They Call It Conspiracy, We Call It Resistance: The Writings and Actions of Ray Luc Levasseur

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A forgotten history of guerrilla resistance inside the heart of the American empire.

As the protest movements of the 1960s waned and the Reagan era took hold, a new generation of underground militants carried forward the fight against US empire and corporate war profiteering. For over a decade, small networks of radicals waged campaigns of sabotage and expropriation, bombing government and corporate buildings, liberating funds from banks, and eluding capture even while topping the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

While earlier groups like the Weather Underground have been widely chronicled, the most dangerous and effective actions came later, as state repression intensified and guerrilla resistance reached its peak. The US government deployed unprecedented resources to crush these networks, exposing the lengths to which power will go to defend itself.

This collection brings together Ray Luc Levasseur’s essential and often previously unpublished writings, offering firsthand insight into the strategy, spirit, and survival of these movements. Leslie James Pickering further traces the dramatic history of the Sam Melville–Jonathan Jackson Unit and the United Freedom Front, restoring to memory one of the most significant yet overlooked chapters of armed struggle in the United States.

About the Contributors

Ray Luc Levasseur was born in 1946, of working class, Quebecois blood. Labor history: farm worker, construction laborer, tannery worker, forklift operator, janitor, logger, factory worker, carpenter, plumber, soldier. Political activism: Southern Student Organizing Committee, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, SCAR/Red Star North, Mainers Against Solitary Confinement/Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, Free Palestine. Underground resistance: 1974–1984. Imprisoned: 1969–1971, 1984–2004. He lives in Waldo, Maine.

Leslie James Pickering is a proprietor of Burning Books, a founder and former spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front Press Office, an author of guerrilla movement histories, and a perennial target of the FBI.

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