The Weather Underground

Started writing this piece a week ago but couldn’t finish before taking off for a long weekend. Afterwards, it seemed outdated and ready for the ever-expanding ‘incomplete ideas’ folder (as opposed to the circular file which would’ve claimed it back in the days of pens and typewriters). Then i saw this video and this story. Enthusiasm instantly rekindled: if the reactionary right is Seig Heiling itself towards revolt by machete, the left might as well talk about whether reasons for not using violence against the state also pertain when it comes to protecting people from the totally unapologetic, violent wing-nuts whom Sarah Palin and FOX are apparently unleashing for prime time insurrection. Listening to these people, one wonders if a McCain-Palin victory next week will calm them down or embolden them into a frenzy. If Obama wins, i think the answer to this dilemma is fairly obvious. As i mentioned last week, i’m down with Diddy under the covers; friends back home are already warning me to expect long-term guests if these people take over the government (which they will inevitably succeed in destroying; curses on anyone who makes W look moderate). Others i know may well be contemplating various levels of community self-defense, particularly if they’ve had any experience dealing with wild-eyed Israeli settlers.

So, the ironic aspect of the whole Bill Ayers business is that it’s actually not a bad time for people to be thinking about the Weather Underground. Naturally, neither Palin, McCain, nor any of their sheep utter the name of Ayer’s group in the ‘domestic terrorist lover’ attacks against Obama. Bring up the Weathermen and the next thing you know, liberals may start talking about Timothy McVeigh and the dangers posed by “patriotic” militia movements. Ok, that seems unlikely; McCain’s has had to deflect Qs about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy, Grand Master of Patriots Extemperaneous, but the republicans don’t like putting things in context because they rarely know anything about history. However, i also think that liberals, broadly speaking, do not want to have a showdown over insurrectionist politics with people who’ve got NRA tattooed on their biceps and/or spend their weekends casting Satan out of the kids’ playground. As a northerner and northern Californian, i’ve always felt the fundamentalist militia volk were stuck in the shadows, safely removed from the functional majority; now it seems like they’re burrowing out of the leaf litter. On the campaign trail, MoveOn.org type groups are probably right to minimize the role of Ayers in Obama’s political background (somehow i've ended up on all their email lists); however, the Weathermen were not the Klan, they were and still are on my side of the aisle and i’m happy to be inspired to write about them especially in the context of this election and its possible outcomes.

The Weather Underground are one of the few groups in America who actually tried to carry out an armed insurrection. NB: with much less volatile weaponry than is available nowadays. They never came close to the scale of death and destruction in Oklahoma City (1995), for example. Neither secessionists nor racists, they had an analysis that concluded the system of power had to be dismantled and if that required violence… well arguably, there shouldn’t be an ‘if’ in that sentence. During that period, there was so much domestic and really extreme international violence being committed by the US govt that in most any other country, armed opposition would have been considered obvious. (It certainly seemed obvious to the Vietnamese.) In any event, they were worlds away from inciting hate crimes, e.g. the assassination of an afro-american politician, and never believed that they were on a mission from any god. Some activists from that period have maintained that the decision to use violence discredited the nonviolent civilly disobedient anti-war movement and distracted from its goal of stopping the war in Southeast Asia. i’m not going to argue that point either way (would Martin have succeeded without Malcolm? would SDS have controlled the streets without Days of Rage?). What is true is that they did not target individuals in a random way, and after 3 of their own members were killed while working with explosives in a NYC flat, they tried to take measures to ensure that facilities but not people were present at their targets. The FBI were after them, they disappeared for years. Marge Piercy’s VIDA is loosely based on one of their members (Kathy Boudin?) and is a great tale of how hard it was to live outside the law and still be honest, even with oneself.

It’s my view that because the Weathermen (and women) were white kids from mostly elite colleges, e.g. Harvard and Columbia, individually they make an easy target now. What if the FOX-feeding right were to start carrying on about Obama’s ties to former Black Panthers? i think we can agree that they would have dug themselves a very deep hole on that one, being infinitely incapable of dealing with the historical facts of racist violence in a public forum, nor the case for self-defense by those still being gun downed by police who think that being African is a crime. One of the key, threatening things the Weather Underground did was forge political ties with the Panthers; their “War Against America” statement followed the assassination of Fred Hampton, Chairman of Chicago’s Black Panther organization. White revolutionaries crossing the color line at that level was more than even a lot of the anti-war left at the time could cope with, so the last thing anyone wants to discuss on the republicrat stage now are revolutionary movements that have the potential to inspire (especially young people) to engage in heroic fantasies of interracial self-defense. McCain , of course, is happy to talk about supporting the brave troops who are protecting democracy, so long as the discussion doesn’t involve any IVAW vets.

Two great documentaries have been made about the Weather Underground, quite stylistically different. In Emilé D’Antonio’s film, Underground, it’s really clear that the subjects are in hiding and the urgency (or at least awareness) of that permeates nearly every scene. The director-outlaw dynamic is brilliant. More recently (2002), some younger filmmakers who were looking back at a time they, themselves, didn’t directly experience released The Weather Underground as a retrospective documentary, interviewing members of the group in their current locales, including prison. Both films are worth checking out. D’Antonio’s team were subpoenaed by the FBI for information about the Weatherman, and one of the producers, Mary Lampson, had this to say about the group. “The strength of a movement can be judged in part by the government’s reaction to it. Their response to this film has been swift and harsh. They do not want to allow the U.S. people a chance to react to the ideas expressed in this film.” And what ideas is she referring to? ''We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence was itself a form of violence. That's really the part I think is hardest for people to understand.''

Hard then, hard now. Who wants to see political violence rip through the streets of Chicago, NYC, LA again? Only those who would provoke it, i’d like to believe. Thinking today about the Weathermen, we have to ask if “doing nothing” still means not using fire to fight firepower, or could it now just entail staying home doing Sudoku puzzles with the iPod phones securely blocking out all non-self-selected sound? i don’t think the level of violence in our world today has maxed out – for most people – yet we can recognize the correlation between poverty and violence. The Weather Underground’s tactics may not have achieved much more than getting them on the Most Wanted list, but the group’s commitment to supporting their allies, circumventing the racial Other, are certainly worth thinking about today. Describing Bill Ayers as a terrorist has face-value impact on the minds of those who otherwise would never have known he existed, but describing him as a revolutionary? – entirely different because it leads us to ask how today’s revolutionary might, or should, be defined. That, to me, is the more compelling question now, and the Weatherman are an excellent reference point for anyone wanting to have that discussion.

Wrapping up or rounding out this rant, i offer the second half of an interview Jane Fonda did recently with Al-Jazeera. Her observations about being used as a Leftist demon are pertinent as they are interesting. Needless to say, her commitment to being hopeful also, for me, makes her a true maverick (since assigning that label to someone seems to matter in this pre-election week).