collaspeof the weather underground

8/6/2019 Collaspeof the Weather Underground

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The Collapse of the Weather Underground

Alison Claire Stout

Honors Thesis

Spring 2010


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For Grandma Barb and for Mandy,the best dog, friend and littlest sister a girl could have.


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Table of Contents

I. Introduction

HistoriographyHistorical Context

Overview of the OrganizationII. Chapter 1: TargetsIII. Chapter 2: Public Response

IV. Chapter 3: Underground Issues

V. Conclusion

Bibliography


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I. Introduction

Historiography

Detailed historical accounts of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO)

are limited in numbers but vary broadly in scope.1

With an organization that took its

actions to such extremes, differing reactions must be expected and are evident in every

piece written about the group. The vast majority of books on the Weathermen are written

from a sympathetic standpoint. They view the organization as one that merely acted on

the anger felt towards the American government during the 1960s and 1970s. Jonah

Raskins brief introduction to The Weather Eye: Communiques from the Weather

Underground, May 1970-May 1974, written in 1974 while the group was still active, is

an extremely useful yet equally biased account of the Weathermen. Raskin, though not a

member of the organization, was romantically involved with one of the female

Weathermen. His book is the most extensive compilation of communications from the

organization and his introduction is a comprehensive overview of the background of the

group. Though he mentioned the major bombings the group undertook, he neglected to

elaborate on the severe damage they caused. Instead of discussing historical parts of

buildings that were destroyed by the group, he wrote, By design, there has been only

1The WUO has been referred to by many different names in the time since its

conception. Before the June 1969 convention it was called Revolutionary YouthMovement I (RYM I). Between June 1969 and March 1970 it was called Weatherman,which was a faction of SDS. After March 1970 it was called the Weather UndergroundOrganization or the Weather Underground. Group members are referred to asWeathermen or Weatherpeople and, in some instances, as Weatherwomen. Forsimplification purposes, I will refer to the organization as the Weather Underground

Organization (WUO), individual groupmembers as a Weatherman orWeatherwoman, and multiple group members as Weathermen, even when a different

name would technically be more correct.


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property damage, not attacks on individuals, and there have been only a few minor

injuries.2Though it is true that the organization killed no civilians, Raskins statement

avoids detailing the extent of the damage, something news reports from the late 1960s

and 1970s did not shy away from.

Ron Jacobs, author of The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather

Underground (1997), similarly wrote of his awe for the group in his preface, stating that,

I found its politics difficult to understand but always admired its style and its ability to

hit targets which in my view deserved to be hit.3 In an attempt to further explain and

understand the WUOs politics, Ron Jacobs book focuses on the political history of the

group instead of the people involved with the organization. According to Ron Jacobs the

politics are more significant when studying the group than the individuals in it and he

noticed a dearth of books written from such a viewpoint. Although Ron Jacobs book

provides a thorough history of the organization, it is important to take his personal

activism and admiration of the group into account when reading the book.

Dan Bergers Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of

Solidarity (2006) also portrays the organization in a similar light. He agrees with Ron

Jacobs on the powerful image the group conjures and expands on Jacobs book, focusing

both on the politics of the group and the personalities involved with the organization. He

writes in his introduction that, the group needs to be rescued from myths and symbols,

2Jonah Raskin, ed. The Weather Eye: Communiques from the Weather Underground,

May 1970-May 1974 (New York, NY: Union Square Press, 1974) 8.3 Ron Jacobs, The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (NewYork, NY: Verso, 1997) vi.


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and instead dealt with at the real level.4 Berger is aware that writers and historians of the

WUO are often impacted by their own personal activist views. Instead of directing

attention towards the failures and negative aspects of the organization, his book focuses

on the more positive parts. For example, he does not imply that the Weathermen were

crazy or psychotic in their actions; rather he portrays them as young men and women

with a lofty political agenda who were somewhat misled with the actions they took. This

is a common theme in books and articles on the WUO and is extremely significant to

acknowledge because it gives off a skewed vision of the group. In a manner similar to

that of Ron Jacobs, Berger seems to excuse the Weathermen for the actions they took.

Unlike many other accounts of the WUO, Harold Jacobs preface to Weatherman,

an extremely comprehensive book published in 1970 (just one year after the formation of

the group) that contains various essays, articles and communications from the WUO,

portrays the organization from a well-rounded, seemingly unbiased perspective.

Whenever a question arose over the value of a particular piece, I chose to include it,

even at the risk of making the book unduly long and repetitious, to give Weatherman the

greatest possible latitude in the presentation of its ideas. At the same time, I tried to

include substantive criticisms of Weatherman to provide as genuine and useful a

confrontation of ideas as possible.5Indeed, Harold Jacobs book contains sources that

both praise and criticize the WUO, providing the reader with an experience that leans in

neither direction. For example, he included an essay by Carl Oglesby (SDS president

from 1965-1966) that criticizes the Weathermen, stating that, Any close reading of the

4 Dan Berger, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics ofSolidarity (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006) 12.5

Harold Jacobs, ed. Weatherman (N.p.: Ramparts Press, Inc., 1970) ii-iii.


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RYMs Weatherman statement will drive you blind.6 Instead of praising the

organization for its lofty ideals, Oglesby points out the contradictory and unfocused

nature of their founding paper. Harold Jacobs inclusion of Oglesbys essay and similar

pieces demonstrates his balance, which is important when studying the WUO.

Kirkpatrick Sales SDS (1974) has a similar take on the Weathermen and covers

the history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the takeover by the WUO.

Sales book portrays the organization from a well-balanced perspective, something that

Ron Jacobs and Dan Berger seemed unable to do in their histories of the organization.

Although his book is written in a style that resembles that used by Berger and Ron Jacobs

and is not a compilation of articles and communications, it provides a more balanced

examination of the organization than the other two. Instead of portraying the Weathermen

from a purely positive standpoint, he includes reactions to the group, both positive and

negative, from outside sources. Ron Jacobs, Berger and Raskin seem to neglect this in

their books, either because of their connections to the activist world or their honest

attempts to write a straight history of the organization. In not including extensive

criticisms of the organization, though, they offer misleading images and downplay the

severity of some of the actions the WUO took.

Although each book written about the WUO is useful to studying the background

of the organization, the actions it took and its significance today, it is important to take

the particular biases of each author into consideration. Ron Jacobs, Dan Berger and Jonah

Raskin, all activists in their own right, are clearly sympathetic to the Weathermen.

Whether they agreed with the actions, politics or goals of the group, each portrayed it

6Harold Jacobs, 129.


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from primarily one perspective and neglected to include extensive criticisms of the

organization. Harold Jacobs and Kirkpatrick Sale, however, both examine the

organization from both a positive and negative angle, providing well-rounded analyses of

the group and its actions. They do not focus purely on one side or the other and refrain

from giving off the impression that the WUO was just a group of young activists who

meant well but somehow ended up wandering down the wrong path. In studying the

organization there is no right or wrong regarding their actions and the views on their

activities are extremely complex. While the group was well intentioned, they did make a

great deal of mistakes, probably due to their youth and naivet. Many of the group

members indicate today that they either feel some regret about their actions or at least

understand that violence was not the way to achieve their goals, a concept that takes away

from the mythical nature of the group mentioned by Berger. This somewhat twisted view

of the group, one that clearly affected Ron Jacobs, Dan Berger and Jonah Raskin in their

writing, is one that is imperative to avoid in studying and analyzing the group. Through

extensive research it is obvious that most historians have a great deal of trouble looking

at the group through both a positive and a negative lens, because to do the latter results in

rejecting the hopes and aspirations that came with the spirit of the 1960s and giving off a

cynical view of the time.

