( CNN ) -- As Occupy Wall Street demonstrates its staying power , media increasingly portray it favorably . Because of its success , the movement is being asked to put forth a list of its demands . So far , members have said no . And well they should . The refusal of Occupy Wall Street to tie itself down with an agenda that can be debated piecemeal is one of its great strengths . The decision allows Occupy Wall Street to remain a cri de coeur for all who believe they have lost ground over the last decade . In choosing this strategy , Occupy Wall Street is doing more than defying expectations . It is linking itself with the best of 1960s America . Fifty years ago in his 1961 Inaugural Address , President John F. Kennedy declared that the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans . A year later , in its Port Huron Statement of 1962 , the group Students for a Democratic Society ( SDS ) , took Kennedy 's generational declaration a step further , insisting that the time had come for America to make a new commitment to social justice . For SDS , an organization dominated by college and graduate students , participatory democracy was a version of Occupy Wall Street 's horizontal democracy , and to look back at SDS 's Port Huron Statement is to see why Occupy Wall Street activists should feel confident about the path they have chosen . The Port Huron Statement was often maddeningly vague . But like Occupy Wall Street 's chant , `` We are the 99 percent , '' the Port Huron Statement left no doubt about the all-inclusive equality SDS sought . As Kirkpatrick Sale has written in his definitive history `` SDS : The Rise and Development of the Students for a Democratic Society , '' the organization both captured and shaped the spirit of the new student mood . `` America rests in national stalemate '' was the underlying premise of the Port Huron Statement . SDS believed the `` decline of utopia and hope '' was the defining feature of the American political landscape in the early '60s , and its task was to search for `` truly democratic alternatives . '' SDS members had , they believed , grown up when America was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world , and they saw themselves struggling with the complacency such power produced . SDS did not underestimate the difficulty of overcoming the problems it faced . At a time when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was still years away and the fall of the Berlin Wall was impossible to imagine , SDS was concerned not only with the questions of economic equality but the entrenched racism of the South and the nuclear arms race . The organization conceded that much groundwork had to be laid if serious change was possible . `` The first task of any social movement is to convince people that the search for orienting theories and the creation of human values is complex but worthwhile , '' the Port Huron Statement says . The group never said exactly how it would succeed at that task . But it was clear about what it wanted . `` We would replace power rooted in possession , privilege , or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love , reflectiveness , reason , and creativity . '' SDS was not bothered by criticism that such a declaration of principles was too idealistic . It faced its critics head on . `` If we appear to seek the unattainable , as it has been said , then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable , '' the concluding lines of the Port Huron Statement declare . The organization 's faith in people , particularly those belonging to its college-age generation , was knowingly idealistic . At the core of the Port Huron Statement was SDS 's unapologetic insistence : `` We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfilled capacities for reason , freedom , and love . '' By the end of the 1960s , SDS was a spent force , but the values expressed in the Port Huron Statement had a life of their own . They were echoed in the civil rights movement as well as in the social programs of Lyndon B. Johnson 's Great Society , and they continued into the 1970s with the antiwar movement . It is too early to predict what will follow from Occupy Wall Street , but the example of SDS and its Port Huron Statement provides a basis for believing Occupy Wall Street rests on much more solid ground than its critics realize . As Occupy Wall Street 's General Assembly , its daily mass meeting open to everyone , shows , the movement is not about to be intimidated by the charge -- even when voiced by those on the left -- that it is too elusive and too egalitarian for its own good . Occupy Wall Street 's September 29 Declaration of Occupation lists a multitude of grievances , ranging from anger about illegal house foreclosures to outsourcing jobs , but the declaration never departs from its core article of faith and source of appeal . They are registered in its opening sentence , `` As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice , we must not lose sight of what brought us together . '' The opinions in this commentary are solely those of Nicolaus Mills .
Nicolaus Mills : Occupy Wall Street makes smart move by refusing to list demands . Mills : In 1962 , Students for a Democratic Society 's Port Huron Statement did n't list demands . Mills says the values outlined in that statement lived on long after SDS ended . Occupy allows room for all who have lost ground to bring issues to light , he writes .