It was Nixon's first courtroom appearance since his resignation in 1974. "The Right Punishment for F.B.I. 1972)", United States vs. Gelbard, 443 F.2d 837 (1971), "Prairie fire : the politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism : the political statement of the Weather Underground. We wanted to say, "No, what we're going to do is whatever we had to do to stop the violence in Vietnam. Media in category "Weather Underground" The following 4 files are in this category, out of 4 total. Aide Sees 'Scapegoat' Role". By the end of April, the FBI offices were to terminate all files dealing with leftist groups. [45][46][47], Weather maintained that their stance differed from the rest of the movements at the time in the sense that they predicated their critiques on the notion that they were engaged in "an anti-imperialist, anti-racist struggle". Although the charge carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, Felt was fined $5,000. A member of the Weather Underground and other radical organizations which used violence as a tool for political… The Palestinian terrorist group Black September holds Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich. ", International Movement And Research: Social Movements and Violence: Participation in Underground Organizations, Volume 4, (Greenwich: Jai Press, 1992. The most well-publicized of these tactics were the "black-bag jobs," referring to searches conducted in the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weatherman. Some attacks were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with threats identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. [108] The Weather Underground faced accusations of abandonment of the revolution by reversing their original ideology. The younger members of the working class became the focus of the organizing effort because they felt the oppression strongly in regards to the military draft, low-wage jobs, and schooling. It is in schools that the youth of the nation become alienated from the authentic processes of learning about the world. The sixties. New York: New York University Press; Pg. [citation needed], In 2003, Weather Underground members stated in interviews that they had wanted to convince the American public that the United States was truly responsible for the calamity in Vietnam. The WUO organized in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society(SDS) largely composed of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. (2002). The police killing of Panther Fred Hampton prompted the Weatherman to issue a declaration of war upon the United States government. 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 success of the Democratic National Convention protests in August 1968 and reflected Jacobs' strong advocacy of direct action.[17]. In 1970, the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government under the name "Weather Underground Organization". Use the HTML below. With the help from Clayton Van Lydegraf, the Weather Underground sought a more Marxist–Leninist ideological approach to the post-Vietnam reality. That Dylan line was also the title of a position paper distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. [6] The group began striking at night, bombing empty offices, with warnings always issued in advance to ensure a safe evacuation. The FBI described the WUO as a domestic terrorist group,[3] with revolutionary positions characterized by black power and opposition to the Vietnam War. Growing up Underground. At this juncture, WUO shrank considerably, becoming even fewer than they had been when first formed. [81] Justice Murtagh and his family were unharmed, but two panes of a front window were shattered, an overhanging wooden eave was scorched, and the paint on a car in the garage was charred. Oughton, Gold, and Robbins were killed; Wilkerson and Boudin escaped unharmed. Weather Underground, also called Weather Underground Organization, formerly Weatherman, militant group of young white Americans formed in 1969 that grew out of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Weather Underground carried out violent actions against the government, including bombings at NYPD headquarters, the U.S. Capitol building, … The League had two student subsidiaries, a Student League for Industrial Democracy which came into exist… and Jeff Jones, editors (2006). After eight postponements, the case against Felt and Miller went to trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on September 18, 1980. Spellbound follows eight teenagers on their quest to win the 1999 National Spelling Bee. 6946, and S. 2043 false identification, May 5, 1982. [citation needed], According to Dan Berger a relatively sophisticated program of armed propaganda was adopted. "Terrorists terrorize," he argues, "they kill innocent civilians, while we organized and agitated. They smashed the windows of a bank and those of many cars. [81] The judge's house had been under hourly police surveillance and an unidentified woman called the police a few minutes before the explosions to report several prowlers there, which resulted in a police car being sent immediately to the scene. It was intended to make group members believe that they were, deep down, white supremacists by subjecting them to constant criticism to break them down. [103][104][105][citation needed] The decisions in these cases led directly to the subsequent resignation of FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray, and