Power to the People : Remember the peaceful protests of the ‘60s? The violent ‘70s? Whatever happened to those guys?

One is a Connecticut homemaker, another a physical therapist. Some teach. Several are dead; several more are in jail. Some have seen their lives turned into fodder for bad movies or weekly TV dramas. Others have watched their own children follow in their footsteps.

These are the superstars of social consciousness, protesters par excellence whose names became synonymous with the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s--and those who got caught up in the turmoil that followed in the next decade. With the recent announcement that a onetime associate of the violent Symbionese Liberation Army active in the 1970s is a potential suspect in the Unabomber case and the continued release of the bomber’s radical-tinged rhetoric, those earlier epochs of radicalism are being recalled.

Older, grayer and often beset by the infirmities that strike at midlife, many of the warlords of social change in the ‘60s remain committed to causes that mirror their youthful fervor. In fact, many condemn the killings and violent tactics of the Unabomber. Out of the headlines, many are still in the trenches. For most, political philosophy remains a powerful force in their lives.

With his bushy red ponytail, for example, Mario Savio--52 and plagued by an arthritic elbow--recently waited for a chance to speak in the crowded room where University of California regents were discussing plans to end affirmative action programs. He never got it, because speakers were selected by lottery. Instead, the Sonoma State mathematics and critical-thinking instructor, whose oratory from the roof of a car sparked the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, handed out brochures for the Campus Coalitions for Human Rights and Social Justice, the organization he helped start nine months ago.

“Mostly I believe in going along with the program and keeping your eyes open,” said the father of three sons, one of whom helped write the Campus Coalitions brochure. “There are so many things wrong in the galaxy, you’d be fighting Klingons if you tried to take on every one of them.

“But occasionally something comes down the pike which is just so horrible”--in this case, Savio said, reduced funding for higher education and the threat to affirmative action--”that you just have to do something.”

Across the country, former Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale said he stresses a similar theme in his speeches at 40 to 50 colleges each year.

“If we’re not reaching for the future world of cooperational humanism, then we missed the whole damned point,” said Seale, who is 59 and lives in Philadelphia. When he is not volunteering as a recruiter for Temple University’s African American studies program, Seale is busy updating his autobiography, “A Lonely Rage,” and transforming his best-selling cookbook, “Barbecuing With Bobby Seale,” into a CD-ROM. He is also wrapping up a volume on what he calls “polylectic reality.”

In one of the strangest scenes in American jurisprudence, Seale was so disruptive in the courtroom of Judge Julius Hoffman in 1969 that his trial was separated from the fellow defendants who became known as the Chicago Seven. All eight had taken part in the boisterous demonstrations that marked the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “I am proud that I stood up in front of Judge Julius Hoffman and cussed his butt out,” Seale said. Ultimately, most of the charges were dismissed.

After decades of railing against the shortcomings of politicians, another of the Chicago Seven defendants, Tom Hayden, became one. In 1982, Hayden was elected to the California State Assembly; 10 years later, he successfully ran for a seat in the state Senate. In addition to his passion for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Hayden is a champion of environmental issues. Recently, Hayden, 55, announced his support for the death penalty.

In her own period of primarily anti-Vietnam War activism, Hayden’s former wife, actress Jane Fonda, visited Hanoi and inspired the legendary counter-counterculture bumper sticker still seen on some decrepit vehicles: “I’m not Fonda Jane.” Fonda had breast augmentation surgery, and in 1991, wore a Scarlett O’Hara wedding gown when she married multibillionaire Ted Turner. The wedding banquet included quail shot by Fonda herself.

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Looking back, Dave Dellinger, the oldest of the Chicago Seven, said, “There were things in the ‘60s protests that were not properly done. Some of the things were violent, which I do not like. I am anti-violence. And some activists became sectarian. You had to do what they did or you were wrong.”

Dellinger, 80, has been married for 53 years. He has five children and 14 grandchildren, and continues to work on prison reform and community projects in Peacham, Vt. Early this summer, Dellinger visited Southeast Asia as part of the Interfaith Pilgrimage for Reconciliation and Love. His trek took him through Cambodia and Vietnam, by foot.

Daniel Ellsberg, 63, also recently traveled to Asia--going to Hiroshima to mark the dropping of the atomic bomb 50 years ago. It was Ellsberg, then a policy analyst in the Department of Defense, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. A “total activist,” in the description of son Robert, Ellsberg staged a 30-day fast during a United Nations hearing this year on nuclear proliferation.

The Berrigan brothers, Ellsberg’s old buddies, also have kept their political fires burning. Daniel Berrigan lives in a Jesuit Community in New York and works with AIDS patients. A collection of essays, “Apostle of Peace” (Orbis Books), will be published in the spring in celebration of his 75th birthday. His brother Philip left the priesthood when he married Elizabeth McAllister, a former nun. They live in Baltimore with their two children, and all family members are dedicated social protesters.

The two class clowns of the Chicago Seven--Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin--met tragic ends. Hoffman was 52 when he died in 1989, an apparent suicide. It brought to a sad close a flamboyant life that included such antics as throwing dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, attempting to levitate the Pentagon by mental force and running a pig for President. Charged with selling cocaine to undercover agents, Hoffman fled before his trial began. He spent seven years on the run, undergoing plastic surgery and adopting the alias Barry Freed.

Together, Hoffman and Rubin founded the Youth International Party, the Yippies, in 1968. They munched jellybeans in Judge Hoffman’s courtroom and urged the youthful masses never to trust anyone over 30. After they turned 30, they were amazed when so many people didn’t trust them anymore.

