Bruce Rubenstein

Bruce Rubenstein

Bruce Rubenstein

Weathermen

In the late 1960s Bruce Rubenstein was a member of the Weathermen faction of Students for a Democratic Society.

MDS founder/Weatherman

Paul Buhle, Thomas Good and Bruce Rubenstein played key roles in founding the Movement for a Democratic Society in 2006.

According to an article on Movement for a Democratic Society and the new Students for a Democratic Society in The Nation April 2007;

Power has resided largely with three figures: historian Paul Buhle, once editor of the original SDS journal Radical America; Thomas Good, a 48-year-old Communist-turned-anarchist who created the new SDS website and Bruce Rubenstein, a Connecticut personal-injury attorney.

The Nation went on to comment on tensions within MDS caused by the dominance of the Weatherman clique;

The Weather controversy blew up when former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn, was invited to speak at the first new SDS conference, held in Providence, Rhode Island, in April 2006. Dohrn received a rousing welcome, but when Bob Ross, an early SDS leader, used his talk to lament that "the largest legal and unarmed movement in the history of the West" turned "ineffectually violent and useless," he was received coolly.

At the first new SDS national convention in Chicago, in August, Good opened the proceedings by reading greetings from Dohrn. Moreover, Bruce Rubenstein, MDS's treasurer, was unapologetic about his Weather history and says that if it were 1969 he would "do it all over again...."

Statement of Solidarity with Pace SDS

Five Students for a Democratic Society New York members were arrested at Pace University, New York, on Wednesday, November 15, 2006, during a “free expression” protest.

Movement for a Democratic Society issued a support statement;

We the undersigned officers and members of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), denounce the actions of Pace University in regards to the planned arrest of several SDS first amendment activists on November 15, 2006 at the downtown campus. The targeting of these activists for their efforts to organize an SDS chapter at Pace is reprehensible. President David A. Caputo and the Pace administration have violated the civil rights of the student population and we join with SDS Pace in calling for David Caputo to step down now.

Endorsers of the statement included Bruce Rubenstein, Treasurer of Movement for a Democratic Society Inc.

Obama supporter?

In 2008, Bruce Rubenstein was apparently an Obama supporter;

Barack Obama's Connecticut campaign drew a capacity crowd of 250 to a kickoff event at Yale's Afro-American Cultural Center today, while Hillary Rodham Clinton rolled out an endorsement by Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy...Bruce Rubenstein of West Hartford, a fundraiser who likes to play both radical and insider, dropped by.

From the blog Down With Tyranny June 1st 2006;

Everyone who has paid any attention at all to Joe Lieberman's political career knows he is one of the slimiest and low down dirty players in American politics...But posting fake blogs in the name of Barack Obama and Harry Reid is downright bizarre. According to today JOURNAL INQUIRER from north-central Connecticut, the FBI has been brought in on the case. "A Hartford lawyer says the FBI has agreed to investigate postings promoting Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's re-election on a popular Connecticut-based Internet 'blog' in the names of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Bruce D. Rubenstein, a former finance chairman for the Democratic State Central Committee and a Lieberman critic, said Wednesday that an agent in the FBI's Meriden office told him the agency would probe the postings on the 'Connecticut Local Politics' Web log... Obama confirms that Lieberman's postings were fake and that he never authorized Lieberman to use his name for anything...

"Support Bill Ayers"

In October 2008, several thousand college professors, students and academic staff signed a statement Support Bill Ayers in solidarity with former Weather Underground Organization terrorist Bill Ayers.

In the run up to the U.S. presidential elections, Ayers had come under considerable media scrutiny, sparked by his relationship to presidential candidate Barack Obama.

We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack...

We, the undersigned, stand on the side of education as an enterprise devoted to human inquiry, enlightenment, and liberation. We oppose the demonization of Professor William Ayers.

Bruce Rubenstein signed the statement.

References

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