The Weather Underground was an American Marxist militant organization active from 1969 until 1977. Originally known as the Weathermen, or simply Weatherman, the group originated as a faction of the national leadership of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The group adopted the name Weather Underground Organization (WUO) in 1970. Its members advocated revolutionary struggle against the United States government and described their politics as anti-imperialist and anti-racist. The group's ideology was influenced by Black Power and the anti-war movement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarded the WUO as a domestic terrorist group.
The Weather Underground took its name from Bob Dylan's lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965). They took this line as the title of a position paper distributed at the SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a "White fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical movements to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world".See document 5, The "Days of Rage", a riot orchestrated by the WUO in October 1969 in Chicago, was timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the U.S. government under the name "Weather Underground Organization".The Weather Underground, produced by Carrie Lozano, directed by Bill Siegel and Sam Green, New Video Group, 2003, DVD. That year the WUO took part in Timothy Leary's escape from prison.
In the 1970s, the WUO conducted a bombing campaign targeting government buildings and banks. Some attacks were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with threats identifying the particular issue that the attack was intended to protest. Three members of the WUO were killed in an accidental explosion in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1970, but no one was killed in any of the bombings claimed by the group. WUO targets included the Marin County Civic Center (1970), the United States Capitol (1971), and the Pentagon (1972).
The WUO began to disintegrate after the U.S. reached a peace accord with Vietnam in 1973, and was defunct by 1977. Some members of the group joined the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO) and continued their activities until that group disbanded in 1985. Due to misconduct by the FBI, Weatherman's leadership was largely able to resume normal lives after the group dissolved, without being prosecuted or serving jail time. Some members of M19CO who were involved in the 1981 Brink's robbery, in which three people were killed, served lengthy prison sentences.
Background and formation
The Weather Underground emerged from campus-based opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War as well as the civil rights movement of the 1960s, particularly from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), one of the leading organizations in the New Left. Following factional divisions within the SDS in 1969, the Weather Underground Organization emerged as a far-left militant organization.
One of the factors that contributed to the radicalization of SDS members was the Economic Research and Action Project, which the group undertook in urban neighborhoods in the Northeastern United States between 1963 and 1968. This project was aimed at creating an interracial movement of impoverished Americans that would mobilize for full and fair employment or guaranteed annual income and political rights. The group's goal was to create a more democratic society "which guarantees political freedom, economic and physical security, abundant education, and incentives for wide cultural variety". While the initial phase of SDS activity involved campus organizing, phase two involved community organizing. These experiences led some SDS members to conclude that deep social change would not happen through community organizing and electoral politics, and that more radical and disruptive tactics were needed.Frost, Jennifer (2001). An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s. New York: New York University Press; p. 28
In the late 1960s, United States military action in Southeast Asia escalated. In the U.S., anti-war sentiment was particularly pronounced during the 1968 presidential election. Around this time, SDS began to fragment and collapse following a split between the group's leadership in the "National Office", the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and their respective supporters. During the factional struggle, National Office leaders such as Bernardine Dohrn and Mike Klonsky began announcing their emerging perspectives, and Klonsky published a manifesto titled "Toward a Revolutionary Youth Movement" (RYM).
RYM promoted the philosophy that young workers possessed the potential to be a revolutionary force which could overthrow capitalism, if not by themselves then by transmitting radical ideas to the working class. Klonsky's document reflected the philosophy of the National Office and was eventually adopted as SDS's official doctrine. During the summer of 1969, however, the National Office itself began to split. One group, led by Klonsky, became known as RYM II; the other group, RYM I, was led by Dohrn and endorsed more aggressive tactics such as direct action, as some members felt that years of nonviolent resistance had done little or nothing to stop the war. The Weathermen strongly sympathized with the radical Black Panther Party; the police killing of Panther Fred Hampton prompted the Weathermen to issue a declaration of war upon the U.S. government.
