Jane Alpert

{{Short description|American former far left radical (born 1947)}} {{Use American English|date=February 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2026}} {{Infobox criminal | name = Jane Alpert | image_name = | image_size = | image_caption = | birth_name = Jane Lauren Alpert | birth_date = {{birth date and age|1947|5|20}} | birth_place = New York City, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = | alma_mater = Swarthmore College | occupation = Author | charge = Conspiring to bomb a federal building and jumping bail; contempt of court | conviction_penalty = 27 months in prison; 4 months in prison }} '''Jane Lauren Alpert''' (born May 20, 1947) is an American former far left radical who conspired in the bombings of eight government and commercial office buildings in New York City in 1969.<ref name="NYT_19691113">{{cite news | url= http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00A15F6355B107B93C1A8178AD95F4D8685F9 | last= Treaster | first= Joseph B | title= Court Building Bombed; F.B.I. Seizes 2 at Armory; Blast Rocks Court Building; 2 Seized at Armory | date= 1969-11-13 | work= The New York Times | quote= A bomb extensively damaged a part of the fifth floor of the New York City Criminal Courts Building last night in the fourth explosion in a Manhattan public building in two days. | access-date= 2007-11-22 }}</ref> Arrested when other members of her group were caught planting dynamite in National Guard trucks, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy, but a month before her scheduled sentencing jumped bail and went into hiding.<ref name= "NYT_1969-11-19">{{cite news | url= http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60C1EFE345B107B93CBA8178AD95F4D8685F9 | title= 4 Indicted in Bombings Here; U.S. Keeps Its Evidence Sealed | last= Ranzal | first= Edward | date= 1969-11-19 | work= The New York Times | quote= In a simple one-count indictment returned quickly yesterday by a Federal grand jury, three men and a woman were charged with conspiring to destroy Government property with bombs made from stolen dynamite. | access-date= 2007-11-24 }}</ref><ref name="NYT_19700515">{{cite news | url= http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60A1EF93F5C1B7493C7A8178ED85F448785F9 | title= Jane Alpert's Bail In Bomb-Plot Case Declared Forfeited | date= 1970-05-15 | work= The New York Times | quote= Jane Lauren Alpert, who pleaded guilty May 4 to being part of a conspiracy to bomb Federal office buildings here last fall, was declared yesterday to have forfeited her $20,000 bail. The reason was that she violated the conditions of bail by not checking in with the United States Attorney's office this week. | access-date= 2007-11-23 }}</ref>

After four and a half years of wandering the country working at low-level jobs under false names, she surrendered in November 1974 and was sentenced to 27 months in prison for the conspiracy conviction.<ref name= "NYT_1975-01-14">{{cite news | url= http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10715FA3F5E157493C6A8178AD85F418785F9 | title= The 4-Year Odyssey of Jane Alpert, From Revolutionary Bomber to Feminist | last= Franks | first= Lucinda | date= 1975-01-14 | work= The New York Times | quote= Jane Alpert says she made the transition from revolutionary bomber to feminist during a four-year underground odyssey that took her across the United States and thrust her into such roles as ski-lodge waitress, medical technician, and counselor at an Orthodox Jewish high school. | access-date= 2007-11-23 }}</ref> In October 1977 she was sentenced to an additional four months imprisonment for contempt of court, for refusing to testify at the 1975 trial of another defendant in the 1969 bombings.<ref name= "NYT_1977-10-07">{{cite news | url= http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20F10F8385A167493C5A9178BD95F438785F9 | title= Jane Alpert Given Four-Month Term | last= Lubasch | first= Arnold H | date= 1977-10-07 | work= The New York Times | quote= Jane L. Albert, who served 20 months in prison for her part in a 1969 conspiracy to bomb buildings in New York, received an additional four-month sentence yesterday despite a vehement renunciation of her radical past. | access-date= 2007-11-23 }}</ref>

During her fugitive years, Alpert saw that the radical left was in decline and began to identify with radical feminism, mailing a manifesto to ''Ms.'' magazine, along with a set of her fingerprints to authenticate it.<ref name= "TIME_1975-01-27">{{cite news | url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912766-1,00.html | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20121021174038/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912766-1,00.html | url-status= dead | archive-date= October 21, 2012 | title= Underground Odyssey | date= January 27, 1975 | work= TIME | quote= When she was arrested, the newspapers blossomed with tales of "the girl next door" who went wrong. Like many a militant leftist who turned to antiwar violence in the faraway '60s, Jane Alpert was a model student, a troubled romantic and a political naïf. | access-date= 2007-11-23 }}</ref> That document, ''Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory'', denounced "the sexual oppression of the left" and detailed her conversion from militant leftist to radical feminist.<ref name="Alpert1974">{{cite book | title= Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory | last= Alpert | first= Jane | url= http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/mother/ | quote= Having gone underground three years ago as a committed leftist, and since become a radical feminist, I regard this piece as a distillation of what I have learned in these three years. | access-date= 2007-12-01 | archive-date= 2008-12-19 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20081219175710/http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/mother/ | url-status= dead }}</ref>

