The Weather Underground at Forty

Bringing the War Home:
The Weather Underground at Forty

http://hnn.us/articles/93754.html

By Ron Briley
Mr. Briley is Assistant Headmaster, Sandia Preparatory School.
7-20-09

Forty years ago, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of
the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) drafted a statement to be
employed in a factional dispute with the Maoist Progressive Labor
(PL) wing of the organization. At the June 1969 Chicago convention
of SDS, the RYM group, now known as the Weathermen, expelled the PL
wing and effectively dismembered SDS as a national student organization.

The Weather Manifesto­based upon lyrics from Bob Dylan's Subterranean
Homesick Blues (1965) that "you don't need a weatherman to tell which
way the wind is blowing"­assailed the Progressive Labor movement for
failing to comprehend the revolutionary nature of global
anti-imperialism in which American capitalism and empire were under
attack in Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, Bolivia, Angola, and throughout the
Third World in conjunction with domestic revolutionaries such as the
Black Panthers. Living in the belly of the beast, it was imperative
that radicalized American students join the revolutionary struggle
that would usher in the millennium of world communism. White youth
would be radicalized to support black liberation through the example
of the Weathermen renouncing nonviolence and joining the armed
struggle against American imperialism.

The bellicose nature of the Weather Manifesto evoked considerable
controversy then and now, as the radicals sought to embody their
principles with the formation of revolutionary collectives that would
"bring the war home." In other words, the goal was to subject
Americans to some of the violence and destruction inflicted daily
upon the Vietnamese people. Terming themselves the Weather
Underground, the New York City collective planned a bombing that
would simulate the Vietnam experience by creating death and
destruction during a military dance at Fort Dix in nearby New
Jersey. Instead, on March 6, 1970 the bomb was triggered by
accident, destroying a New York City town house where the explosives
were being assembled. Dead in the explosion were Weather members Ted
Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins.

Following this tragedy, the Weather Underground members re-evaluated
their strategy. While not disavowing the principles of their
Manifesto, the Weather Bureau, or leadership cadre, asserted that
symbolic attacks against institutions and manifestations of
imperialism such as military induction centers and government offices
would galvanize the support of the American working class. Thus, the
Weather Underground did not consider themselves terrorists as their
goal was not to induce fear amongst the American people, but rather
to demonstrate that it was possible to strike against the
institutions and property of the capitalist "pig" state which sought
global control over the working class and people of color. The
Weather Underground conducted a series of bombings in the early 1970s
which sought to symbolically bring the war home without the taking of
human life. Warnings of impending explosions were provided to
authorities in order to avoid the type of tragedy which occurred in
the Weather town house explosion.

But the Weather Underground failed to incite a working-class
revolution in the United States, and with the end of the war in
Vietnam, many radicals attempted to re-enter mainstream
society. Individuals such as Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine
Dohrn surrendered to authorities and were able to arrange plea
bargains as more serious charges were dismissed due to massive civil
rights violations and illegal domestic surveillance by the government
in the COINTELPRO or Counter-Intelligence Program. Black Panther
leaders such as Fred Hampton, however, were victims of more deadly
government repression and were unable to negotiate plea
bargains. Other Weather Underground members such as David Gilbert
and Judy Clark remain incarcerated for their roles in a Brink's
robbery in which three people were killed.

What are we to make of the Weather Manifesto and Underground after
forty years? Certainly some on the radical left continue to
perpetuate the myth of the Weather Underground as romantic
revolutionaries. On the other hand, efforts by the political right
to keep the cultural wars of the 1960s alive were negated in the 2008
Presidential election as few voters were influenced by accusations
that Barack Obama was linked to terrorism through his far from
intimate associations with Bill Ayers, now a professor of education
at the University of Illinois, Chicago. And, of course, Obama was a
school boy during the heyday of the Weather Underground. More
serious assessments of the Weather legacy are available in the
Academy-Award nominated documentary The Weather Underground (2003)
and recently published memoirs by Rudd and Ayers.

In My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen Underground
(HarperCollins, 2009), Rudd credits filmmakers Sam Green and Bill
Siegel with providing the incentive to prepare his memoir. Rudd
remains a political activist opposed to manifestations of American
imperialism such as the war in Iraq, but he expresses serious
reservations regarding the strategy employed by the Weathermen. In
an orgy of self-indulgence, the Weather faction destroyed SDS; a
student organization which offered the best potential to organize the
growing campus opposition to the Vietnam War. In addition, the
Weather fascination with violence split the antiwar movement and
alienated the working class which the radicals hoped to rally with
their Manifesto and revolutionary action. Rudd laments that the
Weather Underground abandoned the tactics of organization and
participatory democracy which fueled the early campus antiwar
movement and the Columbia University insurrection which Rudd does not
repudiate.

In Fugitive Days (Beacon Press, 2001; revised edition 2009), Bill
Ayers is more ambivalent. While denouncing the intolerance and
machismo of the Weathermen, he regrets that he did not do more to end
the immoral Vietnam War. Seeking to recreate the mood of the times,
Ayers describes the increasing frustration with the Vietnam War which
drove antiwar activists to more extreme positions. He also accounts
for the naiveté with which many associate the Weather Underground by
evoking the milieu of the late 1960s. With a growing protest
movement in the United States and the global struggle in which
anti-imperialist forces were on the march in Vietnam, Algeria, and
Angola, the Weathermen believed they were on the winning side of
history­creating new communities free from capitalist exploitation
and embracing the Che Guevara prediction that numerous Vietnam-type
conflicts would topple the American regime. This impression of a
brave new world was also fueled by the Prague Spring in
Czechoslovakia and the revolt of students and workers on the streets
of Paris. Revolution in America and the world seemed inevitable. Or
at least so thought the radicals as well as Richard Nixon and J.
Edgar Hoover. Indeed, what is even more surprising in retrospect
than the illusions of the Weathermen regarding a working-class
revolution in the United States is the assumption of the Nixon
administration that the radicals were capable of bringing down the
government. The fears of the Nixon administration fueled the
repression of the antiwar movement and dissenters such as the Black
Panther Party, culminating in the record of criminal misconduct
revealed in the Watergate scandals. The illusions of both leftist
radicals and the reactionary political right reveal much about the
passions and insecurities unleashed during the tumultuous 1960s.

The Weather Manifesto was a product of the times and reflective of an
increasing radicalization of the antiwar and civil rights movements
induced by government suppression and the frustrations of addressing
de facto segregation, economic inequality, and the intransigence of a
government intent upon pursing a war of aggression in Vietnam. The
tragedy for many was the abandonment by the Weathermen of the
principles established in the 1962 founding document of SDS, The Port
Huron Statement. Addressing issues of imperialism, racism, economic
inequality, the military-industrial complex, and the sense of
alienation experienced by many individuals seemingly overwhelmed by
the powers of impersonal institutions such as the university, The
Port Huron Statement advocated greater democracy rather than armed
revolution. These sentiments would seem to resonate well with the
young people of today who have re-established SDS. While the Iraq
War has failed for a number of reasons, including the absence of a
military draft and sustained media coverage, to provoke Vietnam
era-style protests, the youth of the twenty-first century are
technologically savvy and intent upon creating a world community to
formulate solutions for environmental concerns of which the
protesters of the 1960s were only dimly aware. Perhaps social
networking will provide the organizational impetus, advocated by
Rudd, to implement the democratic vision of The Port Huron Statement
rather than the days of rage envisioned by the Weather Manifesto.

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