[marxist] Notes on Bill Ayer's Book FUGITIVE DAYS (Attn. CarrolCox)

[Max Sawicky]

wow.  what a testimony on how destructive B.A. and the
W-cruds were.  I came into SDS right after this tempest
in a region where PL dominated the chapters at Rutgers
and never saw a Weatherman.  Obviously the national
impact of their mickey-mouse terrorism was clear enough,
but from my vantage point in NJ they didn't seem all that
important.  We did have Panther chapters in the area but
they were lower profile than the SF group.  The Panthers
had their two conventions on the East Coast (Philly &
D.C.), both of which I attended and wrote about, but even
with their deficiencies you could still come away from them
with a good feeling about future prospects.

The dynamic of 200 people showing up for the first SDS
meeting of the year (no matter who was leading it), and then
dwindling at a 75% decay rate held.
My impression is that the need to impart some kind of
ideological message was so overpowering on the part
of the activists that we could not help but bore a lot of
people out of radical politics from the get-go.  Less
preaching and more constructive things to do might
have been better.

mbs

Notes on reading Bill Ayers' FUGITIVE DAYS
andy pyle