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The Weather Underground (PBS Documentary about The Weathermen)
PBS ^
| April 2004
Posted on 04/28/2004 6:22:25 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
In October 1969, hundreds of young people wielding lead pipes and clad in football helmets marched through an upscale Chicago shopping district, pummeling parked cars and smashing shop windows. Thus began the Days of Rage, the first demonstration of the Weathermen, later known as the Weather Underground. Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, this group of former student radicals waged a low-level war against the United States government through much of the 1970s, bombing the Capitol building, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison and finally evading the FBI by going into hiding. In THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, former Weathermen including Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd and David Gilbert speak frankly about the idealist passions and trajectories that transformed them from college activists into the FBIs Most Wanted.
The Weather Underground emerged when Dohrn and a group of fellow University of Chicago students split with the campus-run Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, because they disagreed with the SDSs peaceful protest tactics against the Vietnam War. Dubbing itself the Weathermen, this new organization took its name from a line in Bob Dylans Subterranean Homesick Bluesyou dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blowsand within months had set off bombs at the National Guard headquarters and set in motion plans to bomb targets across the country that it considered emblematic of the worldwide violence sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Using extensive archival material such as photographs, film footage and FBI documents, THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND chronicles the Weathermens public rise and fall and offers a rare insider look into the groups private conflicts. Fueled by righteous anger, these white, middle-class students were also widely criticized for their controversialsome say misguidedpolitics. As former SDS president Todd Gitlin says: ''Like Bonnie and Clyde, many of them were attractive personally. They were into youth, exuberance, sex, drugs. They wanted action. Ultimately, the Weathermen's carefully organized, clandestine network managed to successfully dodge the FBI for years, although the group's members would eventually reemerge to life in a country that was dramatically different than the one they had hoped their efforts would inspire.
As an exploration of the Weathermen in the context of other social movements of the time, the film also features rare footage and interviews with former SDS members and the Black Panthers, further examining the U.S. government's suppression of dissent during the 1960s and 1970s. Looking back at their years underground, former Weather Underground members paint a compelling portrait of troubled times, revolutionary times and the forces that drove their resistance home.
TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: billayers; blackpanthers; bobkerrey; bs; cluelessinseattle; cointelpro; deguello; documentary; phaedra; radicalleft; reddaiperdoperbabies; reddiaperbabies; sds; theweathermen; weathermen; weatherunderground; wuo
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To: HamiltonJay
Please, revolutions, particularly violent upheaval ones are the results of the MASSES not the pretty boys rising up. Nope. They're usually the result of bored angst-filled pretty boys managing to convince the masses to follow.
Ho, Fidel, Che, Carlos, Osama, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Marx were all relatively middle class or above. Off the top of my head I can't think of any revolution led by poor boys.
Even our's. Even Toussaint LOuverture was a house slave rather than a free one.
61
posted on
04/28/2004 9:48:25 AM PDT
by
Tribune7
(Vote Toomey April 27)
To: HamiltonJay
You don't understand terror. The WU were NOT terrorists. The leftist groups of young today are sympathetic to terrorism and are potentially much more dangerous than the WU ever were. I saw Bill Ayers get confronted by a group of Michigan students shortly after 911 and they attacked him for not supporting AQ terrorism. Ayers was saying that the innocent should not be attacked, the leftist UM students thought that they should.
62
posted on
04/28/2004 9:49:21 AM PDT
by
Poincare
To: cyborg
IIRC, Ayers wrote a nostaligic article for the New York Times on the bombings and it was serendipitiously published on 9/11/01.
63
posted on
04/28/2004 9:50:23 AM PDT
by
Tribune7
(Vote Toomey April 27)
To: Tribune7
Imagine that. Wow. I wonder how felt after THAT.
64
posted on
04/28/2004 9:51:45 AM PDT
by
cyborg
To: archy
Do you think this kind of thing can happen again?
65
posted on
04/28/2004 9:57:39 AM PDT
by
cyborg
To: PJ-Comix
I hope college kids don't do this again. Death will rise to greet them if they do.
66
posted on
04/28/2004 9:59:00 AM PDT
by
O.C. - Old Cracker
(When the cracker gets old, you wind up with Old Cracker. - O.C.)
To: PJ-Comix
In Chicago re-airs this Sunday on channel 11 at 3am.
67
posted on
04/28/2004 10:01:19 AM PDT
by
Musket
To: Tribune7
THere is a difference between leading and fighting... The WU and their ilk wackos actually thought they were going to be the Army.
Its amusing. As to our revolution, most of the poeple leading and doing the fighting were not pretty boys.
The 60s activists were bay and large ignorant dupes of communist plants... trying to stir up upheaval in the US to undermine it. Unfortunately for their case, the american middle class worker lives a pretty good life... so they could find no buyers willing to rally to there cause other than frankly idiotic students.
THe Socialists and COmmunists were much more of a real threat to this nation in terms of political change during the great depression than the 60s. The only difference in the 60s is the TV networks and news media went gaga over these twits.
However in numbers it was the 30s where Communism and Socialism was at its peak in american politics, not the 60s.
To: HamiltonJay
The WU and their ilk wackos actually thought they were going to be the Army. They thought they were going to inspire a revolution just like Fidel did when he attacked that military barracks. The WU figured they would lead & the masses would follow.
Our revolution was started by taxpayers -- not the poor.
