Reply #14: Yes, all my old SDS buddies from back then are also [View All]

[Warpy]

living full and decent lives, active in community programs, generous to a fault. Nobody turned yuppie and sold out for a fat paycheck in a corporate office. A couple turned into drug and alcohol burnouts during the Reagan years, but who could blame them?

Clinton pardoned a couple of the old Weather Underground people who had served their time and who had been only on the periphery, anyway, and you'd think he was letting all the child molesters in the country teach kindergarten. People in their 50s are a far cry from radicalized students in their 20s and the pardons were overdue.

For those too young to have lived through any of it, the Weather Underground were direct action people who built bombs but usually succeeded in detonating them in their own faces. Their crimes were mostly against property and not people. I thought they were nuts back then but I understood the anger and the role direct action plays when peaceful protests have turned ugly due to overreaction by power.

Age might have mellowed the lifestyle and stopped the violence, but their politics haven't mellowed at all. They are living treasures.