Rubin drifted through est, meditation, modern dance, acupuncture, massage and hypnotism. He married a former debutante and eventually went to work for a Wall Street investment firm. “If I am going to have any effect on my society in the next 40 years, I must develop the power that only the control of money can bring,” Rubin wrote in a New York Times article announcing his decision to become a securities analyst.

In 1991, Rubin moved to Los Angeles as a distributor for a nutritional drink called Wow! He was a familiar sight in his designer suits in Westwood, where he was fatally struck by a car in November while jaywalking on Wilshire Boulevard.

William Kunstler, a lawyer for the Chicago Seven, said he found it hard to offer harsh judgment of former clients who have fallen from the radical fold. “They did their thing,” he said. “How many others did?

“See, the problem is I guess that age, financial responsibility, maybe burnout take a lot of people out of the struggle,” said Kunstler, who at 76, revels in his role as attorney-to-the-revolutionary stars. “And in fact, those same things make some people jump to the other side of the spectrum.”

For lawyers, Kunstler added, “it’s easier, because we can stay doing our thing. My thing is to destroy government in any way I can. Hold it in check. Because I regard all government as oppressive, whatever country you’re in.”

Of former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, for instance, Kunstler generously said: “Eldridge has basically become a white Baptist.”

Not exactly, but the best-selling author of “Soul on Ice” has passed through unsuccessful career stops as recycling maven and fashion designer. (Cleaver’s attempt to popularize codpieces never quite caught on.) Cleaver resides in Berkeley and sometimes tours with his old pal Seale, who confirms that Cleaver takes pride not only in having become a Republican, but in having voted for Ronald Reagan.

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One of Seale’s compatriots, Bobby Rush, ran the Illinois Black Panther chapter in 1969. Rush served time in jail on weapons charges, sold insurance and in 1992 became the first ex-Panther to be elected to Congress. The 48-year-old Democrat represents a district that includes parts of Chicago and its suburbs.

Jail time turns out to be an experience shared by many from the various strands of radicalism. Kathy Boudin, part of a splinter group from the Weather Underground known as “The Family,” is serving a 20-years-to-life sentence in Bedford Hills, N.Y., for her role in a 1981 raid on an armored car in which a guard and two police officers were killed.

Another former Weather Underground organizer, Bernardine Dohrn, spent seven months in jail in 1982 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating Boudin. Today, Dohrn and her husband, fellow ex-Weatherperson William Ayers, live in Chicago with their three sons. Ayers teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dohrn, who once declared that it was time for an “armed struggle” and praised the Charles Manson family, is the director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University’s Law School.

In Massachusetts, 44-year-old Katherine Ann Power pleaded guilty in 1993 to charges of manslaughter and armed robbery that dated from 1970, when she was an anti-war activist at Brandeis University. Power spent 23 years living under the assumed name of Alice Metzinger, teaching vegetarian gourmet cooking classes and running a tea shop in Corvallis, Ore.

Power is serving an 8-to-12-year sentence in a Massachusetts prison. Susan Saxe, another former Brandeis student, was involved in the same incident--in which a highly decorated Boston police officer was killed--served five years in jail and now works for a Jewish charity in Philadelphia.

Like Power, carpet sweeper scion Silas Trim Bissell took a new name and lived as a fugitive for 17 years, only to serve two years in a federal prison for attempting to blow up a building at the University of Washington in 1970. As Terry Jackson, he earned a second set of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and became a physical therapist and artist. He married his second wife, Ruth Evans, while in prison; today they live in Oregon.

Bissell, 53, concentrates his political efforts on helping Central Americans. But, he cautioned, “It is clearly inappropriate for people to do violence now. Regardless of what comes in the future, I’ve made a decision not to ever again use violent means for political change.”

Stephen Bingham, too, lived underground for more than a dozen years after he was charged in 1971 with supplying San Quentin prison revolutionary George Jackson with the pistol that left Jackson and five others dead in a failed escape attempt. Bingham, scion of an illustrious Connecticut political family, fled to France and worked as a carpenter and house painter. In 1984, he turned himself in, and was subsequently acquitted on all charges. He works as a public service lawyer and lives quietly in San Rafael, Calif.

Angela Davis, too, was acquitted for alleged participation in a shootout in Marin County in 1970, the year after UC regents fired her from UCLA for her pro-communist views. She spent 17 months in jail before the trial, and returned to resume teaching at San Francisco State University. Twice she ran for vice president as a communist. She writes and speaks extensively. In February, conservatives reacted with outrage when the 51-year-old professor of the history of consciousness was appointed to a prestigious UC President’s Chair.

Davis bristles when her appearance is mentioned. Dreadlocks have replaced her trademark Afro, prompting her 1994 lament: “I am remembered as a hairdo. It is humiliating because it reduces a politics of liberation to a politics of fashion.”

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But fashion remains an important consideration for another former fugitive and prison inmate. At 40, Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw wears square-shaped fingernails, often lacquered a profound purple. Her hair color is Expensive Blond. She has had two parts in films by John Waters, and last winter, she modeled in a Paris fashion show.

It’s a long way from the big-guns-and-beret look popularized when she was known as Tania, the revolutionary name she adopted after being kidnaped by the SLA in 1974. Today Shaw is a Republican, married to her former bodyguard. They live with their two daughters on a three-acre spread in Connecticut, where she sometimes volunteers in a soup kitchen.

“A total invention” is how she describes the Tania phase of her life. But under the heading of what goes around comes around, sort of, Shaw’s teen-age daughter came home from boarding school not long ago with green hair and the announcement that her boyfriend was a devil worshiper, Hearst told the London Observer.

“Really, dear?” Shaw said. “That’s nice.”

* Times staff writers Michael Colton and Bettijane Levine contributed to this report.