69
posted on
04/28/2004 10:11:36 AM PDT
by
Tribune7
(Vote Toomey April 27)
To: HamiltonJay
COINTELPRO doesn't scare me... you for groups with the stated intent to overthrow the duly elected government by violence and with any means possible, and you don't think you are going to to be targeted? THese guys were criminals, and their groups were organized crime...
Particularly the ones who were undercover or informents for the COINTELPRO program, agents provocater who urged the more violent and vicious attacks. As a part of their cover, knowing they'd never be charged for them? Or as part of the continuing operation by the FBI and others to demonize various sets of national enemies and keep their inflated budgets and *special powers* intact.
70
posted on
04/28/2004 10:14:25 AM PDT
by
archy
(The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before.)
To: Tribune7
Our revolution was started by taxpayers -- not the poor. Jefferson? Revere? Hamilton? Washington, the planter? Ben Franklin? Tom Paine and Henry Knox? The Virginia Clark family? Patrick Henry? Certainly not *poor,* and certainly not *just* your typical *taxpayers*....
71
posted on
04/28/2004 10:18:33 AM PDT
by
archy
(The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before.)
To: archy
I know. That's my point to HamiltonJay.
72
posted on
04/28/2004 10:23:15 AM PDT
by
Tribune7
(Vote Toomey April 27)
To: cyborg; Travis McGee; hookman; spatzie
Do you think this kind of thing can happen again? Just exactly when did it stop? The phases it's in ebb and wane, but as recently as 5 years ago, the accomplices of the people under discussion here were in the White House.
Now, they're in their adversarial/ head's down mode a little more, as when they insinuated themselves into positions of authority and responsibility in academia in particular.
Like Travis McGee says, it's time to take out the trash. And we can't trust the gocernment to do it. In places they have been or still are the government.
73
posted on
04/28/2004 10:23:18 AM PDT
by
archy
(The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before.)
To: Tribune7
Off the top of my head I can't think of any revolution led by poor boys. Zapata and Villa come pretty close; so does Nicaragua's Sandino or Aguinaldo in the Phillipines of the early XX Century. Cuba's Castro was an attorney and El Che Guevera a physician, so poor examples, but Ho Chi Minh could be considered either a professional student, usually a fairly impoverished class, or a professional revolutionary.
74
posted on
04/28/2004 10:27:52 AM PDT
by
archy
(The darkness will come. It will find you,and it will scare you like you've never been scared before.)
To: St.Chuck; PJ-Comix
Almost all in the Weathermen were essentially rich kids. Some were VERY rich kids - Diana Oughton in particular.
75
posted on
04/28/2004 10:42:42 AM PDT
by
NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
(Michael <a href = "http://www.michaelmoore.com/" title="Miserable Failure">"Miserable Failure"</a>)
To: Poincare
Oh no. Bombs going off aren't going to terrorize people. Yeah, sure...........
76
posted on
04/28/2004 10:43:54 AM PDT
by
NotJustAnotherPrettyFace
(Michael <a href = "http://www.michaelmoore.com/" title="Miserable Failure">"Miserable Failure"</a>)
To: archy
Now many of these Weather Underground terrorists are tenured profs and administrator at our finest (sic) universities.
77
posted on
04/28/2004 10:51:14 AM PDT
by
Travis McGee
(----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
To: PJ-Comix
Sometimes I think this stuff is to make SDS look good. That's where the Jane Fonda's and Sid Blumenthals of the world took off.
They were the real danger because they were/are still very much more influential.
To: archy
hahaha.. so you are thinking it was the FBI informants who were driving these groups to plant bombs?
I suppose next you are going to suggest it was FBI informants who were calling for Sentors executions in John Kerry's anti war group....
The black panthers needed no incitement to violence, nor did the WU. They were willing to do it on their own accord, or did you not hear them speaking of their glory days and revolution by there own mouths? More than a few spoke of it with happy rememberance, and admit they would do it all again. That's not the response of someone who was incited to violence.
Someone who was incited to do something they would not have done on their own, usually shows remorse and regret, as the Bar owner and the heavier set guy clearly did.. recognizing that what they did in the reflection was wrong.. they don't go aroudn saying, I'd do it all again.
You decide overthrowing a duly elected government to instill your communist revolution don't get suprised that you are targeted by that government. Or to put it in terms even the naive and lacking common sense WU activists would have understood... you lay with dogs, wake up with fleas.
You paint a target on your chest, engage in violence and other subversion, you don't get to call yourself a victim when you find out the government's after you.
To: PJ-Comix
. Recently a substitute host for Rush played a tape of an "anti-war" meeting AFTER the reporters left. It discussed how to support the Iraqi "resistance" fighters killing American troops. Rebecca's Remarks (As Heard on the Rush Limbaugh Show)
And the first thing is that we need to support the Resistance of Iraqis in Iraq. (applause) Right. These are people who are risking their lives to get the United States out of their country. And we have to see them as our allies. We have to see them as our main allies.
Similarly, we have to support resistance in the US military. Soldiers, and you know, anyone (applause) families who are actually opposing the war, we need to be on their side.
If you recall, theres one time in the last 30 years when the US military machine was brought down, during Vietnam, and it was brought down because there was a fierce Resistance in Vietnam, and because the soldiers were refusing to fight.
(applause)
80
posted on
04/28/2004 12:49:00 PM PDT
by
lowbridge
("You are an American. You are my brother. I would die for you." -Kurdish Sergeant)
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