Samuel Melville (Part 1 of 2)

Samuel Melville was an anti-Vietnam protestor and a vehement opponent of American Imperialism. He began his activism working for a left-wing newspaper in New York City. Later in his activism, he started bombing buildings in the united states. Here is an account of conversation that Samuel Melville had, with the love of his life, during the first few months they knew each other:

“This country’s about to go through a revolution,” he told her. “I expect it to happen before the decade is over and I intend to be a part of it.”

“That winter the talk around our kitchen table turned increasingly to guerrilla action,” Jane remembered. “The argument went like this: if the movement was dying, it was because the movement had never really learned how to fight. We had to stop acting like coddled children, scared off by a few arrests, a couple canisters of tear gas.”

Samuel's vision was a world where his own thought, was not influenced by state forces. He takes the typical Marxist paranoia of the state, and moulds it into an incredible revolutionary force.

The first time Sam ever went to a protest, police were raiding a student strike at Columbia University. Sam tried to convince the students to fight back and started dragging 50-gallon garbage cans to the roof of the Low Library to hurl onto the police below. He tried to get the students to join him, but they only scattered in fear and confusion. Police grabbed Sam in the act, dragged him into a building, clubbed him and left him tied to a chair. Sam could never understand why nobody would fight back.