The group, founded by the University of Washington visiting philosophy professor and political activist Michael Lerner, carried out its protest activities from 1970 to 1971.
The members of the Seattle Seven were Lerner, Michael Abeles, Jeff Dowd, Joe Kelly, Susan Stern, Roger Lippman and Charles Marshall III.
[2][3][4] After the nationwide organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) disintegrated in 1969, Michael Lerner, an instructor newly arrived in Seattle from Berkeley, California, felt compelled to start up his own local group.
He kick-started his efforts by inviting Jerry Rubin, a notable counterculture figure, to speak on the University of Washington campus on January 17, 1970 – two days later, the SLF was formed, largely composed of students and radicals coming out of organizations (like the SDS) that had recently disbanded.
The founding of SLF came less than a month after SDS Weatherman, which had staged violent street demonstrations during the latter half of 1969, announced that it was going underground to adopt a strategy of random acts of bombing, arson, and other sabotage.
In March 1970, the Seattle Liberation Front, UW Black Student Union, and the Weathermen organized hundreds of protesters at the University of Washington's campus.
[8] Members of the SLF collective based at 814 South Weller Street spoke at a design hearing for the then-proposed I-90 freeway in June 1970, denouncing the project as "racist" and advocating revolution.
Lerner stated the reason for the failure to win a conviction was "because it was revealed that the FBI agents who were infiltrating the anti-war organization were themselves the people who had precipitated the violence."
[7] Due to the publicity of the trial, the Seattle Liberation Front faced ideological dissension, personality conflicts, and charges of "male chauvinism."
In the fall of 1970 SLF sponsored a short-lived weekly underground newspaper, Sabot, which folded in December after a three-month run amid political infighting among the staff.