41 years ago this week students at Columbia University began an occupation of their campus that shut down the university and resonated around the world. Last year many of these activists gathered at Columbia to remember and reassess this life-changing event. Among them was Mark Rudd, who was one of the leaders of the strike and later went on to help found the ultra-left Weatherman faction of SDS. After spending 7 years underground, he emerged in 1976 and began to reconstruct his life based upon non-violent principles. His memoir UNDERGROUND: MY LIFE WITH SDS AND THE WEATHERMEN has just been published. Mark will be speaking and signing books at Looking Glass Books on SE 13th in Sellwood on April 26 at 4 PM.
Full Disclosure: Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein was one of the student strikers at Columbia in 1968 and was arrested in the president's office on April 30, 1968. That summer she lived downstairs from Mark in an apartment on West 110th Street.