Information AboutWeatherman (organization) |
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, Chicago, October 1969 (Photo credit: David Fenton; publicity photo for film ''Weather Underground'')]] Weatherman, known Colloquially as '''the Weathermen''' and later the '''Weather Underground Organization''', was a U.S. Radical Left organization consisting of splintered-off members and leaders of the Students For A Democratic Society . The group referred to itself as a "revolutionary organization of Communist women and men." Their stated purpose was to carry out a series of Militant actions to achieve the Revolutionary Overthrow of the Government Of The United States (and of Capitalism as a whole). Weatherman imploded shortly after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 , which saw the general demise of the New Left , of which Weatherman had been a part. Originally, the Weathermen were part of the Revolutionary Youth Movement within the Students For A Democratic Society . When they split — first from the RYM's Maoist s, and then from SDS itself — they distinguished themselves from other self-proclaimed revolutionary groups by claiming that there was no time to build a Vanguard Party and that revolutionary war against the United States and the system of capitalism should begin immediately. To that end, they carried out a campaign of Bomb ings, Jailbreak s, and Riot s. BACKGROUND The group initially emerged from the campus-based Opposition To The Vietnam War and from the Civil Rights Movement s of the late 1960s. During this time, United States Military action in Southeast Asia , especially Vietnam , escalated despite the growing significance of a worldwide movement against the war. In the U.S., the anti-war sentiment was particularly pronounced around the time of the 1968 US Presidential Election . After the summer 1969 fragmentation of Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman's adherents explicitly claimed themselves the ''real leaders'' of SDS and retained control of the SDS National Office. Thereafter, any leaflet, label, or logo bearing the name "Students for a Democratic Society" or "SDS" was in fact the views and politics of Weatherman, and not of SDS as a whole. Weatherman contained the vast majority of former SDS National Committee members, including Mark Rudd , David Gilbert and Bernadine Dohrn . For this reason, the group, while small, was able to easily commandeer the mantle of SDS and all of its membership lists. For a brief time, affiliations with regional SDS Cadre were maintained from the National Office, but with Weatherman in charge the relationships didn't last long, and local chapters soon disbanded. By February 1970 the group had decided to close the SDS National Office, concluding the major campus-based organization of the 1960s. The name Weatherman was derived from the Bob Dylan song " Subterranean Homesick Blues ", which featured the lyrics "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." The lyrics had been quoted at the bottom of an influential essay in the SDS newspaper, ''New Left Notes''. Using this title the Weathermen meant, partially, to appeal to the segment of American Youth inspired to action for Social Justice by Dylan's songs. It appears also that the "Weatherman" Moniker used by the group may have been meant as a rebuke against the Progressive Labor Party , whose Worker Student Alliance SDS faction had succeeded in recruiting many former SDSers to its ranks, and had allegedly co-opted the 1969 convention. The Weatherman group had long held that Militancy was becoming more important than Nonviolent forms of Anti-war action, and that university-campus-based demonstrations needed to be punctuated with more dramatic actions, which had the potential to interfere with the U.S. military and Internal Security Apparatii . The belief was that these types of Urban Guerrilla actions would act as a Catalyst for the coming revolution. Many international events indeed seemed to support the Weathermen's overall assertion that Worldwide Revolution was imminent, such as the intensification of the Viet Cong's Guerrilla Warfare campaigns against U.S. and ARVN forces, which Weatherman regarded as a successful Revolt against U.S. Imperialism ; the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China; the 1968 student revolts in France , Mexico City and elsewhere; the Prague Spring ; the emergence of the Tupamaros organization in Uruguay ; the emergence of the Guinea-Bissauan Revolution and similar Marxist -led independence movements throughout Africa ; and within the United States, the prominence of the Black Panther Party together with a series of " Ghetto Rebellion s" throughout poor Black neighborhoods across the country. The Weathermen were outspoken advocates of the analytical concepts that later came to be known as " White Skin Privilege " and Identity Politics . As the Unrest in poor black neighborhoods intensified in the early 1970s, Bernardine Dohrn said, "White youth must choose sides ''now.'' They must either fight on the side of the oppressed, or be on the side of the oppressor." "DAYS OF RAGE" The opening salvo in the "Days of Rage," Weatherman's first event, came on the night of October 8 1969 in Chicago , Illinois , when they blew up a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot . Although the October 8 rally failed to draw as many participants as they had anticipated, the estimated two to three hundred who did attend shocked police by leading a Riot through the Gold Coast Neighborhood , smashing windows and cars. That night, six people were shot and seventy were arrested. Two smaller violent conflicts with police followed the next two nights. SUBMERSION In safe house while preparing