Satya interview with Mark
by Anne Sullivan
An exerpt from a 2004 interview Weathering the Storm, The Satya Interview With Mark Rudd(click for full article] by Anne Sullivan. Satya was a fine NYC magazine on vegetarianism, peace, and non-violent activism that died a few years ago.
I’m interested in what your life was like when you were a federal fugitive for seven years. Are you willing to share this with Satya readers?
It’s a rather long story. I’ll try to be brief. I separated from the organization early, at the end of 1970, the first year. My wife and I lived on our own in several parts of the country, working at mostly unskilled jobs. I became a construction laborer. We had to move every one and a half years or so, sometimes more often. Lived in anonymous working class communities, both rural and urban, east coast and southwest. It was very arduous work always trying to keep clean ID, staying at least two years ahead of where the FBI knew we had been. It was scary and nerve-wracking, and I was often depressed because I felt it was a total waste of my time. I never did get into the romance of being an outlaw. Too domestic, I think. The hardest part was being nobody in no community, never letting people know who we were. When we came up in 1977, it took a year to get to New Mexico, but we jumped into a community of activists, Anglo, Chicano, Indian, right away. My wife and I separated several years later, but we have both stayed here, raised kids, have jobs. I built a house starting from 1982, planted many trees, and have never ever considered moving again under any circumstances. My line is “they’ll have to kill me to get me out of here.” I’m not sure who “they” are.
More on violence and nonviolence.