Like all great revolutionary groups, the Weather Underground started with Bob Dylan. Dylan's immortal lyrics "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows" (from Subterranean Homesick Blues) were quoted at the bottom of a the Newspaper of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1969. It is from these lyrics that the Weathermen - later the Weather Underground Organization - would get their name. But it's from the SDS that they initially sprang, so let's start there.
From 1960 to 1969, the SDS served as a major student activist group. They were a radical leftist group, often seen as a representation of the American New Left. The SDS believed that no single issue could be addressed in order to solve things, but that it was a widespread and interconnected systemic problem. Though they were not communist, they openly opposed anti-communist groups, societies, and behaviors.
In about '65, after 5 years of peaceful protests, the group began demonstrations, including anti-war demonstrations which got national attention. By '68, these demonstrations (which were meant to be peaceful) turned violent, as police attempted to break up the demonstrations through violence. This started to create a split in the SDS, between two major groups. One of these groups, the Worker Student Alliance, allied itself with the progressive labor group (a faction inside the SDS), and basically believed in a "soft communism." They believed that to achieve communism, that a different approach must be taken - one that involved peaceful co-existence with capitalism, reformation policies to adapt the US to a communist state, and a turn to electoral politics. The other group was led by Klonsky, Rudd, Dohrn, and Jacobs - who founded the Revolutionary Youth Movement of the SDS. They remained a division of the SDS through 1969, the SDS's last convention, and had an official manifesto signed by 11 SDS members, and the signing of this manifesto is seen as the beginning of the Weathermen, and the 11 members are seen as its founders.
In this time, we had multiple major events. One was the Days of Rage, in which John Jacobs, one of the founding members of the Weathermen, stated "Weatherman would shove the war down] their dumb, fascist throats and show them, while we were at it, how much better we were than them, both tactically and strategically, as a people. In an all-out civil war over Vietnam and other fascist U.S. imperialism, we were going to bring the war home. 'Turn the imperialists' war into a civil war', in Lenin's words. And we were going to kick ass."
Bill Ayers said: "The Days of Rage was an attempt to break from the norms of kind of acceptable theatre of 'here are the anti-war people: containable, marginal, predictable, and here's the little path they're going to march down, and here's where they can make their little statement.' We wanted to say, "No, what we're going to do is whatever we had to do to stop the violence in Vietnam."
This was all-out rioting - smashing the windows of cars, and banks, twenty-eight policemen were injured, six weathermen were shot, and sixty-eight were arrested.
In the 1969 SDS convention (the last one to be held), Jacobs promoted a fully war-tuned philosophy, that the "imperialist war" should be made a "civil war." He condemned the pacifism of white middle-class, and stated "We're against everything that's 'good and decent' in honky America. We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mother's nightmare." This is quite possibly his most famous statement.
They started a War Council, which came to multiple conclusions. One was that violent military actions should be taken against the Imperialist US Government, immediately, and enlist public support in that struggle. Another was to start major collectives in every major city in the US. They also "claimed leadership" of the SDS, which can be seen as the end of the SDS as its own organization - it was thereafter an extension of the Weathermen.
The basic ideology of the Weather Underground was one opposed to US Imperialism, with specific examples being pointed to around the globe, including the most prominent in Vietnam. The Weathermen stated: "the main struggle going on in the world today is between U.S. imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it," that "The goal of revolutionary struggle must be the control and use of this [imperialistically gained] wealth in the interest of the oppressed peoples of the world" and "The goal is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."
They believed that they were playing a Vanguard role, following the Marxist-Lenninist theories, and that other revolutionary groups would centralize around them. Their main tag-line was to "Bring the War home." They promoted the ideas that the revolution was not something they were starting, but something which was an ongoing struggle around the world, and that they were simply bringing this revolutionary struggle back into US territory. They also believed that their actions would become a catalyst for an internal US revolution.
They took a broad view of what the working class was - stating that the students were simply working class individuals gaining better working class skills in order to join the labor force.
