By DCist contributor John Harlow

Created and organized by artist and curator Mark Tribe, the Port Huron Project is a series of reenactments of protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and ’70s, conducted at their original locations by paid performers. Previous PHP events have featured enactments of speeches originally delivered by Coretta Scott King and Howard Zinn in New York and Boston respectively.

Tomorrow at 6 p.m., the National Mall will host the third and final event here in D.C., featuring a reenactment of Paul Potter’s “We Must Name The System” speech, originally delivered during the April 17, 1965 March on Washington. Potter was the president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the time, the famous New Left activist group whose political manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, inspired the name of this series. DCist caught up with Tribe to chat about his project, Potter’s speech, and the role of social activism and art in today’s America.

DCist: Since the project debuted in September of last year, you have conducted reenactments in Central Park and on the Boston Common. How were those events received by audiences?

Mark Tribe: Well as an artist is difficult for me to evaluate how audiences appreciate my work, but I spoke to several people after the show who reported feeling a surreal sense, a kind of temporal duality. You’re standing in a park in 2007 listening to someone deliver a speech that was originally delivered 35 or 40 years ago. I think many people have found the enactments eerily relevant.