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MARK RUDD RECOUNTS SDS AND THE WEATHERMEN IN UNDERGROUND
By Carl Anderson
United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
April 26, 2009
[Review of Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2009), 336 pages, $25.99, ISBN 0061472751 and 978-0061472756.]
At the center of Columbia University in New York City is the Sundial, the scene of many campus protests against the Vietnam war and still a center of student anti-war organizing today. Here Mark Rudd begins his story of political activism at Columbia, where he was one of the organizers of the student occupation of campus buildings and the subsequent student strike that motivated students around the world to protest wretched university systems and the immoral war in Vietnam. The occupation of the buildings and the strike were notable in that they combined the Harlem community's effort to stop the construction of a gym in Morningside Park by the university and the larger movement against the war in Vietnam.
In short order Rudd went from a local leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to election as its National Secretary, then becoming a founding member of the Weather Underground and a fugitive for seven years. After turning himself in to the authorities in 1977, Rudd became a math teacher, an organizer in support of the people of Nicaragua, and an activist against the war in Iraq. He has also become committed to non-violent action to effect change.
Rudd tells his story in three parts: the student uprising in 1968, the disintegration of SDS after a series of internal factional fights between the hard left Progressive Labor Party and Rudd's "Revolutionary Youth Movement" which became the Weathermen, and then Rudd's life as a fugitive. Part 1, the 1968 uprising at Columbia, is fun to read, with Rudd telling a compelling story of student organizing and protest.
Parts 2 and 3 alternate between depression and the tragicomic arrogance that helped destroy SDS. You will undoubtedly find something to dislike in these sections; I certainly did. Rudd definitely does not romanticize life underground. He also doesn't try to give the definitive political analysis of what went wrong. It is an intensely personal book that tells his story and his own evolution in recounting the Weather Underground's history.
The epilogue resumes a positive tone, discussing Rudd's activities since turning himself in. It also discusses the tragic Brink's robbery of 1981. However, the highlight is the moving account of the 40th reunion of the 1968 Columbia activists, an event that I witnessed. There, for the first time, white students who had been active with SDS heard the story of the black students who occupied one of the buildings. It is a story that is well worth telling, and its inclusion makes the book well worth reading.
At a reading from his book at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, the Mark Rudd of 2009 showed he is a positive optimist about the prospects for the progressive movement. He has played an energetic role in bridging the gap between student activists of today and the New Left organizers of the 1960s. That marks a long journey from his days Underground.
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