On September 3, 1969, Stein and about 75 women stormed a Pittsburgh high school called South Hills and participated in a "jailbreak" to advertise for the Days of Rage. In August 1969, Stein and fellow Weatherman members: Bernardine Dohrn, Ted Gold, Dianne Donghi and Diana Oughton traveled as SDS delegates to Cuba to meet with representatives of the Cuban and North Vietnamese governments. The Bust Book is a handbook for political activists and legal defendants. warned that if Columbia failed to act on the demands before the end of the spring vacation, which begins Friday and ends April 6, the SDS chapter would "take further action."" ĭuring the summer of 1969, Stein became a member of Weatherman organization and co-authored The Bust Book: What to Do Until the Lawyer Comes, with Kathy Boudin, Gus Reichbach and Brian Glick. This strike is our first blow." At a news conference, Mrs. Eleanor Raskin, an SDS spokesman who is a second-year law student at Columbia. The New York Times quoted her: "We've effectively shut down the college and cut down attendance at the university by half," said Mrs. By March 1969, she led more than two hundred students in pickets of Columbia buildings. She was charged with criminal trespass, fined $25 and released without bail. More than 700 students, including Eleanor Stein, were arrested. In April, she and her mother were involved in the Columbia University protests of 1968. Protesters march on the Pentagon (October 21, 1967) of the kind that Eleanor Stein attendedĪ year before joining Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Eleanor Stein and Annie Stein participated in the protest at the Pentagon in 1967. Her marriage to Jonah Raskin ended in November 1969. In the summer of 1967, they returned to New York where she applied for law school at Columbia University. Īnxious to return home after three years in England, Stein finished her thesis which earned her the distinction of being the first American Studies graduate from Manchester to earn first-class honors. During their time abroad, they traveled to London School of Economics to attend Malcolm X's discussion on imperialism in February 1965. She enrolled in undergraduate courses at the University of Manchester. On August 28, 1964, they were married at the Foley Square Courthouse, and hours after the wedding, the couple boarded a plane to Manchester, England. In 1963, Stein attended Barnard College where she met Jonah Raskin, a graduate student in the English Department. As a junior high student, she wrote a poem with political inflections called "The North Star." The opening lines are as follows:įor those escaped from the shackles of slaveryĪnd martyrdom. When Stein was a student at Erasmus Hall High School, she was a member of the honor roll, the editor-in-chief of the school's student newspaper: Dutchman, captain of the debating team and secretary for the math team.
A family friend, Chavy Wiener introduced her to communism by reading to her a Soviet children's book, The Story of Zoya and Shura. During the month of January or June, Stein would accompany her grandfather on picket lines or hand out leaflets. On Saturdays, Annie Stein would dress up the children and stand on street corners, passing out literature to passersby. Stein looked forward to the arrival of Mary Church Terrell at these meetings, because Terrell would usually bring a small present for her. Anti-Discrimination Laws, allowed her to arrange pastries on a large platter before every meeting. Before Stein was five years old, her mother, who was the secretary of the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Her father was an economist in the New Deal and her mother was active in promoting social causes such as civil rights.
Her parents, Annie Stein and Arthur Stein (activist), were Jewish and belonged to the Communist Party. Erasmus Hall High School (2008), which Raskin attendedĮleanor E.