“If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister” – Leon Trotsky, 1909.
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Since the last surviving “Weathermen” turned themselves in to the authorities or got arrested in the early eighties, there was little or no interest shown by the public for a less (in)famous American equivalent to other ultra-leftist urban guerrilla groupings that grew out of the 1968 student movement-such as the German “Red Army Faction” or the Italian “Red Brigades”.
The first sign of renewed interest came in 1997 with Ron Jacob’s book “The Way the Wind Blew – A History of Weather Underground” and continued with a recent DVD release of a documentary entitled simply by the group’s name: “The Weather Underground”. Unlike Ron Jacob’s attempt, which fails miserably to explain any of the group’s politics or the context from which it grew out of, director Sam Green and his crew should be given full credit for their effort.
Conducting a series of extensive interviews over three years with ex-Weathermen members and digging through mountains of dusty archive film material, the young filmmaker and his crew produced an impressive documentary which gives plenty of material for analysis and conclusions. Made in 2003, this Academy Award nominated documentary, could have been seen only in a number of alternative film festivals and theatres in the West. It has been made available to a slightly wider public only recently with its commercial DVD release.
This renewed interest of publishers for the politics of the sixties is not incidental. There is a definite thirst among the new generations for the legacy of past battles. It overlaps with a leftward turn in the youth culture in the late nineties and growth of the “anti-globalisation” movement that became evident after Seattle. Filmmakers in fact often expressed their surprise at the crowds of mostly young people who appeared at initial screenings. The story of Weather Underground offers an ideal opportunity to review and discuss some old lessons of the labour movement, as tactics that gave birth to the Weathermen, are appearing again today in the shape of “direct action” philosophy and with popularity of anarchism among some of the new layer of activists.
Weather Underground has its roots in the anti-war student movement that swept American campuses in the second half of the sixties. This movement found its expression initially through a nationally based student organization called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The SDS was born silently in 1960 out of academic liberal left circles. Its initial actions were concentrated around moderate reformist demands such as: promotion of international peace initiatives, support for non-violent Civil Rights movement in the south and the fight against social polarisation within American capitalism.
As the radicalisation of American youth grew, with the lack of any traditional national student union, the SDS turned out to be the only channel for organizing and co-ordination. By 1968 the SDS came under the spotlight of the media as hundreds of thousands of students and young people joined the anti-war movement attracting the attention of the whole country. The SDS became the symbol of the American “New Left” with numerous political currents trying to enter it and hijack its appeal.
Thus, the SDS became the symbol of the American “New Left”. However, after years of tireless mass protests and no sign of any loosening of American imperialism’s grip in sight, it became clear that a new evaluation of tactics was needed and that a loose organization such as the SDS could no longer satisfy the rapidly politicising layer of students. Illusions that the mass protests by themselves would be enough to stop the imperialist beast turned into frustration. A growing number of activists came to conclusions that “something more” had to be done. But, what?
In what was to be its last convention in 1969, the SDS split into different fractions. One of them named its convention paper after a line from a Bob Dylan song. The Group gathered around the colourfully titled “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to know which Way the Wind is blowing” resolution. This consisted of some of the most prominent leaders of the student movement including the SDS national secretary Bernardine Dohrn (“la Pasionara of the lunatic left” – in the words of J. Edgar Hoover) and Columbia University leader Murk Rudd. Weathermen denounced the non-violent approach of the student movement and presented themselves to be openly pro-Revolution, on the side of the world’s struggling majority.
The documentary does a really good job of putting the whole story in its historical context. It shows how the student militants were influenced by the worldwide uprising against imperialism form anti-colonial struggles in Congo, Angola, Viet Nam; the Cuban revolution and 1968 movements in Mexico, France, Japan, etc. Led partly by revolutionary optimism and partly by political ignorance, Weathermen proclaimed themselves the revolutionary vanguard inside the U.S. In the words of Murk Rudd: “We wanted to become the communist cadre, completely devoted to the Revolution”. However, they had no clear idea on how to become a cadre organization, even less on how to bring about a Revolution.
In order to transform themselves into “communist cadres”, Weathermen members decided to break with their petty bourgeois student existence. They abandoned their studies and workplaces in order to form Weather collectives in major U.S. industrial centres and tried to insert themselves and organize among the working class youth. Part of their “break with bourgeois society” was also the forceful breaking of monogamy and the practice of “free love” within the group. Building of communist morals inside an isolated group within capitalism was not all that romantic and naïve as it may seem.
