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Home , Brian Flanagan, Days of Rage, Jeff Jones (activist), John Jacobs (activist), Mark Rudd, Terry Robbins

The Organization

“Bring the War Home”

John Reardon April 1, 2011 Social Movements

The 1960s in the was an amazing time in our nation’s history for numerous reasons. This decade marked the hippie or counter culture movement, anti-war movement, rise in feminism, and civil rights movement. All of these social movements were started by groups of people who were sick and tired of the same old way of life that America possessed. Ideas of acting against the norm and fighting for what you believed in was something that had never been seen in our culture until the 1960s. The astonishing aspect of these events was that the majority was influenced by the young people of America. If you were to look at the hippie revolution and their ideals of free-love, sexual experiences, drug experimentation, music, equal rights; it was all from the youth demographic. One could argue that the spark of these new ideas and thoughts was the War; the most infamous and controversial war that the United States has ever been a part of. Personally, I am fascinated with what occurred during the 1960s. I think it is definitely a time in American culture that should be appreciated due to what it has done for our culture today.

Without the free spirits, student activists, protesters, etc. our country would not be what it is composed of today.

During the latter years of the 1960s, a student driven organization known as the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) emerged onto the scene. Their main goal was to actively protest against the government for the war on Vietnam. They would hold annual conventions, protest, and show their immense dedication to ending the war. Bernadine Dohrn, who was a student en route to obtaining her degree in law, was the leader of this organization. However, during their last convention in 1969, the SDS was taken over by a much more radical organization known as the Weather Underground Organization (the weatherman). This organization had one main goal in mind and that was to start a revolutionary party that would eventually overthrow the United

States government. This group lasted throughout most of the seventies and was completely dissolved in 1981 when the main leaders of the group, , Cathy Wilkerson, Bernadine

Dohrn and , came out of hiding and gave themselves up to the police. The debate on whether their actions were to be considered as revolutionist or terrorist is still something that is debated today.

They believed that the people of the United States were not doing enough, that living their everyday lives while was going on in Vietnam, was in its self an act of violence. It reminds me of the “bullying campaign” that I learned at a young age. If you’re allowing bad things to happen to people, you are no better than the people who are committing the violence.

Just sitting back and allowing these terrible events to happen is just as bad as dropping bombs or pulling triggers. From October 8-11, 1969, the Weatherman instituted their “”, which was a series of demonstrations taking place in . Weather underground individual

John Jacobs is quoted saying, “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. , 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." Days of rage was supposed to be a new breed of protesters, people who wouldn’t stop fighting until they got what they wanted. They were not going to be the usual activists or protesters who would be containable or could be shut up; they were willing to give up their lives for what they believed in. And they were not going to allow any form of government (the police) stand in their way. However, the numbers were not in their favor when about 800 weather underground participants and followers showed up to roughly

2000 policeman. Later on that night around 10:00pm is when the real action began when John

Jacobs, , and Dave Gilbert led the group of protesters to the Drake Hotel where Judge made his home. The march was indeed a violent one where the crowd would smash cars, building windows, and everything else in their path. The riot quickly came to an end when the rioters ran into police barricade. The police were better trained and ready for the attack, shooting a great amount of tear gas into the crowds as well as driving their squad cars directly through the mob. The next two days was much of the same, the protesters would march throughout Chicago’s streets destroying cars and such with the same results as the previous days.

Although, just because they were stopped from rioting and many were arrested, the message had been sent, the Weatherman organization was here to stay and you’d better listen to them. The total damages from the three-day riot/protest cost the city of Chicago almost $200,000 and the organization paid almost $40,000 more than that in bails alone.

Days of Rage ( on right) After the Days of Rage, the movement had been set in motion. The organization had determined just how they were exactly going to form and what the definition of their movement was about. The “War Council” was formed during December 26-31 in Flint, Michigan, where they would justify their actions. They wanted to be an underground movement that was going to violently act out against the government but didn’t want to be a group who would try and persuade the public’s eye. In addition, they wanted to spread their organization throughout all the major cities in the United States, but were only successful to create branches in , the

Mid West, and City. They had decided that their name would be derived from a Bob

Dylan song: “You don’t need to know a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”. This quote meant that anyone, regardless of your political or current event knowledge could tell in some way, shape or form that a revolution was imminent. , leader of the Chicago

Black Panther party did not approve of what the Weatherman did during the Days of Rage. “"We believe that the Weather Underground Organization's action was anarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic, chauvinistic, and Custeristic… It's nothing but child's play - its folly." And to some extent I can agree with these comments. For example, at this point in time Martin Luther

King Jr. was trying to promote non-violent protests and some parties of the Black Panthers were in agreeance with that. It was almost as if the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers were not working in sync with one another. This only led to more people speaking out against the weatherman, saying that they had destroyed all that the SDS had built. These statements caused feelings of isolation and being targeted as outcasts for the Weather Underground.

