The summer of 1966 was a heated one.  It was also the birth of the Black Power movement.  Stokely Carmichael first raised the
slogan of Black Power during freedom actions in southern communities and the message of militant black struggle quickly spread
throughout the country.  That summer in Cleveland, a large riot took place in the area where Ayers and the others lived.  It was their first
real taste of raw anger and real, vicious, police repression. In the aftermath of the riots Stokely Carmichael traveled to Cleveland to give
a speech to the community.  Ayers and members of the Community Union attended the event.  Carmichael spoke:  “We can’t wait for
white people to decide whether we’re worthy of our freedom.  We must take our freedom.”   White movement activists around the
country understood the words of Charmichael.  Black people did not need white saviors; they would do for themselves.  Ayers and his
roommate Terry Robins agreed.  A short time later they left Cleveland and moved back to Ann-Arbor to organize the white community.  
The experience of the Community Union in Cleveland would give Ayers and Robins a foundation in the tactics of legal grassroots
organizing, and would provide a concrete example for the early Weather Underground Organization that legal, non-violent activism was
not going achieve a revolution in the U.S.
During this same time period, across the country in Oakland California, another event took place that would forever change the
atmosphere of revolutionary social struggle in the United States. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for
Self Defense.  A 10-point program for the organization of the Party was published and the Panthers took up Arms to patrol the
community in defense against racist police attacks.   The actions of the Panthers would provide an example of the usefulness of
armed resistance for the new left- an example that would heavily inform Weathermen.
 Back across on the other side of the country, in New York, Mark Rudd had spent the years of 1966 and 1967 organizing with S.D.S
against war and racism on the campus of Columbia University. Since early 1967 S.D.S. had re applied itself to organizing on college
campuses across the country and by 1968 the organization had achieved a massive membership of 100,000.  It was estimated that by
this time up to 20 percent of college students supported S.D.S.  Large increases in S.D.S membership came after a week long series
of protests in 1967 organized by S.D.S and other New Left organizations, entitled Stop the Draft Week.    These protests played out the
changing tactics and rhetoric of S.D.S during the preceding year.  Tom Hayden, one of the authors of the 1962 Port Huron Statement
was still a major figure in the New Left and his pre Stop the Draft week speeches embodied the changing outlook of S.D.S.  Hayden
gave support to the emerging militant black power movement and made reference to guerilla struggle as a tactic that the new left
should be paying close attention to.   As part of the “Stop the Draft Week” demonstrations, (on Monday October 16th, 1967 in Berkley
California), three thousand activists stormed the streets and shut down the local army induction center.  124 were arrested in roaming
street battles with police.  On October 21, 1967, in Washington DC, 50,000 people assembled to shut down the Pentagon and
engaged U.S. marshals in militant, illegal protest.   
 It was in this context that the beginnings of the Weather Underground began to take shape in 1967.  In Ann-Arbor Michigan, two future
leaders of the Weather Underground heavily influenced the local S.D.S chapter and formed a faction know as the Jesse James Gang;
these leaders were Bill Ayers, and Terry Robins.  The two consistently argued for more militant tactics in the movement.  Back in New
York, at Columbia University, Mark Rudd had risen to leadership in the S.D.S chapter there and would lead an event that shaped the
positions of much of the future members of the Weather Underground across the country - in April of 1968 this event occurred on the
Campus of Columbia University in New York.  This action became know as the Columbia Uprising.  The Uprising was a two-part
story.  One part was anger over failed attempts to petition the Administration of the college to end its involvement with the Institute for
Defense Analysis (IDA).  The IDA was a federal government funded project that researched weapons and riot-control technology. One
of its 12 facilities was housed on the Michigan Campus.   The other part was a gymnasium being built in a predominately black
neighborhood near the college - against the wishes of many community groups from the area.  On April 23, 1968, a section of
Columbia S.D.S. known as the “Action Faction” Led by Mark Rudd, Ted Gold, and John Jacobs (all future Weather Underground
Members) organized a student march to the administration offices to demand that charges be dropped against students who had
been placed on administrative probation for an earlier protest against the I.D.A.  When the S.D.S. students arrived at the offices, a
scuffle ensued with a group of right wing students.  
