Today's Stories

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2008

Looking Back at CAPBOMB

What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

By JUDY GUMBO ALBERT

We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are, we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves.

--Jefferson Airplane, We Can Be Together

This is the inside story of how my late husband Stew Albert and I became prime suspects in CAPBOM, which is the FBI codename for the 1971 Weather Underground bombing of the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Sarah Palin and her cohort of extreme right-wing really, really scary people used the Capitol bombing to link President-elect Obama with the not nearly as scary 1960s Weatherman and 1997 Chicago Citizen of the Year Bill Ayers.   At the time, my widely quoted take on the Capitol bombing was: “We didn’t do it, but we dug it.”

As a former 60’s protestor, celebrating with everyone else the results of this historic election, I’d like to give my personal point of view about the attacks on the 1960s that were made during the campaign – specifically “guilt by association” and “domestic terrorism.” And also to reflect a bit on how I feel about those issues today.

Wrong Place, Right Time

In the spring of 1971, on the day the Capitol bombing takes place, I’m living in our nation’s capital organizing an anti-war demonstration. Along with Stew, Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, his girlfriend Nancy Kurshan and satiric journalist Paul Krassner, I’m an original Yippie. Yippies believe in the politics of theatre. We call ourselves Groucho Marxists and use comedy to turn serious issues on their head.  We’re cultural revolutionaries who raise political awareness by having as much fun and getting as much media attention as we can. We’re a youth movement who doesn’t believe in hierarchy: every Yippie is her or his own leader. Our favorite Bob Dylan mantra is: Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FederalReserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are not the first to throw money at Wall Street.  In the spring of 1968, Abbie, Jerry and the rest of us stopped trading on the New York Stock exchange when we threw $1 and $5 bills at greedy stockbrokers who grabbed at the money floating down from a balcony.  Yippies brought the New York Stock Exchange to a halt for a mere $250.

By the summer of 1968, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, we’re running a pig named Pigasus for president as a send-up to protest the election and an unjust and illegal Vietnam War. In what is to become an iconic American moment, 15,000 of us -- Yippies, mainstream anti-war demonstrators, the media and even a member of the British Parliament -- are severely gassed and beaten by the Chicago police.

But three years later, by the time of the Capitol bombing, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find the fun in protest.  All of us in the anti-war movement are frustrated by the seemingly endless parade of atrocities being committed in Vietnam, which we see in living color at home on TV every night, and a recent campaign of deadly, intense carpet-bombing in Laos.

The Mayday Tribe

I’m staying temporarily in Washington DC, in a collective house at 2226 M Street.

Chicago Conspiracy 8 defendant and anti-war activist Rennie Davis, and at least 30 others live in the surrounding neighborhood. The M Street house is situated directly across the street from a red-brick fire station that, in addition to fire-trucks, is outfitted with surveillance cameras  so overtly visible in the front window that I occasionally lead a group of us out front just to dance and wave at the cameras. 

We call ourselves the Mayday Tribe. Our name - Mayday -- is intended to convey an urgent distress call about the war to the American people and motivate protestors to come to a demonstration scheduled for three months later.  We’re putting together a People’s Peace Treaty on behalf of the American public to draw attention to the Nixon administration’s obdurate refusal to make peace.  Our admittedly utopian demonstration slogan states: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

We predict thousands of people will take to the streets and block traffic to protest the war and this recent escalation in bombing.

At my initiation, Stew and I have officially broken off our two-year-old romance.  As I recall, I feel fine. Liberated in fact. I have no qualms about publicly labeling Stew an arrogant, patronizing, sexist, male chauvinist pig, which, looking back on it, was about 35% true, and 65% women’s movement PC rhetoric. Besides, we’re still on speaking terms. I realize he’s lonely without me and know I can still get him to do almost anything I want, so I ask him to come and visit from New York and bring with him, on the plane, a large satchel of high quality marijuana donated to the cause by a sympathetic New York City lawyer.  I’m trying to lighten things up by introducing some traditional Yippie medicinals into our ultra-serious organizing effort.