Historical Context

The period from 1965 to 1969 marked significant changes within activist

movements in the United States and the rest of the world. Civil rights and the Vietnam

War were the two most significant protest points in the United States. As with most


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activist groups, civil rights groups started out with peaceful approaches. The nonviolent

movement was led by Martin Luther King Jr., whose activism started in 1955 with the

Montgomery Bus Boycott that spawned from Rosa Parks arrest. At the start of the

boycott, King told his followers that, If you will protest courageously and yet with

dignity and Christian love, in the history books that are written in future generations,

historians will have to pause and say there lived a great peoplea black peoplewho

injected a new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization. This is our challenge

and our overwhelming responsibility.7 King promoted nonviolent protest as a means of

achieving civil rights, partially because of influences by other peace activists and, as his

quotation indicated, to give blacks a good representation in the history books. If they used

violent means they could be portrayed in a negative light and King believed in the

importance of maintaining a clean image. The three most prominent civil rights

organizations during the 1950s and 1960s were the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),

the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, led by King), and the Student

Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The groups initially held similar

nonviolent views, but SNCC acknowledged the possible need for increased militancy

and confrontation and both SNCC and CORE became disillusioned, rejecting Kings

moderation, nonviolence, and universalism.8

Unfortunately nonviolent activism, though

it spread rapidly and attracted many people to the issue at hand, proved ineffective and

was ultimately replaced with a shift to black power.

7William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York,

NY: Oxford University Press, 2007) 157.8 Darlene Clark Hine, et al., The African-American Odyssey, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River,NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006) 562, 583.


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One of the main opponents of Martin Luther King Jr. was Malcolm X. Unlike

King, who fully endorsed nonviolence, Malcolm X followed a different path. After a

disturbing and troubled childhood, he declared in 1964 that, Revolutions are never based

upon love-your-enemy, and pray-for-those-who-despitefully-use-you. And revolutions

are never waged by singing We Shall Overcome. Revolutions are based on bloodshed.9

Malcolm X rejected the idea of acting peacefully to ensure that blacks would look

respectable to future generations and instead believed in literally fighting for black rights.

His passion for radicalization inspired other civil rights movement leaders, including

Stokely Carmichael of SNCC who coined the term Black Power. In 1966 Carmichael

proclaimed that, The only way we gonna stop them white men from whippin usis to

take over. We been saying freedom for six years and we aint got nothin. What we gonna

start saying is Black Power.10 He, like Malcolm X, firmly believed that the only way for

blacks to gain equal ground was to fight back and refuse to let whites control the system

that demoted them to a lower status for hundreds of years.

The idea of black power continued evolving and culminated in the militant Black

Panther Party, an organization centered in Oakland and Chicago that formed in October

1966. The Panthers had no qualms when it came to violence and, alarmed white

Americans when they took up arms for self-defense and patrolled their neighborhoods to

monitor the policein black leather jackets, berets, and Afro haircuts.11

Whites

quickly realized that blacks were no longer going to allow themselves to be subjected to

the ever-present inferiority they faced in the United States. Some of the Black Panthers

9 Hine, 584.10 Hine, 585.11

Hine, 587.


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faced endings similar to those of Malcolm X and MLK Jr., who were both assassinated.

Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, members of the organizations Chicago faction, were

killed in their sleep by Chicago police. Countless others were arrested after being spied

on by the FBIs COINTELPRO program, which aimed to shut down groups that could

potentially endanger the nations security. Although the Black Panther Party was the

most prominent militant black organization, it was not the only group to stage rebellions

in the country.

Three major black rebellions, along with countless smaller ones throughout the

country, erupted in the late 1960s in Watts, Newark and Detroit. The Watts rebellion of

1965 was fuelled by extremely high unemployment and resulted in 34 deaths, 900

injuries and 4,000 arrests. Another rebellion broke out in Newark in 1967, also caused by

anger over high unemployment and poverty, and resulted in 25 deaths. The most extreme

of the rebellions, in Detroit in the summer of 1967, started when police raided a bar in a

black section of town, resulting in five days of violence. The uprising grew so severe that

President Johnson ordered 4,700 National Guardsmen (in addition to the 800 policemen

already there) to subdue the situation. Ultimately 43 black people died, making it the

deadliest riot of the year.12 The black rebellions, which were the result of years of harsh

suppression, represented the highpoint of black discontent with the American system and

demonstrated the extent to which they were willing to fight for equal standing. They had

learned from years of experience that peaceful protests simply did not work and that the

only way to achieve change was through violence.

12Hine, 590.


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Blacks were not the only ones to turn to violence in America in the late 1960s.

The major white youth activist group at the time, Students for a Democratic Society

(SDS), which formed in 1962, was slowly making the shift from peaceful to militant

action. Founded by white students due to new black exclusivity amongst black activist

groups such as SNCC, SDS primarily fought against the Vietnam War. As the war

escalated throughout the 1960s, some members of SDS became increasingly militant.

Finding that their peaceful protests were proving ineffective, violent action seemed to be

the only way to accomplish anything. By the spring of 1967 the organization was starting

to shift towards more direct activism. The New York Times wrote that year that, the spirit

of resistance and direct action constitutes perhaps the major attitude in the New Left

today.13

In the same article, one SDS member said, I recognize that violence may be

necessary, Im no pacifistIm a white, middle-class girl, but I understand why Negroes,

Puerto Ricans or Okies riot. I feel the same frustrations in myself, the same urge to

violence. The formerly nonviolent group was evolving, primarily due to the recognition

that peaceful protests were simply not working. They understood why other groups had

shifted to violence and recognized that to succeed in making changes they would have to

follow suit.

Overview of the Organization

1969 marked a turning point in American society. The end of the decade of

change was fast approaching and youth activists were starting to realize that they were

unable to accomplish all they had initially aimed to do. Students for a Democratic Society

13Paul Hoffman, The New Left Turns To Mood of Violence In Place of Protest, NewYork Times 7 May 1967: 1+.


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(SDS), the largest and most influential activist organization, was growing increasingly

violent, with at least eighty-four bombings, attempted bombings, and arson incidents on

college campus in the first six months of 1969, twice as many as in the fall, and another

twenty-seven bombings and attempts in the nations high schoolsThere was no

mistake: violence had become a real part of the lexicon of American left-wing politics.14

Although some members of the group supported violence, the majority did not and

eventually left. By the summer, ideological cracks in the organization were becoming

more and more visible and a significant change seemed imminent. This change took place

on June 18, 1969 at the Chicago Coliseum, at SDSs ninth annual convention.

15

SDS was

already in the midst of a split with various groups emerging from the woodwork. The two

major rival groups were Revolutionary Youth Movement I (RYM I) and Progressive

Labor (PL). At the convention, RYM I passed out its You Dont Need A Weatherman to

Know Which Way The Wind Blows paper (also referred to as the Weatherman

statement), named after Bob Dylans 1965 song Subterranean Homesick Blues. The

lyric from which the group adopted its name implies that the direction the country needed

to take towards revolution should be relatively obvious to American people. As

Kirkpatrick Sale points out in SDS, the song had also been used as a piece of

underground advice to young Americans disaffected from the American system, with the

usual Dylanesque overtones of antiauthoritarianism and youthful independence.16

The

name, and the song from which it came, served to promote youth activism and the

14 Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1974) 512-513.15 Sale, 557.16

Sale, 559.


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potential for young people to change the system, as long as they were careful with their

actions.

