Ex-Radical Sara Jane Olson Returns With A New Cause

Ex-radical Sara Jane Olson has returned to public life with a new cause.

The 1970s radical, who spent 25 years as a fugitive after taking part on the Symbionese Liberation Army, returned to her native Minnesota in 2009 after being released from a California prison.

Since her release, ex-radical Sara Jane Olson has decided to advocate for a new cause — ending the War on Drugs. Olson and a friend petitioned the Obama administration to end the disparity between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine.

Olson said her own time in prison opened her eyes to the problem, and motivated her to make something useful of her time on release.

“I don’t really like to talk about my personal experience in terms of my family and all that,” Olson said Friday. “But when I was there, at some point I did adjust to it and I said, ‘I have to learn something from this.’ ”

The SLA was famous for several bombing and other attacks, as well as the 1974 kidnapping of California heiress Patty Hearst.

In her new cause, Olson teamed up with her friend and next-door neighbor Mary McLeod to ask President Obama to grant clemency for prisoners still serving under now-discarded harsh sentences for crack cocaine.

Congress threw out old sentencing guidelines in 2010, ending the much more harsh penalties for crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine. There are still close to 5,000 prisoners serving time under the old guidelines, however.

Olson joins other celebrities and politicians calling for an end to disparity in drug sentencing. In the lead-up to the sentencing being reformed, Def Jam mogul Russell Simmons organized protests against harsh prison terms for crack possession.

“It is critical that we change both the way we think about drug laws in this country and how we generate positive solutions that leave a lasting impact on rebuilding our communities,” Simmons said. “We need to break the school to prison pipeline, support and educate our younger generations and provide them with a path that doesn’t leave them disenfranchised with limited options.”

Olson hopes to continue that fight now.

“The war on drugs is a politically convenient peg on which to hang a lot of things, and that has been done by a lot of politicians,” said ex-radical Sara Jane Olson, noting the racial disparity between users of crack and powder cocaine.