The Day of the Bombing

Early in the morning of Monday March 1, the M Street phone rings. We’re told that members of the Weather Underground, originally known as Weatherman, (from Bob Dylan’s prophetic mantra “You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows”) are taking credit for placing a bomb in an out-of-the-way men’s bathroom. The Weathermen say:

We have attacked the Capitol because it is, along with the White House and the Pentagon, the worldwide symbol of the government which is now attacking Indochina.

When I first hear this news, I feel exhilarated. Irrationally exuberant in fact. My reaction is documented by an unknown person, possibly an informant who, in a later legal affidavit, describes me and the others in M Street as “exultant” – which is not so far removed from my own recollection. But why, you quite rightly ask -- and I ask myself the same question -- did I feel so positive about this act -- especially when placing a bomb is something I could never do – or did – myself?

As an anti-war activist, I considered dissent to be patriotic. Still do. At the time of the bombing, I felt like I was rooting for David in the face of Goliath. I saw the Weathermen as courageous enough to take the lead in our very own, 60’s style Boston Tea Party.  In my view, they blew up a U.S. Capitol bathroom on my behalf and on behalf of the entire anti-war movement. And I appreciated that they did so for the most compelling of reasons -- to stop the endless, brutal killing war in Vietnam and Laos.  Which is why I could, in good conscience, make the statement: “We didn’t do it, but we dug it.”

Hands Up!

Immediately after the bombing, M-street house surveillance intensifies. Firemen swarm.  Burly new guys start hanging around outside the firehouse. They don’t look and weren’t even dressed like firemen. Stew and Leslie Bacon, a young, anti-war activist friend, decide to take a walk to Lafayette Park, directly in front of the White House. Beyond the macho of it, I can’t speculate about Stew’s motives. Most likely I disapproved because, at that particular moment in our on-again, off-again relationship, almost anything he said or did was enough to provoke my disapproval.

As the tension-filled, day-after-bombing dragged on, it became increasingly clear to me that there was no time like the present to get the hell out of Dodge.

Leslie chooses to remain in DC.  I grab Stew, Colin and Michael, two other M Street residents, plus a couple of bags of clothing and we hop into my 1969 dark blue VW Beetle named “Lindequist.” (When I bought the car I found the previous owner’s name “Lindequist”, inscribed on the dashboard; I currently drive Lindequist 3.) A few blocks into our getaway I realize I’ve forgotten my all-time favorite hat – a fisherman’s cap made out of fluffy brown Canadian beaver pelts with a brown leather front brim.   Stew and I immediately get into a huge fight. Stew, the pragmatist, now recognizes the wisdom of leaving town as quickly as possible. I, the Yippie fashionista, will not leave my favorite hat to the mercy of the pigs. It’s my car, I’m the driver: we circle back. I run in, save my hat and, Keystone Cops like, we once again beat a retreat. There’s no PETA yet to make my hat a political issue.

But in the early evening, just we’ve reached the outskirts of Baltimore, I suddenly notice flashing lights behind me. I pull Lindequist over and hear a loud, gruff male voice coming over a loudspeaker “get out of the car with your hands up.” Shotguns at our heads, the four of us are quickly spread eagled against the VW.  Colin is shaking so hard I think he might pee himself – but he doesn’t.  The boys are put in one police car; I’m alone in another for what feels like hours. I’m buzzy with adrenaline and really bored sitting alone in my personal Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome cage. I can’t see much except cops and the boys’ heads in front of me in the other car, so all I can do is bite my nails and obsess. Lindequist and the satchels are thoroughly searched. Eventually we are released and, in true Yippie absurdist fashion, are given a ticket for a bald tire by a local highway patrolman who signs his name James Bond

We’re not Weathermen. It literally didn’t occur to me we were being stopped because of the Capitol Bombing.   I am really grateful we left the marijuana back in DC.