The Weatherman statement was written by eleven central members of RYM I,

including prominent activists Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Mark Rudd. The

statement discussed international revolution, imperialism, the way in which race and

class fit into these issues, and the need for neighborhood collectives to form a mass

revolutionary movement. The paper argued that US imperialism is at the heart of all

problems in the country and that socialism was the only system under which reform

fights can occur. [I]f we, as revolutionaries, are capable of understanding the necessity

to smash imperialism and build socialism, then the masses of people who we want to

fight along with us are capable of that understanding. On the other hand, people are

brainwashed and at present dont understand it.17 Instead of accepting that many

Americans were comfortable with the capitalist system in the country and did not want to

switch to socialism, the group simply stated that these people were brainwashed, a

declaration that marked the beginning of many arrogant pronouncements on the part of

the Weathermen. In terms of race struggle, the organization argued along with other

revolutionary groups that there is a black colony in the United States. What this means

is that black people are oppressed as a whole people, in the institutions and social

relations of the country, apart from simply the consideration of their class position,

income, skill, etc.18

They clearly point out that all black people in the country were

oppressed purely based on race, not class or location. Token exceptions aside, the

specific content of this caste oppression is to maintain black people in the most

17 Harold Jacobs, 76, 75.18

Harold Jacobs, 53.


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exploitative and oppressive jobs and conditions.19The group made note of token

exceptions to indicate the hypocrisy in the country that blacks were kept on the lowest

rungs of society but a select few with particular talents (mainly in the musical arena)

were idolized. The American system was built around slavery, a system in which blacks

were kept at the bottom and used to benefit the rest of society, and most white Americans

felt little desire to disrupt a system that had worked well for them for the previous three

hundred years.

Responses to the Weatherman paper varied widely, but most were negative.

While the paper, and those involved with the group that wrote it, ultimately beat PL at the

convention, Kirkpatrick Sale argued that:

There is much to criticize in Weatherman. There is only apassing reference to the woman question, no attempt to

set out a program either short or long range, a totalmisreading of the centrality of blacks in the economicstructure, a thoroughly romantic image of the toughnessand heroism of working-class kids, and unfoundedoverconfidence in the imminent collapse of the Americansystem, and an utter confusion as to who is the vanguardfor white youths to follow (blacks? Vietnamese? streetkids?)But all of that is almost unimportant next to the

two major defects of the statement[The first problem isthat] it immediately creates a sense of distance, exclusion,and elitism The second difficulty is that it reduces the

role of white American revolutionaries to fighting otherpeoples battlesNot only are students no longer an

agency of change, they are not even an object of change;not only do white middle-class college-educated peoplehave no battles of their own to fight, they have nolegitimacy as a stratum or validity as a force. This is wherethe best minds of the generation had come to.20

19 Harold Jacobs, 55.20

Sale, 562-63.


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Although the paper covered what the organization saw as necessary to change the

country, it was not given the respect the WUO expected. It is evident through reading the

paper that those in charge of writing it were wealthy young whites who believed that they

knew exactly what to change in the country and how best to do this. The elitism Sale

mentioned is evident throughout and resulted in a severe drop in respect from fellow

activists and Americans. As Carl Oglesby said, Any close reading of the RYMs

Weatherman statement will drive you blind.21

No matter how hard the organization tried

to put forth an influential and well-constructed document, some ridiculed it and many did

not see it as a feasible collection of ideas on which to base the entire white radical

movement.

The overarching goal of the Weathermen was relatively straightforward, which

was to overthrow the capitalist and imperialist United States government. They hoped to

replace it with a socialist system from which everyone in the country would benefit

equally. The more specific objectives, however, were less easily defined. The group

wanted to fight domestic and international imperialism, halt the war in Vietnam, eradicate

racial inequalities, end sexism, and eliminate class boundaries. These targets had clearly

evolved from other activist groups at the time, most specifically SDS, but had one crucial

difference: the Weathermen sought to achieve these goals through violence. The age-old

violence versus non-violence debate had been concluded in the student movement arena

and violence had won. Drawing from revolutionaries such as Che Guevara, Fidel Castro,

Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, the organization believed that violence was the only way

to achieve revolution in the country. Their violence was evident at the June 1969

21Sale, 562.


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convention and was first truly put into practice in Chicago at the Days of Rage rally that

year, which lasted from October 8th

to 12th

. Although the group tried to get together

thousands of people to participate in the protests, they were able to assemble a crowd of

no more than 600 during the four-day span.22

The activists ran through the streets,

wreaking havoc on the citys property and inhabitants. Ultimately, though, the event was

a failure and showed a significant lack of support for the group from other radical and

revolutionary organizations. The violent aims of the organization were apparent in the

closing paragraph of their Weatherman statement, which refers to city-wide fights

and to the battlefields of the International Liberation army, which will be added to the

many Vietnams which will dismember and dispose of US imperialism. Long Live the

Victory of Peoples War!23

The violent terminology used and the mention of tearing

apart and throwing out the current American system clearly reflects the quest for a violent

revolution, but the organization seemed to be in the early stages of the decision to

become violent. They used no specific examples of violence and made no mention of the

bombing campaigns they started less than nine months later. This indicates that although

they promoted violent revolution, they had not yet thought through what it would require.

Although the Weather Underground Organization tried to change the country for

the better, it ultimately fell apart without making a significant impact on the United

States. It did not accomplish many of its broad goals, was generally perceived negatively

by other organizations and the government, and suffered from extreme disunity after it

moved underground in early 1970. These major problems are evident when looking back

on the organization from a modern perspective, but it is understandable why they were

22 Sale, 603.23

Harold Jacobs, 90.


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ignored at a time of such great distress. Studying the shortcomings of one of Americas

most notorious white revolutionary organizations is important because it can shed light

on what makes such an organization collapse and what it takes for one to survive.

Without understanding why past revolutionary movements were unable to succeed it is

impossible to form one in the future that has the potential to truly alter the system.


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II. Chapter One: Targets

One of the main problems the Weather Underground Organization dealt with

from the beginning was the vast number of institutions it attacked during its existence and

its changing views on these issues. The organization was unable to focus purely on one

issue, even a single broad one, such as racial inequality, and its focuses changed over

time. Although the group was clearly passionate about all of its targets, the decision to

focus on multiple problems was ultimately a hindrance, no matter how honorable the

thought. The group was unprepared to fight for so many issues and barely had enough

resources to fight for just one. Additionally, the organizations targets changed over time

and lacked stability. The FBI report on the Weather Underground Organization discusses

the groups inability to stick to one set of principles. The WUO has undergone

significant ideological changes from the Weatherman during the period from 1969 to

1976. Changes in the balance of forces in the world, the ending of the war in Vietnam, a

less abrasive social fabric in the country, a general malaise of the revolutionary left

coupled with their own maturing has affected their ideological outlook.24 The FBI also

discusses the Weathermens ideas on revolution, changes in rationale for their activism,

and their hope to bring communism to the United States. These changes, along with

changes of focus that naturally occurred over time, played a large role in weakening and

ultimately dismantling the organization. Unlike other organizations at the time, such as

the Black Panther Party, which consistently fought for black rights, and the National

24 United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Weatherman Underground SummaryDated 8/20/76, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1976) 27 Jan.2010 37.


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Organization for Women, which readily campaigned for womens rights, the Weather

Underground Organization targeted imperialism, racism and sexism with changing ideas.

The most significant objective of the Weather Underground Organization was the

elimination of American imperialism, symbolized by the war in Vietnam. As with

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organizations primary focus was the war,

which they considered the most vicious inhuman air war in history.25 Even after the

relatively recent World War II, in which millions of lives were lost, the Vietnam War

stood out as the most atrocious and unjustified. This judgment could be based on the

more dangerous warfare that had been developed after the World Wars or the seemingly

unnecessary and unprovoked intervention in Vietnam. Either way, Americas New Left

was discontent with what was happening in the country and saw it not only as a massacre

of the Vietnamese people, but as symbolic of United States imperialism. The draft, for

example, was seen as an attack on poor, Black and Third World and working-class

youth.26 Those with enough money to avoid the draft were generally upper- and middle-

class men, while the poor and underprivileged had few options regarding escape. In this

way the government was able to protect those who were considered irreplaceable and use

the less fortunate to further its goals, all while pretending the draft methods were

nondiscriminatory. Although no man of the right age was automatically safe because of

class alone, those who had the funds to attend university, for example, could use school

as an excuse to avoid the draft. Those who could not afford schooling had no such

excuse.

