Review of Mark Rudd’s Underground

Revelation Revolution:
A Review of Mark Rudd's Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen

http://www.indypendent.org/2009/07/23/revelation-revolution/

By Eleanor J. Bader
July 24, 2009

Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen
By Mark Rudd
Harper Collins, 2009

Those who have characterized Mark Rudd's memoir, Underground, as
unapologetic must not have read it. The book passionately reflects on
the 1960s and 1970s, a time when a new world order seemed not only
possible, but likely.

Rudd begins this well-written, almost-confessional book with an
account of entering college in the fall of 1965. He admits that
Columbia University was a dream come true, since it was such a
radical departure from his middle- class, suburban upbringing in New
Jersey. At Columbia, he was encouraged to read revolutionary
theorists, such as Malcolm X, and was deeply affected by David
Gilbert, the chair of the university's Independent Committee on
Vietnam, who openly declared his opposition to the war and suggested
that antiwar activists adhere to their beliefs instead of behaving
like "good Germans." As a Jew reared in the shadow of the Holocaust,
Rudd found Gilbert's words potent and quickly became immersed in
campus activism, soon joining Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

The discovery of Columbia's connection to the Institute for Defense
Analyses, a think tank affiliated with the Pentagon, in early 1967
led SDS members to intensify their anti-war efforts. Combined with
pre-existing university plans to raze several buildings in largely
Black Harlem for the construction of a gymnasium in Morningside Park,
the predominantly progressive student body felt pushed to the brink.

Due to an administration crackdown, students decided to occupy five
buildings on the Columbia campus in April 1968. African-American
students and Harlem residents entered Hamilton Hall and refused to
leave. White students took over Low Library and other surrounding
buildings and penned demands. Rudd's excitement over the week-long
sitin is palpable, and readers who have ever immersed themselves in
organizing will feel the contagion.

Rudd writes with vivid fury about the police violence that ended the
occupation and rails against a mainstream media that portrayed the
protesters as "lunatic, destructive kids."

He is also conscious, albeit in hindsight, of the media's fixation on
him as the archetypical leader ­ the charismatic white man ostensibly
in charge. At the time, however, Rudd savored the attention and
admits to rampant womanizing. After being expelled from Columbia in
spring of 1968, he became a "traveling salesman for SDS" speaking
throughout the country to ramp up opposition to the war. However, as
SDS grew, factions emerged which ultimately destroyed the largest
student mobilization in U.S. history.

While Rudd helped found the most radical portion in SDS, the
Weathermen, in 1969, he had early concerns about the group's
dogmatism. "I did not realize at the time that we had unwittingly
reproduced conditions that all hermetically sealed cults use:
isolation, sleep deprivation, arbitrary acts of loyalty, even sexual
initiation as bonding," he writes.

Rudd buried these worries as the Weathermen became the Weather
Underground, which ultimately carried out 24 property-destroying
bombings across the United States. He writes that he accepted the
idea ­ now recognized as delusional ­ that "we had begun the war
against the pigs" and describes a mood that is difficult to fathom in
2009. In retrospect he calls it "a fantasy of revolutionary
urban-guerrilla warfare."

This fantasy ground to a halt when a 1970 plan to bomb New Jersey's
Fort Dix went awry, killing three of Rudd's comrades and destroying
the Greenwich Village townhouse the would-be bomb makers were using.
Rudd, his girlfriend Sue LeGrand, and other Weatherpeople quickly
fled underground. Moving between safe houses sent Rudd into a
near-suicidal depression, and his graphic description of severing
ties with everything and everybody garners sympathy.

Nonetheless, he and LeGrand cobbled together a sub rosa life. Their
first child was born in 1974, and they had a second child after he
surrendered in 1978. The decision to resurface came after
seven-and-a-half years on the lam; Rudd could no longer stand living
with constant anxiety.

Rudd eventually paid a fine and settled in New Mexico. When his
relationship with LeGrand ended, he finished his degree and spent
more than two decades teaching mathematics at a community college in
Albuquerque, N.M. He has continued his work as a non-violent activist
and organizer through his involvement with Native American land
rights and antiwar and anti-militarization efforts.

Underground's poignancy is underscored by Rudd's conclusion: "The
Weather Underground didn't seem to affect anybody at all. We were not
part of most people's universe, even of those who were still working
in what remained of the movement." This sobering and heartfelt
statement, bolstered by his across-the-board denunciation of
violence, clearly speaks to 21st century activists who are eager for
rapid change.

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