 Something broke free that day; a spirit of revolt enveloped the S.D.S students.  A march stormed towards the new gymnasium.  When
students arrived they tore down a fence and engaged police officers trying to block their entrance.  The march then headed back to
campus and the students proceeded to occupy four buildings .  Once inside the students barricaded the buildings.  Inside the offices
of the University President Grayson Kirk, the students drank his sherry and smoked his cigars, and most importantly they liberated
documents from his files that detailed the universities connections with the I.D.A.  After occupying the buildings for a week, and
attracting national attention, the police moved in on the students at the request of university administrators.  In a brutal attack, police
clubbed and maced their way into the buildings and arrested 692 students.   Immediately after the arrests, the National Lawyers Guild
set out to provide legal representation to those arrested at the action.  One of the N.L.G. lawyers was a 28-year-old woman named
Bernardine Dohrn .  Dohrn would soon become national president of S.D.S and later, a leading figure in the Weather Underground.  
The Columbia Occupation served to convince radical members of S.D.S across the country that the Powers that be would stop at
nothing, would use no restraint, in their efforts to hold back the forces of revolution in the country.  The battle had been lost but the war
had just begun.  Non-violence theory died for many that day in the buildings of Columbia University.
         By 1969, the winds were changing and the forces that would give birth to the Weather Underground began to congeal.  The Anti-
War movement was nearing its peak in the country.  The Stop the Draft week had drawn tens of thousands to the streets in 1967.  In
1968 thousands were again in the streets at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  The Columbia Occupation still weighed
heavy on everyone’s minds.  The Black Power movement had grown around the country and chapters of the Black Panther Party were
established in nearly every major city.  Martin Luther King had been assassinated.  Police had engaged in shootouts with various
Black Nationalist groups throughout the nation.  Urban riots had burned in many major cities across the country.  The F.B.I. had
initiated a program known as cointelpro (counter intelligence program) to disrupt and infiltrate leftist and revolutionary groups around
the nation.  All of this and the government still pushed forward with its war against the people of Vietnam.
In December of 1968, the Tet offensive took place in Vietnam with N.L.F.  forces attacking nearly every major city in the South, at one
point even taking control of the U.S. embassy in Siagon.  Though the Tet offensive was eventually beat back, it served to show the
militant anti war forces within the United States that armed struggle by a peoples army could inflict major blows to U.S imperialism .  
This was the context in which the National S.D.S. convention took place on June 18th, 1969.
 From June 18 to the 22nd, 1969 the National S.D.S convention took place in Chicago.  For the past year divisions had been brewing
over tactics and ideology within S.D.S, and these factional divisions festered into a rupture during this convention.  S.D.S had a
national membership of over 100,000 people and vastly more considered themselves supporters.  The power that could be wielded by
the control of the organization was great and this fact led to maneuverings for power in order to take control over the ideological and
tactical foundations of S.D.S.  The stakes were impressive given the general context outlined above.  On June 18th the first day of the
Convention, all delegates were issued the newest issue of New Left Notes, the newsletter of S.D.S.  Within that issue was a position
piece entitled “You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”  The piece was authored by Karen Ashley, Bill Ayers,
Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long , Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd, and Steve Tappis.  
These people were representative of a group that congealed after the Columbia occupation, a faction of S.D.S who wanted to move S.
D.S toward increasingly militant struggle with and anti-imperialist outlook, not merely an anti-war sentiment.  This position paper was
the birth of the Weathermen.
 The document was a complex and intricate position paper, designed to lay out an ideology and tactical unity that could mould S.D.S
into a militant anti-imperialist organization.  The document began with an overview of the international revolutionary situation, and laid
out a rational for the adoption of a position that came to be known as revolutionary internationalism.  The first section of the document
makes references to armed struggle in various areas of the world.  It stated, “we determine who are our friends and who are our
enemies according to whether they help U.S imperialism or fight to defeat it.”   The first section also lays out the connections between
U.S. wealth and 3rd world poverty.  It stated that the relative wealth enjoyed even by the poor sectors of U.S. society, and the extravagant
wealth horded by the nations upper class, is ill gotten.  It stated that this wealth was the result of the theft of labor and resources from
the third world colonies.