SDS Convention, June 1969 At an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969, the National Office attempted to persuade unaffiliated delegates not to endorse a takeover by the PLP, who had packed the convention with their supporters. The PLP was an anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist group that had turned to SDS to recruit new members after meeting with little success in organizing industrial workers, their preferred base. SDS members of that time were nearly all anti-communist but refused to be drawn into actions that could be perceived as red-baiting, which they viewed as mostly irrelevant and out of date. The PLP soon began to organize a Worker Student Alliance. By the late 1960s the group would profoundly affect SDS, particularly at national gatherings of the membership, forming a well-groomed, disciplined faction which followed the PLP line. At the beginning of the June 1969 convention, two position papers were passed out by the National Office leadership, one a revised statement of Klonsky's manifesto, the other called "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows".
The latter document outlined the position of the group that would become the Weather Underground. It had been signed by Dohrn, Karen Ashley, Bill Ayers, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd and Steve Tappis. The document called for creating a clandestine revolutionary party:
The most important task for us toward making the revolution, and the work our collectives should engage in, is the creation of a mass revolutionary movement, without which a clandestine revolutionary party will be impossible. A revolutionary mass movement is different from the traditional revisionist mass base of "sympathizers". Rather it is akin to the Red Guard in China, based on the full participation and involvement of masses of people in the practice of making revolution; a movement with a full willingness to participate in the violent and illegal struggle.
At the June 1969 convention, the Weathermen faction planned for October 8–11 as a "National Action" built around Jacobs' slogan, "bring the war home". The National Action grew out of a resolution drafted by Jacobs and introduced at the October 1968 SDS National Council meeting in Boulder, Colorado. The resolution, titled "The Elections Don't Mean Shit—Vote Where the Power Is—Our Power Is In The Street" and adopted by the council, was prompted by the perceived success of the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and reflected Jacobs' strong advocacy of direct action.
As part of the "National Action Staff", Jacobs was an integral part of the planning for what quickly came to be called "Four Days of Rage". For Jacobs, the goal of the "Days of Rage" was clear:
Weatherman would shove the war down their dumb, fascist throats and show them, while we were at it, how much better we were than them, both tactically and strategically, as a people. In an all-out civil war over Vietnam and other fascist U.S. imperialism, we were going to bring the war home. 'Turn the imperialists' war into a civil war', in Lenin's words. And we were going to kick ass.
In July 1969, thirty members of Weathermen leadership traveled to Cuba and met with North Vietnamese representatives to gain from their revolutionary experience. According to the Senate Internal Security Committee, the North Vietnamese requested armed political action in order to stop the U.S. government's war in Vietnam. Subsequently, the group accepted funding, training, recommendations on tactics and slogans from Cuba, and perhaps explosives as well.
Flint War Council, December 1969 After the Days of Rage, the Weathermen held the last of its National Council meetings from December 26–31, 1969, in Flint, Michigan. The meeting, dubbed the "War Council" by the 300 people who attended, adopted Jacobs' call for violent revolution. Dohrn opened the conference by telling the delegates they needed to stop being afraid and begin the "armed struggle". Over the next five days, the participants met in informal groups to discuss what "going underground" meant, how best to organize collectives, and justifications for violence. In the evening, the groups reconvened for a mass "wargasm"—practicing karate, engaging in physical exercise, singing songs and listening to speeches.Jones, A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience, 2004.Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, 2002.
The War Council ended with a major speech by Jacobs, who condemned the "pacifism" of white middle-class American youth, a belief which he claimed they held because they were insulated from the violence which afflicted blacks and the poor. He declared that youth were moving away from passivity and apathy and toward a new high-energy culture of "depersonalization" brought about by drugs, sex and armed revolution. "We're against everything that's 'good and decent' in honky America," Jacobs said in his most commonly quoted statement. "We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mother's nightmare."
Two major decisions came out of the War Council. The first was to go underground and to begin a violent, armed struggle against the state without attempting to organize or mobilize a broad swath of the public. The Weathermen hoped to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country. Ultimately, the group created only three significant, active collectives: one in California, one in the Midwest, and one in New York City. The New York City collective was led by Jacobs and Terry Robbins, and included Ted Gold, Kathy Boudin, Cathy Wilkerson (Robbins's girlfriend) and Diana Oughton. Jacobs was one of Robbins' biggest supporters and pushed the Weathermen's national leadership to allow Robbins to be as violent as he wanted to be. The Weathermen leadership agreed, as did the New York City collective.Good, "Brian Flanagan Speaks," Next Left Notes, 2005. The collective's first target was Judge John Murtagh, who was overseeing the trial of the "Panther 21".