25Raskin, 34.

26 Bernardine Dohrn, et al. Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism:The Political Statement of the Weather Underground. (N.p.: Communications Co., 1974)30.


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In early 1971 the group issued communiqu #8, stating that they attacked the

Capitol because it is, along with the White House and the Pentagon, the worldwide

symbol of the government which is now attacking Indochina. To millions of people here

and in Latin America, Africa and Asia, it is a monument to U.S. domination over the

planet.27 The organization understood the importance of the monument to the country

and knew the serious impact the bombing would have. It also chose to attack something

symbolic that would not harm or kill innocent civilians. Instead of trying to kill millions,

as the United States was doing in Vietnam, the Weathermen chose to send an important

message that could cripple the countrys pride and sense of security. The attack occurred

on March 1st,1971 and severely damaged parts of the building. An article written later

that day nostalgically recalled several significant events that occurred in the Capitol,

including the housing of the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the Library of

Congress, speeches by John Adams and Daniel Webster, and the reading of the decision

made by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in regards to the Dred Scott case in 1857. The

explosion occurred deep in the original wing of the Capitol, for which George

Washington laid the cornerstone in the fall of 1793.28

Although the damaged areas were

no longer in much use, they held symbolic weight and their destruction was taken as a

personal attack on America and its history. The stone laid by George Washington, for

example, holds little actual purpose with regards to the building, but it is commemorative

of the countrys first president and is therefore viewed with pride and significance.

27 Raskin, 34-5.28Marjorie Hunter, Capitol Rich in History Where Bomb Exploded, The New YorkTimes 2 Mar. 1971: 20.


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Along with fighting US imperialism abroad, the Weathermen were against the

oppression of non-white races in America. They viewed racial oppression, particularly

against blacks, as part of the international struggle against American imperialism.29

Initially inspired by the actions of the Black Panther Party, the organization wanted to

ensure that African-Americans had their support in all ensuing battles. In reference to

their violent actions, the organization stated in communiqu #1 that, This is the way we

celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all black

revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of

their people. Never again will they fight alone.

30

Although the actions black

revolutionaries took did not directly benefit the upper-middle class white activists, they

were inspirational and gave the Weathermen another cause to pursue. The Weathermen

wanted to publicly declare their support of the Black Panther Party, of which Cleaver and

Brown were prominent members, and used the term fight to emphasize that violent

action was a strong possibility. The fact that the Weathermen would associate with and

idolize people such as Brown, who once declared that If America doesnt come around,

then black people are going to burn it down,31

could easily terrify the majority of white

Americans. Not only were white activists threatening violence, but they were doing so

alongside one of the most notorious and dangerous radical groups in the country. This

was intimidating to the American people and government for both radical and racial

reasons. The fear that more groups could adopt such violent ways of activism was

29 United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Weatherman Underground SummaryDated 8/20/76, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1976) 27 Jan.2010 43.30 Raskin, 18.31Crime: Cherry Pie, Time Magazine Online 25 Oct. 1971, 8 Feb. 2010.


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alarming in its own right, but the fact that the Black Panthers were indeed black was

shocking to some in a different way. These white radicals were teaming up with radical

blacks and it was difficult for most whites to differentiate between and prosecute radicals

based on this. No longer could fingers simply be pointed at black radicals for wreaking

havoc on the countrythese radicals now included whites, and not just lower class

whites, but upper-middle-class well-educated women and men. If these prominent whites

could become revolutionaries fighting for the overthrow of the government, anyone

could, and this instilled a great deal of fear in the government and civilians.

Although the Weathermen supported the black rights movement, their purpose in

the movement was unclear. They stated multiple times in various communiqus, other

publications and interviews that they strongly felt for their black brethren, but in 1974 the

group declared that, Whatever decisions Black people and other oppressed peoples make

in exercising this right to self-determination, white revolutionaries and anti-imperialists

have a very clear-cut responsibility to support these decisions once they are arrived at.32

This varied from their earlier comments in 1969 and 1970 about fighting alongside the

Black Panthers and other revolutionary African-American groups, possibly indicating

that they felt their role in the struggle had changed. Where they initially thought they

should be fully entrenched in the fight for black rights, their experiences had shown them

that perhaps this was not the place for them. They shifted from stating the need for them

to fight alongside blacks to saying that their primary role was to support the black

revolutionary groups once these groups had decided what to do.

32Dohrn, et al., 122.


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Similarly, with reference to the Mexican-American population in the United

States, the Weathermen stated in 1974 that, The oppression of Chicanos is deep and

their resistance is extensive. Anglos have borrowed and benefitted from Chicano culture,

skills, labor and struggles. The liberation struggle of La Raza is critical to creating a

humane society in the US. We have a responsibility and a human need to learn about and

actively support the Chicano struggle for self-determination.33 Again, it seemed as if the

Weathermen were losing their spark. They no longer spoke about declaring war on the

United States government and people and instead discussed what was wrong in the

country in a more passive way. Instead of stating what the organization intended to do

about Chicano oppression in the United States, they discussed how and why these people

were treated as lower class citizens.

In discussing another oppressed group, the Native Americans, the Weathermen

simply wrote, Support the Wounded Knee freedom-fighters.34 They summarized how

Native Americans struggled in America and what the government did to ensure the group

remained oppressed, but again gave no information on what they were doing to help the

group. It is as if the organization was arguing that there were all of these various racial

oppression issues in the country, but that they had to be solved by the groups themselves.

This was a far cry from the Weather Underground Organization of just a few years prior.

The group went from trying to fight alongside oppressed people to merely supporting

them, something that is equally important but significantly different to their initial goals.

Along with fighting for racial equality, the Weathermen also fought for womens

rights. Although the issue of gender inequality was not initially a major target for the

33 Dohrn, et al., 125.34

Dohrn, et al., 124.


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organization, it quickly gained significance in the movement. In the middle of 1973 the

female members of the group wrote A Collective Letter to the Womens Movement,

the purpose of which was to mark a changeto commit ourselves as women to the

cause of womenSince going underground we have never publicly committed ourselves

to the right and duty of women to rebel, to the revolutionary content of womens

demands, and to the profound feminist critique of Western culture.35 Although gender

equality was important to many people in the organization, they had not previously

determined it a necessity to fight for womens rights and to include these in the

revolution. After further examination it was clear to them that women played large and

significant roles in society and that it was extremely important to support them, even if

doing so took violent means.

In A Collective Letter to the Womens Movement, the female members of the

organization pointed out that, Three years ago, we denied the legitimacy of white

womens demands. Although we had been assaulted, underpaid, brainwashed, aborted,

raped like women everywhere, weand the left as a wholedid not recognize that

womens demands for power over their own lives is fundamental to any revolution we

would care to make.36 This realization is crucial to studying the Weathermens ideas on

revolution and their own particular brand of it. The fact that they confessed to initially not

supporting white womens rights showed their own form of racism. They ignored the

struggles white women faced purely because they were white. They could look at similar

issues faced by black women or Hispanic women and play them off as purely race related

when, in fact, they had more to do with gender and class than ethnicity. It is difficult to

35 Raskin, 69.36

Raskin, 70.


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determine whether the organizations denial of white womens rights was done on

purpose to hinder whites or whether they truly did not realize that oppression based on

gender was an issue. It is very possible that, with the groups all or nothing philosophy,

they did not believe that some of their members could be both activists and victims.

