Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead by Ed Mead

Author:Ed Mead [Mead, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781894946803
Publisher: Kersplebedeb Publishing
Published: 2015-10-31T05:00:00+00:00

Yes, I was disappointed by the response of Seattle’s left to our initial bombing, but rather than blame them, I looked for ways to build bridges. We knew that without mass struggle there could be no revolution, and without armed struggle there could be no victory. The contradiction between the mass struggle and the armed struggle was a non-antagonistic one. The Brigade had come out of PFOC and was following the lessons of Prairie Fire to their logical conclusion. These were our friends, so we were stunned when PFOC joined the rest of Seattle’s left in denouncing us. One particularly painful example was that of Roger Lippman. He was the leader of the Seattle PFOC and he had been there to wave goodbye when I set out to do this work—but once the work got real, he failed to support us. Worse, he subsequently organized against the Brigade and signed a petition demanding that we leave the area. After leading me into these politics, he let narrow self-interest overcome his sense of revolutionary duty. The leader of PFOC cut ties to something he had helped to create. I would subsequently serve eighteen years in prison for Brigade-related activities, much of that time in Washington State. During that entire period, Roger never so much as sent me a dime, or even dropped me a postcard.

Still, despite these ill feelings, I was looking for ways to mend the fences and support the aboveground movement. For instance, at around this time, the trial was about to begin for those charged with property damage and related things during the protests against the racist contractors in Seattle’s Central District. This is when we moved to strike again. Late one night, we snuck onto one of the construction sites and poured sand and dirt into the oil and fuel tanks of many pieces of heavy equipment, including Cat D-8 bulldozers and front-end loaders. We also poured fuel all over a bulldozer still loaded on the bed of a lowboy truck, and all over the truck, as well. Then we set the whole works on fire.

On the day of the trial, the contractor refused to testify against the protesters, explaining to reporters that this was because of the tens of thousands of dollars in sabotage suffered just days earlier. He added that the damage caused by the protesters was nothing in comparison to that of the recent attack, and that he did not want any more trouble. Because the complaining witness failed to appear, the charges against the protesters were dismissed. The Brigade did not issue a communiqué or otherwise claim this action; we felt the deed spoke for itself. We saw this as an example of the armed front acting to defend the mass movement.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I had a pretty good relationship with the American Indian Movement (AIM). In August of 1975, the FBI and U.S. marshals initiated a wave of terror against Native American militants on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations in South Dakota.

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