Controversial Ray Luc Levasseur UMass Speech Still On

Despite Deval Patrick's criticism, it looks like former United Freedom Front member Ray Luc Levasseur will speak on campus at UMass Amherst during this Thursday's Colloquium on Social Change. The United Freedom Front, described as a terrorist organization, was responsible for a number of bombings in the Northeast in the late 1970s and early 1980s, perhaps most notably the 1976 Suffolk County Courthouse bombing in Boston that injured 22 individuals, even costing one courthouse employee his leg. The UFF used bombings and robberies as tactics to fight political conditions they disapproved of, including apartheid in South Africa and U.S. policy in Central America. Levasseur is scheduled to speak at UMass regarding his 1989 trial in Springfield for seditious conspiracy. This, the longest criminal trial in Massachusetts history, eventually found Levasseur and his co-defendants not guilty. Thursday's appearance, if it goes on, would be Levasseur's first public appearance in the area since his imprisonment.