Swords in the Hands of Children
about the book
This crisp, contemplative memoir of an American radical arrives at a moment of surging activism and rage. It is essential reading for progressives struggling with how to act and survive in the Age of Trump. Against the vividly evoked chaos and conflicts of the Vietnam Era, Jonathan Lerner probes the impulses that led a small group of educated, privileged young Americans to turn to violence as a means of political change. Beyond that, he tells the true story of an intellectually adventurous but insecure gay man immersed in the macho, misogynistic and physically confrontational environment of the Weathermen.
Variously known as the Weather Underground, the Weathermen, or Weatherman, the group unleashed a series of bombings across the United States, attacking the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, and the U.S. State Department, among many other places. At its height, the organization consisted of several hundred people, all committed to violent change and toe-to-toe battles with the police.
Inventing himself first as "minister of propaganda" for a movement - and along the way participating in the Venceremos Brigade in Cuba and observing the Native American uprising at Wounded Knee - and then reinventing himself as high-rolling gay hustler, Lerner recounts a wild and utterly American journey from idealism to destruction and beyond. Other Weatherpeople have written memoirs; none has explored the painful history of the consequential group with such penetrating honesty.
"Imagine if your favorite uncle, a brutally honest, worldly, self-reflective gay raconteur, had been, as a twenty year-old, a lieutenant in an underground guerrilla army dedicated to the violent overthrow of the government of the United States. Jonathan Lerner is that favorite uncle you never had, telling unbelievable true stories—no bullshit—from the 'revolution' fifty years ago. This is the closest you'll ever get to being there." - Mark Rudd, national secretary of SDS, founding member of the Weather Underground and author of Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen
"A powerfully written account of idealism undercut by submission to a rigid ideology... Lerner brings a unique perspective—that of a gay man—which no other book on the Weather Underground has expressed." - Arthur Eckstein, author of Bad Moon Rising: How the Weather Underground Beat the FBI and Lost the Revolution
"In language as emotionally bruising as it is beautiful, Lerner illuminates the overlapping, interlocking histories of political revolution, anti-war activism, Black Power, Gay Liberation, Radical Feminism-and all the insanity, passion, and sheer drive of the Sixties and Seventies. ...A brilliant and moving analysis of one of the most significant moments in American history." - Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States
"In this compelling, wise, and passionate memoir, Jonathan Lerner gives us a deeply honest and self-questioning depiction of his youthful radicalism. By telling his particular story of life at the far edge of the 60s and 70s counter culture (with all its intricate complexities), he is able to be precise and unstinting about the wages of resistance and rebellion without sacrificing his continuing and moving idealism." - Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Eat the Document
"Lerner's story of emotional and moral development in this environment is intimate. It is also a broad consideration of how radical ideas can seduce apparently nice, normal, quiet people into ideologically driven terrorism. ....In this memoir, a past member of the Weather Underground examines how a desire to save the world can morph into a drive to burn it down." - Shelf Awareness
About The Author / Editor
Read An Excerpt
We rented a big, old row house. We pooled resources, but we were broke all the time. "How did we live? How did we eat?" John Fournelle asked me. Hardscrabbling suffused his feeling for the period. He recalled collecting soda bottles on the street to turn in for refunds, and one of his sharpest memories, contrastingly rich, was when a few of us stopped at my father's in Chevy Chase and ate ice cream drizzled with creme de menthe. We shoplifted groceries. We ate a lot of peanut butter and brown rice. Sometimes we found part-time jobs to supplement the erratic donations we received.
The self-imposed poverty didn't bother me. I liked the idea that I could carry everything I owned in a backpack. It enhanced that self-righteous idea of being a guerrilla, someone who could disappear nimbly without a trace. For much of my adult life I have lived close to the edge financially; I wouldn't advise becoming a writer, if you can’t handle that. But I've always been confident that things would work out and I would somehow be okay. Some philosophies hold that if you believe that sort of thing about yourself fiercely enough, it will be realized. Of course, that is magical thinking, too.
In the Washington SDS house, we created a semblance of domesticity: chores done more or less responsibly, on a rotation; communal dinners around the big splintery telephone-cable spool that served as a dining table. We even partied occasionally, scraping up the price of nickel bags of pot and hits of acid and gallon jugs of Gallo Hearty Burgundy. The summer was easygoing and largely uneventful. We ran a "freedom school" for high school kids, did draft counseling. I had one chilling moment when we were gathering for an anti-draft rally in Dupont Circle. It was a hippie hangout then, and we figured we might interest a few of the idlers. A man pulled to the curb and beckoned me over; I thought he wanted to ask directions. He thrust a stack of leaflets at me through his window, then sped away. They read, "The crosshairs are on you," and were signed by the Minutemen, a right-wing paramilitary. I threw them away and never mentioned this to anybody, absurdly embarrassed that I might have been specifically targeted because of some manifest weakness. And for a while, I walked the streets feeling marked.