An overall strategy for the destruction of imperialism was detailed in the document.  It stated that, as each successive peoples
struggle around the world is born, the U.S. would have to respond militarily to protect its imperial interests.  Eventually, the U.S. forces
will spread themselves too thin. At the right moment, revolutionaries within the United States were to wage people’s war and attack
from within.  The government would fall and “world communism” would eventually be instituted.
 The second section dealt with the correct position for white revolutionaries in the “mother country” to take in regards to the Black
liberation struggle.  First, the Black communities of the United States were to be understood as colonies within the Imperial homeland
(U.S.).  Just as colonies around the world were rising against imperialism, so too were the black colonies within the U.S.  Therefore,
the black liberation movement would necessarily have to be the revolutionary vanguard.  The Black Panther Party would lead the
revolutionary war in the “ belly of the beast”.  The job of white revolutionaries, according to the document, was to support the black
liberation struggle, as well as to organize white people into revolutionary organizations that could receive leadership from blacks when
the revolutionary war broke out.
 Other sections of the Weatherman position paper dealt with what it called “ United Front” politics.  It stated that the revolutionary
situation in the United States would necessarily be different from situations in the 3rd world colonies due to the fact that the United
States was the homeland territory of imperialism.  It stated that Class politics were different in the United States due to the spoils of
imperialism; crumbs of which kept otherwise potentially revolutionary segments of the population from revolting.  This section laid out
which classes in the United States would be potential friends to the revolution and which class groups would necessarily be
enemies.  These enemy groups were marked for destruction.
 The last sections dealt with the necessity of building a new Communist Party based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.  The
tactics for building such a party were to be divided into two parts.  The first part was the formation of underground cadre organizations
that would begin attack against imperialist power positions within the US.  These cadre organizations would weaken the government
and inspire the people.  The second part was the formation of above ground organizations that would lend support to the cadre
groupings and educate the general public.  As time went on and processes of internal criticism were carried out, the correct
revolutionary position would manifest itself.  With this position, a Party could be formed to lead the revolutionary War.    The preceding
was just a short overview of a very long and complex document, but shows that the weathermen were serious and were beginning
with a thought out, and coherent plan that they hoped would unite the new left into a powerful revolutionary anti-imperialist movement.  
Within one year from the publication of “You don’t need a Weatherman…” its authors, and close to 100 others had formed the Weather
Underground Organization.  Choosing to create an underground cadre organization to attack imperial interests from within, just as it
was laid out in their position document.
 The impact of the Weather Position paper on the S.D.S. convention is hard to determine.  Bill Ayers himself stated years later: “To all
but those fully initiated in the sectarian battles of the day, the Weatherman paper was incomprehensible in large parts.”   However, the
position paper was taken seriously enough by the F.B.I. to include it, along with an analysis, into its hundreds of pages of
documentation on the Weatherman .  Regardless of the papers impact on the convention, the personalities involved with its
authorship had an influence of profound proportions on S.D.S during the convention.
The main issue at stake during the convention had to do with a faction in S.D.S called P.L.  P.L. stood for the Progressive Labor Party, it
was not really a faction of S.D.S as much as it was an already formed communist party that sought to infiltrate and force S.D.S towards
its own line.  For years, P.L. members at S.D.S meetings would arrive as “voting blocks” and were able to have an influence over S.D.S
that was disproportional to their numbers.  The main point of contention at the S.D.S. convention was over P.L.’s position on Vietnam
and the N.L.F.  P.L. believed that North Vietnam was selling out the international anti-imperialist struggle because it was negotiating
with the U.S., and P.L. opposed Castro and Cuban policy for being “lackeys of soviet revisionism.”    In short, P.L. stood directly contrary
to the prevailing ideology of S.D.S.  The Progressive Labor party fancied themselves to be ultra-revolutionaries, but their positions
seem to have been disconnected from any type of objective reality.  They were hyper-ideological to the point of becoming irrelevant.
 By the end of the three-day conference, the Weatherman faction had taken control of S.D.S. and expelled P.L from the organization.  