==Early life== Alpert was born in May 1947 and grew up in the New York City area. Her grandparents, who were Jewish, immigrated from Russia to escape the pogroms.<ref name="Alpert1981">{{cite web|title=Growing Up Underground, The Astonishing Autobiography of a Former Radical Fugitive |last=Sanders |first=Robert |publisher=Self |year=2002 |url=http://users.iglide.net/rjsanders/seco/alpert.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080303231041/http://users.iglide.net/rjsanders/seco/alpert.htm |archive-date=March 3, 2008 }}</ref><ref>Sanders (2002)</ref> One of her grandfathers gave up his Orthodox faith after coming to America and became a socialist in the 1930s.<ref name="Alpert1981"/> Jane Alpert's mother graduated from high school at fourteen and then graduated from Hunter College at eighteen.<ref name="Alpert1981"/> When she was three years old her parents had their second child, Andrew. Andrew was born with several birth defects, including a severed optic nerve that caused him to be legally blind. According to Jane, "Skip (Andrew) survived, with above-average intelligence, but almost blind, with respiratory difficulties and permanently stunted physical growth. I remember him as a large, inert lump who took all my mother's time and attention."<ref name="Alpert1981"/>

In 1956, her father took a job as vice president of the Linz Glass Company in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. "It was there that Jane Alpert first became aware of the fact that she was an outsider, not only because she was Jewish, but also because she was from the city and unaccustomed to country ways."<ref name="Alpert 1981">Alpert (1981)</ref> When she was twelve, they moved back to New York, and she felt like an outsider once again.

Alpert graduated from Forest Hills High School two years before her graduating class and attended Swarthmore College. She continued to do well academically, read constantly, and began to make friends. Among a variety of influential books she read were those of Ayn Rand.<ref name="Alpert 1981"/> Alpert was involved in her first demonstration in the fall of her first year of college.<ref name="Alpert 1981"/> Alpert had attended graduate school at Columbia University but had not been active in the movement there. In April 1968, she became involved in the Strike Committee's Community Action Committee that started the Columbia Tenants Union. The committee attempted to mobilize more community residents to actively resist Columbia's "gentrification" policies.<ref name="Feldman 2007">Feldman (2007)</ref>

Alpert attended Swarthmore College, graduating with honors in 1967 after developing an interest in radical politics. She did graduate work at Columbia University but quit after the 1968 student uprising.<ref name="Time Magazine 1975"/> She wrote for ''Rat'', a New York City underground newspaper, and had become involved with the Black Panther Party by the time she met Sam Melville in 1968. Her autobiography ''Growing up Underground'' was published in 1981.<ref>{{cite book|title=Growing Up Underground|author=Jane Alpert|publisher=Morrow|year=1981|isbn=9780688006556|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/growingupundergr00alpe_0}}</ref>

==Sam Melville== After graduating from Swarthmore, Alpert took a job as an editor in a publishing firm and started graduate work at Columbia University. Alpert met Sam Melville at the CAC (Community Action Coalition).<ref name="Weissman 1982">Weissman (1982)</ref> Melville and Alpert became more involved with politics; they became romantically involved as well, and Alpert moved to the Lower East Side to live with Melville at his apartment.<ref name="Feldman 2007"/> "On the Lower East Side Alpert began writing for ''Rat''."<ref name="Feldman 2007"/> In her book, Alpert says Melville was able to turn insults into compliments.<ref name="Feldman 2007"/> "His voice suggested helpless lust, as though his accusation of wanton sexuality were also an admission of my power over him."<ref name="Alpert 1981"/>

Alpert became drawn into the world of radical politics which she had always watched from the outside. "If Sam had been the most conventional, straight-laced businessman, I would have found his affection hard to resist. The combination of sexual love and radical ideology was more than irresistible. It consumed me. After a few weeks with Sam, it was obvious to me that I was going to quit graduate school."<ref name="Alpert 1981"/> The pair was involved with several bombings,<ref name="Feldman 2007"/> and Alpert wrote several communiqués in 1971 that were released to the press.<ref name="Alpert 1981"/>

