** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
Maybe I'm missing something. Who exactly was freed from oppression by
the Weather Underground's robbing a Brink's truck and blowing up a
townhouse (killing some of their own members). Don't forget, people,
these were primarily middle-class white people who, under the guise of
helping "the black struggle" had an opportunity to do what they wanted
to whomever they wanted and it was okay because they're "helping the
cause!" The cache of weapons, including the explosives, helps only the
people who sold them to the WU. I mean, really, if the Brinks job was
to help the struggle, where's my share of the money???
----- Original Message -----
From: mathew jallow <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, December 3, 2004 2:46 pm
Subject: Re: Terrorist for a teacher?
> Hi,
> It is evident to me that the word terrorist is being overused and
> misunderstood. First, who decides who is a terrorist? What is the
> defination of a terrorist? Does everyone agree to accept a
> particular defination? Does one country has the right to define and
> decide what a terrorist is for the rest of the world? These are the
> questions we must ask ourselves, and must find an answer to. Why
> are people engaged in liberation struggles called terrorists when
> all they are doing is fight oppression and for freedom in all its
> forms? As far as I understand the meaning of the word, The Weather
> Underground, The Black Panthers and like-minded organizations were
> struggles for liberation from oppression. I cannot determine
> whether the methods they employed were acts of terror or not, and I
> do not think anyone or any government has the right to so either.
> The real terrorists were those groups that organized lynchings in
> the South and other places and state sponsored terrorists that
> enforced the Jim Crow laws. These groups are still alive and well
> today in many parts of America, glorified by the press, yet no one
> is talking about them.
> There is a whole history about the 60s and 70s freedom movements
> that needs to be taught and understood. The Weather Underground and
> The Black Panthers changed America for the better forever, and
> there is no denying that.
> I have followed the activities of these groups since I was in high
> school, and our student organization did invite Stokely Carmichael
> to visit The Gambia where he spent a week with us. I was a personal
> penpal relationship with him even before he came with wife Mariam
> Makeba and went everywhere with both of them.
>
> VERA R CROWELL <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
>
> From the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal:
>
> Meet the Newest Member of the Faculty
> Clinton pardons a terrorist, and now she's teaching in Clinton, N.Y.
>
> BY ROGER KIMBALL
> Friday, December 3, 2004 12:01 a.m.
>
> At Hamilton College--an elite liberal arts institution in Clinton,
> N.Y.--you can take courses in Roman civilization, Shakespeare and the
> "Emergence of Modern Western Europe, 1500-1815." All well and good.
> Youcan also take something called "Resistance Memoirs: Writing,
> Identityand Change." That last course--a month-long, half-credit
> seminar--is
> scheduled to begin next month. Its teacher is Susan Rosenberg,
> formerlyof the Weather Underground.
>
> Remember the Weather Underground? Its self-described revolutionaries,
> mostly middle-class, dedicated themselves to supporting radical black
> causes and tearing apart American society in the 1970s and early
> 1980s.In 1970, they blew up a townhouse when a bomb detonated
> prematurely and
> killed a few of their troops. Kathy Boudin, Bill Ayers, Bernardine
> Dohrnand other high-profile members of the group spent the next
> decade or so
> running from the police and, some of them, continuing to pursue
> careersin criminal violence.
>
> Ms. Rosenberg did her part. In October 1981, in an operation code-
> named"The Big Dance," several black radicals and members of the
> WeatherUnderground held up a Brinks armored car in Nanuet, N.Y. In
> the course
> of that act of domestic terrorism, they murdered Peter Paige, a Brinks
> guard, and police officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, the only
> black officer on the Nyack, N.Y., force. Ms. Rosenberg, then still at
> large, was indicted as an accessory.
>
> According to John Castellucci's "The Big Dance," an account of the
> Brinks robbery, Ms. Rosenberg's role in the Brinks job was performing
> surveillance, driving a getaway car and transmitting orders. "Any
> whitewho had taken part in the robbery," Mr. Castellucci writes,
> "would have
> received orders from her."
>
> Mr. Castellucci reports that the Brinks robbery was only one of
> severalviolent episodes that Ms. Rosenberg was involved with in the
> late 1970s
> and early 1980s. She was finally apprehended in November 1984 while
> unloading a cache of weapons--including 740 pounds of explosives--
> at a
> storage facility in Cherry Hill, N.J.