What Happens to Leslie  

Five days before Mayday, on April 28, Leslie, who at the time is 19 years old, is arrested in Washington D.C. by the FBI and appears a few days later before Judge John Sirica, later of Watergate fame. Leslie is taken to a Seattle hotel where she is held captive in a room for weeks, with no access to family or friends, only to lawyers.  She is questioned harshly about the Capitol bombing but there’s nothing she can tell them because there’s nothing she knows.  On May 1, the Weathermen make public a communiqué addressed to Leslie’s mother:

Your confidence in Leslie is justified because she is completely innocent of any involvement in the bombing of the US Capitol. We know this for a fact because, as the FBI and Justice Department well know, our organization did the bombing.

Leslie said to me recently that her mother, an upscale, conservative, California homemaker, told the national and international press staking out their Atherton home:

I don’t see why everyone is so upset about someone blowing up a building when the government is blowing up people.

Standard operating procedure for FBI agents and prosecutors, then and now, is to target young women who they consider potential “weak links” in an evidentiary chain and most likely to give up information. These young women become their special victims. I’ve come to believe that Leslie’s kidnapping, imprisonment and resulting unwanted national media attention, was the moral equivalent of a rape.  The federal prosecutor and the FBI violated a 19 year old woman’s trust and privacy, and, even though today Leslie is teacher and grandmother, this incident still poisons her sense of security and well- being.

Facing My Fear

I learned at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 that, when you’re in a true “face your fear” moment, you need to take action. Don’t delay. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t over think the consequences. By facing your fear, you can discover inside yourself the courage to take your life – and your freedom -- into your own hands.

This is one such moment. My mantra serves me well.   By the time I drop Stew off in New York City, check in with the marijuana-donating lawyer for free legal advice, and drive back home to Boston, I’ve talked myself into believing I’ve emerged from this incident shaken but unbowed.

In Boston, as my FBI files later reveal, agents have evicted my next door neighbor and ensconced themselves in an adjoining apartment. A group of Boston women, me included, take over a building at 888 Mass. Ave and turn it into a women’s center. The takeover becomes a springboard for the women’s demonstration that preceded Mayday -- the April 10 Women’s March on the Pentagon.

The march attracts no more than 500 women -- but the contingent I lead marches under a beautiful purple Janis Joplin banner.  

Monday May 3, 1971 -- Mayday

Our Mayday demonstration doesn’t stop the war – or the government.

The day before the demonstration, rock concert permits are cancelled. Police, reprising Chicago 1968, and presaging the 2008 Republican Convention, teargas as many demonstrators as they can; they destroy tents and use other coercive tactics to force protestors to leave a day early. Many do.  

The remaining demonstrators begin assembling at 6 a.m.  When it’s time to get up, I make a strategic decision, based purely on personal sloth, to let myself and my Boston affinity group sleep in -- we’d been smoking too much of that dope and partying the night before. By the time we arrive downtown, streets are empty.  Traffic is flowing smoothly. Stew and Abbie are among 7,000 demonstrators already arrested and locked up in an emergency detention center next to RFK stadium.  Some claim Mayday is the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.

For me, Mayday is a bust. No pun intended. And it’s my own fault.

My failure of leadership is what my new fiancé David calls an AFOG – another f----g opportunity for growth.  It’s a harsh lesson that stays with me:  don’t wimp out just before the end is in sight.  Follow through on your commitment. No excuses. And never, ever smoke really strong dope the night before a big demo. Duh.

Guilt By Association

Three weeks after Mayday, Stew receives his subpoena to a Grand Jury investigating the Capitol bombing. He burns it publicly in New Haven to support Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale, who is on trial there at the time.

I receive my Grand Jury subpoena in Boston a few days after Stew. Why me?  Perhaps no-one got the memo that Stew and I had broken up. Or perhaps the FBI was pissed about my arrogant, fuck you dance in front of the cameras on M-Street’s front porch. Or maybe the Feds just wanted to “round up the usual suspects.”

