Joining Forces

Hayden and Fonda’s decision to take to the halls of Congress to try to stop the war came at a moment when the antiwar movement felt stuck. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords brought home the last remaining US troops in Vietnam, and peace activists were adrift. After eight years of grassroots protests, ranging from teach-ins to massive single-day actions, many were prepared to move on to other issues. But the remnants of the antiwar movement were justifiably concerned that Nixon could break the peace as soon as fighting resumed between the North and South and authorize a new bombing campaign.

Hayden began the 1970s in court as one of the Chicago 7, a group of primarily well-known New Left activists whom the federal government accused of conspiring to start a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. After a shambolic set of proceedings that received regular coverage on the evening news, Hayden was one of the four who was convicted of crossing state lines with an intent to incite a riot. The US Court of Appeals eventually overturned the widely lampooned sentences in 1973.

The stress of the trial weighed heavily on Hayden. Facing a five-year prison sentence and constant FBI surveillance, he became even more convinced that he was living under fascism. At the time, Hayden lived in a radical collective in Berkeley known as the Red Family. Members practiced martial arts, went to target practice, and regularly debated the exact nature of the coming revolution. His time in Berkeley disrupted his pragmatism, a core part of Hayden’s political identity that stretched back to the early days of the reform-minded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) of the early 1960s. He embraced the confrontational tactics throughout the decade while also seeking out links to conventional politics.

Hayden met with administration officials in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, governors, and even presidential candidates while also traveling to Cuba and Vietnam. The tumultuous events of the late 1960s and Berkeley’s radical political scene altered his worldview and made him question his almost innate sense of political practicality. By the decade’s end, Hayden flirted with joining the underground and publicly called for the Left to create nebulously defined “liberation zones” across America.

By the summer of 1971, the Red Family kicked Hayden out for male chauvinism and other alleged manipulative behavior. Hayden was guilty of specific transgressions such as infidelity, but his dismissal was also part of a broader feminist wave against predominantly white male leaders that reshaped many movement spaces in the early 1970s. Women took control of these groups from male leaders who had long dominated leftist groups and were slow to respond to growing calls for gender equality. Other male leaders, including several of Hayden’s fellow codefendants like Rennie Davis, faced similar charges.

Eventually, the Red Family dismissed other male members and collapsed shortly after they banished Hayden from Berkeley. Much like other splits within the broader movement, a well-deserved corrective devolved and eventually crippled the Red Family. The episode was extremely painful for Hayden, who, at age thirty-one, decided to live under a pseudonym in a shabby studio apartment in Venice, California, filled with books on Irish history. He practiced yoga and karate on the beach and reevaluated his place within the movement. He developed antiwar slideshows with students who took his class on Vietnam at Immaculate Heart College and worked with close friend and lawyer Leonard Weinglass on whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s defense team.

Teaching the history of Vietnam gave Hayden a new sense of direction, but his relationship with Fonda helped him develop a new antiwar campaign. Fonda was already a dedicated activist before meeting Hayden, as she was a vocal supporter of antiwar GIs in the early 1970s. A year after a brief encounter at an antiwar GI meeting, Hayden and Fonda met again at an antiwar event in downtown Los Angeles, where Fonda was a featured speaker. Like Hayden, Fonda had become weary of the sectarianism that had defined movement politics and sought more structure for her antiwar work. Soon, the two began collaborating on slideshows; not long after, in January 1973, they were married.

In the early months of their budding romance, the two worked with fellow organizers in southern California to form the IPC in the summer of 1972. The IPC began as an education campaign about the war and coordinated a national tour of midwestern states just weeks after Fonda’s controversial visit to North Vietnam. Amid the initial backlash over the Hanoi trip, Hayden and Fonda successfully toured Middle America, showing the slides that brought them together. Joined by singer Holly Near and antiwar GI and POW George Smith, they began their voyage at the Ohio State Fair. It was one of many atypical venues for an antiwar rally.

Months after the successful tour, Hayden and Fonda set up an IPC headquarters in Santa Monica in January 1973. Both were determined to create a new organization to help unite peace groups nationwide. Hayden, a skilled strategist who was unafraid to lead, recognized that there was “a lack of any day-to-day work or organization about Vietnam.” He also added that there was a severe “lack of non-rhetorical education about Vietnam since the “teach-ins” of 1965. IPC organizers were in search of a more proactive approach to antiwar politics. Shifting away from the mass demonstrations that had defined the movement, the IPC was more interested in mobilizing local communities outside the nation’s antiwar hotspots. Soon, the IPC established dozens of chapters across the country.