>
> As it happens, a key witness in the Brinks case refused to testify as
> the trial approached. Prosecutors dropped their earlier charges
> againstMs. Rosenberg, figuring that she could serve a long prison
> term anyway
> for weapons possession. At the time, she was quoted in the New York
> Times saying: "We're caught, but we're not defeated. Long live the
> armedstruggle!" When she was indeed sentenced to 58 years, she
> announced that
> "we were busted because we vacillated on our politics. . . . Our own
> principles were not strong enough to fight to win." According to Mr.
> Castellucci, one of the officers who apprehended her interpreted this
> statement to mean that "she regretted not shooting them." Given the
> context, Mr. Castellucci notes, "he was probably right."
>
> So why isn't Susan Rosenberg still in prison? Because in January 2001,
> Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. The outcry at the time was loud
> andfurious. And no wonder. Just as important: Why is Hamilton College
> opening its doors to her?
>
> Ms. Rosenberg is coming to Hamilton under the auspices of the Kirkland
> Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture, a left-wing
> enclave run by Nancy Rabinowitz, a professor of comparative literature
> (and, incidentally, the daughter-in-law of Victor Rabinowitz, of the
> radical law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, et al., which defended, among
> others, Kathy Boudin). It was Ms. Rabinowitz who invited Ms.
> Rosenberg.And it was she who rechristened an "artist/scholar-in-
> residence program"
> as an "artist/activist-in-residence program." According to Ms.
> Rabinowitz, Ms. Rosenberg is "an exemplar of rehabilitation" whose
> "story is about how you can make something productive out of something
> that was really awful."
>
> It is by no means clear that Susan Rosenberg is "an exemplar of
> rehabilitation." In an interview on Pacifica radio soon after she was
> released, she tentatively renounced individual violence. But
> nowhere in
> her evasive circumlocutions did she renounce collective violence, what
> she described in 1993 as "the necessity for armed self-defense" in the
> pursuit of "revolutionary anti-imperialist resistance." She still
> denieshaving taken part in the Brinks job and likes to call herself
> "a former
> U.S. political prisoner."
>
> And what is Ms. Rosenberg going to teach students? In a statement,
> Hamilton administrators described her as "an award-winning writer, an
> activist and a teacher who offers a unique perspective as a
> writer." In
> fact, her "writings" consist of political doggerel and radical
> exhortation, while her awards are PEN commendations for prison
> writing.Here is a representative passage from her poem "To Mumia
> Abu-Jamal," the
> convicted cop killer now on death row:
>
> Their message so clear
> Do not be Black
> Do not be radical
> Do not be a political prisoner
> There is still time to
> SHAKE IT LOOSE."
>
> As for offering a unique perspective--well, so might Osama bin Laden.
> Robert Paquette, a professor of history at Hamilton, was quoted by the
> Post Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., saying: "If you're going to bring
> SusanRosenberg here . . . why not bring in David Duke on race or
> O.J. Simpson
> on the sociology of sports?" Mr. Paquette is not the only unhappy
> faculty member. Steven Goldberg, a professor of art history, noted
> that"there are nine children today who will never see their father
> . . .
> three women who are widowed" because of the crimes with which Ms.
> Rosenberg is associated.
>
> Edward Moore, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., chief of police, is the
> fatherof a Hamilton student. He recently e-mailed Joan Hinde Stewart,
> Hamilton's president, to express his distress that "a convicted
> terrorist having a violent criminal background is welcome at Hamilton
> College."
>
> Under fire, Hamilton administrators have wrapped themselves in the
> mantle of free speech. "As long as public safety and the rights of
> others are not compromised," they stated, "the college does not
> normallyput limits on which voices can be heard and which cannot."
>
> Well, that depends. In 2002, it is true, when Annie Sprinkle, a
> pornography star and performance artist, came to Hamilton to regale
> students and members of the local community about the proper use of
> sexual appliances, Hamilton administrators stood high on the
> pedestal of
> free speech. But when Brendan McCormick, a Hamilton alumnus and
> officialclass representative, sought to alert his classmates to the
> Rosenbergappointment, the college's development office refused to
> send out a
> letter from him, as it normally would. "I pointed out the hypocrisy of
> sending out a press release claiming that you do not censor speech and
> then turning around and doing just that," Mr. McCormick later said.
>
> Ah yes: Free speech for me, but not for thee. Hamilton College is
> set to
> kick off an ambitious capital campaign today in New York. Mr.
> McCormicksuggests that alumni consider withholding contributions.
> Call it the
> right kind of resistance.
>
> Mr. Kimball is the author of "The Rape of the Masters" (Encounter).
>
> Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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