By Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Where to begin? What can one say faced with the difficult news of his death?
We worked together, at a distance, on the new edition of “Listen
Yankee! Why Cuba matters” outcome, in part, of long conversations
between two old friends, and to an extent in part, a sort of for
handed memorie.
Because our friendship remained intact since the 1960´s when we each
headed glorious organizations, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
and the Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (FEU).
Our ideals and our struggle united us and above all the headstrong
conviction that a better world was possible and that it was something
worth dedicating one’s life to achieve.
There is so much that must be said about Tom Hayden. The long road
that so often sent him to jail from the days when he marched in the
South to defend the civil rights of black people to finding himself at
the helm of the movement against the Viet Nam war with its seminal
moment at the insurgence of the youth movement in Chicago in 1968. A
road that led him to occupy elective posts never abandoning the dreams
of his youth.
Because for him the 60´s were never a thing of the past and one can
never reference those everlasting years without mentioning him
He had a large body of published works, books, essays, and speeches
from the Port Huron Statement, functional manifesto for SDS to his
texts on Afro-American rebellion in New Jersey, to his most recent
works, where his solidarity with Cuba was ever present, and where his
struggle for the freedom of the Cuban Five saw no bounds.
His life and his ideas will continue being an inspiration to the new
generations. He was, is and always will be, what the founder of the
FEU in Cuba always wanted, an eternal young rebel.
Until victory onward Tom, comrade in arms, comrade.
ajiacomix 