Bruce Seidel: A Profile

Bruce Seidel was a small man by American standards, 5’ 3”, 125 lbs.

Bruce attended the University of Illinois at Urbana from 1966 to ’71.  He majored in Economics, and continued graduate work in the same field. He became involved in, and radicalized by, the anti-Viet Nam war movement. After he moved to Seattle he told friends of being beaten by police during a demonstration in Chicago, and again in D.C. after smashing the window of a police car as part of a massive ’71 May Day “Stop the Government” demo. He left Urbana without completing his Masters’ Degree. According to Mead, Seidel’s thesis was too radical for the faculty to consider valid: they refused to accept it.

He moved straight to Seattle from Illinois, and immediately became involved in anti-war work at the University of Washington, doing such actions as joining demonstrators camped out on the lawn of the Federal Courthouse in 1972.

By early ’72 Bruce had changed his organizing focus from the campus to the workplace. He learned the trade of a welder and Seattle Opportunities Industrialization Center. He figured that if he wanted to “proletarianize the proletariat” he needed to work directly with “the people.”

At the same time – with the ebbing of the Vietnam War – Bruce became intensely involved in prison work. He began volunteering at the State Reformatory in Monroe to help with a “consciousness raising” program for white inmates. Soon he launched the Sunfighter. He was greatly impressed with Ed Mead and John Sherman, both prisoners recently released from the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, and bent on forging the state prison population into a labor union. Mead, a Ninth Grade drop-out, was also clearly impressed with scholar Bruce. Bruce was eventually barred from volunteering at Monroe because of “rumors” that he smuggled marijuana [acid?] into inmates.

As a student at SCCC, he helped organize CONvention, which brought him into contact with Mark Cook. He later said that his experiences with prison activism “had a really great impact on my life. I have truly learned a great deal.”

Bruce lived in a house on Malden, one or two households after Faygele and Patrick had lived there. This was just a coincidence: the political community was large enough, and the town was small enough, that this sort of overlap was common.

Bruce died early on the morning of January 24th, 1976. His distraught family refused to speak with reporters, and told their friends that he had died in a motorcycle accident. A friend of Bruce’s told P-I reporter Walt Wright: “He came from a very religious Jewish family, and upper middle-class background, very achievement-oriented and he had cut ties with all that.”

Though the ties may have been cut, Ed remembered that Bruce always kept an 8 x 10 photo “of his dad and mom and a whole bunch of relatives standing in a doorway.” Ed told reporter Wright that Bruce had plans to return to the Midwest to visit his family immediately after the expropriation. “He knew there was a possibility we wouldn’t survive.” (Wright, “Pages in the Life…” Apr. 22 ’76)

Some of Bruce’s acquaintances described him as impatient, often refusing to hear others out, contemptuous, sarcastic, antagonistic, a strutting “tough guy”. One, who met Seidel in ’72, described him as “a lost soul type, the kind of person who did better relating to communist theory than relating to other people. He made points instead of making friends.” Ed portrays Bruce as a loving man who gave of himself generously, an image which others close to Seidel convey.

Wednesday, April 21, ‘76, the reporter Wright published excerpts of a draft statement on some of the Brigade’s stances which Bruce had been working on only days before he was killed. Wright, writing for the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, quoted “sources close to Seidel.” It was the only document that directly implicated an individual (Bruce) in Brigade bombings – five total. (The FBI office in the Federal Courthouse in Tacoma, the Capitol Hill and Bellevue Safeways, and the City Light substation in Laurelhurst in support of striking City Light workers. The document confirmed Mead’s assertion that the Brigade did the Tacoma FBI bombing, and suggested for the first time that Brigade members had aided American Indian fugitives. The excerpts of Wright’s published writings are as follows.

On the Weather Underground, Class Struggle and Armed Struggle

“There will be a special page in the book of life for the men (women) who have crawled back from the grave. This page will tell of bitter defeat, ruin, passivity, and subjection in one breath; and in the next overwhelming victory and fulfillment. So take care of yourself and hold on.” George Jackson [Blood In My Eye], p

Last September we understood and wrote, “that our attacks must be discriminate and both serve and educate the every day person.”

But, we wrongly planted a bomb inside Safeway located in a poor neighborhood.

On New Years eve we took two bombs to Safeway’s main offices for the Seattle area in the very white suburbs of Bellevue; and simultaneously in solidarity with a long and progressive city workers strike, we destroyed the main power source for Seattle’s very rich Laurelhurst neighborhood.

We are a product of various cultures, neighborhoods, ‘fronts’ and forms of struggle.  We have lived and worked among the people in this country and in the Northwest in particular.

We have learned and directed, the issues, grievances and rage that eat away ourselves and all oppressed peoples. 

Like most, our practice has varied from leafleting, boycotting, participating in strikes, bombing and co-ordinated guerrilla attacks…whatever the situation called for.

For us, in the George Jackson Brigade, we understand politics in command to mean something different than just paying lipservice to struggles of oppressed peoples, writing radical and/or Marxist essays, or even placing pipebombs in a shit-house adjoining the local FBI office. 

In more than one situation, we were told or led to believe that we had support but when we arrived with a communique or resource needs for ourselves; or last winter for Indian brothers on the run, we found many old doors locked tight. 

