Guest: Mark Rudd

From 1965 t0 1968, I was a student activist and organizer in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter at Columbia University. I was one of the leaders of the Spring 1968 occupation of five buildings and the subsequent strike against the university's complicity with the war and its racism. At the time I was identified by the press as the symbol of student radicals.

After being kicked out of Columbia, I became a full-time organizer for SDS, where I helped found the militant Weatherman faction. I was elected National Secretary of SDS in June, 1969, then helped found the "revolutionary" Weather Underground, which had as its goal "the violent overthrow of the government of the US in solidarity with the struggles of the people of the world."

Wanted on federal charges of bombing and conspiracy, I was a fugitive from 1970 to 1977. All of the charges were dropped because of government illegalities. From 1980 to 2006 I was a math instructor at a community college in Albuquerque, NM, and a perennial organizer and nonviolent activist locally on issues of native American land rights, nuclear, US military interventions, Palestine solidarity, unionization, environmental justice, and war and militarization.

I retired from teaching in 2007 and have been devoting myself since then to organizing and also writing and speaking on the history which I was involved in. In March, 2009, my book Underground was published.

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