the federal indictments of W. Mark Felt or "Deep Throat" and Edwin Miller and which, earlier, was the factor leading to the removal of federal "most-wanted" status against members of the Weather Underground leadership in 1973. The remaining Weather Underground members continued to attack U.S. institutions. [22] Mark Rudd turned himself in to authorities on January 20, 1978. Acid Christ: Ken Kesey, LSD and the Politics of Ecstasy. [75], One of the first acts of the Weathermen after splitting from SDS was to announce they would hold the "Days of Rage" that autumn. Harold Jacobs ed., Weatherman, (Ramparts Press, 1970), 508-511. Officials Accused in Break-ins". Charles Manson was an obsession with the group and Bernardine Dohrn claimed he truly understood the iniquity of white America, with the Manson family being praised for the murder of Sharon Tate; Dorn's cell subsequently made its salute a four-fingered gesture that represented the "fork" used to stab Tate. An in-depth look at the rise and fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, including interviews with the scandalized, former politician. [116], The indictment charged violations of Title 18, Section 241 of the United States Code. The Weather Underground was referred to as a terrorist group by articles in The New York Times, United Press International, and Time Magazine. The lyrics had been quoted at the bottom of an influential essay in the SDS newspaper, New Left Notes. The police claimed they shot in self-defense, although a controversy arose when the Panthers, other activists and a Chicago newspaper reporter presented visual evidence, as well as the testimony of an FBI ballistics expert, showing that the sleeping Panthers were not resisting arrest and fired only one shot, as opposed to the more than one hundred the police fired into the apartment. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate. The way the wind blew. The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), commonly known as the Weather Underground, was a radical left militant organization active in the late 1960s and 1970s, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. 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". [136] Weather members then wrote in response to her manifesto. Neon Night Riders 2. The survivors of the raid were all charged with assault and attempted murder. [22] This was "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi. [90] The communiqué included taunts towards the FBI, daring them to try to find the group, whose members were spread throughout the United States. In direct actions, dubbed Jailbreaks, Weather members invaded educational institutions as a means by which to recruit high school and college students. Weather underground organization. Six Weathermen were shot by the police and an unknown number injured; 68 rioters were arrested. This page was last edited on 6 May 2021, at 05:02. San Francisco, CA. The FBI refers to the organization in a 2004 news story titled "Byte out of History" published on its website as having been a "domestic terrorist group" that is no longer an active concern. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. : Inside the Agency, p. 194. [148] He has since claimed that he was misquoted. [117], Felt and Miller attempted to plea bargain with the government, willing to agree to a misdemeanor guilty plea to conducting searches without warrants—a violation of 18 U.S.C. [122] Felt and Miller appealed the verdict, and they were later pardoned by Ronald Reagan.[123]. The robbery was violent, resulting in the deaths of three people including Waverly Brown, the first black police officer on the Nyack police force. Was this review helpful to you? Beginning in 1974, the organization's express political goal was to create a re… Despite the change in their legal status, the Weather Underground remained underground for a few more years. The Weather Underground . 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. Other radical groups worldwide applauded the bombing, illustrated by German youths protesting against American military systems in Frankfurt. [73] The city rebuilt the statue and unveiled it on May 4, 1970, but the Weathermen blew it up as well on October 6, 1970. This documentary follows the 2002 mayoral campaign in Newark, New Jersey in which a City Councilman, Cory Booker, attempted to unseat longtime mayor Sharpe James. 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. 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. The idea was to create an umbrella organization for all radical groups. Crying For Sleep 2020's tense, tectonic unrest is a fitting foreground for Andrew Morrison's freshest slab of bruised and blasted Cyclist productions, Weather Underground. Throughout the underground years, the Weather Underground members worked closely with their counterparts in other organizations, including Jane Alpert, to bring attention their further actions to the press. For the youth political movement, seemingly ineffectual methods of peaceful protest and resistance led to the rise of a faction that wanted a more extreme approach that the government could not ignore. The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding and establishing an above-ground revolutionary mass movement. Within 15 minutes, more than half the crowd had been arrested. New York: Morrow & Co, Inc. No byline, UPI wire story, "Weathermen Got Name From Song: Groups Latest Designation Is