The Vietnam War and the book Underground: My Life With SDS and The Weathermen by Mark Rudd
In the preface to Underground: My Life With SDS and The Weathermen, Mark Rudd
explains that for many years he didn’t discuss his radical activism in the 1960s because of
his “guilt and shame” (ix). Why does Rudd feel guilty and shameful about the way he
and his fellow radicals came to protest the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s? Do you
think Rudd’s feelings of “guilt and shame” are warranted? Put differently, do you think
The Weatherman and the Weather Underground did more harm or did more good when it
came to ending the war and fighting for the rights and liberties of colonized peoples both
at home and abroad?
