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Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond

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Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond

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Overview

A nice Jewish boy from suburban Boston—hell, an Eagle Scout!—David Gilbert arrived at Columbia Universityjust in time for the explosive Sixties. From the early anti-Vietnam War protests to the founding of SDS, from the Columbia Strike to the tragedy of the Townhouse, Gilbert was on the scene: as organizer, theoretician, and above all, activist. He was among the first militants who went underground to build the clandestine resistance to war and racism known as “Weatherman.” And he was among the last to emerge, in captivity, after the disaster of the 1981 Brink’s robbery, an attempted expropriation that resulted in four deaths and long prison terms. In this extraordinary memoir, written from the maximum-security prison where he has lived for almost thirty years, Gilbert tells the intensely personal story of his own Long March from liberal to radical to revolutionary.

Today a beloved and admired mentor to a new generation of activists, he assesses with rare humor, with an understanding stripped of illusions, and with uncommon candor the errors and advances, terrors and triumphs of the Sixties and beyond. It’s a battle that was far from won, but is still not lost: the struggle to build a new world, and the love that drives that effort. A cautionary tale and a how-to as well, Love and Struggle is a book as candid, uncompromising, and humane as its author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604863192
Publisher:	PM Press
Publication date:	12/30/2011
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	726,458
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

One of America’s most celebrated political prisoners since his appearance in the Academy Award nominated film, The Weather Underground, David Gilbert is also the author of No Surrender, a book of essays on politics and history.

A popular leader in the progressive struggle for radical change through culture, Boots Riley is best known as the leader of The Coup, the seminal hip-hop group from Oakland, CA. Billboard Magazine declared the group “the best hip-hop act of the past decade.” Riley recently teamed with Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine) to form the revolutionary new group, Street Sweeper Social Club.

An Appreciation Boots Riley 1

Introduction 5

Beginnings 9

Missing the Wink 14

Illusions Replaced by a Dream 18

The 1960S and the Making of a Revolutionary 23

Columbia and the Black Struggle 25

Assault on a Black-Jewish Alliance 29

Black Education 30

Black Power 31

Internationalism 33

Vietnam 35

National SDS 42

Local Action 42

"Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many 45

Kids Did You Kill Today?" Strike! 46

Women: Relationships 51

Women: Politics 55

Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll 61

Political Theory 65

The Weapon of Theory 72

Revolutionary Youth Movement 75

Cointelpro 79

From Protest to Resistance 86

Equal Rights and Unequal Power 92

First Bust 95

Affinity Groups 98

Foco 100

Revolution in Our Lifetime? 102

Making Choices 105

Sectarianism 106

A Seismic Fault Line 110

The Split of SDS 113

The Most Sane/Insane of Times 119

Criticism/Self-Criticism 123

Breaking and Brawling 127

Fighting in the Streets 132

Rocky Mountain High 134

On a Life Trip 140

The Panthers in Denver 142

County Jail 144

War Council 147

The Townhouse 149

Underground 153

Weather Declares War 161

High on Youth Culture 164

New Morning 166

Encirclement 171

Clandestinity 177

Regrouping 179

Action 180

Status and Hierarchy 185

Democratic Centralism 189

The Doldrums 192

Kathy Boudin 198

Prairie Fire 199

Organization Man 205

Hard Times 210

Things Fall Apart 217

Alone 225

A Mile High: Aboveground in Denver 229

Back to Brookline 236

Rebuilding My Life in Denver 238

Adams Street 240

Men Against Sexism 241

El Comité 243

Iran 247

My Two Worlds Collide 249

Sexist Dog of the Century 251

Back Under 257

Socialism? 263

Dancing Feet 265

Back Above, the Hard Way 271

BUSTED 275

Trial by Trial 278

Isolation 279

Climbing Mountains 286

The Rock Is a Hard Place 296

Daily Life 305

Facing Life 310

Heading up the River 317

Afterword 321

Five Pages on Twenty-Eight Years 323

Glossary of Acronyms 329

Acknowledgments 333

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Editorial Reviews

Though Gilbert is still in prison after almost 30 years for the botched 1981 Brink’s robbery, these are not prison memoirs. Rather, Gilbert (No Surrender) reflects thoughtfully on his development as a leftist organizer and revolutionary in the context of the social tumult of the 1960s and ’70s, driven by a fundamental desire “to get America to live up to its ideals of democracy for all.” In a conflicted and conflict-ridden period of cold war anticommunism, civil rights struggle, Black Power, antiwar organizing, class divides, a burgeoning youth counterculture, and second-wave feminism, Gilbert’s political education and personal growth sometimes painfully intertwined, as he relates in candid passages detailing his failings as well as advances vis-à-vis colleagues, peers, and lovers, including longtime partner and fellow revolutionary Kathy Boudin. Some sections of this loosely chronological narrative, spiced with older diary entries, are more grounded than others. Inside knowledge of flashpoints—the breakup of SDS, the Weathermen’s springing of Timothy Leary from jail, or the beginnings of a rift between the renamed Weather Underground and Black Panthers—add to the historical record or underscore the complexities of the movement, while glosses on larger historical events or figures (the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Bob Dylan) prove less novel. However, such lively ruminating from someone on the inside of important recent history makes for vital reading. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Gilbert adds heart and bone to the stuff of history.”
—Mumia Abu-Jamal

“Required reading for anyone interested in the history of radical movements in this country. An honest, vivid portrait of a life spent passionately fighting for justice. In telling his story, Gilbert also reveals the history of left struggles in the 1960s and 70s, and imparts important lessons for today’s activists.”
—Jordan Flaherty, author of Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six

“David’s is a unique and necessary voice forged in the growing American gulag, the underbelly of the ‘land of the free,’ offering a focused and unassailable critique as well as a vision of a world that could be but is not yet—a place of peace and love, joy and justice.”
—Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days and Teaching Toward Freedom

“Like many of his contemporaries, David Gilbert gambled his life on a vision of a more just and generous world. His particular bet cost him the last three decades in prison, and whether or not you agree with his youthful decision, you can be the beneficiary of his years of deep thought, reflection, and analysis on the reality we all share. If there is any benefit to prison, what some refer to as ‘the involuntary monastery,’ it may well look like this book. I urge you to read it.”
—Peter Coyote, actor, author of Sleeping Where I Fall

“This book should stimulate learning from our political prisoners, but more importantly it challenges us to work to free them, and in doing so take the best of our history forward.”
—Susan Rosenberg, author of An American Radical

From the Publisher

Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond

Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond

Paperback

Paperback

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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Customer Reviews