By Linda Stamato
Bryan Burrough’s latest book, Days of Rage: The Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, is the product of several years of investigation.
With little information of value to be had from heavily redacted FBI files and only newspaper accounts to go by, Burrough had to fill in the substantial blanks about this period–the 1970s for the most part—through hard-to-get interviews with the people behind the bombs.
The process of laying the groundwork for the book and the revelations that are the substance of it made for a riveting talk at Saturday’s Morristown Festival of Books.
The turmoil and outrage that characterized the era—Vietnam War protests, the Kent State shootings, civil rights demands, police brutality—fueled the revolutionary movements.
Radical political groups—Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers, for example—produced members for the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front, the F.A.L.N., The Family, and later, the Black Liberation Army, United Freedom Front and the Symbionese Liberation Army (kidnappers of Patty Hearst).
They believed that revolution was inevitable. When street protests proved unsuccessful, they moved underground. Seeking to “take the struggle to the next level,” they plotted mass murder, targeting police stations and military installations as they attempted to gain attention and attract followers.
There were some 3,000 “protest bombings” during this period. While some people were injured—notoriously in NYC and San Francisco–and a number were killed, the groups had precious few accomplishments to claim for their investment in effort and materiel.
Their political goals went unmet; they failed to attract large followings and became, essentially, invisible as the nation moved into the 1980s.
The “dream of revolution” dried up. America moved on.
Some of the radicals’ post-bombing reflections have them seeing themselves as well intentioned, almost harmless revolutionaries, with death and destruction a kind of collateral consequence of their political movement.
Burrough said this view is not only self-serving, it’s dead wrong.
These were not harmless protests but deliberate acts of violence, intending to lead to the downfall of the U.S. government. These groups were waging a war against America.
Burrough, a Chatham resident, said he wrote this book because so little had been written about the period and the radical movements that dominated it. To reclaim the history, he interviewed those who served time for their crimes and those who didn’t, now grandmothers and grandfathers living “ordinary lives” in Brooklyn’s Park Slope and the Bay Area of San Francisco.
Two major themes emerged: First, these groups may have been populated with some inspired, smart people, but they were totally unrealistic, even naïve, about what they could accomplish. Still, they were dangerous.
Second, radical movements today would not need to resort to “bombings as press releases.” They’d get more than enough attention by using the Internet.
If the size, rapt attention and reception of Saturday’s audience at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is any measure, Burrough, author of Barbarians at the Gate, Public Enemies and The Big Rich, has another winner in Days of Rage.
Too bad his bias shows through in Days of Rage. It is a thinly veiled attempt to be objective. the fact that the NYPD used cigarettes to burn their arrestee Sekou Odinga is disgusting and merely illustrates what these people were trying to tell us. Burroughs is so jealous that many of the aging radicals are either free or prospering. He just cant stand the possiblity that American system does sometime work. But the greatest shortcoming in the book is his refusal to address the conditions that the radicals were targeting: conditions that we are now seeing covered in the mainstream press such as police brutality and execution of male blacks for very minor offenses. But what could you expect from someone associated with the Wall Street Journal?
I take Karl Fenske’s point. The accomplishments that came from the period were due to the efforts of many organized groups and individuals, on and off college campuses. What role the radical underground played in bringing about change would be close to impossible to establish with any precision. Their efforts may have contributed to or set back the reforms sought by less radical groups. Having lived through the period, I’d have to say that their efforts more than heightened awareness of the violation of rights, the corruption of war and the overwhelming desire for reform and for peace.
He said we achieved nothing? We, inter alia, got rid of Tricky Dick and reversed the direction of politics locally and nationally; we got civil rights legislation passed; we got out of Vietnam; we got consumer protection laws passed ; Roe v. Wade; Woodstock. Nothing? I was there but was too mad to comment. The author needed to take a few more years to get the whole story.
The Book Festival gave us all an opportunity to learn more in a single day than almost any other way, thanks to the choice of authors. Truly inspiring.