The eminence gris federal prosecutor responsible for all grand juries investigating Weather Underground bombings is a smartly dressed, slick-haired man named Guy Goodwin. Goodwin also convened a grand jury to investigate another equally false allegation -- that Rev. Phil Berrigan and Elizabeth McAllister, a nun, are plotting to kidnap President Nixon’s evil national security advisor Henry Kissinger. He harassed Vietnam Veterans Against the War so much that, in 1972, they filed a $1.8 million civil suit against him.

My first response to my Grand Jury subpoena is to go numb.  I’m facing a possible 20 year sentence.  My “face your fear” mantra just doesn’t cut it. Denial works a whole lot better.  Stew writes that I:
buried the great fear deep in her soul and beamed smiles that would bounce off the moon…but underneath the smiles, Judy was truly terrified. Even though we had officially parted, I knew that I still loved her, which meant that I had to look out for her so that, as a strange Canadian in a stranger America she would not come to harm.

On a PBS interview all I can say about being subpoenaed is: “It’s annoying. Uncool. But our lawyers will take care of it. Nothing to worry about.”  Perhaps it’s a positive thing I grew up in a dysfunctional, alcoholic family – repression and denial are terrific short-term survival techniques for really tough times.

We Didn’t Do It But….

Pretty soon my inner Yippie re-emerges and my “face your fear” mantra kicks in.  Stew and I decide the appropriate Yippie response is to hold a press conference in front of the Capitol Building.

Stew invites Jerry Rubin along for both his expertise and moral support.  Abbie and Jerry believed passionately in the 1960s communications guru Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that the medium is the message -- which led them to measure their success by how much media coverage they got and how frequently they got it. For all the time I knew them, and up until their deaths, a defining aspect of the Abbie/Jerry relationship was their constant competition with each other for the media spotlight. Manipulating the media to expose establishment hypocrisy was a primary Yippie value.

I paint my forehead with a Weather Underground Rainbow, cover one cheek with a woman’s symbol, the other with an NLF (otherwise known as Viet Cong) flag and I put a green marijuana leaf on my chin. And yes, that is a cigarette I’m smoking in the photo – I quit for good a few years later. In my press statement I quote a Weatherman communiqué that says:

The Weather Underground bombed the Capitol to bring a smile and a wink to all the kids in America who hate their government.

Then I pull off my 15 minutes of fame by adding: We didn’t do it but we dug it.

It’s obvious to me, almost 40 years later,  that Sarah Palin did a remarkable job getting global media attention for Bill Ayers and his associational link to the Capitol bombing – way better than Billy, the Weather Underground, Stew, Jerry or I ever accomplished at the time.  If Palin wasn’t a neo-fascist, I might consider giving her a Yippie Excellence in Media Manipulation award. 

In the time immediately preceding our Grand Jury appearances, Stew and I are so overtly hostile to each other that we become famously difficult to be around.  Observers who witnessed what Stew and I came to call our “pussycat fights” – meow, hissssss, scratch,  pose – are horrified. In the photograph with Colin, I can’t tell if I’m gazing at Stew adoringly, or whether I’m just about to yell at him for some real or imagined sexist act. It’s clear to me now that Stew and I needed to break up, intensely and publicly, to allow us to get back together with each other as full and equal partners.  Which we did two years later -- and remained together until Stew’s death on January 30, 2006.

In the summer of 1971, I arrive to make my one time appearance before the Grand Jury dressed like a witch and surrounded by a contingent of women. In fact I am a member of W.I.T.C.H. -- an early New York City based women’s liberation group appropriately named the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Back then, you could use the word terrorist in a joke and not be labeled unpatriotic.

I walk into an old, dimly lit New York City in my long witchy dress, alone but unintimidated.  Two rows of older men and women, black and white, arms crossed, stare stonily at me. On our lawyers’ advice I refuse to testify. Instead I cite Constitutional Amendments 1, 4, 5, 6 and 9. These numbers are indelibly imprinted in my memory – although, as a Canadian, I was at the time a little fuzzy about what each Amendment actually stood for. But now I get it why America’s founders gave us freedom of speech and due process. It’s another reason I consider myself a patriot – just like Abbie and Anita who named their son America.

