Jane Alpert | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jane Lauren Alpert May 20, 1947 New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore College |
| Occupation | Author |
| Criminal charge | Conspiring to bomb a federal building and jumping bail; contempt of court |
| 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.[1] 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.[2][3]
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.[4] 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.[5]
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.[6] 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.[7]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.