CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

I Am Not a “Pussy” and Never Was

A Vietnam War veteran throwing his medal at the US Capitol. Source: Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Public Domain.

“Reading Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young, what struck me most was what utter pussies we all were.” – Emmett Rensin in the LA Review of Books

“Reading Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young, what struck me most was what utter pussies we all were.”

– Emmett Rensin in the LA Review of Books

 Around the start of the millennium, I visited Mark Rudd, who was living in New Mexico with his wife, Marla, and organizing workers into a union. He was also finishing his autobiography, which he was calling “Che and Me,” a cheeky title for sure that would be changed to Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. For most of the 1970s, Mark was a fugitive, though not a member of the Weather Underground. Racked by a sense of guilt when three of his comrades – Teddy Gold, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins— blew themselves up, he distanced himself from the Weather Underground’s “central committee” that included Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones and Bill Ayers.

He survived mostly as a solitary operative, though he had his own support network that helped to keep him safe. In much of the world, his fans and followers thought of him as a principal figure in the annals of the Weather Underground. Mark showed me dozens of emails on his computer that lauded him for his work with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohn, who he insisted would soon be forgotten figures on the left. That’s what he wanted. That didn’t happen.

As it turns out, Dohrn and Ayers are almost as well known now as they were in 1969 when they went on a rampage in the streets of........

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