The IPC’s main link to Washington was Larry Levin, a friend from Venice who bonded with Hayden over their interest in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. After helping Hayden and Fonda establish the IPC, he moved to the nation’s capital to lobby on behalf of a new umbrella organization, the Coalition to Stop Funding the War, in January 1973.

Made up of religious organizations, unions, and other longtime peace activists, the coalition explicitly sought to direct activists’ attention toward Congress to prevent Nixon from violating the Paris Peace Accords. The antiwar movement had lobbied Congress before, but the coalition offered a steadier outlet for activists interested in working on Capitol Hill.

Levin and others recall that Hayden was initially skeptical of the congressional strategy. Still bruised and battered by the events of the ’60s, Hayden was wary of alliances with politicians. By the fall, the politics of Vietnam and Watergate pushed the IPC toward lobbying. Fighting between the North and South had resumed, and a war-weary public was beginning to learn more about the president’s abuses of power. The IPC formalized their support of congressional lobbying at a Germantown, Ohio, conference in October. Hayden sought to capitalize on what he referred to as the “Watergate Opportunity,” as he and other IPC organizers agreed the time was right to pressure Congress to cut funding to South Vietnam and stop Nixon from taking drastic military action.

With established relationships on Capitol Hill through Levin and other coalition organizers, Tom, Jane, and their infant son went to Washington in January 1974. In their press releases, they highlighted the corruption of South Vietnam and the plight of the nation’s hundred thousand political prisoners. They also announced their intention to have members of Congress sign on to their three-point pledge, which called for the prohibition of direct US involvement in Indochina, a settlement based on the Paris Peace Agreement, and an end to US aid for police and prison systems in South Vietnam.

The couple purposefully avoided courting media attention, but a few journalists reported on their arrival. Mary McGrory, the venerable liberal columnist for the Washington Star, described the couple as the “most unexpected and most unnerving lobbying team on Capitol Hill.” She echoed other observers who marveled at their interactions with members of Congress. “People expected bandoliers and funny hats,” said one congressional aide to McGrory. “But they’re not like that at all. She’s very refined, and they’re both practical and serious about what they’re doing.”

“Fonda and Hayden are Now Models of Establishment,” declared another columnist who interviewed the latter about the IPC’s shift in tactics. When asked by a reporter about the move from radical protest to lobbying, Hayden, in between Capitol Hill appointments, argued, “The situation has changed.” “Now a majority of the people are on our side about Vietnam,” he added, and insisted that it was now appropriate to engage with the mainstream.

With Levin’s help, the two met with approximately fifty members of Congress to convince them to oppose the president’s recent request for an additional $474 million in military aid. The new proposal tested the antiwar movement’s influence versus Nixon’s.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, Hayden and Fonda detailed their mostly positive meetings with politicians in memos sent to other IPC organizers. Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota was one of the more enthusiastic supporters. He told them he was “willing to introduce any Indochina amendments if no one else will” to restrict funds. In their notes, the IPC identified Abourezk’s then aide and future Democratic senator majority leader, Tom Daschle, as one of the more helpful figures on Capitol Hill. Marvin Esch, a moderate Republican congressman from Michigan, did not sign the IPC’s pledge but added that he felt he could be pressured to sign if his constituents pressured him. Esch eventually became a reliable ally and voted to restrict aid to South Vietnam.

Hayden and Fonda’s presence provided a jolt to the coalition’s lobbying efforts in 1974. “Everyone wanted to mentor Tom and Jane. They wanted them to be part of the system,” said Levin. Bay Area congressman Ron Dellums, with the help of his then intern Barbara Lee, provided the space for Hayden’s classes on the history of US imperialism and played an essential role in strengthening the IPC’s ties with legislators and their staff.

Many of the staff members were in their twenties, which meant they were very familiar with Hayden’s work as both an activist and a New Left intellectual. They knew that antiwar sentiment had already spread on Capitol Hill and that the IPC could get their bosses on their side with enough pressure. After the Vietnam seminars, legislative aides began to give direct quotes and statistics from Hayden’s classes to members of Congress for their speeches.