They also made contacts with government and leadership in foreign countries, including Cuba and North Vietnam. Members of the WU stated that they were highly influenced by looking at the methods and style of political organization of these other nations.
They stated that non-violent protest was insufficient, and a militant group was necessary - that militant action was necessary - in order to more dramatically effect change. Naomi Jaffe stated: "We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence."
The death toll in Vietnam had breached over a million, including a huge number of civilian casualties caused by US soldiers (US estimates call it about 92,000). Hundreds of thousands of other civilians died in the war as well. Even though comparatively small, there were also a large number of US soldier casualties, including well over ten-thousand draftees.
In February of 1970, the Weatherman made their first attack, on Judge Murtagh - who was the judge presiding over the case known as the "Panther 21." These were 21 Black Panther members who were being tried. So they threw gasoline Molotov cocktails at the house of this judge, as well as at a police car. They broke windows as well, but it was basically seen as attempted arson, since they never successfully lit the house on fire - basically just the overhang out front.
That same month there was also a bombing of a police station which killed one and injured another officer, in which the WU was suspected, but never claimed responsibility.
Then in 1970, the Weather Underground blew up their first building - their own. Three of the founding members were in a townhouse putting together a bomb, but apparently they weren't very good at it at this point, because they screwed up on something and, bam. They blew up the building. It was a pretty impressive explosion. They all died in it, and it damaged neighboring buildings as well.
This saw a major shift in the WU. For one, the FBI now believed that these guys were serious about what they were doing, had some real explosives, and needed to be dealt with. Despite this show of apparent incompetence, enough unprepared explosives to level two city blocks, and it became apparent that the Weathermen were willing to do damage and take lives. The remaining members of the WU, however, had a meeting where they discussed a change in tact.
The abrasiveness of the death of their friends and allies had caught them by surprise. The harsh reality of what they were doing set in. They determined that the killing of people - "random innocents" - was not an acceptable way to approach the conflict. There's a lot of conflict about whether they took the right road. Many people of their time who were leftist were in favor of less violence - basically not attacking the working class when they were trying to garner working class support. They wanted to maintain their reputation in the eyes of the people. Others felt this softer approach was counter-productive, and no longer truly militant, merely demonstrative. The term "armed propaganda" has been used to describe the actions of the Weathermen from this point out. They also went fully underground. Basically, no one knew where they were anymore, they dropped all contact with friends and family, and became fugitives.
In May of '70, they declared War on the US Government, in response to the murder of Fred Hampton. Fred Hampton was a charismatic leader of the Black Panther party who was murdered, most likely while asleep in his bed, by the US Government.
They said that within two weeks they would bomb a US landmark. They bombed the National Guard Headquarters, and stated it was in response to the Kent State Massacre, where police fired on protesting crowds, killing four and wounding nine.
A couple weeks later they bombed a police station. They made a statement that this police station bombing was opposed to police cruelty.
They bombed the Presidio Army Base on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution in July.
Now, one important thing to note as I go over all these bombings, is the Weathermen either issued evacuation notices, waited until no one was around, or otherwise attempted to not take the lives of people at these buildings. They were fairly successful in not taking lives in this manner.
In late 1970, the Weathermen assisted in a Prison Break, getting Timothy Leary out of jail and out of the country. They received a $20k payment from "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love" - a psychedelics distribution organization.
In October they bombed Queens Courthouse in New York City to show sympathy with Empire State prison uprisings and the Harvard Center for International Affairs, to protest the Vietnam War.
In March they bombed the US Capitol in protest to the American invasion of Laos. This is the most damage they ever did - and equals $1.62 million in damages when adjusted for inflation.
August of 1971 — they bombed the California State Corrections Department office in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, in response to the shooting death of prison activist George Jackson, who was assassinated by the US Government. Now, I keep saying assassinated by the US Government, not allegedly assassinated by the US Government, and there's a reason for that - but I'll come back to it in a second.