the bomb intended for that action. It was an accident of history that the site of the explosion was the former residence of Merrill Lynch Brokerage firm founder Charles Merrill and his son, the poet James Merrill . The younger Merrill subsequently recorded the event in his poem ''18 West 11th Street'', the title being the address of the house. An FBI report on the incident later claimed that the group had possessed sufficient amounts of explosive to " level ... both sides of the street " . After the Greenwich Village incident, WUO shrank considerably, becoming even fewer than they had been when first formed. There was talk of Infiltration by COINTELPRO that later turned out to be both imagined and real. The vast majority of other Radical Left groups that had not explicitly distanced themselves from the group at the beginning largely did so at that point. Despite their marginalization, the Weather Underground pushed on, releasing a number of manifestos and declarations while carrying on a series of bombings, which from then on were both successful and free of human casualties. The bombing actions attacked the U.S. Capitol , The Pentagon , Police and Prison buildings, and later the rebuilt Haymarket statue, among other targets. To avoid any loss of life as a result of these bombings, a WU member would issue warnings to evacuate the building ahead of time via phone. The group also took a $25,000 payment from a Psychedelics distribution organization called The Brotherhood Of Eternal Love to break LSD advocate Timothy Leary out of prison, transporting him to Algeria . When Leary was eventually captured by the FBI , he offered to serve as an informant to capture the Weather Underground members to reduce his prison sentence. The Weather Underground members, though, remained largely successful at avoiding police and intelligence agencies. Finally, most turned themselves in at the end of the 1970s once it was clear the revolution they had all been working towards had failed to materialize. DISSOLUTION AND AFTERMATH After the group began dissolving in 1977, many members moved on to other armed revolutionary groups and were subsequently arrested and held for long periods. Very few served prison sentences for their time in the Weather Underground; the infiltration and destruction tactics used against them by COINTELPRO made much of the evidence gathered against them deemed Illegal ly obtained and inadmissible in court. Meanwhile, Weatherman members that later revealed themselves to be law enforcement officers offered unapologetic testimonies of intentional Incitement to Violence and Terrorist acts, used as a tactic at key junctures to discredit and destroy the group. Jennifer Dohrn , Bernardine Dohrn 's sister, later claimed that according to documents released under the Freedom Of Information Act , the FBI planned at one point to kidnap her son when she gave birth. Widely-known members of the Weather Underground include Kathy Boudin , Mark Rudd , Terry Robbins , Ted Gold , Naomi Jaffe , Cathy Wilkerson , Jeff Jones, David Gilbert , Susan Stern , Bob Tomashevsky, Sam Karp, Russ Neufeld, Joe Kelly and the still-married couple Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers . Most former Weathermen have successfully re-integrated into mainstream society, without necessarily repudiating their original intent. For example, Bill Ayers, now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University Of Illinois At Chicago , said in a September 11 , 2001 '' New York Times '' profile that he doesn't "regret setting bombs non-human targets . I believe we didn't do enough." Dohrn and Boudin also still hold to their original beliefs. Members like Brian Flanagan have expressed regret. Still others, such as Mark Rudd, believe the group's original motivation, particularly its position regarding U.S. Imperialism , was justified, but its resultant actions were clearly wrong. The WU insisted that Emile De Antonio shoot the documentary ''Underground'' in 1976. However, a much more extensive, widespread, and critically-acclaimed documentary emerged in 2002 with the Oscar-nominated ''The Weather Underground'' by filmmakers Bill Siegel and Sam Green . REFERENCES IN LITERATURE Great Neck , by Jay Cantor is a fictional account of a group of Long Island teenagers coming of age during the radical sixties. One of them, Beth Jacobs, joins first the SDS and later the Weathermen in an attempt to make justice for the Holocaust. {Link without Title} The Last Rock Star Book, a Camden Joy novel, references the Days of Rage in both Chicago and Canada. The Darling, by Russell Banks (2004) is a novel telling the life story of Hannah Musgrave -alias Dawn Carrington- a member of the Weather Underground, escaping from the U.S. to Liberia. CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
SEE ALSO
FURTHER READING SDS: The Last Hurrah (DOCUMENT 4 of 5) chronicles the last tumultuous days of the original Students for a Democratic Society and the rise of the Revolutionary Youth Movement and the Worker Student Alliance as the two principal SDS factions. Document 5 of 5 is the program of the section of the RYM that would later adopt the name "Weatherman". Osawatomie . Water Buffalo Print Collective. Journal Of The Weather Underground Organization . Seattle. 1975. Issue #2 available on line. Retrieved July 27, 2005. Dan Berger (2006) "Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity" Oakland: AK Press. Jeremy Varon (2004) "Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies." Berkeley: University of California Press Ron Jacobs (1997) "The way the wind blew : a history of the Weather Underground." London New York : Verso EXTERNAL LINKS
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