Mark Rudd, who was a student at and led the student activist party at Columbia, had a strong drive behind him to change the ways of the United States politics. His main focus on the matter can be found one of his speeches after the War Council, “black people are fighting, brown people are fighting, Vietnamese people are fighting, and it’s now time for youth people and working people in this country, for white movement, a revolutionary movement to begin to fight!” Quotes like this instilled in Weather Underground participants and their followers just how serious Rudd, Dohrn, Ayers, and other group leaders were about their movement. Soon after the death of Black Panther’s Chicago leader Fred Hampton, the Weather

Underground had seen enough. They realized that the government was going to go to extreme lengths to see that they remained in control and whenever they thought they had lost even the slightest bit of power, they were going to act. Murdering Hampton was the last straw in the eyes of many Weathermen including Terry Robbins. Robbins, a student from Kenyon State College was a key leader in the Weather Underground Organization and was the one who believed that bomb making and training in weapons was the next step for the organization. In addition,

Robbins was the first to conduct the planning of attack on a police officer dance at Fort Dicks.

“What we wanted to do here was, to deliver the most horrific hit that the United States government had ever seen on its territory. We wanted to light it up, our slogan was to bring the war home and we really wanted to give the U.S. and the rest of the world the sense that this country was unlivable if the United States continued in Vietnam. And that was the goal of this group.” (said by , member of New York chapter of the Weathermen)

On there was an explosion in the townhouse where the bombs were being made due to a short circuiting; the three members who were constructing the bomb were killed. Those involved in the bomb building were: Theodore Gold, Terry Robbins, and . Even though their plan turned against them, it was still seen through the eyes of the public that this organization had totally transformed from being student aggressive protesters to full-fledged revolutionists. Immediately following the fatal explosion, warrants for arrest were sent out to many of the weathermen, leaving them no choice but to go into hiding; hence the term Weather

Underground.

Once the organization went underground it was a totally different situation. With warrants out for the arrests of practically all the members, they were left with no choice but to say good-bye to their parents and other loved ones and go into hiding in California. August 28,

1970 marked the first attack on the United States that the new “underground” Weatherman posed on the country. The switchboard operator at the Chronicle received a message that day saying, “There is a bomb in the ferry building. It will go off in fifteen minutes; we’re doing this in the defense of Jackson (African-American civil rights activist/Soledad brother who was murdered in jail) be sure to have the police clear the area”. They believed that bombing the

Department of Corrections building in San Francisco would be a just act or contribution to the black community as the funeral for George Jackson was held only hours after the explosion.

Their twelfth communication to the public said that they had tremendous respect for what

Jackson had done for the African American civil rights and that the white population of the

United States should get off their ass and help the movement. This begs the question what exactly the Weather Underground was fighting for? It seems as if half were fighting for an end to the Vietnamese War and others were fighting for civil rights. The bombings did not stop in

California. After the Kent State killing, which was a massacre in which the National Guard had fired upon a non-violent and unarmed student protest at Kent State University, the Weatherman had placed a bomb in the National Guard Headquarters. Not one month later, on June 9th, 1970, a bomb is exploded in the police headquarters. Also, a month later the Presidio

Army base located in San Francisco is attacked marking the 11th anniversary of the Cuban

Revolution. Personally, this is where I start to draw questions to whether or not these people who call themselves the Weathermen are changing from radical revolutionist to plain and simple terrorists. How do they go from campaigning as anti-war student activists to being involved in a bombing that pertains to the anniversary to the Cuban revolution? I think that in this juncture of their time as an organization that lost a grip on what they were really fighting for. In a sense, like other uprisings and social movements in history, those who started out as non-violent groups did in fact become violent. Why? Possibly because they realized that it’s easier to make a statement when physical damage is done. You can protest all day long but the second there is an explosion or gun shot, all eyes are on you and that’s when you receive the most attention. However, bombing a building for a revolution that has absolutely nothing to do with what you originally started your movement on, is completely outlandish and terrorism. And member Brian Flanagan began to feel the same way, “it was played out”.

By the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s, the Weather Underground Organization had lost its spotlight and was coming to an end. The bombings did continue until around 1975, with buildings being blown up over many different reasons. These events that caused the organization to bomb were: black child killed by Chicago police officer, US- backed cooperation in Chile, forced sterilization of poor women, Gulf oil’s actions in Portuguese Angola, escalation in

Vietnam, Puerto Rican cement workers’ rights, and many more. Unfortunately for the

Weatherman, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had had enough with the actions of the

Weather Underground and established their counter attack known as COINTELPRO (Counter

Intelligence Program). By definition, COINTELPRO was “a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveillance, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.”

(Wikipedia) So basically what happened was FBI agents and informants would pretend to be a part of these organizations (Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Anti-war movement groups,

Martin Luther King followers) and act as rats, reporting back to the government what each organizations next was going to be. In retaliation, members of the Weather Underground broke into an FBI building stealing and exposing numerous documents of the FBI’s illegal operations. The Weather Underground’s last communication to the public was heard after one of their last planned bombings, “we’re not just attacking targets, we are bringing a pitiful, helpless giant to its knees!” Although it was a very inspirational speech, it was very ineffective. The public had set its eyes upon other struggles in the United States such as women’s rights.