Despite the warm welcome, some on Capitol Hill pressured the IPC to tone down its presentation to the American public. A Senator’s office once called Levin for what they described as an urgent meeting. He rushed to the office, wearing shorts and his pair of Ho Chi Minh rubber sandals, the latter popular among certain antiwar activists as a symbol of anticolonial resistance.

When he arrived, the senator’s aide held up the latest cover of the IPC’s newspaper, Focal Point, which featured an illustration of a North Vietnamese woman with a rifle. An American plane was in the background.

“Do you want to win votes? Is this what Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda represent?” the staff member exclaimed. “I thought you guys were beyond this.” Before Levin departed, the aide made sure to add, “Get rid of those goddamned Ho Chi Minh sandals. I don’t want to see them in Washington again.

Expanding Influence in Washington

There was obvious tension between the IPC and liberal Democrats, but public opinion helped override the differences between liberals and the Left in 1974. With the help of the IPC’s literature campaign and lobbying, the Coalition to Stop Funding the War reported that thousands of telegrams, petitions, and endless phone calls were arriving from Americans who wanted to end the war in Vietnam that spring. “Please call your people off. I’m voting with you, okay?” said one exasperated congressman to Fonda just before the House voted on the provision.

The president’s request for more military aid was defeated in the House in April by a 177-154 vote. The Senate would do the same the following month. It was the first time that Congress had opposed a request for military aid in Vietnam since 1964.

Despite intense lobbying from the White House, Nixon’s request for an additional $1.6 billion for South Vietnam was cut down to $700 million by the House on August 6, just days before he resigned. His successor, Gerald Ford, failed to convince Congress to support emergency aid for the collapsing government in Saigon, which eventually fell to the North on April 30, 1975.

It was an incredible victory for antiwar forces. As a part of an ideologically diverse liberal-left coalition, Hayden and Fonda helped expand the movement’s influence in Washington. Aside from their star power, they also acted as a crucial link between the grassroots and friendly politicians who were reevaluating US foreign policy in the mid-1970s.

The events of 1974 would have astounded the Hayden of 1969. In his 1988 memoir Reunion, he wrote that the lobbying campaign was “a turning point for me in working through the system.” He recalled walking out on a “starry Washington night” after their first legislative victory in May and “thanking the heavens for our trust in the process.”

With the encouragement of a few allies on Capitol Hill, Hayden ran an insurgent campaign for the Senate in California in 1976. He challenged the Democratic incumbent, John Tunney, with a staff of former IPC organizers. Hayden lost the race but surprised many with a respectable showing of over a million votes (37 percent). Afterward, Hayden and Fonda founded the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), which became a significant force in California through the 1980s, electing dozens of progressives to local and state office and passing early environmental reforms.

As a new antiwar movement calls for a cease-fire in Gaza and mobilizes Americans to oppose a war funded and backed by the United States, activists should look to what IPC organizer Bill Zimmerman referred to as the last stage of the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era as a model. Organizers are already mounting campaigns to pressure both Congress and the White House to end unconditional support for Israel’s bombing of the Palestinian people. The story of Hayden and Fonda’s lobbying campaign should inspire today’s protesters to take advantage of unexpected political openings. Hayden and Fonda helped channel widespread antiwar sentiment into meaningful political power through radical analysis and conventional tactics.

The Vietnam war’s end solidified Hayden’s belief that he and other activists should aim to find a balance between radical activism and effective organizing in the halls of power. A few months before North Vietnam took over Saigon, he outlined his thoughts on the movement in a thirty-page letter he composed between babysitting stints with his son in Leningrad.

While Fonda was filming The Blue Bird, a Soviet-US film featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Hayden wrote that he believed that the IPC could significantly influence the issues, delegate selection, and even the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 1976: “We may be able to launch a direction which would bring the left to political power over a longer period of, say, 25 years.”

Halfway through the letter, he announced that he was debating the merits of running for the Senate and encouraged IPC organizers to dream of future victories.

It sounds insane, egoistic, etc. But unless we normalize saying it, it can never happen. I think we should think even bigger, towards winning the presidency, itself in the future. . . . We have to ask how can the system be changed if not through expanding and using democratic rights to win power over key institutions. You can say it’s impossible in our generation. . . . But what does the left have to say otherwise?