Unlike the Black Panthers, for example, who were fighting for their own rights, the

Weathermen were fighting for the rights of other oppressed people and fighting the

government on issues relating to imperialism, neither of which negatively affected them

as privileged white Americans. They may have believed that focusing too much energy

on their own issues would take away from their fight for the issues of less privileged

individuals.

In contrast to the organizations earlier views on the unimportance of fighting

against sexism, they wrote in 1974 about the significance of women to revolutionary

movements.

The full participation and leadership of women is necessaryfor successful and healthy revolution. Revolutionaryorganizations must recognize the struggle for womens

liberation as a fundamental political revolution and mustrepudiate the intolerable backwardness of all forms ofsexism. The development of the independent womens

movement as well as active struggle against the institutionsand ideas of sexism are the basis for insuring that therevolution genuinely empowers women.

37

This excerpt from the organizations political statement, Prairie Fire, was written five

years after the groups founding and shows a dramatic change from their original beliefs

on sexism and the roles of women. They initially made little note of actively supporting

womens rights in 1969, but with the ending of the Vietnam War they had more time to



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focus on supporting women. Although it was to be expected that the views and goals of

the organization would evolve with time, the dramatic changes in focus demonstrate that

the group was unstable in terms of its views on its targets and was unprepared and unable

to focus on purely one issue. It can be seen as positive that the group chose to focus on so

many different topics plaguing America and countries it affected, but altogether the

Weathermen did not have enough resources to target so many issues. It was somewhat

nave of the organization to try to combat nearly everything that was wrong with the

country.

The Weathermen also linked sexism back to the faultiness in the entire American

system. In Prairie Fire the group wrote that, The oppression of women perverts the

cultural values of the whole society. Men are alienated from children and from human

emotion. Women are cut off from one another, threatened and competing. Sexism is a

form of cultural conditioning which enables the system to exploit everyone.38 Here the

organization indicated that sexism did not only negatively affect women, but also stunted

male emotional growth and reduced the strength of father-child relationships. It pointed

out that women were isolated and led to constant competition between their peers.

Rightfully so, the Weather Underground Organization saw this as extremely detrimental

to contemporary American society. Men, women and children were unable to grow to

their full emotional and mental maturity because of constrictions placed on them by the

rest of society. The organization wisely included men in the group to indicate that women

were not the only ones who suffered at the corruptive hands of the American government.

In their description of the issue, everyone was at fault and everyone was a victim. The



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group also stated in Prairie Fire that, we believe that the struggle against sexism

demands the destruction of the American state.39

They truly thought that the only way to

end sexism was to entirely get rid of the American system, a method that they seemed to

think would solve the worlds problems. What the organization overlooked in their

decision to overthrow the American state was what system would be established and how

this would occur. They had lofty goals, but lacked any solid plan on how to rectify the

situation in America.



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III. Chapter Two: Public Response

External responses to the Weather Underground Organization played a significant

role in the failure of the group. Although the organization tried to be taken seriously by

other groups, its goals and tactics were ultimately refuted and the group was generally not

considered a significant threat to the country. Members of Students for a Democratic

Society (SDS) thought the groups violent methods were unnecessary and poorly

planned, Black Panthers saw them as selfish, ignorant and unaware of what a true

revolution would involve, and the FBI, though it collected hundreds of pages of evidence

against the group through the agencys Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO),

seemed unsure of whether or not to act. These, combined with responses from the general

civilian public, demonstrate how the Weather Underground Organization was not taken

seriously as a revolutionary group and was not perceived as an immediate threat to the

nation.

Eric Kingson, current professor of social work at Syracuse University and former

member of SDS in Boston, remembers the decline of SDS and the takeover by the

Weathermen. He stated in a recent interview that he has been extremely opposed to the

organization since its inception. Upon discovering that I was writing my thesis on the

Weathermen, he immediately declared that he thought they were complete idiots!40 In a

recent email conversation he wrote:

I thought then and think now that the Weatherman,individually and collectively, were politically psychotic.They were, at best, misguided and inept and absolutelyidiotic in their boisterous statements about creating arevolution and completely wrong to consider using any

40Eric Kingson, Personal Interview, 26 Feb. 2010.


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kind of violence to achieve their ends. A few, whileperhaps believing they were acting for good reasons,committed horrible acts, including murder.I understood, and shared, the anger and frustration they andothers felt at the time about the Vietnam war, racial justice

and other matters of social justice. Just as some in the Bushadministration supported torture in the name of nationalsecurity, the Weatherman, whether well-intentioned or not,went down the wrong track and I could not then and do notnow see much that was redeeming in their actions.

41

Kingson was active in SDS throughout his time as a student in Boston from 1964 to 1968

and continued in the movement afterwards, though it was somewhat disheartening when

the violent organization took over and eliminated the group he had once cherished.

Although the Weathermen may have had good intentions, they did not go about

accomplishing their goals in a positive and effective way, something Kingson considers a

significant error in their planning. Kingson told a story of a meeting he attended with

other members of SDS and some Weathermen. In the middle of the meeting one of the

Weathermen began saying extremely offensive things. Kingson and some of his friends

stood up to leave and started moving towards the door where they were stopped by

another member of the organization who threatened violence and told them that if they

were unable to sit through the meeting they were against the cause in general. According

to Kingson a brawl nearly started but he escaped from the venue without harm. In regards

to the takeover of SDS by the Weathermen he argues that the group members were a

destructive force in anything they were part of, thus explaining the decline of SDS after

the Weathermen took charge. Later on Kingson wrote, I thought their strategies were

psychotic! and when asked whether he thought their bombing campaign was successful

he wrote, No, quite the opposite. It galvanized strong reactions not only against their

41Eric Kingson, Personal Interview, 17 Mar. 2010.


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methods and them, but was also used by some to discredit others working to end the

war. According to Kingson, the Weathermen did not help further anti-war efforts and

actually played a part in taking away from the hard work other organizations were doing

to put a halt to US involvement in Vietnam. He stated that the student movement had

strong potential and did play a role in ending the war, but that the Weathermen only took

away from this. They took the focus away from the issues actually at hand (the war,

racism, sexism, etc.) and spent more effort trying to bomb government buildings, thus

distracting the government from the groups actual goals of ending the war and

promoting civil rights. Lastly, Kingson wrote that, from what he saw, the Weathermen

were not considered a serious threat in the United States.

Similarly, entire chapters of SDS stated their rejection of the Weathermen

throughout their reign. An October 10, 1969 press release from the Boston SDS

headquarters showed the parent organizations disapproval of the Weathermens actions

at the Chicago Days of Rage. Led nationally by Mark Rudd, this gang calling itself

SDS-Revolutionary Youth Movement-Weatherman has absolutely nothing to do with

SDS. They have been running all around the country attacking people. NO SDS

CHAPTER SUPPORTS THEM!42 Although the Weathermen had evolved from SDS,

the organization definitively rejected them and negatively referred to them as a gang. In

the same press release SDS denounced them as lunatics. Although SDS and the WUO

had similar aspirations, their attempted methods varied so greatly that the rift between the

two was irreconcilable. Former friends and comrades of the Weathermen were now

rejecting them as crazy, indicating that the group was not respected by other white

42Harold Jacobs, 614.


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activist groups. Had they been acknowledged as a valuable organization with legitimate

strategies, they may have been perceived differently by their peers and by the rest of the

American public and have been able to succeed further in achieving revolution in the

country.

The Weathermen tried to fight alongside the Black Panther Party for black rights,

and regularly declared their support of the organization, but the Panthers did not

appreciate the groups support. The Weatherman SDS has been trying to give the

impression that the Black Panthers are on their side, but the Panthers deny this.43 Fred

Hampton, Black Panther Party Chairman, referred to the organization as anarchistic,

opportunistic, individualistic, its chauvinistic, its custaristic, and thats the bad part

about it. Its custaristic in that its leaders take people into situations where the people can

be massacred, and they call that revolution. Thats nothing but childs play, its folly.

