He worked as a high school English teacher in Harlem for 6 years, but lost his teaching license after it was discovered that he had simultaneously been moonlighting in pornography; a turn of events covered at the time by Playboy magazine.

An image of Palmer being beaten by police on the steps outside the Pentagon was featured on the front page of the Washington Post.

[6][11] Palmer would also be involved in the 1968 Columbia University protests, where he participated in the takeover of administrative buildings by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and where he began to form a close relationship with Sam Melville.

[2][6] Palmer was arrested during the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests after throwing a chunk of concrete through a car window.

[12] In November 1968, Palmer and his then-girlfriend Sharon Krebs disrupted a Humphrey-Muskie campaign rally by stripping nude and holding up a severed pig's head; a signature move of the radical group known as "the Crazies", whose members were often associated with the Youth International Party.

[2] Palmer was the leading member of a group of Weathermen who planned - and attempted to carry out - a series of firebombing attacks on various locations in New York City, beginning on the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton by police in Chicago.

On December 4, 1970, Palmer and five others (Sharon Krebs, Joyce Plecha, Claudia Conine, Martin Lewis and Christopher Trenkle) were arrested while attempting to firebomb their first target: the First National City Bank at Madison Avenue and 91st Street.

[17][18][19] On August 28, 2000, an $8 million settlement was awarded to survivors of the Attica Prison uprising, of which Palmer received $7,500 which he then donated to Sam Melville's son Joshua.