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Tanned, Rested, and Unrepentant
Ex-Weatherman Mark Rudd sets out to promote his self-serving memoir.
27 March 2009
Ex-Weatherman Mark Rudd sets out to promote his self-serving memoir.
27 March 2009
John M. Murtagh
I’m looking forward to Ted Kaczynski’s book tour. Sure, it will have to be beamed remotely from the Unabomber’s prison cell, but it’s always interesting when terrorists try to justify themselves. Ted hasn’t found a publisher yet, though, so for now we’ll have to content ourselves with Mark Rudd. HarperCollins has just published Rudd’s memoir, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen, and the author is embarking on a promotional tour.
For the uninitiated, Rudd is the former adolescent who organized the sit-ins at Columbia University in the late sixties, helped lead the so-called “Days of Rage” at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and helped found the violent Weather Underground. He went into hiding during the 1970s following the death of three of his cohorts, who blew themselves up while assembling nail bombs destined for the Officers’ Club at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Three weeks earlier, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, the same crew had firebombed my home. My father at the time was a New York judge, and Rudd and his collaborators apparently objected to his presiding at the then-pending trial of several members of the Black Panther Party on charges they had plotted to bomb several Manhattan department stores.
Continue reading, click below:
In the early hours of Feb 21, 1970 when John Murtagh was only nine years old, the terrorist group, Weather Underground tried to kill his family by bombing their home in Upper Manhattan. The specific target was Mr. Murtagh's father, a NYS Supreme Court justice who was trying a case involving the Black Panthers and their plan to bomb New York City landmarks and department stores. The Weather Underground's founder was Bill Ayers, who subsequently became a mentor to Barack Obama. John Murtagh traces his roots to County Mayo. He is an attorney and a member of the Yonkers City Council.
To read Mr. Murtagh's recollections of that night, click below:
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