We think these people may be sincere but theyre misguided, theyre muddleheads and

theyre scatterbrains.44 Although Hampton recognized the organization as potentially

sincere, he directly pointed out that they were going about obtaining their goals in an

ineffective, irresponsible and impractical way. As the head of the Chicago faction of the

Black Panther Party, Hamptons views possibly reflected those of the rest of the Panthers

in his area, showing that the black rights organization did not support the Weathermens

activities. He also pointed out that the group believed society can work without a

government, had selfish goals, firmly believed that its way was the only adequate and

acceptable way of accomplishing its goals, and had an unrealistic view of revolution.

This revelation must have been somewhat of a shock to the Weathermen who had so

43 The Weather Underground, dir. Sam Green, DVD, The Free History Project, 2003.44

The Weather Underground.


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publicly declared their devotion to the Black Panthers. To find that a group that they so

strongly supported saw their actions as childs play could have been devastating to

their cause and have taken away from their philosophy. Mark Rudd explained in a recent

interview that the Weathermen were aware of the Black Panthers feelings about them,

but we blew them off, saying that they didnt understand what it took to build a white

movement in solidarity with them. In retrospect, it was pure white racism on our part.45

The group was unable to accept criticisms as valid, demonstrating a certain immaturity on

their part. They were young and stuck in the mindset that their way of achieving

revolution was the only way.

Angela Davis, a black activist and member of the Communist Party associated

with the Oakland faction of the Black Panther Party, reacted differently to the

Weathermen. The group blew up two buildings in October 1970 in response to Davis

arrest for the abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley. In their October 8th, 1970

communiqu, the group wrote, Last night we blew up the hall of injustice, Marin County

Civic Center[W]e dedicate it to the first of a new breed of freedom fighters

Jonathan Jackson and his comrades who were killed and captured, and to Angelastill

alive and free!who together began a new offensive in our struggle against the belly of

the monster. Free all political prisoners!46

The Marin County courthouse was where

Judge Haley had worked prior to his murder and was considered a symbol of injustice to

many in the radical community. Less than a week later, on October 14th

, an all-female

unit of the Weather Underground Organization bombed the Harvard Center for

International Affairs, a bombing dedicated both to protesting the Vietnam War and to

45 Mark Rudd, Personal Interview, 18 Mar. 2010.46

Raskin, 24.


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Davis. When asked about her reaction to the organizations actions taken in response to

her arrest, she said, They did that? I was in jailI had no idea what was going on on the

outside.47 The fact that she was unaware of what the radical group was doing in her

honor demonstrates that their actions were not taken seriously and were not significant

enough to make it through the prison walls. Davis, however, did not indicate that she

reacted negatively towards the actions of the Weathermen. Unlike Fred Hampton, she did

not argue that they were scatterbrains or muddleheads. She instead stated that all

activist groups must make mistakes and that these mistakes are the only ways in which

such organizations can grow and evolve. She said that the organization was broadening

the terrain in which radical groups can fight for revolutionary ideas. According to Davis,

the Weathermen were not wrong to use violence as a means to try to achieve their ends. It

was simply a method that had to be employed at some point in the fight and was

ultimately a significant learning experience for the activist community.

The difference in reaction to the organization by Fred Hampton, of the Chicago

Black Panthers, and Angela Davis, of the Oakland Black Panthers, is significant not only

because it shows a difference in tactics and beliefs that eventually stunted the activities of

the Panthers, but also because it shows the range in which people reacted to the

Weathermen. While Hampton saw the group members as childish people who put little

thought into their actions, Davis saw them as activists testing out a new form of

revolution at a time when it truly did have potential to change the country. Although there

is no formulaic reason as to why the two felt differently about the group, their differing

responses demonstrate varying political leanings. Hampton fought solely for black rights,

47Angela Davis, Personal Interview, 25 Mar. 2010.


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while Davis fought for black rights, gender equality, communism, education and prisoner

rights. Davis believes that a group is most effective when it fights for many goals, instead

of fighting for one thing, a mindset also evident in members of the WUO that may

explain her lack of antagonism towards them.

FBI documents on the Weatherman Underground, summarized on August 20th,

1976, focused primarily on the organizations links to Communist revolutionaries instead

of on the potential takeover of the United States government and casualties that could

arise from the Weathermens activities. However, information and documents collected

by the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), a clandestine series of operations

directed by the FBI, focused instead on the organizations anti-war activities and other

actions that could potentially disrupt the typical American way of life. Anything that

went against the government could be considered a threat and COINTELPRO sought to

eradicate these problems from the country. The program had no qualms regarding

attacking organizations they perceived as threats. For example,

In 1967 the Bureau initiated COINTELPRO-BlackNationalist/Hate Groups, adding a systematic program ofharassment and disruption against the hundreds of civilrights and black power targets that the FBI had beenmonitoring throughout the decade. This program markedCOINTELPRO at its most severe, resulting in the murderof Chicago Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clarkand contributing to the violent factionalization of the BlackPanther Party generally. Apart from the Civil RightsMovement, other left-wing groups were feeling similarlybesieged, especially those targeted by the Bureaus

COINTELPROs against the Communist Party, SocialistWorkers Party, and the New Left.

48

48 David Cunningham, Theres Something Happening Here: The New Left, The Klan,and FBI Counterintelligence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004) 110.


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As significant leaders in the New Left, the Weathermen were included in this list of

targets, indicating the FBIs distrust of their organization and activities. If the

Weathermen had not been considered a threat, they would not have been a part of the

FBIs major focus. However, the FBI never took steps, neither large nor small, towards

physically targeting the group. They tried to halt publication of the groups newspapers

and magazines, infiltrated the group with members of the secret agency, and kept track of

the members when they could (which was difficult because the group was underground),

but they did not take actions as serious as those they took against the Black Panther Party.

For example, Fred Hampton was killed in December of 1969 in the middle of the night

during an unprovoked police raid. He had been drugged prior to the raid, so he was

unable to fully gain consciousness during it, and was shot multiple times in the head. As

Deborah Johnson, Hamptons pregnant girlfriend at the time, described it, I heard a pig

say, Hes barely alive, hell barely make it. I assume they were talking about Chairman

Fred. But then they started shooting again. I heard a sister scream. They stopped

shooting. A pig said, Hes good and dead now.49 Hampton was specifically killed off

because he was a black leader in the revolutionary movement, something that did not

happen to any of the Weathermen even though they could be considered even more

violent than the Panthers. This could be based on race or on class, but either way it shows

a discrimination on the part of the FBI against activists at the time.

COINTELPRO used four main tactics to attack groups they declared as hazardous

to the country (or, more specifically, the government). Brian Glick, an attorney in the

49The Assassination of Fred Hampton How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered aBlack Panther 2 of 3, YouTube, 10 Dec. 2009, 11 Mar. 2010 .


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period, identified these tactics as: infiltration, psychological warfare, harassment

through the legal system, and extralegal force and violence.50

The tactics varied slightly

depending on the group being targeted but for the most part they were the same.

COINTELPRO only assassinated African-Americans, though, demonstrating a racist tilt.

Dan Berger, in his book Outlaws in America: The Weather Underground and the Politics

of Solidarity, pointed out that some consider it unsurprising that the government used

these tactics, especially the violent ones, against groups that were advocating violence.

He then stated that the way in which the government used violence was extremely

different from how radical groups used it. When the Civil Rights and Black Power

Movements used armsas did Robert Williamss NAACP chapter in the mid-1950s, the

Deacons for Defense in the early to mid-1960s, the Black Panther Party in the late

1960sthe emphasis was on self-defense. When the militancy of the white Left was on

the ascendancy, it was focused more on property than people. Even with the turn to

armed struggle, tactics differed.51 Where the FBI used violence to attack and try to

eliminate radical groups, the groups used violence to further their goals and rarely used it

to kill civilians or government officials. The Black Panthers used violence to protect

themselves and the Weathermen used it against buildings and other property to

demonstrate their genuine desire to start a revolutionneither had any intention of killing

or seriously harming others.

