Swords in the Hands of Children Quotes

“I was asked to do a lot of things by the Weather Underground leadership over the years and, toward the end, asked to do many things I didn’t even believe at the time were right, but I did them anyway. I let my friends talk me into doing them. Those acts mainly amounted to lying to people, rather than potentially injuring them. When I finally quit it was not just because I realized that the vision was unconnected to reality. Even then, as ever, I was acting more from emotion than ideology. Mostly I was angry at having been manipulated, and humiliated for allowing myself to be manipulated, and mortified at then manipulating others in turn. But no one ever asked me to carry out a bombing. Grown-up me wants to think that even if they had, as late in the process, say, as the moment when dressed in the bland costume of an office worker I had been handed the attaché case containing the ticking device, I would have hesitated, considered the implications, and declined to go through with it. But I was still a child during those years, who needed to tag along after the big boys, take their dare, win their approval. Yes, almost certainly, I would have done it.”
― Jonathan Lerner, Swords in the Hands of Children: Reflections of an American Revolutionary

“I am frightened of escalation. I remember how it seduces and blinds. I remember how to incite it. I remember that I once believed there was nothing left for us to do but make things worse. On purpose.”
― Jonathan Lerner, Swords in the Hands of Children: Reflections of an American Revolutionary