The newly voted in national officers now consisted of Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, and Jeff Jones, all of whom were Weathermen.  One
additional thing was decided on at that convention;  S.D.S. was to have a national day of action in October.  The location would be
Chicago. The organizing committee for the action would consist of Kathy Boudin, Bernardine Dohrn, and Terry Robbins, along with the
national officers. The protests would be entitled “Days of Rage.”
 This was the beginning point of the Weathermen, and for the next six months the newly founded organization would seek to develop
its tactics and prove to themselves, and the rest of the left, that they were serious and dedicated - that they had what it was going to
take to bring down the Empire. The first thing the weathermen got to work on to show the world that they were serious was the task of
organizing for the Days of Rage demonstrations.  The weathermen had decided that this protest would not be traditional.  There would
be no permits for this protest, in fact this would not really be a protest at all; what they were organizing for was a battle with the police of
Chicago, both to avenge those brutalized at the 68 Democratic convention, and to show the “Pigs” that an army of revolutionary white
youth was being developed to fight the forces of repression.  A Marxist philosopher from San Jose State University named Herbert
Marcuse informed this method of action.  Marcuse had developed the idea of  “repressive tolerance”, which stated that legal, non-
violent protest only served to legitimate the lies of freedom in America, and provide a safety valve for dissent that would allow the
powers of imperialism to continue with their policies.  The weathermen wanted to smash this set up.   They wanted to expose the
fascist underbelly of the U.S. system.  In one of the last published issues of New Left Notes, the weathermen laid out the purpose for
the Days of Rage confrontation:
It will be a different action.  An action not only against a single war or a “foreign policy,” but against the whole imperialist system that
made that war a necessity.  An action not only for immediate withdrawal of all U.S. occupation troops, but in support of the heroic fight
of the Vietnamese people and the National Liberation Front for freedom and independence.  An action not only to bring “peace for
Vietnam,” but beginning to establish another front against imperialism right here in America- to “ bring the war home.”

 One month after the S.D.S. convention, a delegation of weathermen including Bernardine Dohrn, Teddy Gold, and Diana Oughton
traveled to Cuba with a delegation of other American anti war activists to meet with a delegation of Vietnamese to discuss strategy for
ending the war.   One month later, in August, another weatherman named Linda Evans traveled to North Vietnam.   These were not the
first visits, nor the last visits between Vietnamese, Cubans, and North Americans during the years of the Vietnam War.  The F.B.I
meticulously documented such travels, and were convinced that the connections being built were more than just ones of friendship
and solidarity and a sharing of ideas. However, there is no evidence in any new left, or F.B.I. documents, that I have come across
which shows any type of material connections.
After three months of organizing for the Days of Rage, the Weathermen expected to draw thousands of anti-imperialist youth to
Chicago to fight the police and show America and the world that a fighting force of white youth was forming in the Imperial homeland.  
The turnout was less than expected.  Estimations of numbers vary from 200-800.  Regardless of the estimates of numbers what’s
certain is that the Weathermen made good on their promise to battle the police in the streets of Chicago.  Participants arrived dressed
for combat.  Nearly everyone had helmets, padded clothing, steel-toed boots, goggles, and blunt weapon’s to be used for beating
police (pigs) and trashing capitalist property.  At the gathering place for the protest, a large bonfire was built where the weathermen
gathered to hear a few short speeches.  Soon Bernardine Dohrn took the crowds attention: “Brothers and Sisters. It’s time for mother
country radicals to take our place in the worldwide struggle.  Its time to bring the war home….Tonight is the anniversary of Che’s
murder. But Che’s death has not killed the revolution.”  Loud cheers of “venceremos” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” filled the air.   After two
other short speeches by Jeff Jones and Tom Hayden the crowd burst, running toward the streets of Chicago’s gold coast.
The crowd rampaged through the streets of Chicago smashing every manifestation of capital and imperialism that was in their path.  
Broken glass littered the street in their wake.  When confronted by police barricades the weathermen charged full force into them and
engaged in hand-to-hand combat.  The battles were fierce.  By the end of the evening there had been 75 arrests. Twenty-one police
officers (pigs) had been hospitalized and an unknown number of weathermen injured.  There were three documented cases of gun
shot wounds sustained by weathermen fighters.
