Flash in the Pan? A History of the Weathermen

by Jacob Peterson-Davis

When does violence become necessary to exact social change?  Some would say never.  But what is to be done when those in power use violence to bring about their own economic and political domination?  When the entire culture of a country is inherently rooted in the domination of a white, elite, power structure, who will stop at nothing to stay on top and subjugate not only other countries, but also their own citizens, violence may well becomes a necessity.  The police and armed forces of the United States are inherently violent and only exist to protect a system that could not function without the use of force and the aggressive repression of any dissent.  This is how the members of the Weather Underground Organization (first called the Weathermen), felt about the state of their country in the late 1960’s.  The group formed after members of Students for a Democratic Society left the organization because they felt nothing had been accomplished by the nonviolent protesting that was advocated by the SDS. The Weathermen sought solidarity with the Black Panthers and other radical groups, so as to bring about the collapse of the United States government.  Soon, autonomous groups of Weatherman members existed in most major cities in the US.  With the Vietnam war raging overseas and the struggle for civil rights happening in their own country, the Weathermen felt that they had to use violent acts to destroy government buildings and other institutions to show to the rest of the country and the world that the hegemony that is the US government could be resisted.  Although the group did not intend to physically hurt anyone at the beginning of their operations, they eventually made plans to kill high-ranking government and military leaders.  Theses plans never came to fruition.  But the bombings that did succeed were powerful symbols of resistance.  In the end most of the objectives sought by the Weathermen were never accomplished.  I plan to analyze and provide a concise history of their actions.
         

In the beginning of the Weathermen, the organizers attempted to carry out a very public campaign of resistance.  They intended to appeal to the masses of America, who they believed would be persuaded to follow them into armed conflict against the government.  In October of 1969, the Weathermen planned a national demonstration in Chicago called “The Days of Rage.”  This demonstration was meant to protest the Vietnam War, police repression of the Black Panthers, and the incarceration of Panther leader Huey P. Newton.  Unfortunately, the turnout for the rally was much smaller than anticipated, as former Weatherman Mark Rudd recounts in his autobiography.

The news that came in was that only a few hundred people had gathered that first night in Lincoln Park, the site of the big police riots against the demonstrators at the Democratic Convention the year before.  It was a much smaller crowd than we had anticipated—only two hundred Weathermen dressed in combat boots, leather or denim jackets, some with gas masks and almost all armed with sticks or pipes or rolls of pennies in their fists.  Chilled by fear and the October night, people broke up park benches—it was war, after all—and lit a bonfire.  They tried chanting, “The revolution has come! / Off the pig! / Time to pick up the gun! / Off the pig!” but it didn’t seem to boost morale.  Some incendiary speeches were attempted, but the dejection over the small numbers plus the fear about the violence to come put a huge damper on the rally.
                    

The rally eventually ended when large numbers of riot police surrounded the protesters and a scuffle ensued.  Sixty-eight people were arrested and six Weathermen were shot but none injured critically.  Though disappointed by the overall outcome of “The Days of Rage”, the leaders of the Weathermen realized some of their mistakes.
They had gained such notoriety that it impaired their ability to organize effectively.  The police and FBI were watching their every move and planning their own counter-protests.   Because they were known from the beginning as troublemakers who were not content with civil disobedience but instead sought to bring about conflict, many of their activities were thwarted because of FBI and police interference. 

Repression was particularly intense in Chicago, where the SDS National Office and a very active chapter of the Black Panthers were located—and where the Weatherman/SDS had scheduled a militant demonstration for October.  The Weather Bureau sent Robert Roth to the Chicago collective in September 1969, and he noticed the police presence immediately.  It would be hard not to.  The Chicago police’s “gang intelligence unit” camped out on the lawns of activists’ houses, followed them constantly, and threatened individuals by name.  “I don’t think any of us had experienced that before, either [that level of] surveillance or personal connection to the police force,” Roth says.          

In 1970 most of the Weathermen went underground to avoid facing charges and in an attempt to thwart FBI surveillance of their activities.  In March of that year, a New York townhouse where three Weathermen members were building bombs exploded, killing all three.  The police seized on this tragedy to increase their surveillance of the group.  The group had not been able to appeal to the masses as they had hoped, so they decided to focus on covert, violent acts of protest.
             

On May 21, 1970, the Weathermen, (now calling themselves the Weather Underground), released a communiqué that declared war on the government of the United States.  Bernardine Dorhn, one of the few female leaders in the organization, read the statement.

Black people have been fighting almost alone for years.  We’ve known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution.  We never intended to spend the next five or twenty-five years of our lives in jail.  Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we’ve been trying to show how it is possible to overcome the frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system.  Kids know the lines are drawn; revolution is touching all of our lives.  Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don’t do it.  Revolutionary violence is the only way.3          

Many in the liberal left rejected the Weatherman’s use of violence.  But the Weatherman believed that a violent regime must be confronted with violence.  The direct action that the group took toward resistance was something that had not been attempted before.  The mostly middle-class, white, college graduates that composed the Weatherman finally concluded that non-violent protesting is a construct of the power structure that allows the status quo to remain in power indefinitely.  They wanted to show people that anyone can stand up and fight back against tyranny.  In a way, they sought to “wake people up” by changing their perspectives.