In observing the responses to the Weathermen by others involved in participating

in or destroying activist movements, it is clear that Americans for the most part were

unsure of how to react to the organization. Former SDS members were astonished by the

50 Berger, 62.51

Berger, 62.


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violent tactics the group employed, Black Panthers were split on the organizations

actions, and the FBI, though it recognized the groups potential in the revolutionary

arena, did not acknowledge it as a serious threat and refrained from taking any serious

steps towards halting the Weathermens actions. If the group had been treated as a true,

legitimate threat to the American people and government, other groups would have

stepped in to dismantle it long before it disintegrated on its own. Ultimately, no matter

the responses by external friends or foes, the Weather Underground Organization was its

own worst enemy. Outside groups likely recognized its instability and immaturity and,

for this reason, did not take excessive steps to destroy or support it.


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IV. Chapter Three: Underground Issues

The decision to move underground in 1970 and the subsequent years spent in

hiding were extremely influential on the productivity and sustainability of the Weather

Underground Organization (WUO). Although members of the organization generally

shared ideas relating to the war in Vietnam and racial injustice, they confronted issues

within their own group about sexism and the direction the group should take. Violence

was one of the earlier issues the group had to face. When Students for a Democratic

Society (SDS) split up and the WUO took over as the primary New Left activist group, it

was a self-proclaimed violent revolutionary organization. After seeing and participating

in nonviolent SDS demonstrations, the founders of the WUO believed that violent

revolution was the only way to obtain change in the United States. In its early days, the

group declared that it needed to be a movement that fights, not just talks about

fighting.52Indeed, one of their main catchphrases was Bring the war home! The

Weathermen truly believed that in order to start a revolution in America they would have

to kill seemingly innocent people and, in a sense, give the United States a taste of its own

medicine.

The Weathermen chose the military camp Fort Dix as their first violent target in

1970. A dance was scheduled at the fort for military officers and the Weathermen

decided to attack the venue and potentially harm hundreds of people. Noncommissioned

officers and their wives and dates in New Jersey would pay for the American crimes in

Vietnam. At that point we had determined that there were no innocent Americans, at least

52 Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red ArmyFaction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 2004) 21.


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no white ones.53 While group members were building the bomb in the basement of a

townhouse in Greenwich Village on March 6th

, two wires crossed, resulting in a

devastating blast that demolished the building and killed three members, Diana Oughton,

Teddy Gold and Terry Robbins. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson, two other members

who were upstairs, were able to escape. The explosion and the resulting media forced the

Weathermen to move more deeply into hiding, as it was no longer safe to be in the open.

Numerous Weathermen later recounted how devastating the blast was and how influential

it was on later practices. For a group preaching violent revolution as the only way to

change the country, they were in no way prepared to lose some of their own. Bill Ayers

had a particularly difficult time after the townhouse explosion, as he had been in a

relationship with Diana Oughton. We had been playing at a deadly politics, its true, and

our rhetoric was filled with images of death. But not Dianas.54 Although he admitted

that death was something they were playing with, it was as if he never expected it to

affect anyone he loved. It is nave to be content with killing others and not be willing to

accept the possible ramifications.

After the townhouse explosion, Mark Rudd discovered that many other

Weathermen felt uncomfortable with the plan to blow up the Fort Dix dance but had been

afraid to voice their concerns. Whenever anyone expressed a doubt about the planned

Fort Dix bombing, Terry, Diana or any one of the collective members would turn around

with an attack: Youre just accepting your white skin privilege, or Dont you think

53 Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (New York, NY:Harper Collins, 2009) 194.54

Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001) 191.


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white people are pigs?55Rudd also remembered that, Teddy had warned that anyone

who pulled out of the action would have to be offed for the sake of security.56

In such

a situation there is little room for dissent. All members of the organization were clearly

passionate about what they were fighting for, but it is extremely important to note that

they were not all on the same page regarding violence, especially that of a deadly variety.

The trauma of dealing with the loss of three friends and comrades led the Weather

Underground Organization to slightly change its tactics. Instead of aiming to actually kill

people, the group shifted to simply bombing buildings and issuing warnings to ensure

that no one would get hurt. The first warning, communiqu #1, was distributed to radio

stations, television news stations, and published in papers on May 21, 1970. Hello. This

is Bernardine Dohrn. Im going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.

This is the first communication from the Weatherman undergroundWithin the next

fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice.57 Almost

three weeks later, on June 9, 1970, the Weathermen bombed the New York City police

headquarters. According to communiqu #2, a warning was called in to the headquarters

shortly before the blast to try to ensure that no one would be harmed.58

All future

Weather Underground bombings were done in a similar fashion, demonstrating the

significant change in the mindset of the organization. What had started out as a violent

revolutionary group devoted to changing the American system had morphed into one that

seemed quite concerned with public safety.

55Rudd, 197.

56 Rudd, 197.57 Harold Jacobs, 509-510.58

Harold Jacobs, 512.


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Another extreme issue in the underground was the significant lack of

organization. Naomi Jaffe was one member whose involvement in the Weather

Underground was strongly altered and eventually cut short by the stunted organization of

the group.

People knew each others whereabouts on a need to know

basis. And toward the end that became more and morerestricted, because everybody got more and more freakedout, paranoid I would say to some extent. I wasnt living ina collective, I was living on my own. And what I had as aconnection was meeting to meeting, were going to meet atsuch and such a place at such and such a time.I raised

the criticisms in a particularly sharp way. I had a meeting

with some people in leadership and they didnt show up forthe next meeting and then I didnt have any way to get in

touch with them anymore. So it was over for me.59

Jaffe speaks of her split from the organization in a sad and disheartened way. Although

she could see it coming, she was not able to decide to leave the group on her own accord

and was simply cut out. The organization seemed not to care about members who had

devoted years to the causes, something that could easily take away from its strength.

People are unlikely to care strongly about a cause if others involved with it seem to not

want more help. Jaffes expulsion from the group is also symbolic of its impending

collapse. The organization had once promoted harsh criticism between members,

believing that an organization cannot improve and retain its strength without constructive

criticism. However, when Jaffe tried to share her concerns with the group, they kicked

her out without paying attention to what she was saying. The Weather Underground

probably knew it was failing and was putting up a defensive wall to try to keep safe what

it could in its remaining time as an active organization. As Bill Ayers expressed in a

59The Weather Underground.


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recent interview, We became dogmatic and quite intolerant and unwilling to debate. We

were challenging ourselves to confront the greatest power on earth, we were scared, and

we were a bit despairing.60Similarly, Mark Rudd wrote that, We were constantly

embattled from [the] outside (the rest of the movement, the police, parents, the

government), so internal criticism was seen as disloyal.61 Any member who tried to

criticize the group was kicked out because the organization was too insecure and weak to

handle criticism. They were ultimately too overwhelmed to try to make significant

changes that could have helped the group retain more power and make more changes to

the system.

The decision to surface from the underground was the final blow in the split of the

Weather Underground Organization. After five years of sporadic fighting against the

government from hidden collectives and continuous struggles between group members,

some activists decided it was time to turn themselves in. Surrender seemed like a

relatively good idea at the time. An FBI memo explained that the majority of evidence

against the Organization was obtained using prohibited methods of surveillance, thus

making it in the best interests of the national security not to pursue prosecutions.62

Although the FBI once had a significant amount of information that could be used against

the Weathermen, they had acquired the majority of it through illegal methods, deeming it

not viable. With this somewhat free pass, it made sense for some of the Weathermen to

emerge while it was still safe to do so. Moreover, prosecutors had a strong incentive to

be lenient to anyone who surfaced voluntarily, because harsh punishments would deter

60 Bill Ayers, Personal Interview, 19 Mar. 2010.61 Mark Rudd, Personal Interview, 18 Mar. 2010.62

Varon, 296.


