[Vision2020] Former Weatherman Kathy Boudin

[No Weatherman]

As a supplement to my previous post, allow me to point out a
Weatherman whom I believe would be a positive influence on
presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama and whom I believe would
be a positive influence on schoolchildren. Her name is Kathy Boudin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Boudin

And she wrote the following letter in 2001, the same year that Bill
Ayers published his memoirs.

http://www.slate.com/id/1008160/

She wrote this letter after spending the previous 19 years of her life
in prison, contemplating her role in the death of innocent civilians
killed by the Weathermen in their senseless war. Bill Ayers spent 10
years of that same time period fleeing justice and he spent the next
ten preparing for the next phase of the war.

Her words are beautiful and eloquent

Letter from Kathy Boudin '65
For the last 19 years I have lived in prison, quietly making a
personal journey that has helped me to face the tragedy I am
responsible for, understanding what allowed me to be involved, and
building a new sense of life and what is worth doing. I want to thank
you who have been with me throughout, who have helped me survive and
learn to rebuild. When I stood in front of the judge almost two
decades ago, I expressed my remorse. That was the beginning of a long
process of facing what I had done. I want to describe some of what I
have learned.

Do I feel what I did was wrong? Yes. I want to be clear. I know that I
am responsible for a terrible thing. I feel nothing but remorse and
shame about my involvement. I will live with this for the rest of my
life.

I pled guilty to robbery and felony murder for the death of a man who
was a Brinks' guard. My role was riding in a getaway car parked three
miles from the robbery. Although I did not shoot nor hurt anyone
physically and was never armed, I live every day with the knowledge
that I am fully responsible — responsible because I supported the idea
that this misguided robbery would make a positive difference,
responsible because I was in a getaway car, and morally responsible
for all the tragic consequences that resulted. Three people died;
others suffered physically and emotionally; families were ripped
apart; a whole town shaken. Now, in spite of my dream of helping to
create a more humane society, I am forever connected to the deaths of
innocent people. This connection has changed me. I will never be
associated again with any act that places human lives at risk.

Part of what I share with other women here is that aching question,
"Why?" Why did I make the life choices that brought me to prison? As I
was growing up, I wanted to be a doctor, to help, to heal. Later, I
was torn over whether to apply to medical school or law school. I
thought the problems were social, and I wanted to heal society. I
spent years working as a community educator feeling a responsibility
to use the privileges of my background to help others. I felt the
urgency to solve the problems that moved so many of my generation, but
I became fixed on being certain that I had the correct solution, and I
made some seriously wrong choices. Over time, I lost sight of the goal
of healing.

After 12 years of living underground, I became rigidly committed to a
grand vision of improving society that was not connected to the
day-to-day realities of people. I felt strongly about existing
problems, but I was seriously out of touch with how to work on them.
By the time of my arrest, I was desperately trying to redefine myself
and my life, to make major changes, but I did not carry it through. I
have asked myself over and over again how could I, an adult, a person
who was educated, a woman who saw myself guided by ideals of helping
humanity, have gone out that day? I never wanted anyone to get hurt,
yet the risks should have been obvious to me. My sense of the world
and of myself was distorted.

People were killed and injured and I abandoned my son, whom I loved,
at the baby-sitter. Now, after years of soul searching, I can see that
a combination of my personal issues, wrong thinking, and the impact of
years of isolation contributed to my moral failures.

After my arrest, I had to start over and sort out what had gone wrong.
I committed myself to my son and that was the start of a better path
of living. It began to put me back in touch with reality. Something
inside of me changed. I went back to basics. My son became a
life-line, and he has remained for all these years an anchor to my own
heart, and to other people's hearts as well.

At Bedford Hills I began to create a new life. I dedicated myself to
working with our Children's Center. With women here, I've learned
about how to love and support our children from a distance and how to
help other mothers do this. I went through years when our whole
community faced fear, loss, and death caused by AIDS. Together, we
developed a peer community health program to cope with the AIDS
epidemic. I have worked with women committed to acquire a college
education, and with them moved educators on the outside to help build
a wonderful four-year college program. I find satisfaction in the
day-to-day ways that people find strength in their abilities, and
being part of this: teaching women to read and write, to communicate
with their children, and learning about dying and living with dignity.
I have known wonderful people — inmates and staff — and learned from
them and with them.

Fortunately, I've been in a prison that believes people can change,
and can make a difference. Here, I live with many other inmates who,
like myself, have grown to become teachers and peer counselors, coming
together to solve shared problems. It is through these experiences and
relationships that my own change and growth have come about. My
experience at Bedford leaves me both hopeful and inspired by the
enormous potential of people. I believe that there are lessons from
our work here that would be useful in the broader society. My
opportunities to learn, to get a master's degree in adult education,
to study psychology and social work, have helped me reorient myself
and my goals.

I know it is impossible to make up for the suffering I helped to
cause; I have tried to give back to a community of people, to live my
life in a life-giving way.

My work, while the source of much hope, has also taken me in another
direction. It deepens over and over my grasp of the human sorrow and
loss that I am tied to. Sitting with young women dying of AIDS,
creating a quilt for those in our community who are no longer with us,
I face the deaths for which I am responsible. As I work with mothers
on rebuilding their relationships with the children they left, I am
overwhelmed by my own responsibility for leaving a group of children
with no hope of ever seeing their own fathers again. Now I can ask:
what if it were my father, my husband, or my son who had been killed
or hurt? What would I feel? I understand the rage that the victims'
families may feel towards me. If I could just turn the clock back and
make things different; if only I could do that.

As I look back, I feel enormous regret. My life's journey will always
include that day 20 years ago, and all the people who suffer because
of it. I think about how much has changed in the last two decades.
Some of you have become grandparents, have moved to new cities,
created meaningful work, probably changed inside yourself. I know I
have. I feel the preciousness of life, its shortness, its complexity.
I don't know whether it is because of my growing older, being rooted
in a community, or the lessons I continue to learn from the tragedy I
helped to create, I recognize limitations, yet find satisfaction in
what I can do. While looking back, I am also looking ahead. I think
eagerly of using what I've learned here to give back to society. I
imagine rejoining you who have been with me during these years. I hope
that you will write back and will become part of my life. Others from
the College have helped me to know that in examining the past, there
is hope; and that in passing on hard learned wisdom to our children,
our friends, and others around us, there is the possibility of repair
and renewal.

—	KATHY BOUDIN '65
—	http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/bulletin/letsu01.htm