Bombings also pierced the myth of government invincibility—one of Weather’s most important accomplishments, some former members argue.  In disrupting the smooth functioning of U.S. imperialism, in exposing the malfeasance of power, the Weather Underground’s actions showed that the government could be opposed at many different levels.  Bombings were about dramatizing and humanizing revolutionary politics, about exacting a political cost for state or corporate terror, about challenging the institutions responsible for oppression.1         

The Weathermen began with a major focus on swaying the opinions of white people, but eventually concluded that most white Americans would not side with Black people if a race war actually became a reality.  They instead switched to strengthening their ties with the Black Panthers and other radical minority groups.

Weathermen had given up on white people and saw the organization’s role solely as one of causing chaos in support of the blacks and other national liberation movements, in the style of the abolitionist John Brown.  Although some members, among them Jim Mellen, still believed it was possible to organize American working-class youth into a revolutionary movement and disagreed with the decision to go underground, their dissension fell on deaf ears.4

Besides trying the change the world, Weathermen members also tried to change themselves and get rid of all their former prejudices.  Groups would meet for intense discussions of sexism and other social topics.  Members were taught to work through their prejudices and learn to think outside of the constructs in which they were raised. 

The struggles in the New Left over the women question were instructive to Weather in the long run.  The organization, which had always been extremely intolerant of oppressive attitudes, now found its male members attacked for sexism.  The arguments which occurred could have torn Weather apart but, instead, created a dynamic which provided lessons for all of its organizational work.  The men’s realization that they, too, were capable of counter-revolutionary thought and action allowed them to see that most prejudices resulted form ignorance.  This realization paved the way for a new approach to inter-organizational relationships.  By trying to work out their own shortcomings while maintaining a revolutionary perspective, they were forced to acknowledge that individuals were capable of change, whatever their previous prejudices.4

Autonomous collectives of Weather people carried out bombings all around the United States during 1971 and 1972.  The attacks focused on government buildings and symbolic statues.  On August 21, 1971 Black Panther leader George Jackson was murdered by guards while incarcerated in San Quentin prison.  “Many believed that the murder was the culmination of state efforts to silence the Black leader.  Nine days after the murder—and hours before Jackson’s funeral—the Weather Underground simultaneously bombed the California State Department of Corrections offices in San Francisco and in Sacramento.”2           

Various communiqués were released throughout the early seventies by the Weather Collective, which focused on a variety of topics.  An especially important document was released in January 1973, titled “on structure.”  It discussed feminist issues and made a case for the Weathermen to pursue a more direct approach to these issues.  “In acknowledging that ‘anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and anti-sexism all intermingle but are not all the same,’ the paper argued for the Weather’s immersion in the women’s movement, to push for internationalism and anti-racism in that sector while also learning and benefiting from what the women’s liberation movement had to offer.  Noting that feminism ‘has played a crucial role internally’ for women, the paper pushed the organization to take a more public pro-feminist stance.2 
           

The paper gave many women in the Weathermen the chance to assert themselves as they never had before and many took on leadership roles.  In the years that followed 1973, the Weather Underground began to focus more on world events and less on direct action bombings.  Most members continued to live underground and using aliases and faked documents.  The FBI continued to track many of them, which made organizing for direct action difficult.  The Underground was still able to use printing presses to release communiqués and statements regarding world affairs. 

The Weather Underground was repositioning itself—not just as movement fighters but also as thinkers and strategists.  Communiqués underscored Weather’s creativity, prompting (leftist leader) Abbie Hoffman to call the leaders in the Weather Underground some of the most creative people he knew.  Communiqués were released to analyze world developments, rather than to just announce a bombing.  Whether attached to bombings or not, communiqués began to offer specific strategies, plans of action, and even slogans for possible use by the aboveground.2          

Although individual Weather cells around the country continued to bomb buildings into 1976, many of the original members had begun to move apart from the group.  Many had been living in hiding since 1970 and were tired of being on the run.  Some wanted to focus on being in monogamous relationships and raising families.  Growing older had caused some to change their views on violence.  Mark Rudd speaks of his decision to distance himself from the Weathermen.  “Only a year before, I had believed the revolution so imminent, and the struggle so intense, that there was no space or time for children in my or any other revolutionary guerrilla’s life.  Now, with Sue’s guidance, certain older and saner feelings were filtering back to me:  thoughts about children, and living in a house or an apartment, having a partner, longings that I can describe only as ‘normal.’  I was following my parents’ patterns.”1 
           

The FBI only intensified its efforts to infiltrate the Weathermen Collective as the decade wore on.  The program entitled Cointel Pro focused on finding members of the collective and coercing them into becoming FBI informants.  This program worked very effectively as Weathermen began to be paranoid of their very own comrades.  Differing ideologies began to split members into little sub-groups of their own.  Many members simply became disillusioned with what they saw as little or no change affected by their efforts.  Some were consumed with heavy drug habits as they attempted to cope with such hopelessness.  By the early 1980’s, some of the Weathermen had come out of hiding to face charges from years earlier.  Some members remained in hiding well into the nineties. 
           

Although many of the Weathermen’s far-reaching goals were not accomplished, the group still managed to make a huge impact on the political and social landscape of the 1970’s.  Perhaps the members of the group set the bar too high ideologically, but they laid their lives on the line for their beliefs.  I find this to be very inspiring. 

Works Cited:
Berger, Dan. Outlaws of America. Oakland, CA, AK Press. 2006.

Chepesiuk, Ron. Sixties Radicals Then and Now. Jefferson, NC, McFarland and      
            Company. 1995.

Horowitz, David.  Counterculture and Revolution. New York, Random House. 1972

Jacobs, Ron. The Way the Wind Blew. London, Verso. 1997

Rudd, Mark. Underground:  My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. New York,