April 30, 1975 marked the almost 19 and a half years the had been going on between the United States and Vietnam. It was over, after nearly two decades, the worst war the United States had ever experienced was finally over. What was there left for the Weather

Underground Organization to do? And that is the exact questions they asked themselves. By the late 1970s the majority of the Weather Underground had come out from hiding and gave themselves up to the police. Years later Rudd was quoted saying, “the violence didn’t work.”

That’s a pretty heavy comment for someone who dedicated his life to having this radical, violent overthrow of the United States government. It simply did not work; defeated. So after the deep realization that their time had come and the end was near the Weather Underground was handed out their punishment(s). Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd and Jeff Jones were the main leaders of the East Coast Weatherman, had all federal charges dropped due to the illegal actions of COINTELPRO. In result, they were slapped with moderately heavy fines and years of probation. On the contrary, there were members of the Underground who stayed in it for too long and subsequently are serving life sentences for their actions. , Judith Alice Clark, and Dave Gilbert were the handful of former WUO members who on October 20, 1981 robbed a

Brinks armored truck in New York. The group got off with $1.6 million dollars and the lives of two police officers and a security guard. This tragic event many describe as the official end to the

Weather Underground Organization.

I chose this social movement for a number of reasons; firstly, I’m extremely intrigued by the 1960s-1970s in the United States. I think that this time in America, people began to really

“let their hair down” and take a stand for what you thought was right or wrong. There was an epiphany amongst the youth culture of this time. They were sick of the “cookie-cutter” lives and were willing to tell anyone and everyone to screw themselves. Would I have acted this way if I were to of grown up during these times? Hard to say for sure for a number of reasons, but my gut instinct and just the way of how I grew up during the 90s and 2000s, I’d say that it would definitely be difficult not to follow a movement such as that. I believe that during these times, protesting and rioting was this new and terrifying beast that the government or grown-ups had no idea how to handle. They all grew up having their parents and elders tell them exactly how to live, can you imagine having grown up in a situation like that to have your own children tell you what they were going to do or how they were going to act? The generation from the 60’s and

70’s blows me away every time I think about it. I’ve had conversations with my parents, both who grew up during these times, how lucky they are to have experienced such a time in the

United States culture. I’m insanely jealous. Moreover, I feel the major reason as to why the

Weather Underground organization and many other protesting organizations would be so appealing: outlaw culture. With the way that music was during these times and the lifestyles, everything pretty much had the same underlying tone of “screw the man.” Who wouldn’t find that appealing?

Moving on to the reaction of the Weathermen and the organization on a whole, I have mixed emotions. Their movement, to end the war in Vietnam and have equal rights, is something

I am totally for and would have undoubtedly been a part of. The one aspect of the Weather

Underground that I did not approve of was the random acts of bombing. I can see when you’re a group of radical 20-23 year olds and are so dedicated to what you believe in that there may be no limits to how far you are willing to go just to prove yourself, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. I do not agree with many of the bombings because the group seemed to have lost control or grasp on what they were fighting for. I mean, bombing a building to mark the anniversary of Cuban revolution was way too much. It was not a current event, the Cuban revolution had happened over ten years prior to the bombing; it just didn’t make any sense.

That’s when I believe the Underground had lost their touch on reality; they had taken it too far.

This led me to think of another point, of how the bombings and weapons training even came about. Was Terry Robbins, the member who developed ideas of weapons training and explosives, mentally stable? It seemed that if Robbins had survived and not been killed in his short-circuiting accident, that he was going to carry out an event of mass murder. That would have totally changed the entire foundation of what the Weather Underground was all about. I predict that if Robbins did carry out that initial bombing, and people were injured or killed, that the organization wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. I believe the only way that they were able to get away with such monumental actions was because they were non-lethal.

So were the Weathermen revolutionists or were they simply domestic terrorists? In my opinion, I think that they were extreme revolutionists that were willing to be branded as terrorists or psychopaths or misled youth, because they didn’t care. They could have cared less what the public or government or even what their parents viewed them as; they were willing to give up everything to see that something was done about this war. And I’m sure that there was an outstanding number of people that thought of the Weathermen as total terrorists. But think of it like this, if you were a soldier in Vietnam who was drafted because you were of age, passed the physical test, the whole nine yards, but didn’t want to fight. You were totally against everything that was going on around you and hated the fact that you were being forced to kill; would you define the Weathermen as terrorists? Absolutely not. And that’s where I think I can justify why I think that they were not simply just terrorists but people who saw something that was not right and didn’t just sit around and talk about it, but did something about it. The Weather Underground

Organization is a part of American culture that should be looked back on as something very original and unique to our history. Yes, it was an extreme group and lives were lost, but what if this group never did evolve? How much of an affect did the Underground have on the United

States leaving Vietnam. We may never know, however, we do know that they had a definite effect on what was going on within the United States.

Bibliography

 Much of my information came from the documentary, The Weather Underground. This

film was directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel and gives a very in depth experience of

what this group did and fought for. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343168/

 "The Weather Underground." Independent Lens. Web. 2 Apr. 2011.

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 "The Weather Underground Organization." Terrorist Planet. Web. 2 Apr. 2011.

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 "The Weather Underground." Wikipedia. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.

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