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others from leaving the underground. Some Weathermen, remarkably, were no longer

sought on any charges whatsoever.63

As Bill Ayers wrote, The conspiracy charges

which had put us on the FBIs most wanted list were, ironically, dropped because of

extreme governmental misconduct. It came out, in the wake of the Watergate affair, that

the Bureau had recklessly tapped phones, broken into peoples homes, even written a

plan to kidnap Bernardines infant nephew.64The FBIs illegal methods of obtaining

evidence against the Weathermen demonstrate how strongly they felt about gathering

information on the organization when it formed and that they saw it as an issue that could

not be put on hold. In doing so they ultimately destroyed their own attempts at

dismantling the group. It is important to compare this to the way the FBI targeted non-

white radical groups, such as the Black Panther Party. Some black radicals, like Fred

Hampton, were targeted and assassinated by the FBI and police departments in attacks

that were never prosecuted or further studied by the government. Attacks like this were

not aimed at white radicals, though, probably because of race and class. Although the FBI

had spent a great deal of time studying and staking out the Weathermen, they never

deemed it necessary to actually stage a direct attack on the organization. They may have

wanted to interfere, as they did illegally with the Black Panther Party, but they did not.

Like Ayers and Dohrn, who surfaced with little to no prosecution in 1980, Mark

Rudd also got away with minor misdemeanors, serving two years probation and paying a

small fine. He had not been as active in the organization as Ayers and Dohrn and was

considered less of a threat. Tired of hiding his identity and concerned about the future

implications of the clandestine lifestyle on his three-year-old son, Rudd turned himself in

63 Varon, 297.64

Ayers, 292.


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in 1977. My part in the destruction of the Weather Underground was actually very

small. I did manage to advance the idea of inversionthat is, bringing the belowground

up out of hiding as one big unit.65 The Central Committee, however, only contemplated

inversion for a short while and saw it as a way to openly take over the whole

revolutionary movement. Rudd did not sympathize with this. He viewed the leaders of

the group, including Dohrn and Ayers, as exceedingly arrogant, both in regards to their

leadership of the organization and the organizations leadership over other revolutionary

groups. This seemed to be a far cry from the groups initial decision to move

underground. It had shifted from guerilla revolutionary violence tactics to a more media-

centered focus, as exemplified in the 1976 documentary Underground.66

Other ideological shifts also played a large role in the decision to surface and the

subsequent collapse of the organization. Mirroring the breakup of Students for a

Democratic Society and the two major groups that emerged, RYM I (Weatherman) and

PL, the Weather Underground Organization also split into two separate factions, one

which aimed to continue the groups violent activities, and one which wanted to come out

into the open and fight aboveground. As seen with the dissolution of SDS, no

organization can survive such contrasting views, especially when they pertain to the

safety of the group. Although the Weathermen had initially tried to do away with

monogamous relationships because they were concerned that peoples loyalties may lie

elsewhere and that such relations were a burden, many of the group members had become

romantically involved and had children. Mark Rudd married and had a son with a fellow

Weatherwoman, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers married and had two sons, and Kathy

65 Rudd, 279.66

Underground, dir. Emile de Antonio, DVD, 1976.


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Boudin and David Gilbert were involved and had a son. Although some of the

relationships may not have lasted (Rudd and his wife divorced, and Boudin and Gilbert

were both imprisoned in separate facilities after the 1981 Brinks truck robbery and

murders67

), they still heavily impacted loyalties and primary concerns. As Rudd and

Ayers have both stated, one of their primary reasons for emerging from the underground

was to protect their families and give their children the chance to have a normal life.

They waited to turn themselves in until they thought it would be the most safe and they

have since become active members of society. Nearly all former Weatherpeople are

involved in some form of activism today, showing that they did not lose touch with their

radical roots, but have instead chosen to try to change the system in ways that are less

detrimental to their families.

The dissolution of the organization is unsurprising today when examining

statements made by former members regarding the group. Dohrn said in 1977, Why did

we do this? I dont really know. We followed the classic path of so-called white

revolutionaries who sell out the revolution.68 Similarly, Rudd wrote that, Our strategy

of going underground in 1970 had simply been the wrong choice.69

Although the

organization had tried and fought hard over the years to develop a revolution that could

overturn the government, it ultimately failed because of disunity within the group with

67On October 20, 1981, several former members of the Weather Underground

Organization and the Black Liberation Army attacked and robbed a Brinks armored car inNanuet, NY, killing two police officers, a Brinks guard, and stealing $1.6 million. Mostof the people involved were caught immediately and convicted. David Gilbert remains inprison to this day, and Kathy Boudin was released on parole in 2003.

68John Kifner, Weather Underground Splits Up Over Plan to Come Into the Open,New York Times 18 Jan. 1977: 12.69

Rudd, 279.


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regards to common goals and the means used to achieve them. The entire time spent

underground was unstable, from the decision to go into hiding to the activities employed

while underground to the eventual emergence into the open. An organization can only

succeed if it has a strong foundation, something that the Weather Underground sorely

lacked. When they initially reached the decision to move underground, it was done in

haste and not enough time was spent planning out the logistics. In order for the

organization to succeed, more unity would have been an absolute necessity.


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V. Conclusion

Today it seems that the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) was bound to

fail from its earliest conception. Constructed of fragments from the already declining

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organization was blamed for the parent

groups disintegration. Built on a weak foundation, the chances of survival for the

fledgling organization were slim, and coupled with the major mistakes it made during its

seven-year reign, it had little chance of success. The group tried to target everything they

considered wrong with society, from the war in Vietnam and American imperialism to

racism and sexism. This choice ended up spreading resources too thin, making it nearly

impossible to lead a successful campaign against any of Americas major social

problems. The actions it took and statements it made distanced it from other significant

activist groups, resulting in increasing isolation and a lack of support from organizations

it expected to work alongside. The fact that other groups did not take the WUO seriously

disheartened them and added to their isolation, resulting in an extremely dysfunctional

organization. When the group moved underground in 1970 the number of members

drastically dropped. Mark Rudd, for example, left the group by the end of 1970. The

disunity, disorganization and unrealistic views of revolution resulted in the WUO

developing too many rifts too quickly, fizzling out shortly after it had been founded.

Mark Rudd, currently a math professor in New Mexico, did not speak about the

organization for 25 years and does now because he thinks, it might be useful for young

people to learn what not to do.70 He is now the most outspoken former Weatherman

against the group. When asked whether revolution can succeed in the United States, he

70Mark Rudd, Personal Interview, 18 Mar. 2010.


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said, No, its a fantasy. The country is way too conservative. What do you want to do,

kill of the population? Who will make the revolution? The fantasy of armed revolution

replaced the practice of mass organizing. Only mass organizing could and can succeed.

And it must be nonviolent. Rudd had been one of the leaders of the WUO at its

formation and was a major movement leader at Columbia University in the late 1960s.

The fact that he now clearly states that there is no way armed revolution can succeed in

the United States shows how strongly his views have shifted from those he held forty

years ago. Rudd also wrote that, in retrospect, I do think we could have saved it (SDS) if

we had tried to hold it together and not pushed our hegemonic and arrogant line as the

only true direction for the organization. We should have kept up campus organizing and

pushed anti-imperialism, not total armed revolution. Again, Rudd blames the

Weathermen and their excessive arrogance for the destruction of SDS and, ultimately, the

student movement as a whol

collaspeof the weather underground

Documents