Alpert, Melville, and two others were arrested in November 1969. Alpert was released on bail<ref name=bomber>{{cite news|author=Lipton, Eden Ross|date=October 25, 1981|work =The New York Times Book Review|title=A Bomber's Confessions (Review of ''Growing Up Underground'' By Jane Alpert)|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/25/books/a-bomber-s-confessions.html?pagewanted=2|page=2}}</ref> and lived underground while Melville was incarcerated. Alpert learned that Melville was killed at Attica Prison, in New York, in 1971 and wrote an epitaph that was published in the ''Rat''.<ref name="Weissman 1982"/> She wrote: "I no longer had to worry over how much loyalty I owed him or whether I was betraying him when I said, 'I love you,' to another man. ... I could try to feel grateful that he died in a way he would have chosen."<ref name=bomber />

==Bombings== Weathermen claimed responsibility for at least twenty bombings between 1970 and 1975.<ref name="Foss 1992 129">Foss (1992) 129</ref> Alpert was involved with several bombings and authored the letters that were released to the press. Alpert was charged with bombing eight government and corporate office buildings during a three-month bombing spree<ref name="Foss 1992 129"/> in 1969. Targets included:

* Chase Manhattan * New York Federal Building * Standard Oil * General Motors * Marine Midland Bank * Foley Square * New York City Police Headquarters<ref>{{cite book |title = The Weather Underground. |year= 1975|publisher= US Government Printing Office |location= Washington DC |pages= [https://archive.org/details/statedepartmentb00unit/page/n33 31]–32 |url= https://archive.org/details/statedepartmentb00unit |access-date= December 20, 2009}}</ref> * United States Capitol * United States State Department building * Armed Forces Induction Center * New York Corporate Office

Alpert planted a bomb on the floor of the New York Federal Building, which housed U.S. military.<ref name="Varon 2004 p.120">Varon (2004) p.120</ref> Alpert said she felt a sense of hyperawareness surrounding her, and she felt happy and fearful at the same time.<ref name="Varon 2004 p.120"/> Alpert watched the bomb go off from a distant building and felt that the 2 A.M. eruption brought the revolution an inch or two closer.<ref name="Varon 2004 p.120"/> Alpert said: "the bombings had made us the toast of the movement and the talk of all New York. ... Weighed in the balance against the fear of arrest was the anticipated thrill that we would soon be openly celebrated as heroes."<ref name="Weissman 1982"/>

==Relations with members of the WUO== When Alpert was arrested in 1969 with Sam Melville and two others in regards to the 1969 bombings,<ref>Treaster (1969)</ref> Alpert's parents bailed her out, and with the advice of others, Alpert forfeited the $20,000.00 bail and went underground. Jane Alpert was not arrested for the New York Corporate Office bombing and was still wanted. While underground Alpert got in contact and met with Mark Rudd.<ref name="Jacobs 1997 p.144">Jacobs (1997) p.144</ref> While with Rudd, the pair got pulled over by a police officer, but they gave false identification papers and were let off.<ref name="Jacobs 1997 p.144"/> From there Alpert visited Bernardine Dohrn in San Francisco<ref>Jacobs (1997) 144</ref> at the Golden Gate Bridge. The following day, Dohrn and Alpert went to Mt. Tamalpais to speak to a group of women.<ref name="Jacobs 1997 p.145">Jacobs (1997) p.145</ref> The two parted ways and Dohrn gave Alpert Kathy Boudin's address. Alpert headed back to the east coast and stopped in Boston to visit Boudin. Although Boudin and Alpert argued over the new left movement.<ref name="Jacobs 1997 p.144"/> Alpert was impressed with the Weathermen and said, "Nothing was more important to them than staying together."<ref name="Jacobs 1997 p.145"/>

==Surrender in 1974== As a fugitive, Alpert saw that the radical left was in decline and began to identify with radical feminism, once mailing a feminist manifesto to ''Ms.'' magazine along with a set of her fingerprints.<ref name="Time Magazine 1975">Time Magazine (1975)</ref> After four years of wandering the country working at low-level jobs under false names, she surrendered in November 1974 and was sentenced to 27 months in prison for the conspiracy conviction. In October 1977, she was sentenced to an additional four months imprisonment for contempt of court, for refusing to testify at the 1975 trial of Patricia Swinton, another defendant in the 1969 case.<ref name="Time Magazine 1975"/>

''The New York Times'' wrote: "Jane Lauren Alpert, who pleaded guilty May 4 to being part of a conspiracy to bomb Federal office buildings here last fall, was declared yesterday to have forfeited her $20,000 bail. The reason was that she violated the conditions of bail by not checking in with the United States Attorney's office this week."<ref>New York Times (1970)</ref>

