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NauenThen

From the vault

I liberated this poster from the Orland, Maine, post office in 1974. Those girls were a little older than me & my friends but they could've been me (my mother got furious when I said that) & I followed the Symbionese Liberation Army closely. (Patty Hearst kidnapping, remember now?) I wasn't as energetic politically as they were & probably wouldn't have gone as far as they did but everyone I knew sympathized. We sat around, for example, discussing whether it would be worth spending your life in prison to assassinate Nixon, at that time the worst president ever (& to some extent I think he still is, because he paved the way for the disastrous monstrousness of Bush & the guy who preceded Biden, & because he ruined public service for so many). Luckily my friends were potheads & never got it together to act.

 

I also remember that Bill Harris published a book defending his politics of violence; there was an article in the Times on September 11, 2001, which I didn't read till later, after it had become SEPTEMBER 11. .... Well, I remember this very clearly but I can't find any mention of this at all. Maybe it wasn't the Times? Maybe it wasn't a book? It was around then that Harris & 3 others were arrested for a 1975 murder so he was definitely in the news again. 

 

Update: It wasn't Bill Harris but Bill Ayers: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen."  September 11, 2001. The piece opens: "I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough." 

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