Weather Underground", as published in. The Weather Underground hoped to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country. They were making the bombs in order to kill Army soldiers and non-commissioned officers (NCO) who would be attending an NCO dance at Fort Dix, and to randomly kill people in Butler Library at Columbia University. "These are things I am not proud of, and I find it hard to speak publicly about them and to tease out what was right from what was wrong. [22][107] The name came from a quote by Mao Zedong, "a single spark can set a prairie fire." Weather warned that other political theories, including those addressing class interests or youth interests, were "bound to lead in a racist and chauvinist direction". James Merrill memorialized the event in his poem 18 West 11th Street, the address of the brownstone townhouse. In 1973, the FBI established the "Special Target Information Development" program, where agents were sent undercover to penetrate the Weather Underground. [22], On June 9, 1970, a bomb made with ten sticks of dynamite exploded in the 240 Centre Street, the headquarters of the New York City Police Department. This Oscar-nominated documentary interweaves extensive archival material with modern-day interviews to explore the incredible story of The Weather Underground. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. "[6] After the Greenwich Village explosion, in a review of the documentary film The Weather Underground (2002), a Guardian journalist restated the film's contention that no one was killed by WUO bombs.[85]. Revolutionary violence is the only way. In the manifesto compiled by Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and Celia Sojourn, entitled "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism," Weatherman explained that their intention was to encourage the people and provoke leaps in confidence and consciousness in an attempt to stir the imagination, organize the masses, and join in the people's day-to-day struggles in every way possible. [73][74] The city rebuilt the statue once again, and Mayor Richard J. Daley posted a 24-hour police guard to protect it,[73] but the Weathermen destroyed the third one, as well. The Weather Underground The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), commonly known as the Weather Underground, was a radical left militant organization active in the late 1960s and 1970s, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. The indictment charged Felt and the others "did unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to injure and oppress citizens of the United States who were relatives and acquaintances of the Weatherman fugitives, in the free exercise and enjoyments of certain rights and privileges secured to them by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America. Prairie Fire urged people to never "dissociate mass struggle from revolutionary violence". The Times is … [https://books.google.com/books?id=mi2G28ZcmvsC&pg=PA243 243. [22][131], Boudin, Clark, and Gilbert were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy terms in prison. [16] 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 rioting lasted about half an hour, during which 28 policemen were injured. The explosion was preceded by a warning about six minutes prior to the detonation and was followed by a WUO claim of responsibility. [110] The Prairie Fire Collective faction started to surrender to the authorities from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. [9][22][25][76], For the next two days, the Weathermen held no rallies or protests. [9][76], The Days of Rage cost Chicago and the state of Illinois about $183,000 ($100,000 for National Guard expenses, $35,000 in damages, and $20,000 for one injured citizen's medical expenses). Most modern sources lean towards a much larger number than the FBI reference. Initially, a group called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society was founded to "throw light on the world wide movement toward industrial democracy known as socialism". [137][138][139] The group also fell under the auspices of the FBI-New York City Police Anti Terrorist Task Force, a forerunner of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces. 2357 (1972)], reversing, "New York Times.com/archives/1972/"Barnard Coed Subpoenaed to Seattle". [130], Within two years, many members turned themselves in after taking advantage of President Jimmy Carter's amnesty for draft dodgers. They charged the police but broke into small groups; more than 1,000 police counter-attacked. )[120] Writing in The New York Times a week after the conviction, Roy Cohn claimed that Felt and Miller were being used as scapegoats by the Carter administration and that it was an unfair prosecution. Congress. Though the October 8, 1969, rally in Chicago had failed to draw as many as the Weathermen had anticipated, the two or three hundred who did attend shocked police by rioting through the affluent Gold Coast neighborhood. Four months afterwards the cases were dismissed. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? [83], The site of the Village explosion was the former residence of Charles Merrill, co-founder of the Merrill Lynch brokerage firm, and the childhood home of his son James Merrill. The latter document outlined the position of the group that would become the Weathermen. Jacobs, R. (1997). "[6], The Weathermen called for the overthrow of the United States government. [65], Factions of the Weatherman organization began recruiting members by applying their own strategies. Broken Down 2. According to Bill Ayers in the late 1970s, the Weatherman group further split into two factions—the May 19th Communist Organization and the Prairie Fire Collective—with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers in the latter. They began with participation in street riots, and escalated their efforts to include the bombing of specific targets associated with the government or local power structures. Committee on the Judiciary. Starting in … One particular group, the Weather Underground, attempted to team up with the Black Panthers to violently confront the US government. However, the event turned sour when Hispanic and Black groups accused the Weather Underground and the Prairie Fire Committee of limiting their roles in racial issues. The group was devastated by the loss of their friends, and in late April 1970, members of the Weathermen met in California to discuss what had happened in New York and the future of the organization. Dohrn, Bernardine. According to "Prairie Fire", young people are channeled, coerced, misled, miseducated, misused in the school setting. [17] Jacobs was one of Robbins' biggest supporters, and pushed the Weathermen to let Robbins be as violent as he wanted to be. ), 67. With their ranks decimated and increasingly isolated, the Weatherman group adopted an "underground" strategy With most WUO members facing the limited criminal charges (most charges had been dropped by the government in 1973) against them creating an above ground organization was more feasible. Senate. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/weather-underground-bombings One of the factors that contributed to the radicalization of SDS members was the Economic Research and Action Project that the SDS undertook in Northern urban neighborhoods from 1963 to 1968. [25] In fact, the Weathermen eventually created only three significant, active collectives; one in California, one in the Midwest, and one in New York City. They ultimately concluded that members of the Black Liberation Army were responsible, with whom WUO members were affiliated. [81] "Free the Panther 21" and "Viet Cong have won" were written in large red letters on the sidewalk in front of the judge's house at 529 W. 217th Street in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. [22], Some members remained underground and joined splinter radical groups. "[143], Others, however, have suggested that these arguments are specious. Senate. [54], To try to turn their members into hardened revolutionaries and to promote solidarity and cohesion, members of collectives engaged in intensive criticism sessions which attempted to reconcile their prior and current activities to Weathermen doctrine. This documentary tells the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, one of the 20th century's most alluring and controversial organizations that captivated the world's attention for nearly 50 years. Large amounts of tear gas were used, and at least twice police ran squad cars into the mob. Such an alliance would, according to Weather, "help create the 'sea' for the guerrillas to swim in".[106]:76–77. A group led by Klonsky became known as RYM II, and the other side, 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 Vietnam War. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Get a sneak peek of the new version of this page. This FAQ is empty. They "set the terms for class struggle in America ..."[33] The role of the "Revolutionary Youth Movement" is 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. [41], The Weatherman group had long held that militancy was becoming more important than nonviolent forms of anti-war action, and that university 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. They also aimed to convince people to resist reliance upon their given privilege and to rebel and take arms if necessary. Kessler, F.B.I. Cohn wrote it was the "final dirty trick" and that there had been no "personal motive" to their actions. East coast members favored a commitment to violence and challenged commitments of old leaders, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones. Into mainstream society without repudiating their violent activities [ 148 ] he has since claimed that he misquoted... Olympic Games in Munich 's work of 1970 ' call for violent revolution expenses running over $ 600,000 infiltrated the. Dead won a $ 1.8 million settlement from the government or police did to pick that. Some attacks were preceded by a warning about six minutes prior to the early 1980s opposing racism and imperialism destroyed... ], two weeks would pass without any occurrence members would be berated up. Argues that by 1977 the WUO members 1971, the government or police did of Conscience,.. Rudd, David Gilbert and Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Communiques of the were. People prior to the accidental town House explosion page was last edited on May. Anti-War sentiment was particularly pronounced during the 1968 U.S. presidential election members for his and. By 1977 the WUO took part in domestic attacks such as the clandestine organization showed to the Underground... Wuo as terrorist in his poem 18 West 11th street, the Weather Underground,.! Enough explosives to `` Prairie Fire organizing Committee in several American cities U.S. bombing raid Hanoi. 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