Jane Alpert turned herself in on November 17, 1974, at the Office of the United States Attorney in New York City<ref>Foss (1992) p.129</ref> after being underground for four and a half years. According to ''The New York Times'' and ''TIME'' magazine, Alpert was sentenced to 27 months in prison for bombing conspiracy and jumping bail. Alpert said that the "plea was not a copout."<ref>Time Magazine (1970)</ref> Jane Alpert's admission of her deviance – inherently part of the act of surrender – was bolstered by her statement that she returned from underground because "it was the right thing to do"<ref>Foss (1992) 135</ref> Alpert said. "It wasn't a political thing—just a purely pragmatic choice on our part."<ref name="Weissman 1982"/>

Alpert affirmed her ongoing commitment to political activism and did not offer regrets about the actions she had undertaken in the past.<ref name="Foss 1992 p.132">Foss (1992) p.132</ref> She declared that she and her co-conspirators "believed they were acting morally; that if anyone was doing anything concrete to stop the war it was us."<ref>Foss (1992) 132</ref> Contrary to some reports, Alpert was not a member of the Weather Underground, although she knew several people who were. In Alpert's surrender statement she mentioned work in the feminist movement as a major goal.<ref name="Foss 1992 p.132"/> Alpert also differentiated between her self now and her self then in her surrender statement; she explained her role in the bombings as "craziness", and suggested that her relationship with Sam Melville was a catalyst for her actions.<ref name="Foss 1992 p.133">Foss (1992) p.133</ref>

Alpert acknowledged her feminism, which provided evidence that she would not engage in the same activities now that she did then because of a heightened awareness of power relationships in the male-female interactions.<ref name="Foss 1992 p.133"/> At Alpert's surrender her attorney said, "She is no longer in the grip of the mistaken ideology which caused her to flee; the war is over and the man with whom she was in love and for whom she pleaded guilty is now dead."<ref name="Foss 1992 p.133"/>

==''Mother Right'' (1974)== Writes ''The New York Times'' reviewer Eden Ross Lipton:<ref name=bomber />

<blockquote>And in November 1974, anticipating the post-Watergate easing of judicial attitudes toward radicals, Jane Alpert turned herself in. She received and served a 27-month jail sentence for the bombing conspiracy and for jumping bail. The radical left reviled her for a tract, ''Mother Right,'' that she had written while underground (and in which she had repudiated Sam Melville), and for presumably informing on others, a charge that she has always denied.</blockquote>

Alpert wrote ''Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory'' in 1974;<ref name="Alpert 1974">Alpert (1974)</ref> her audience was women involved in the Feminist Media. Alpert had been underground for three years when she released her piece for publication. "I regard this piece as a distillation of what I have learned in these three years. The piece describes the process by which I became a feminist, and devotes a fair amount of space to my vision for the future, for you, for myself, for the planet."<ref name="Alpert 1974"/> In Alpert's letter she says that the first part is in the form of an open letter to, "my sister-fugitives in the Weather Underground."<ref name="Alpert 1974"/> The second part of the piece is structured around, "my political/religious vision as a feminist and as a woman."<ref name="Alpert 1974"/> Alpert became a fugitive in May 1970, a few days before her scheduled sentence for conspiracy to bomb military and war related corporate buildings in Manhattan.<ref name="Alpert 1974"/> At that time she was not a member of the Weathermen, and she was never part of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). "For now, I only want to set the scene of my renewed acquaintance with the Weather Underground by saying that when it occurred, I was decisively through with the left and had, at least mentally, rededicated myself to the cause of a revolution made by and for women."<ref name="Alpert 1974"/>

==''Growing Up Underground'' (1981)== Jane Alpert wrote ''Growing up Underground'' in 1981. Her book is a confessional memoir wherein she writes about her experiences as a political activist.<ref name="Weissman 1982"/> Alpert wrote the book to set the record straight about her personal role in the bombings of New York City buildings in 1969 and her life underground in the early 1970s.<ref name="Weissman 1982"/> Alpert explains what happened in 1969 and how she got involved in the Weather Underground Organization. She writes about her misunderstood childhood and her account of her life underground. She was supported by her family and friends financially while she lived underground.<ref name="Weissman 1982"/> Mary Moylan wrote a critique of Alpert's book that was published in Jonah Raskin's book, ''"The Weather Eye" Communiqués from the Weather Underground'' (1974). Murray Kempton also wrote a critical review of Alpert's book for ''The New York Review of Books''.,<ref name="Weissman 1982"/> though the New York Times review offered a dissenting view.<ref>{{cite news|work=The New York Times|title=Book Review: ''A BOMBER'S CONFESSIONS''|author=Lipton, Eden Ross|date=October 25, 1981|pages=2|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/25/books/a-bomber-s-confessions.html?pagewanted=1}}</ref>

