Jim wrote: --
there are plenty of SDS and Black Panthers running around today, the vast majority never went to jail.
Faustine:
Of course they didn't. The bottom line is that their organizations were torn apart by operations conducted against them,
This is incorrect. The black panthers were torn apart because they murdered dissidents, and "dissidents" came to include anyone who wondered if Newton was snorting too much of the Black Panther funds.
The same is true to a greater or lesser extent of most of the other communist armed communist organizations. The first target of those arms was always themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, though this was most dramatic and bloody in the case of the Black Panthers.
The FBI explioted this mindset to the hilt--COINTELPRO kept them all twitching like galvanic frogs. The merest stimulus and they exploded right on cue. Getting your enemies to destroy themselves, what a strategy. The whole thing is a depressing reminder of what happens when hot-headed idealism faces off against cold-blooded realism. Call me a fence sitter, but there's got to be another way. Here's a great link, if youre interested: The COINTELPRO Papers Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall South End Press ISBN 0-89608-359-4 http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel.htm ~Faustine.