September of 1971 — they bombed the New York Department of Corrections office, in solidarity with 29 inmates killed at Attica State Prison .
May of 1972 — they bombed the The Pentagon, to celebrate Ho Chi Minh’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Ho Chi Minh!
May of 1973 — they bombed the New York’s 103rd Precinct House, to retaliate against the NYPD’s killing of a 10-year-old black boy
September of 1973 — they bombed the ITT headquarters in Manhattan, in response to the US-backed coup d’etat in Chile.
March 6, 1974 — they bombed the San Francisco offices of the Department of Health Education and Welfare, to criticize the forced sterilization of poor women.
May 31, 1974 — they bombed the California Attorney General’s office, after the shootout deaths of six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
June 17, 1974 — they bombed the Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters in retalliation for its work in Angola.
Also in 1974, the leaders of the WU allied with Lydegraf, an expelled member of the communist party, to write a new manifesto Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism. It was a manifesto that got a lot of positive attention from leftists in the country.
January 28, 1975 — they bombed the U.S. State Department, to protest American policy in Vietnam. The bomb damaged 20 offices on three separate floors.
June 16, 1975 — they bombed the New York’s Banco de Ponce, in sympathy with a Puerto Rican cement workers’ strike.
But by this time, they'd been fugitives for about five years. Moreover, the US had officially ended its occupation of Vietnam. What happened as a result was there was a lot of division in the WU. They no longer had this huge imperialistic example to point at in Vietnam, and they started to shift somewhat in their objectives and ideologies. They were also getting older and more scared, and many started to turn themselves in. Some of the individuals of the Weather Underground stayed Underground, while others formed the Prairie Fire Collective, which was an above ground organization.
Now, part of the reason why a lot of these people turned themselves in, and were willing to turn themselves in, was they were basically let of the hook. In 1973, the US actually dropped most of the charges against the Weather Underground. And now we get to look at why.
There was a group that called themselves the People's Commission for the Investigation of the FBI, and they broke into some FBI offices. They found out about something just AWESOME called COINTELPRO.
COINTELPRO - or the counter intelligence program - was a government group that liked to break the law. A lot. And do so often violently, and with the very clear objective of destroying anti-Government groups. That meant the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, various anti-war groups, and even Martin Luther King Jr. Evidence surfaced there confirming the violent and illegal actions to members of these groups, and illegal methods that were being used to track and capture these people. The People's Commission leaked all this information to the press. This is why I haven't been using the word "allegedly" with the assassinations. Although COINTELPRO didn't have specific proof of these assassinations, it made the objectives and permissions of the group quite clear.
So basically, they couldn't have a trial for the Weather Underground members, because they'd broken too many laws to get the evidence. There was breaking and entering, planting bugs and wires without warrants, illegal spying, basically torture and assault in order to get compliance from witnesses. Everything the "book" says you're not supposed to do.
The members of COINTELPRO who did these illegal things could have gone to jail for 10 years, but no - they were fined a few thousand dollars, and they didn't even pay that, because Reagan pardoned them.
But anyway, the Weather Underground was really falling apart. There was a lot of division, and a lot of the other leftists had their different opinions on the Weathermen. A lot, for example, really criticized them for originally committing to violence and militancy, and switching over to armed propaganda.
They still continued to plot on, but in 1977 they found out that their organization had been infiltrated by some FBI agents, and so their next plot (which was to bomb a California Senator's office) just plain failed. By 1979, most of the members had turned themselves in, taking advantage of Jimmy Carter's Amnesty for Draft Dodgers.
Ayers and Dohrn had some kids at this point, too, so those two founding members walked off, turned themselves in in 1980, basically got off scotch free - got probation and a fine. Though other members went on with other revolutionary groups, other revolutionary actions (most of them being violent at this point), those members either ended up quitting or getting caught by 1985, which is the last we really heard from the Weather Underground.
Members of the group have looked back with extremely mixed feelings. Some seem to regret it completely. Others stand by their decisions and say they'd do it all again. William Ayers, that terrorist that Obama palls around with, said in an interview
"We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war. ... The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret."