==Notes== {{reflist|2}}

==References== * {{cite magazine|magazine=TIME| date=May 18, 1970|title=A Good Deal|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909181,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080408104312/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909181,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 8, 2008 }} * {{cite book|last=Alpert |first=Jane|title=Growing up Underground|publisher= William Morrow & Co. |location=New York|year= 1981}} * {{cite book|last=Alpert |first=Jane|title=Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory|publisher=Know |location=Pittsburgh|year= 1974}} * {{cite book|last=Berger |first=Dan|title=Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity|publisher= AK Press|location=Oakland, CA|year= 2006}} * {{cite book|last=Feldman |first=Bob |year=2007|title= Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories|location= New York|publisher= Columbia University Press}} * {{cite news|last=Foss |first=Karen|title=Out From Underground: The Discourse of Emerging Fugitives|work= Western Journal of Communication Association|year= 1992}} * {{cite news|last=Franks |first=Lucinda|work= The New York Times|date= January 1, 1975|title=The 4-Year Odyssey of Jane Alpert, From Revolutionary Bomber to Feminist| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/01/14/archives/the-4year-odyssey-of-jane-alpert-from-revolutionary-bomber-to.html }} * {{cite book|last=Jacobs |first=Ron|title=The Way The Wind Blew|publisher =Verso|location=New York|year= 1997}} * {{cite news|work=The New York Times|date= May 15, 1970|title=Jane Alpert's Bail In Bomb-Plot Case Declared Forfeited}} * {{cite news|work=The New York Times|date= October 25, 1980|title=A Bomber's Confessions|last=Lipson |first=Eden Ross |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/25/books/a-bomber-s-confessions.html }} * {{cite episode |title=Jane Alpert / 27 Month Sentence |series=ABC Evening News |date=1975-01-27 |last1=Medina |first1=Ann |last2=Smith |first2=Howard K. |website=Vanderbilt Television News Archive |url=http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=33918 }} * {{cite news|last=Sanders |first=Robert J. |date= December 2002|title= Jane Alpert, ''Growing Up Underground''|url=http://users.iglide.net/rjsanders/seco/alpert.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080503231700/http://users.iglide.net/rjsanders/seco/alpert.htm|archive-date=May 3, 2008}} *{{cite news|last=Treaster |first=Joseph|title=Court Buildings Bomwbed; FBI Seizes 2 at Armory; Blast Rocks Court Building; 2 Seized at Armory|work= The New York Times|date=November 13, 1969}} * {{cite magazine|magazine=TIME|title=Underground Odyssey|date= January 27, 1975|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912766-1,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121021174038/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912766-1,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 21, 2012 }} * {{cite book|last=Varon |first=Jeremy|title=Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, The Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence In the Sixties and Seventies|publisher= University of California Press|location= Berkeley, California|year= 2004}} * {{cite news|last=Weissman |first=Judith|title=Jane Alpert's Defense|work= The New York Review of Books|date= March 18, 1982|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/6690 }}

==Further reading== * {{cite web|url=http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/weather.htm|website=FOIA.FBI.gov|author=FBI files|title=Weather Underground Organization (Weatherman)|url-status=bot: unknown|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080312225151/http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/weather.htm|archive-date=2008-03-12}} * {{cite book|url=http://www.sunrisedancer.com/radicalreader/library/waythewindblew.pdf|title=The Way the Wind Blew|author=Ron Jacobs|year=1997|url-status=bot: unknown|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080308170757/http://www.sunrisedancer.com/radicalreader/library/waythewindblew.pdf|archive-date=2008-03-08}} Full text of the book about the Weather Underground Organization. *{{cite book|author=Eager, Paige Whaley|title=From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists|location= England|publisher= Ashgate Publishing Ltd.|year= 2008 |pages= 45–49 }} *Burrough, Bryan: ''Days of Rage'' (2015) {{Authority control}}

{{Weather Underground}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alpert, Jane}} Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:Activists from New York City Category:Members of the Weather Underground Category:American feminists Category:COINTELPRO targets Category:Radical feminists Category:Swarthmore College alumni Category:Columbia University alumni Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American political women Category:Terrorist incidents in the United States in 1969 Category:Forest Hills High School (New York) alumni Category:Jewish American feminists Category:20th-century American women writers Category:American left-wing activists Category:Jewish feminists