 Soon after the action, attempts were made by the weatherman leadership to claim victory in the action. Though they had been brutally
defeated physically, it was rationalized that they had done what they set out to do; they had fought the police on the streets, they had
brought the war home.  The action was viewed as reminiscent of Castro’s failed revolt in Granma, Cuba where his forces were routed
and Castro and Che were imprisoned.  The weathermen reminded everyone on the left that, having lost that battle; Castro and Che
would later go on to lead the Cuban revolution to victory.
 After the Days of Rage, the weathermen central committee, based in Chicago, began to entertain the idea of going underground.  
Many of the top leadership had been arrested and those who had not were wanted.  The F.B.I had increased its surveillance of the
group and the Senate Committee of International Security opened up their own investigation into the weathermen.  These government
agencies believed that foreign governments were controlling the weathermen and that they constituted a serious threat to national
security.  Finally, on December 4th, 1969 an event took place that would cement the decision to go underground and would incite the
weathermen to wage guerilla warfare against the government of the United States.
 While sleeping in his bed, Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party, was assassinated by Chicago police.   
Though Hampton had been critical of what he viewed as the dangerous adventurism of the weathermen, he was still viewed as a
comrade in struggle and his loss sent the weathermen and many others across the country over the edge.  Mark Rudd (in a recent
interview) described the effect that Hampton’s murder had on the weathermen:
For the police to have murdered him so blatantly, I think it was incredibly decisive.  I think a lot of people felt like this was starting to be
Germany in the 1930’s, when people you knew would start to get gunned down.  I think it felt like this was the time to do something,
because if you waited too long it was going to be too late.

Before going underground the weathermen staged decided to stage one last above ground effort to push the American left towards
armed struggle and to display their own militancy and determination.  The event was titled “The National War Council.”  The gathering
was advertised as an anti-war conference for militants to discuss strategy, theory, and tactics but due to the context and insanity of the
times, it came to represent a vocal display of pure violence, hatred and insanity on the part of the weathermen; the conference was a
temporary descent into madness.
 Upon entrance to the Flint Michigan ballroom where the council was held, Tod Gitlin describes the surroundings:
A huge cardboard machine gun hung from the ceiling.  A twenty-foot poster depicted bullets attached ecumenically to the Weatherman’
s enemies’ list: Mayor Daley of Chicago, Humphrey, Johnson, Nixon, Regan, the Guardian (newspaper), and Sharon Tate…The
slogans were “ Piece Now,” “Sirhan Sirhan Power,” “Red Army Power.”

At the conference, Mark Rudd spoke of pigs and destruction: “It’s a wonderful feeling to hit a pig. It must be a really wonderful feeling to
kill a pig or blow up a building.” Jeff Jones stated: “We’re against everything that’s good and decent in honky America.  We will burn
and loot and destroy.  We are the incubation of your mother’s nightmare.”   Many historians of the New Left have focused on this time
period of madness and the vicious hatred and violence that emanated from the weathermen.  This time period has been used unfairly
to tar the weathermen. In addition, this was the last above ground appearance of the Weathermen and it left much of the above ground
leftist movements with a sour last impression.  David Gilbert (a former weatherman) spoke from prison in 2000 on this very time
period of the weatherman’s history describing it as follows:
[our most costly mistake was] our sickening and inexcusable glorification of violence, which grievously contradicted the humanist
basis for our politics and militancy.  We handed effective ammunition to all who wanted to discredit our priority on third world struggles
and our movement toward armed struggle. To this day, almost all “ history” about the WUO makes the mania of those six months (sep.
1969-feb.1970) the whole story, without looking at our correcting of that error and the ensuing six years of solid and humane anti-
imperialist action.

Having staged the “Flint War Council”, the weathermen had finished with their last above ground stand. On February 9th, 1970 the
national S.D.S (weatherman) office was quietly evacuated and closed down.  The vast quantity of S.D.S archives housed in the office
were sold for $300 dollars to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.  Over the next month weathermen began to sever ties with
family and friends and disappear.  As Jeff Jones would later put it, “ The best place to hide a leaf was in the forest.”   The weathermen
disappeared into the sea of humans that populated the country.  The Weather Underground had been born.
 In January, just before going under, the Weathermen had developed a central command structure know as The Weather Bureau.  
Members of the Bureau traveled to weathermen collectives across the country and engaged them in harsh self-criticism sessions
where L.S.D usage was a prerequisite.  The L.S.D. served to weed out police infiltrators, as well as to reveal the hidden bourgeoisie
tendencies that might prevent certain individuals from becoming effective guerilla fighters.  After these sessions, the Weather Bureau
made decisions about who would go under and who would be asked to leave the organization and serve as above ground support (It
was practical usages of L.S.D., such as was just described, that many right wing historians have used to discredit the weathermen as
crazed druggies).  In February, after all members had severed above ground contacts, sold off their possessions, pooled their monies,
and developed false identities, they were ready.  Small cells of 3-5 weathermen each, organized as Focos , were sent out across the
country to set up bases and compile lists of targets.
 The Weather Underground had been born, but before they even had a chance to get started a horrible tragedy occurred that would
stop the weathermen in their tracks and forcefully snap them from the delusions of revolutionary violence they had harbored over the
past six months. Surprisingly, this tragedy, as devastating as it was, may have been a blessing in disguise.
 On March 6th, 1970 inside of a townhouse in the Greenwich Village area of New York, a cell of weathermen were working on the
construction of a timed dynamite device.  This device was being constructed to mimic the anti-personal devices used by the U.S. army
in Vietnam to kill N.L.F. fighters. The intended target of the device was a U.S. army officer’s ball that was to be held that month.  The
device was meant to kill.  The traditional account of the event stated that, while wiring together the device, a wire was accidentally
crossed causing the bomb to ignite and destroy the apartment and the lives of many inside.  Three members of the weatherman cell
who were constructing the bomb were killed in the explosion:  Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton.  Cathy Wilkerson and
Kathy Boudin survived the explosion, crawled from the rubble, and disappeared.
 Bill Ayers, who had been a close friend and lover of Diana Oughton, provided an alternative story of this event in his memoir, Fugitive
Days, decades later. This version of the story held that Diana had developed reservations about the use of revolutionary violence and
had left Bills cell to spend time with Terry Robbins.  Terry had been a loose cannon in the past and she may have been trying to talk
the cell out of their action.  Could she have purposefully detonated the device, knowing that it was the only way to stop an action form
occurring that might have had unbearable consequences that no one in the weather underground was willing to consider or
understand?
 What really happened that day in the Townhouse can only be know by those who were there.  What we can know is that the event
changed the weathermen forever. Soon after the explosion, a national meeting was called by Bernardine Dohrn and the Weather
Bureau, to take place in a safe house somewhere on the coast of California.  At this meeting, Dohrn took command:
We’ve come out of a burning house, and on the ashes of that burning house we can build a new house, a safe house. But there’s no
way weapons and militarism can ever be allowed to lead, because in the end every successful resistance is first and foremost about
consciousness, and then about popular action….

Eventually the group came to a consensus that the town house tragedy was not just the result of a technical failure in bomb making.  
The tragedy was not just in the blast, but in the deluded and dishonest ideology they had developed for them selves that led to the
explosion.  Jeff Jones stated that, “ We blinded ourselves, we lied to ourselves.  The root cause was political, and if we refuse to look
at that fully we’ll simply wander off the cliff farther along.”
 After the meeting, the weathermen in attendance drifted away, back into the underground to re-connect with their cells and continue
on with the struggle.  As a result of the meeting, the Weather Underground had developed a concrete tactical unity.  The targets of their
actions were to be property, not life. To create campaign of strategic bombings, carefully planned so that no one was injured, would be
the future of the organization.  The bombings were to be against carefully chosen targets that represented the ills of the imperialist
system.  It was hoped that the effect of these bombings would be to raise a revolutionary consciousness among the public, to
compliment above ground mass movements, and to serve as an example and inspiration for the formation of other underground
groups.
