I WAS A TEENAGE SUBVERSIVE

I WAS A TEENAGE SUBVERSIVE

 

(According to the FBI)

 

“...subject [Alewitz] has been a very disrupting factor and has contributed a great deal to the unrest on the KSU campus...subject has openly accused the United States of being an imperialist and racist nation and has advocated a socialist revolution in this country.”

 

 

Recently I received the first 1,033 pages of my FBI files.  Most of this is highly redacted (censored) material–information is blocked out that would actually reveal the secret methods and dirty tricks of the government. It is also safe to assume these thousand pages represent a fraction of what they actually possess.

 

Nonetheless, as I go through these documents, I will post some, in somewhat of a chronological order. Given the recent FBI attacks on antiwar activists, some people may find this of interest.

 

I will try to provide a sentence or two of background where it may be helpful. Please keep in mind that these are just a few initial pages.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

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These are documents going back to my student activism at Kent State University.  I was 17 when I began at KSU in 1968 - a founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and a member of the Young Socialist Alliance.  Attached are:

 

• Cover letter from J. Edger Hoover in 1970, characterizing me as a dangerous subversive

• Redacted list of FBI Informants

• Memo noting my arrest on May 4, 1970, and that my mother had formerly been associated with the very dangerous Cleveland Jewish Folk Chorus.

• A list of meetings and activities that I attended at Kent as reported by various unidentified FBI informants

• A flyer from the committee of Kent State Massacre Witnesses that was distributed widely to the national antiwar movement

• A memo noting my disruptive behavior

• An article from the Daily Kent Stater newspaper reporting my announcement as the Socialist candidate for student body President.

• Memos on other activities including the national emergency demonstration in Washington DC on May 9, 1970, announcing that I would be speaking at the rally

• More uninformed, confused reports by snitches, including comments on my location and the ominous notation that my grandparents had been born in Russia (a genetic connection?)

• A mischaracterization of the Student Mobilization Committee as a communist front organization. The SMC was in fact the largest antiwar group at Kent State University and mobilized thousands of students in antiwar activities.