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Related Interest
Related Interest
Swords in the Hands of Children
about the book
This crisp, contemplative memoir of an American radical arrives at a moment of surging activism and rage. It is essential reading for progressives struggling with how to act and survive in the Age of Trump. Against the vividly evoked chaos and conflicts of the Vietnam Era, Jonathan Lerner probes the impulses that led a small group of educated, privileged young Americans to turn to violence as a means of political change. Beyond that, he tells the true story of an intellectually adventurous but insecure gay man immersed in the macho, misogynistic and physically confrontational environment of the Weathermen.
Variously known as the Weather Underground, the Weathermen, or Weatherman, the group unleashed a series of bombings across the United States, attacking the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, and the U.S. State Department, among many other places. At its height, the organization consisted of several hundred people, all committed to violent change and toe-to-toe battles with the police.
Inventing himself first as "minister of propaganda" for a movement - and along the way participating in the Venceremos Brigade in Cuba and observing the Native American uprising at Wounded Knee - and then reinventing himself as high-rolling gay hustler, Lerner recounts a wild and utterly American journey from idealism to destruction and beyond. Other Weatherpeople have written memoirs; none has explored the painful history of the consequential group with such penetrating honesty.
"Imagine if your favorite uncle, a brutally honest, worldly, self-reflective gay raconteur, had been, as a twenty year-old, a lieutenant in an underground guerrilla army dedicated to the violent overthrow of the government of the United States. Jonathan Lerner is that favorite uncle you never had, telling unbelievable true stories—no bullshit—from the 'revolution' fifty years ago. This is the closest you'll ever get to being there." - Mark Rudd, national secretary of SDS, founding member of the Weather Underground and author of Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen
"A powerfully written account of idealism undercut by submission to a rigid ideology... Lerner brings a unique perspective—that of a gay man—which no other book on the Weather Underground has expressed." - Arthur Eckstein, author of Bad Moon Rising: How the Weather Underground Beat the FBI and Lost the Revolution
"In language as emotionally bruising as it is beautiful, Lerner illuminates the overlapping, interlocking histories of political revolution, anti-war activism, Black Power, Gay Liberation, Radical Feminism-and all the insanity, passion, and sheer drive of the Sixties and Seventies. ...A brilliant and moving analysis of one of the most significant moments in American history." - Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States
"In this compelling, wise, and passionate memoir, Jonathan Lerner gives us a deeply honest and self-questioning depiction of his youthful radicalism. By telling his particular story of life at the far edge of the 60s and 70s counter culture (with all its intricate complexities), he is able to be precise and unstinting about the wages of resistance and rebellion without sacrificing his continuing and moving idealism." - Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Eat the Document
"Lerner's story of emotional and moral development in this environment is intimate. It is also a broad consideration of how radical ideas can seduce apparently nice, normal, quiet people into ideologically driven terrorism. ....In this memoir, a past member of the Weather Underground examines how a desire to save the world can morph into a drive to burn it down." - Shelf Awareness
About The Author / Editor
Read An Excerpt
We rented a big, old row house. We pooled resources, but we were broke all the time. "How did we live? How did we eat?" John Fournelle asked me. Hardscrabbling suffused his feeling for the period. He recalled collecting soda bottles on the street to turn in for refunds, and one of his sharpest memories, contrastingly rich, was when a few of us stopped at my father's in Chevy Chase and ate ice cream drizzled with creme de menthe. We shoplifted groceries. We ate a lot of peanut butter and brown rice. Sometimes we found part-time jobs to supplement the erratic donations we received.
The self-imposed poverty didn't bother me. I liked the idea that I could carry everything I owned in a backpack. It enhanced that self-righteous idea of being a guerrilla, someone who could disappear nimbly without a trace. For much of my adult life I have lived close to the edge financially; I wouldn't advise becoming a writer, if you can’t handle that. But I've always been confident that things would work out and I would somehow be okay. Some philosophies hold that if you believe that sort of thing about yourself fiercely enough, it will be realized. Of course, that is magical thinking, too.
In the Washington SDS house, we created a semblance of domesticity: chores done more or less responsibly, on a rotation; communal dinners around the big splintery telephone-cable spool that served as a dining table. We even partied occasionally, scraping up the price of nickel bags of pot and hits of acid and gallon jugs of Gallo Hearty Burgundy. The summer was easygoing and largely uneventful. We ran a "freedom school" for high school kids, did draft counseling. I had one chilling moment when we were gathering for an anti-draft rally in Dupont Circle. It was a hippie hangout then, and we figured we might interest a few of the idlers. A man pulled to the curb and beckoned me over; I thought he wanted to ask directions. He thrust a stack of leaflets at me through his window, then sped away. They read, "The crosshairs are on you," and were signed by the Minutemen, a right-wing paramilitary. I threw them away and never mentioned this to anybody, absurdly embarrassed that I might have been specifically targeted because of some manifest weakness. And for a while, I walked the streets feeling marked.