Perhaps the most interesting to me is Mark Rudd, who's got really mixed feelings. He said:
"These are things I am not proud of, and I find it hard to speak publicly about them and to tease out what was right from what was wrong. I think that part of the Weatherman phenomenon that was right was our understanding of what the position of the United States is in the world. It was this knowledge that we just couldn't handle; it was too big. We didn't know what to do. In a way I still don't know what to do with this knowledge. I don't know what needs to be done now, and it's still eating away at me just as it did 30 years ago."
Whatever their feelings about it now, there are some things to examine about the Weather Underground. They've come under a lot of hot criticism, from one direction or another, for their actions - but whatever we criticize, a few things remain evident to me. One, they did not accomplish what they meant to accomplish. They did not get revolutionary support, they did not became central to a large set of other revolutionary organizations, and they did not overthrow the US Government.
Now, the reasons for this are many, but a lot is that, even though much of the counter-culture sympathized, very few were willing to join ranks. Even with the "person protecting" violence, Mark Rudd commented that "Americans are taught that all violence not sanctioned by the US Government is either criminal or mentally ill." He blames this mentality for the lack of support.
Mark Rudd also commented that the reason he feels he participated in revolutionary violence, while so many others in the movement didn't, was simple: Grief. Grief leading to outrage and then violence, in response to the US's actions. Mark Rudd has made statements implying that his path is now that of a non-violent revolutionary, having experienced the lack of effectiveness of revolutionary violence. He's qutoed a lot in another book, The Unconquerable World.
There are various critics who make their stance very clear, however. The WU was not unsuccessful because of a lack of revolutionary potential, or the way the American people approach things, but because they had no strategy, no perspective, and a lack of commitment. They did only minor material damage, didn't actually do much to the infrastructure of the US, didn't actually stop any US military actions, etc., etc., and their actions wound up as purely symbolic and ineffective. Basically, they relied on others to come in and do the "real damage," while they provided the symbolic platform of launch - and that, further, their guerrilla attacks being their approach, having come from the organizational background of the SDS, was a step backwards, into something even less effective. That all their high morality and sense of urgency was, in fact, little more than a cover for ineffectiveness and impotence.
So, again, we have this strong split about why the revolution of the Weathermen failed. A lot of people feel that the reason they weren't successfully revolutionary was because they were being violent, they should have been out organizing and grouping people together for non-violent protest, changing peoples minds, and making their mark that way - rather than antagonizing the US Government and providing a "poor example" of the anti-war movement. That perhaps the reason things failed was because the mindset of the American people was not yet sympathetic enough, or prepared enough for revolution. Others say that they failed because of incompetence and a lack of commitment, or true strategic directions. That the WU was, in fact, nothing more than a glorified anti-war movement that used rage-bound revolutionary ideology as a cover for a lack of effectiveness.
If you're interested in the other perspectives, William Ayers also published a book called "Fugitive Days," and there's a documentary available on YouTube titled The Weather Underground which is surprisingly well balanced in its presentation.
Other reading/viewing:
The Weather Underground Documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV7GSff4fIA )
"Fugitive Days" by William Ayers
The Unconquerable World: Power, Non-violence, and the Will of the People (http://books.google.com/books?id=_lzgxz8Q6pQC&dq=The+ Unconquerable+World:+Power,+ Non-violence,+and+the+Will+of+ the+People&printsec= frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei= CX9XS8b6EYKiswOevO3FBw&sa=X& oi=book_result&ct=result& resnum=4&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAw#v= onepage&q=&f=false )
Underground, my Life with the Weathermen
Bringing the War Home
The Way the Wind Blew
Outlaws of America
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I was asked after, if I were the leader of the Weather Underground, what would I have done differently to make them successful? My answer:
Be patient, wait until we had the necessary resources and support, and then - if I'm going to do a campaign to incite the people - blow up a building per day, not a few times a year. :)
