A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience

I had the pleasure of having Judge Stein for my law school class last fall. She was an excelllent professor for Civil Procedure, really connecting with the class. Despite her extreme politicl views, she never injected any of them into the classroom setting. Thai Jones's book chronicled his family's pursuit of sticking up for ideas in which they believe. While I do not condone the violence that other group members used, I admire Judge Stein's courage to stand up to those she opposed.

It is quite a feat to tackle writing a book about your parents and grandparents without succumbing to sentimentality, or in some people's case, bitterness. Thai Jones succeeds in keeping an even-handed, slightly amused tone to his family story, and some family it is. His parents, Jeff Jones and Eleanor Raskin, were two members of the Weather Underground, and the author was himself born on the run, so to speak. His first memory is of the FBI hauling his parents away when they were finally busted and he was age four. I don't envy him that memory. And prior to Jeff and Eleanor were their respective parents, radicals of the Old Left, with their own strong opinions, which didn't necessarily match up with those of their offspring. That inherent tension gives the story some of its punch. Of course, the most dramatic part of the book is the tromp through the New Left, SDS, and Weatherman (later, the Weather Underground). Jones draws on family memories, other participants, and reliable sources, but there may not be a whole lot new here for anyone who has read other memoirs such as Bill Ayers' or seen the Weather Underground documentary. Still, he provides yet another perspective which helps us triangulate on that over-heated era. My main cavel about the book is its scattershot time-line, which bounces back and forth between different family members and different years. No doubt, some of this is done for dramatic effect, but it undercuts one's ability to get a clear picture of the linear order of events. And the confusion is made worse by Jones' almost exclusive use of first names for the main family members. A little journalistic insertion of last names, now and then, might have kept me better on track. When all is said and done, I couldn't shake the feeling, from Jones' account, that both of his parents had a screw loose in the judgment department. The author's mother succumbs to the more revolutionary than thou guilt-tripping of the Weatherpersons, and leaves her first husband and abandons her law degree. At the time, I'm sure, it seemed like the right thing to do, but when you get right down to it, she flipped and joined a cult. Jones' father, one of the most macho gun-wavers of the Weatherman leadership, can't keep from buying stand-out-in-a-crowd used cars, all while living "underground" and trying to remain inconspicuous, of course. This recklessness is topped off by his growing dope plants on an apartment fire escape in Hoboken, apparently to make a little cash while on the lam. This, needless to say, catches the eyes of the authorities and they're on the run again. All in all, A Radical Line is an entertaining read. Slight flaws and family quirks aside, it provides a compelling portrait of two and a half generations of rebels.

This is a wry, smart book. Jones cleaves historical and personal stories into an astonishing narrative -- one that spans a century of American power and protest. That he does so at all is impressive; that he does so without any navel-gazing self indulgence is a miraculous breath of fresh memoir air. Jones' book is a stark and often critical look at his own family line, as well as a brilliant contextualization of everything from moral outrage and political movements to sex, drugs and car chases.

I read "A Radical Line" in a single weekend and it really was as advertised - a crash course in American protest movements. My parents lived through the sixties and they have bored me for years with stories from "back in the day". Reading this book - written by someone in my generation - showed me why that ancient history is still important today - maybe more than ever. The author tells the story through the people in his family, and when he describes the anger his parents felt because of American atrocities in Vietnam, it reminds me of the way I talk to my friends about the war in Iraq.