One of the interviewed members recalls “the picking of individuals” – rituals in which the whole group under the influence of LSD would humiliate an individual in order to “test” him/her and break that person’s bourgeois moral. Ex Weathermen David Gilbert, currently serving a 75 year sentence in prison, clearly explains how it was the women who most often ended up exploited again in these “free love communes” by being pressured to have multiple partners against their will. With their boasting proclamations and hyper militant stand, the Weather commune ended up unconsciously reproducing the same macho culture of patriarchal society that they were trying to escape so badly.
Weather collectives soon started organizing their first public action. Sick of predictable protests, in which the protesters marched and went home while nothing was changing, Weathermen started calling for open confrontation with the police and violent demonstrations. Weathermen started to promote their “Days of Rage” demonstration in summer 1969 in downtown Chicago. As one of the leaders Bill Ayers explains, the reasoning back then for many was “the bigger the mess we make, the better”.
Used to the mass protests they had organized within SDS, the Weather leadership was pretty confident that from all across the country thousands of angry youth and working people would pour into Chicago and start the new chapter of the anti-war movement. However, it turned out that the masses didn’t share their enthusiasm for confrontation. What was supposed to be a mass rally, ended up being a gathering of not more then 300 people equipped with baseball bats and helmets.
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Bill Ayers admits candidly that that night he wished “somebody came down and prevented us from continuing”. But, it was too late for backing off. Having gone that far, the Weathermen decided to proceed and march downtown smashing bank and shop windows on the way. Soon, a police cordon blocked their way, far outnumbering the protesters. Weathermen decided to charge. What followed could be described as a “slaughterhouse”. Only by a miracle was there no loss of lives. At least three protesters were wounded from gunshots and the rest were brutally beaten by the police squad and arrested. This action was perhaps best described by the Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (who was murdered in his sleep by that same Chicago police only a few months later). In his typical tone and style Fred stated:
“We believe the Weather action was anarchistic, individualistic and opportunistic...they took the people in a situation where they could be massacred. They call it a Revolution, but it ain’t nothing but child play. It was led by a bunch of muddle-heads and scatterbrains”.
Tactics of open confrontation proved to be a disaster. Instead of attracting the working class youth to them Weathermen found themselves even more isolated from the masses. On top of that, the FBI started to follow their every move. This way the group opened itself up to police repression and gave an excuse to president Nixon to denounce the anti-war demonstrators as nothing but “criminal thugs”.
In an attempt to analyse what had gone wrong it never crossed the minds of the Weather leadership that something was wrong with their political analysis. Instead, quite predictably, they came to the conclusion that the American working class was hopelessly “bought off”. As every isolated sect, they came to the conclusion that they were all alone.
It was exactly this logic that brought the Weathermen into the realm of individual terrorism. What makes the situation even more tragic is that the Weathermen insisted on the point that it was their own decision to go underground. It was their decision to continue with illegal organizing in 1970 not the objective situation that forced them to do so. They were determined to wake the average American from his/her sleep with dynamite. Their aim was: “to make people not able to ignore the war any longer”. The slogan was “Bring the War Home!”
By 1970 the movement had reached its peak. People were beginning to get tired since after years of demonstrations war had just intensified. Some layers of the movement began to fall by the wayside. The government felt it was a good moment to step up the repression. The black revolutionary movement became their special victim. Panthers Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and George Jackson were shot. The National Guard killed four students in Kent State. That same year the footage of massacred women and children of the My Lai village revealed just how savage the American occupation of Viet Nam was. As Leon Trotsky correctly pointed out, in his writings on individual terrorism:
“The outbreaks of anarchist assassination in Western Europe and North America always come after some atrocity committed by the government – the shooting of strikers or executions of political opponents. The most important psychological source of terrorism is always the feeling of revenge in search of an outlet.”
Indeed, there was nothing new or original about the tactics applied by the Weather people. Russia, the “original country of terrorism”, witnessed a whole generation of radicalised youth perish in a futile attempt to break Tsarism by assassination of its representatives. Unfortunately, the Weathermen seemed to be pretty ignorant of the history of the revolutionary movement. For someone who proclaims the ambition of becoming a communist cadre this was fatal.
The first action was planned by the New York Weather collective. The plan was to “bring the war home” by planting a home made nail bomb at the U.S. Army officers’ ball. The bomb however never reached the army officials as it accidentally exploded in the Weathermen’s hiding place, killing three Weathermen members.
