by Lawrence Bush on March 6, 2011
Ted Gold and Terry Robbins were two of three members of the Weathermen who were killed in an explosion in a Greenwich Village townhouse on West 11th Street when one of the bombs they were constructing went off on this date in 1970. Gold had been a leader of the Columbia University strike two years earlier; Robbins had been a leader of the Kent State University student movement. The bombs were reportedly intended for use at a Fort Dix, New Jersey army base dance, “to bring the war home,” according to Mark Rudd. Diane Oughton was also killed, and two surviving members of the Weathermen who were caught in the explosion, Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson, immediately went underground and evaded arrest for a decade. The Weathermen had emerged as a faction within Students for a Democratic Society and proceeded, after the townhouse explosion, to bomb the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the Department of State, and several banks, always with advance warning to avoid killing people. Other well-known Jewish members of the Weathermen, which soon became known as the Weather Underground, were Naomi Jaffe, Eleanor Raskin, David Gilbert, Susan Stern, Bob Tomashevsky, Sam Karp, Bernadette Dohrn (nee Ohrnstein) and Russel Neufeld.
“The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.” —Bill Ayers
by admin on January 31, 2011
by Carol Jochnowitz
DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
Exoneration: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, by Emily Arnow Alman and David Alman. 2010, Green Elms Press, 516 pages.
Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case, by Walter Schneir. 2010, Melville House, 208 pages.
I had just finished reading the books discussed in this essay and took time to visit friends. In their living room I met a woman of about my age to whom I unpacked what was uppermost in my mind: I asked what she remembered about the Rosenberg Case.
She thought for a moment and then answered, “Well, I remember they were found guilty of treason because they had given atomic secrets to an enemy country. But I thought it was terrible that they killed Ethel, because she was the mother of two small children. Later, though, I found out that she was the real ringleader.”
I found it fascinating that every single thing this woman remembered was wrong. [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on November 21, 2010
Clara Lemlich made a spontaneous speech at Cooper Union on this date in 1909 that sparked the “Uprising of the 20,000,” an industry-wide strike mobilized by the new International Ladies Garment Workers Union. “I want to say a few words!” shouted Lemlich, a 23-year-old garment worker (usually described as 19), following AFL leader Samuel Gompers’ speech. She was a member of the ILGWU’s executive board and had been arrested seventeen times, with broken ribs to show for it. “I have no further patience for talk,” she said upon reaching the podium, “as I am one of those who feels and suffers from the things pictured. I move that we go on a general strike . . . now!” The strike lasted until February and was met with constant violence, but at its end the union had increased its membership from the hundreds to some twenty thousand, and most of the major sweatshop owners had signed union contracts — except for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Lemlich remained an activist throughout her life until her death in 1982 at 96. (For a brief Jewish Currents interview with Clara Lemlich in the year of her death, visit our archive and scan down to “L.”)
“If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise.” —Traditional Yiddish oath, led in recitation by Clara Lemlich after the strike resolution passed
by Lawrence Bush on October 29, 2010
Jewish Currents began its life as a Communist-Oriented Magazine.
What Should I Make of that Heritage Today?
When Jewish Currents and the Workmen’s Circle joined forces in 2004, I heard through the grapevine that a muckety-muck at the American Jewish Congress had described me as a communist. While I was tickled that the guy even knew my name, I was appalled by his gossip, particularly since I thought it likely that to him, as to most Americans, being a communist is seen as morally equivalent to being a Nazi.
I’m not a communist, but I’m a red-diaper baby and have known, admired, and loved plenty of communists, including my own parents and grandmother. I count these people as important contributors to the social good in America, particu
larly in the fields of labor organizing, anti-racist activism, folk music, and popular culture — and I have known many of them to be human beings of exceptional conscience, courage, and idealism.
Yet I’ve also spent a good deal of energy wrestling with the fact that these very people were in thrall, at least during the more youthful part of their lives, to a virtual religion, with fundamental beliefs that deserve fundamental reexamination. Among those beliefs: that Marxism is a science; that a planned economy will exceed capitalism in both productivity and egalitarianism; that working-class rule will be enlightened and humane; that rulers of the capitalist system are selfish and benighted, while rulers of communist systems are good guys who sometimes make errors; that ‘bourgeois democracy’ is expendable; that human nature is highly malleable, and our personalities, outlooks and ethics are shaped almost exclusively by social influences; that class strug
gle is the motor force of history. To all of which I variously say, maybe, no way, could be, who knows?
Reexamination was, in fact, one of the features of Jewish Currents that drew me to serve as its assistant editor back in 1978. In 1956, for example (when I was 4), Jewish Life, the predecessor magazine to JC, had issued a brave mea culpa for failing to recognize and acknowledge the Soviet repression of Jewish culture: [click to continue…]
