violence in 1989, as part of colloquium on social change
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/umass_to_host_raymond_luc_leva.html
By Diane Lederman
October 28, 2009
AMHERST Robert S. Cox knew that bringing Raymond Luc Levasseur to
the University of Massachusetts campus would be controversial.
But the head of special collections and university archives also
understood that bringing a man found innocent of a sedition charge
after a 10-month trial in Springfield in 1989 would provide an
opportunity for people to understand that trial and what leads a
revolutionary to violence.
Levasseur, a member of the so-called Ohio 7, was released in 2004
after serving 18 years in prison for his involvement in a series of
bombings carried out to protest United States backing of South
Africa's racist apartheid regime and Central American right-wing
death-squads. He was convicted in 1986 in a Brooklyn courtroom.
The event Nov. 12 has drawn e-mails and calls from members of the New
Jersey and Massachusetts fraternal orders of police who are
protesting Levasseur's appearance, Cox said. They would like the talk
canceled.
But, Cox said, the UMass Amherst Libraries' Department of Special
Collections and University Archives, which is sponsoring this event
and three talks Thursday as part of the 5th Annual Colloquium on
Social Change, has no plans to do that.
Levasseur, who spent several years in hiding, was part of the United
Freedom Front, a group that was charged with eight Boston-area
bombings between 1976 and 1979, the murder of a New Jersey state
trooper, the attempted murder of a Massachusetts state trooper,
several other assaults on law enforcement officers, and several armed
bank robberies. Levasseur was not at the scene of the trooper's
shooting and never charged in the murder.
He is scheduled to reflect on the past and present significance of
the Springfield sedition trial as well as his life as a
French-Canadian youth growing up in a Maine mill town, a Vietnam
veteran, and an anti-imperialist revolutionary active in the Civil
Rights, anti-war, and prison reform movements among other topics.
Part of the mission of the colloquium is to have speakers "whose
activity in the past speaks to the present. I don't know any issue
that's more important than (understanding) political violence," Cox
said. Growing up in a Quaker family, Cox said "I'm far away from any
violent activity."
"We don't have to condone (violence), but trying to understand that
seems immensely important," he said. "What motivates people to take up arms?"
And for the trial in Springfield, which cost $10 million and resulted
in Levasseur and two others being acquitted on seditious conspiracy,
"I think it's an historical trial and no matter how you look at that
... it is a major historical event in civic history."
Cox said he believes that the university is one of a the few
remaining places where "a very wide spectrum of perspectives can come
together. We can have a good civil discussion on the single most
difficult issue facing the United States."
And to cancel the talk, "I really think it would be an opportunity missed."
UMass spokesman Edward F. Blaguszewski said the university condemns
the violent actions the group was involved in but "understanding how
and why people take different paths to seek social change are
important. We can learn his story and (understand) how he was
motivated. I think is relevant to how we grapple with the issues (today.)"
He also said that Levasseur's talk is just one of many in the annual
series that has "had had a whole wide range of figures coming from
many different perspectives. It's got a rich history of trying to
look at controversial issues."
Thursday, as part of the colloquium, historian Blake Slonecker will
talk on the Liberation News Service and the New Left of the 1960s and
1970s at 4 p.m. on the 25th floor of the De Bois Library, and writers
and activists Todd Gitlin and Raymond Mungo will speak a 7 p.m. in a
discussion moderated by Christian Appy, history professor here, in
the Cape Cod Lounge in the Student Union.
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