Love and Struggle

Overview

An extraordinary memoir from a life-long radical

Written from the maximum-security prison where he has lived for almost 30 years, this enlightening memoir chronicles the militant career of David Gilbert, a radical activist whose incarceration is due to his involvement in the 1981 Brinks robbery, an attempted expropriation that resulted in four deaths. From his entry into the world of political activism as the founder of Students for a Democratic Society at Columbia University to his departure from public life in order to help build the clandestine resistance to war and racism known as the Weathermen, Gilbert relates all of the victories he has achieved and obstacles he has encountered during his struggle to build a new world. In telling the intensely personal story he is stripped of all illusions and assesses his journey from liberal to radical to revolutionary with rare humor and frankness. A firsthand glimpse into the terrors and triumphs of the 1960s and beyond, Love and Struggle is as candid and uncompromising as its author.

Reviews

"David’s is a unique and necessary voice forged in the growing American gulag, the underbelly of the 'land of the free,' offering a focused and unassailable critique as well as a vision of a world that could be but is not yet—a place of peace and love, joy and justice." —Bill Ayers, author, Fugitive Days and Teaching Toward Freedom

"Like many of his contemporaries, David Gilbert gambled his life on a vision of a more just and generous world. His particular bet cost him the last three decades in prison, and whether or not you agree with his youthful decision, you can be the beneficiary of his years of deep thought, reflection, and analysis on the reality we all share. If there is any benefit to prison, what some refer to as ‘the involuntary monastery,’ it may well look like this book. I urge you to read it." —Peter Coyote, author, Sleeping Where I Fall

"This book should stimulate learning from our political prisoners, but more importantly it challenges us to work to free them, and in doing so take the best of our history forward." —Susan Rosenberg, author, An American Radical

"Love and Struggle is certain to be included in the top tier of books having to do with the period of US history known as the Sixties. The book combines objective history, personal memory, and a critical perspective into a narrative that is at once an adventuresome tale and a political guide through the past fifty years." —www.counterpunch.org (January 2, 2012)

"This is not 'Glory Days.' It is a reflective, critical (and self-critical), gripping; and yes, tragic account of an important and pivotal movement in the 20th century. How it came to be, the forces which brought it into being, as well as the internal and external forces which ripped it asunder, are here for all to see—naked as a newborn." —Mumia Abu-Jamal, Socialist Viewpoint (January 2011)

"Though Gilbert is still in prison after almost 30 years for the botched 1981 Brink's robbery, these are not prison memoirs. . . . Such lively ruminating from someone on the inside of important recent history makes for vital reading." —Publishers Weekly (March 5, 2012)

"As the occupy movement gains in cachet, readers will appreciate this intensely personal and historical perspective on the protest movement that defined a generation, offered by one of its leading activists." —Booklist (March 2012)

"Gilbert writes with humility, clarity, affection, and even humor, as he reminds us that care—care for each other and for our movements— produces as much, if not more, radical potentiality than a bomb. Revolutionary struggle, yes, but love too, love and struggle, indeed." —The Abolitionist (December 2012)

Author Biography

David Gilbert appeared in the Academy Award–nominated film The Weather Underground and is the author of No Surrender. He is incarcerated in the Clinton Correctional in Dannemora, New York. Boots Riley is the former leader of the Coup, a music group declared “the best hip-hop act of the past decade” by Billboard magazine. He formed a new group, Street Sweeper Social Club, with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. He lives in Oakland, California.