Shook by this incident, Weather Underground gave special attention to the planning of its future actions, especially to avoid any loss of life. In the period of the next five years the Weathermen detonated 25 bombs, targeting symbols of capitalist oppression such as the U.S. Capitol, Prisons, Police Headquarters, Courtrooms etc., in the hope of stirring up public opinion and focussing it on the crimes of American imperialism.
The Weathermen’s prognosis was completely wrong however. These types of actions produced just the opposite effect:
“The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen”. ( Leon Trotsky, Why Marxists oppose individual Terrorism)
As time passed by, the Weathermen felt more and more alienated. As the documentary clearly shows, many of the members came to the same conclusions as the great teachers of Marxism, however, they paid for this wisdom dearly. As Murk Rudd says at one point in a movie recollecting about his days spent underground completely isolated:
“I was sitting all alone on a bench with a newspaper, thinking to myself, What am I doing here? A few years ago I was a leader of the most numerous student organization in a country”.
Forced to constant moving and top secrecy, the organization lost all its democratic mechanisms. In this sort of predicament it was only a matter of time before a complete demoralization set in. By the late seventies, most of the Weather membership had given up the fight and turned themselves over to the authorities
Apart from the pure political value, this film has an unquestionable artistic quality as well. “The Weather Underground” can be loosely included in the new wave of independent political documentaries spearheaded by Michael Moore. However, this release distinguishes itself in a number of things.
The sixties have become an over-exploited market theme today and the authors skilfully avoided the trap of falling into the “sex, drugs and rock n roll” cliché found in your local Time Life collection on commercial TV.
First of all, there is a deliberate insistence on not using any music from that period. Instead, director Sam Green pastes archive material over modern tense electronic themes performed by Aphex Twin and other independent artists. This experiment turned out to be a complete success.
Secondly, thanks to three years of long hard work of the directors, we get the opportunity to see very rare actual authentic film material, catching some of the most important moments in the history of the sixties movement, like the bone chilling footage of the Los Angeles black neighbourhood giving its last respect to the passing coffin of George Jackson with their fists in the air.
Old tape formats, such as 8mm, are also extensively used for present day shots so the whole film has a colourfully warm, retro atmosphere. The authors also don’t hesitate to cross the border of “good taste” and openly show the savagery performed by American troops in Viet Nam.
Apart from these “action scenes”, the film manages to catch the spirit of everyday life in that period. In order to bring in the atmosphere of the retreat in the class struggle in the seventies, the author often uses simple winter time “out of the car” moving shots of depressing American neighbourhoods plagued by unemployment. This is also the only time the author breaks the backdrop music formula, treating the viewers with a soul ripping Gill Scott Heron tune.
All of this comes as no surprise considering the names that are behind this project. Sam Green graduated in the heart of America’s student activism, Berkeley, alongside Marlon Riggs and the co-director, Bill Siegel, can boast that he worked on some of the most important documentaries of our era, such as Hoop Dreams and also collaborated with the documentary magician Leon Gast (author of yet another must see documentary about Muhammad Ali, “Once We were Kings”).
The only objection we can make t theo authors is that they did not find appropriate political voices for what was supposedly planned as the “critical” voice from the movement itself who could argue against the Weathermen tactics. Almost all the valuable conclusions were reached by the members themselves from their own experience, while the ex-SDS leader Todd Gitllin offers a sickening moralistic lecture in which he states that “by deciding that they held the absolute truth, the Weathermen took the position of all murderers in history such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao.”
For us as Marxists, opposition to individual terrorism is not based on moralizing. Our moral is the moral of the revolution. The tactics of individual terrorism do absolutely nothing for the advancement of the proletarian revolution, on the contrary they push it back. Therefore we fight against these currents with much more flare then the hypocritical capitalist mouthpieces who scream over the victims of terrorist attacks while at the same justifying the horrors of capitalism on a daily basis.
In the last chapter, we find the ex-radicals trying to make sense of the sixties and to evaluate their struggle. Their conclusions are mixed. We find Mark Rudd, nowadays a college professor, saying that he is not proud of his past actions and that now he lives with a mixed feeling of guilt and shame. Similarly, in an attempt to explain their actions another Weatherman, currently a bar owner, says: “The Viet Nam war got us all a bit insane. That is the only way I can explain it”.
The Authors end the film in a completely different light however. Asked if she would do it all over again, anti-racist activist Naomi Jaffe says:
“I would do it again. I would like to do it better, differently, smarter, but I would certainly do it again...it was a precious opportunity...the world came close to major changes and that makes a difference in terms of the ability of movements for a change to emerge in the future”
The director then asked her: “Do you think they will?” and she replies “I think it already is!”
May 2005
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