A few months after my Grand Jury appearance, our subpoenas are quashed -- I assume because they can find no evidence of wrongdoing.  That guard who claimed to Guy Goodwin he saw Stew at the Capitol building was either set-up, a liar or befuddled – or perhaps he conflated the historic Capitol building with Lafayette Park. It’s a huge relief. Guilt by association loses out to the real world. In the 1980s, in an act of true Yippie bravado, I buy a car with the proceeds of our successful lawsuit against the FBI and get for it a “CAPBOM’ license plate.

Reframing “Domestic Terrorism”

The recent media hysteria about the Capitol bombing has prompted me to revisit, if not re-consider, how I feel today about my long ago “didn’t do it, but dug it” statement. It’s one of those situations where I really miss Stew’s advice and counsel. What would Stewie say?

In the 1980s, shortly after Stew and I moved to Portland, Oregon, I was driving down a street and saw some picketers. My initial gut response is to identify with the protestors, to honk my horn in support, but as I get closer I realize they are anti-choice fanatics picketing what turns out to be the Planned Parenthood affiliate where I will later be employed. The anti-abortion fundamentalists and right-wing extremists – that same breed of bottom feeder who sent hundreds of e-mail death threats to Bill Ayers -- have it all over the Weather Underground when it comes to domestic terrorism.

Lest we forget, just over a decade ago this country witnessed a horrific killing spree carried out by our very own, home grown American terrorists: in 1993, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was assassinated; Dr. John Britton, another abortion provider, was shot in 1994; in that same year 25 year old Planned Parenthood receptionist Shannon Lowney and women’s clinic worker Leanne Nichols were murdered within hours of each other.  In 1995, in the worst case of domestic terrorism this country has ever seen, right wing racist gun nut Timothy McVeigh and two of his “pals” killed 168 people including 19 children by setting a bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  In 1998, an anti-choice fanatic killed abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian.

The Weathermen bombed bathrooms. They destroyed property.  Which is why calling them “domestic terrorists” doesn’t resonate with me. In every case of a Weather Underground bombing there was an advance call warning people to get out of the building.  The Weathermen who died were three of their own.  Conflating Bill Ayers and the Capitol bombing with Osama Bin Laden’s terroristic destruction of the Twin Towers feels like an enormous truth stretch.  It disrespects those who died.

I’m a widow. I’ve experienced the excruciating pain brought on by death of your loved one. I can’t condone action that results in the death of human beings.

In my humble opinion, members of the Weather Underground turned into purists who came to so completely idealize and romanticize the liberation struggles of anyone who was African-American, Vietnamese, or what we used to call “third world” that they fell into an uncritical objectification of violence for its own sake.  Their stated doctrine of “lead by example,” resulted in groups attempting to imitate Weather tactics with devastating results. In 1970, an unaffiliated collective bombed the University of Wisconsin’s Army Math building, tragically killing a researcher.  In the 1980s, a rogue splinter group that included former Weathermen killed a guard and two policemen in a disastrous, bungled robbery of a Brinks truck. Most of them are still in jail. 

Personally, I feel this may be an appropriate moment for truth and reconciliation. Even if Henry Kissinger and surviving members of the Nixon war machine aren’t going to repent and atone for the enormous death and destruction they wreaked on Southeast Asia, I believe it’s time for former Weather Underground leaders to publicly acknowledge the collateral deaths, in addition to the deaths of their own comrades.  And then they should be forgiven – and forgive themselves.   

Judy Gumbo Albert is an original member of the 1960s countercultural anti-war group known as the Yippies.  Judy is co- author of The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Greenwood Press, 1984) and The Conspiracy Trial (Bobbs Merrill, 1970). For many years Judy was an award winning fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. She is currently living in Berkeley, California writing a memoir titled "Yippie Girl". Her chapter about the Battle of Chicago, 1968 can be found at albert08282008.html. Photos can be found at Judy's website: www.yippiegirl.com.

Judy can be reached at yippiegirl@gmail.com.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont