Tom Hayden, famed anti-Vietnam war activist, dies aged 76

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Tom Hayden, progressive activist and a prominent figure in the US anti-Vietnam war movement, dies after a lengthy illness.

Hayden died in his home in Santa Monica "after a lengthy illness", the Los Angeles Times reports.

He was a member of the "Chicago seven" charged with conspiracy over anti-Vietnam war protests in 1968 and eventually acquitted. Hayden later served in the California state assembly and Senate for nearly two decades. He was married to actress Jane Fonda between 1973 and 1990.

Born in Michigan in 1939, he became an activist during his time at the University of Michigan, where he helped to found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

While there, he wrote a policy document called the Port Huron Statement, which he styled the "agenda for a generation".

Mr Hayden and the SDS went on to become a major influence on the 1960s protest movement, particularly against the Vietnam war.

"Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968,'' he wrote in the essay Streets of Chicago.

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