On the night of March 8, 1971, or 50 years ago this Monday, a lot of things were going through Bonnie Raines’ mind as she waited in a Media motel room that was a command hub for arguably the most audacious act of civil disobedience in modern U.S. history — a burglary at a small, nearby FBI office aimed at exposing the extent of government spying on anti-Vietnam War activists.
Bonnie, who then ran a day-care center, and her husband John, a popular Temple University professor of religion, were understandably worried that one misstep would send them to a federal prison for years, meaning their three young children would grow up without them. Even if the break-in and theft of government documents succeeded, what if there was no evidence of illegal activities?
What Bonnie Raines concedes she never could have dreamed of on that long winter night — when radios everywhere blasted “the Fight of the Century” between Muhammad Ali and Philadelphian Joe Frazier — is that so many would come to see their burglary as an act of bravery that one day Pennsylvania officials would agree to celebrate it with a historical marker.
“Fifty years ago, we were criminals, and now we’re heroes,” Raines, now 79, told me with
— source inquirer.com | Will Bunch | Mar 5, 2021