The Weather Underground was an American Marxist militant organization active from 1969 until 1977. Originally known as the Weathermen, or simply Weatherman, the group was organized as a faction of the national leadership of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which the WUO believed to be imperialist.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarded the WUO as a domestic terrorist group, with revolutionary positions characterized by Black Power and opposition to the Vietnam War. The "Days of Rage", the WUO's first riot 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".
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 matter 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, but none were killed in any of the bombings. The WUO communiqué issued in connection with its bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, indicated that it was "in protest of the U.S. invasion of Laos". The WUO asserted that its May 19, 1972, bombing of the Pentagon was "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi". On September 28, 1973, an ITT Corporation building in New York was bombed in retaliation for the company's involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. The WUO announced that its January 29, 1975, bombing of the U.S. State Department was "in response" to recent escalation in Vietnam.
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 and continued their activities until that group disbanded in 1985.
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). That Dylan line was also the title of a position paper distributed at an 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".
Background and formation
The Weather Underground emerged from campus-based opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War as well as from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, particularly from the emergence of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), one of the leading organizations in the New Left.
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 the SDS 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.
In the late 1960s, United States military action in Southeast Asia escalated, especially in the Vietnam War. In the U.S., anti-war sentiment was particularly pronounced during the 1968 presidential election. Around this time, the 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 the 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 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:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
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:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
In July 1969, thirty members of Weathermen leadership traveled to Cuba and met with North Vietnamese representatives to gain from their revolutionary experience. 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.
SDS Convention, 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.
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. The collective's first target was Judge John Murtagh, who was overseeing the trial of the "Panther 21".
The second major decision was the dissolution of the SDS. After the group's fragmentation in the summer of 1969, the Weathermen's adherents explicitly claimed themselves to be the true leadership of the organization and retained control of the National Office. Thereafter, any leaflet, label or logo bearing the name "Students for a Democratic Society" (SDS) was in fact the views and politics of the Weathermen, not of the slate elected by the PLP. The Weathermen contained the vast majority of former SDS National Committee members, including Dohrn, Mark Rudd, David Gilbert and Vernon T. Grizzard. The group, while small, was able to commandeer the mantle of SDS and all of its membership lists, but with the Weathermen in charge there was little or no support from local branches or members of the old organization, and local chapters soon disbanded. At the War Council, the Weathermen had decided to close the SDS National Office, ending an organization which at its peak included 100,000 members just a few years earlier.
Ideology
The thesis of Weatherman theory, as expounded in its founding document, "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows", was that "the main struggle going on in the world today is between U.S. imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it", based on Vladimir Lenin's theory of imperialism, first expounded in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). In Weatherman theory "oppressed peoples" are the creators of the wealth of empire, and "the goal of revolutionary struggle must be the control and use of this wealth in the interest of the oppressed peoples of the world" in the service of establishing "world communism".
Vietnam and other third world countries, as well as third world people within the United States, were to play a vanguard role. They "set the terms for class struggle in America ...". The role of the "Revolutionary Youth Movement" was to build a centralized organization of revolutionaries, a "Marxist–Leninist Party" supported by a mass revolutionary movement to support international liberation movements and "open another battlefield of the revolution."
The theoretical basis of the Revolutionary Youth Movement was an insight that most of the American population, including both students and the supposed "middle class", comprised, due to their relationship to the instruments of production, the working class, thus the organizational basis of the SDS, which had begun in the elite colleges and had been extended to public institutions as the organization grew could be extended to youth as a whole including students, those serving in the military, and the unemployed. Students could be viewed as workers gaining skills prior to employment. This contrasted to the Progressive Labor view which viewed students and workers as being in separate categories which could ally, but should not jointly organize.
FBI analysis of the travel history of the founders and initial followers of the organization emphasized contacts with foreign governments, particularly the Cuban and North Vietnamese and their influence on the ideology of the organization. Participation in the Venceremos Brigade, a program which involved U.S. students volunteering to work in the sugar harvest in Cuba, is highlighted as a common factor in the background of the founders of the Weather Underground, with China a secondary influence. This experience was cited by both Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn as a major influence on their political development.
Terry Robbins took the organization's name from the lyrics of the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", which featured the lyrics "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." The lyrics had been quoted at the bottom of an influential essay in the SDS newspaper, New Left Notes. By using this title the Weathermen meant, partially, to appeal to the segment of U.S. youth inspired to action for social justice by Dylan's songs.
The Weatherman group had long held that militancy was becoming more important than nonviolent forms of anti-war action, and that campus-based demonstrations needed to be punctuated with more dramatic actions which had the potential to interfere with the U.S. military and internal security apparatus. The belief was that these types of urban guerrilla actions would act as a catalyst for the coming revolution. Many international events indeed seemed to support the Weathermen's overall assertion that worldwide revolution was imminent, such as the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China; the 1968 student revolts in France, Mexico City and elsewhere; the Prague Spring; the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association; the emergence of the Tupamaros organization in Uruguay; the emergence of the Guinea-Bissauan Revolution and similar Marxist-led independence movements throughout Africa; and within the U.S., the prominence of the Black Panther Party, together with a series of "ghetto rebellions" throughout poor black neighborhoods across the country.