 On May 21st, 1970, Bernardine Dohrn released the first communiqué of the Weather Underground.  It became known as “The
Declaration of War”.  It promised that Weathermen would attack a symbol of Amerikan injustice within 14 days.  On June 9th, an
anonymous call warned that a bomb had been placed and that evacuation was necessary.  Shortly thereafter explosions blew apart
the headquarters of the New York City police department.  The blast had the force of 14-15 sticks of dynamite.  The weather
underground issued a communiqué stating that the blast was retaliation for Kent State, as well as the murders of Fred Hampton and
other police killings in the city.   
 This was the first in a series of 25 bombings that would span nearly a decade, the last of which would occur in 1977 [see attached
chronology of bombings].   Some of the most publicized actions included the liberation of Acid Guru Timothy Leary from prison in
September of 1970, ferreting him and his family to Algeria to live with a group of Black Panthers who were in exile there. There was
also the bombing of the Pentagon in 1972 that ruptured a water main, flooding sensitive air force computer systems and causing a
temporary halt of bombing in Vietnam!  Through out the years the weather underground managed to elude capture despite a massive
F.B.I. manhunt.  Federal Indictments of weather underground members were handed down left and right for various felony charges
including interstate flight, mob action, riot and conspiracy.  Bernardine Dohrn eventually made it onto the F.B.I’s 10 most wanted list for
a time and was labeled by J. Edgar Hoover as “The most dangerous woman in America.”   
Keeping with their mission and tactical unity, in all the bombings, not one single person was killed.  The Weather Underground also
made a concerted attempt to explain their actions to a mass audience.  In July of 1974, the Weather Underground produced a book
entitled “Prairie Fire: the politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism.”  This book contained a chronology of actions up to that point and
layed out the theory and ideology behind the Weather Underground’s actions.  The book was also a thorough history of American
imperialism beginning with the enslavement of Africans and the colonization of Native America, and ending in the 20th century with the
Vietnam War and Intifada in Palestine.  The book had over 40,000 copies distributed in the mid 1970s.   
In 1975 the Weather Underground continued with its outreach campaign and produced the 1st of four issues of a newsletter called
“Osawatomie,” the name referred to the battle of Oswatomie in 1856 where John Brown and his guerilla army beat back an assault
against armed slavery supporters who were trying to make Kansas a slave state.   Oswatomie was the last attempt by the Weather
Underground to interject their theory of revolutionary anti-imperialism to the masses of people in the United States. It was at this time
that the decline of the Weather Underground began.
By 1976 the Weather Underground split in two due to internal disagreements over issues of race, class, gender, and the role of an
above ground revolutionary movement.  At this point, the New Left in America was all but dead, and the remaining members of the
Weather Underground were increasingly isolated - their relevancy deeply diminished.  By 1980, all the wanted members of the
Weather Underground had either been arrested, or had surrendered to Federal Authorities.
 The history of the Weather Underground is one of a complex series of interactions and contextual influences.  Past histories of the
Weather Underground would have one view the organization as hopelessly misguided, arrogant, and suicidal.  John Jacobs’ history of
the Weather Underground gives a fuller picture of the complexities that informed the Weather Underground than any other history that
has been reviewed in this study.  The Weather Underground most definitely had its absurd and unnecessarily violent, arrogant, and
suicidal moments, but overall they must be understood as a serious and dedicated group of individuals who felt from the bottom of
their souls that, for the good of the planet and its people, imperialism had to end.
The Weather Underground made a concerted attempt, based on theory and practice, to achieve the goals that they had set out for
themselves.  Their tactics may have been wrong or premature, but their hearts and minds were trying to do what was right.   They were
not responsible for the failings of the left as Todd Gitlin and others would have one believe; they were a product of and reaction to the
left and what they viewed as its failures to effect real social change.  Who was right and who was wrong is not the issue.  The only real
issue at stake is the ability of people to move past their opinions and biases and try to understand - try to move beyond such bickering
and ego stroking.  Most importantly, the Weather Underground has to be viewed in the context of the cause and effect of systemic
violence.  To understand the Weather Underground, one must keep in mind the question of where the root causes of violence in our
society originate.  When the Weather Underground is looked at honestly and contextually, ones tidy moral bearings may begin to slip.