, with Clay, we have our scene-setting poem. I haven't had a chance to say that in a little while, our scene-setting poem with Zachary Suri. What's the title of your poem today?