(W. Wright, “Slain Man’s Document: Self-implication In Three Bombings,” P-I, (Wed.) Apr. 21 ’76, A3; W. Wright, “Pages in the Life of Bruce Seidel: Two

Sides of a Revolutionary,” P-I, Apr. 22 ’76, C6)

For many years, thru both our words and deeds, we have consciously supported and respected the example set by the Weather Underground Organization.  After collectively reading and discussing Weather’s last two articles, Politics in Command and Armed Struggle and the SLA, we found points which we wholeheartedly agree, points which we disagree, and we have many questions and contradictions that we wish to address.

To begin, we certainly agree that “the only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.”  And we wholeheartedly agree that revolutionary war is a class war which is “complex and ongoing” and Martin Sostre wrote; that it includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political, economic, cultural, and military, where all forms are developed “harmoniously around the axis of armed struggle.”

We, ourselves, are a product of this complex and ongoing struggle.  We are a product of various cultures, neighborhoods, ‘fronts’ and forms of struggle.  We have learned and directed, the issues, grievances and rage that eat away ourselves and all oppressed peoples.  Like most, our practice has varied from leafleting, boycotting, participating in strikes, bombing and co-ordinated guerrilla attacks…whatever the situation called for.

From all this we have learned what the Weather Underground has re-affirmed, the important lesson of Ho Chi Minh, “A military without politics is like a tree without roots—useless and dangerous.”  This is Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Tse Tung.  It is the lesson of Cabral, who very consciously distinguished between militarists and armed militants.  And it is the lesson of George Jackson who taught his fellow prisoners that it is not enough to be fearless warriors; rather, we must become organizers, educators and revolutionarys.  And, of course putting politics in command is the opposite dictum the U.S. military and police forces teach their soldiers and recruits.

For us, in the George Jackson Brigade, we understand politics in command to mean something different than just paying lipservice to struggles of oppressed peoples, writing radical and/or Marxist essays, or even placing pipebombs in a shit-house adjoining the local FBI office.  For us, Politics in Command means understanding that continual struggle and contradictions exist on three fronts: internal, among friends, and against the enemy.  And, being revolutionary means critically and self critically analyzing these contradictions, resolving them and transforming the resolution into unity and strength.  In essence, it means honesty or purpose, change and growth.

Internally and collectively sexism, impatience, and individualism remain our prime contradictions.  Our contradictions among our friends primarily stem from our not achieving self-reliance sooner.  Consequently, we have bickered and quarreled with friends over resources and support.  Unlike stated in Armed Struggle and the SLA, we do not and have not in the past, “evaluated other forces primarily by their support for armed struggle.”  And it has not been our practice to “ridicule the process of developing political analysis and organization…” We do, however, evaluate “other forces”; specifically the local Prarie Fire group, the now defunct Seattle Liberation Coalition and their false leaders ____, ___, _____, from their committment to servicing the people and their pronouncements on supporting armed struggle.  Our judgements are based on honesty; on the gap or lack of gap between their words and deeds.  In more than one situation, we were told or led to believe that we had support but when we arrived with a communique or resource needs for ourselves; or last winter for Indian brothers on the run, we found many old doors locked tight.  While some new ones opened up, all in all we relearned to go directly to the people and to rely on the people.

Our key error in fighting the enemy-an age old error- has been in not clearly identifying and isolating the ruling class from behind the many classes of people, laws, and gimmicks where he hides. Last September we understood and wrote, “that our attacks must be discriminate and both serve and educate the every day person.” But, we wrongly planted a bomb inside Safeway located in a poor neighborhood. On New Years eve we took two bombs to Safeway’s main offices for the Seattle area in the very white suburbs of Bellevue; and simultaneously in solidarity with a long and progressive city workers strike, we destroyed the main power source for Seattle’s very rich Laurelhurst neighborhood. On New Years eve our attack was “specific, comprehensible.. and humane”; to quote the local media, “it was well planned and bloodless.”

In 1848, with all of Europe in turmoil and on the verg4e of revolution, Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto not as a theoretical treatise, but as a working paper.  It reflects organization, a program, and a solution. And, as we all know, Lenin spent his entire life teaching the need for an organization “which spans periods of great activity and uprising, draws lessons and corrects errors…which recruits organizers and deepens their ties with the people…”  And, Lenin successfully built and sustained a party of“professional revolutionaries…capable of leading the whole fight of the people.”  During the same time, Lenin was in Europe, and old woman traveled from strike to strike, from mining camps to mills to sweat shops all thru the cities and countryside of Amerika.  Mother Jones exemplified what LeDuan must have said many times ‘organize, organize, organize.’

So we wholeheartedly agree with the Weather Underground on the need for organization and the future goal of building a party to lead, direct, learn and be accountable to working people and all oppressed peoples. And we too, “would disagree with those who would have armed struggle wait for the creation of a leading proletariat party.” For as Cabral said and Attica, McCalestar and San Quentin taught us. “there is always armed struggle.”

“…any serious organization of people must carry with it, from the start, a potential threat of revolutionary violence--after all the ‘stakes are high’”

                                                                                                George Jackson

                                                                        LOVE&STRUGGLE……Bruce

                                                                        unfinished draft… Jan. 1976

April 22^nd Wright published a biographical account of Seidel, relying on Bruce’s friends and acquaintances, and the small paper trail he had left behind. Many of his friends refused to let Wright identify them publicly, for fear of being subpoenaed before the grand jury. Of those who did talk to Wright, several expressed rage towards the Brigade. Said one: “The results of the political line put forth by the George Jackson Brigade are that Bruce is dead, Mead is headed for prison, and Sherman has escaped only to be forced underground for the rest of his life. And the grand jury is investigating a lot of people on the left who had nothing to do with the Brigade, but who will go to jail before they say anything to authorities.”