Posted on 10/01/2008 6:30:55 PM PDT by Protect the Bill of Rights
THE TOWNHOUSE BASEMENT BOMB FACTORY A Vigil For The Underground of Yore
Newsday (Melville, NY) - March 8, 1990 Author: Jonathan Mandell
AFTER THE EXPLOSION on this most quiet and contemplative of streets - one elegant ivied townhouse after another, interrupted only by a seminary - the tour buses would make a special stop on their glide through Greenwich Village. For years (or so it seemed), all that remained of the building that had blown up was a pile of rubble and - oddly, grotesquely - a bookcase full of books, attached several stories up to the outside wall of the adjacent townhouse.
It was quiet again in the cold twilight Tuesday, the townhouse at 18 W. 11th St. rebuilt with a postmodern twist, literally: It looks as if the bottom two stories have been swiveled on an axis out toward the street at a 45-degree angle.
"In a way, it's a memorial," Bob Feldman was saying, as he and three others huddled on the sidewalk outside. "People go by and say, `Why is this building different from all other buildings?' " The wind and cold had reddened his face and moistened his lips, nose and eyes, and so his smile looked like the beginning of a cry. The others each held a candle, trying to keep the flames alive in the piercing wind.
Precisely 20 years before, on March 6, 1970, a group of middle-class students making bombs in the basement of the house where one of them lived did something wrong. They called themselves Weathermen - because, as Bob Dylan had sung in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - a group that had broken away from the Students for a Democratic Society, the SDS . The explosion killed Diana Oughton, Terry Robbins and Ted Gold. "For those who knew them," said a letter sent to friends, to activists, to a journalist, "it is an occasion to pause, to remember them, and to reflect on the turbulent times in which they organized, explored, dreamed and died." Another invitation was sent out to come to this memorial candlelight vigil.
(excerpt)
SDS FOUNDERS STILL CARRYING FLAME CLARK PROFESSOR SAYS STUDENT GROUP'S GOALS HAVE NEVER FADED
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA) - April 5, 2000 Author: Mark Melady
WORCESTER -- In the 1960s, SDS was an acronym that, likes its nemesis the FBI, stood on its own.
Even people who did not know that it stood for Students for a Democratic Society thought they knew what it meant -- unrest, protest, civil disobedience, anti-capitalism, anti-war, anti-authority. In a word for comfortable, moderate America -- trouble.
``We could really crank it out on the mimeograph machine,'' laughed Robert J.S. Ross, a sociology professor at Clark University and one of the founders of SDS .
Mr. Ross and Helen Garvy, former SDS assistant national secretary, reminisced yesterday about the group's meteoric arc across the most tumultuous decade of the 20th century.
[snip]
Two years later, Mr. Ross was among the SDS members gathered at a United Automobile Workers camp in Port Huron, Mich., to write the group's manifesto, perhaps the first document to lay out the political philosophy and goals of the then emerging New Left.
In his 1973 history of the SDS , author Kirkpatrick Sale quotes Mr. Ross summing up the marathon Port Huron conference: ``It was a little like starting a journey.''
SDS welded itself to the anti-war movement with the 1965 peace march on Washington that drew 25,000 participants.
``It was the largest demonstration by Americans against a war America was fighting since the Spanish-American War,'' Mr. Ross said, ``and most Americans still hadn't heard of Vietnam.''
Over the next few years SDS played a pivotal if not lead role in organizing the mass demonstrations and marches against the war. It was a role Mr. Ross said was ``both exhilarating and confusing.''
The group's role in the anti-war movement weakened its organizational efforts elsewhere, he said, and helped precipitate its decline, along with internal strife that separated members along race and gender lines, and over the issue of violence.
The history of the SDS can be neatly book-ended by the decade, beginning with the 1960 Ann Harbor conference and ending with the 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house that had been transformed into a bomb factory by the Weather Underground , an SDS splinter group.
Too neatly for Mr. Ross and Ms. Garvy, who believe the passion for dissent and political activism fomented by SDS flourished long after the group had disbanded.
``We carried it into our communities wherever we went,'' said Ms. Garvy who lives in northern California. ``At 24, I was running a school for 124 kids in California whose parents had lost faith in the public schools.''
Mr. Ross said that as SDS members moved into jobs and careers, many kept pushing for change as faculty members, lawyers, doctors and city planners.
Mr. Ross believes the left does not reach the national political radar screen and won't until the Democrats control both houses of Congress.
(excerpt)
Weatherman Leaders Eye Surrender
Boston Globe - November 24, 1980 Author: Associated Press
Bernardine Dohrn was smart, attractive and impatient - "too smart to be the all-American girl," said one friend. After a few days at the center of a violent storm of protest against the war in Vietnam, she became one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives.
Now, after more than a decade of life underground, Dohrn and another former leader of the radical Weather Underground reportedly are seeking to come home.
Dohrn and William Ayers, son of former Commonwealth Edison Co. Board Chairman Thomas G. Ayers, have contacted authorities through an attorney asking for leniency in exchange for their surrender, according to Gregory Ginex, head of felony trial division of the Cook County states' attorney's office.
[snip]
For Dohrn, 38, surrender would end an 11-year underground odyssey. She was an avowed communist whose stated support of terrorist bombings to achieve political ends stood in sharp contrast to her upbringing in an affluent, suburban Milwaukee home.
Born in Chicago, she spent much of her childhood in Whitefish Bay, Wis., where she was a Girl Scout and one of the top graduates in her high school class.
While a student at the University of Chicago Law School, she worked among the poor in the ghettos of Chicago's South Side.
"She wanted to help people, but all she ran up against was red tape," a friend recalled. "Bern saw the system working against everything she wanted to do for people."
After she earned her law degree in 1967, Dohrn joined the militant Weather Underground and became a leader of the group.
[excerpt]
Chicago
Columbia University
Perhaps we can use this thread to bring the reality of that time front and center.
ping
“A 60’s Primer - To Better Understand Obama.”
That’s definitely what’s needed to understand Obama. He is the dream candidate of the ‘60s radical.
N.J. APARTMENT REVEALS LINKS AMONG RADICALS
Boston Globe - October 23, 1981 Author: Associated Press
Authorities investigating a bloody Brink's robbery yesterday revealed new links between radical groups.
Col. Clinton L. Pagano, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said that evidence found during a search of an East Orange, N.J., apartment linked to the robbery "indicated that the persons who occupied the apartment were involved with the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground .
He said evidence found in the apartment, combined with "intelligence information," has led investigators to believe "that these two groups have merged into a single group."
(snip)
Pagano said evidence found in the New Jersey apartment "is not only being analyzed for connection with the Brink's robbery and murders, but also to establish a tie to the escape of Joanne Chesimard."
Chesimard, a leader of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted of killing New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973, escaped from Clinton Reformatory, where she was serving a life sentence, on Nov. 2, 1979.
Pagano said that police searching the apartment confiscated automatic weapons, written materials, a large quantity of ammunition, numerous documents, bomb-making materials, and disguises and false identification materials.
(excerpt)
His mama was an amoral hippie. The Love(forSelf) Generation and their offspring have taken control of one American institution after another, and it seems like this election will mark their final triumph.
“Even people who did not know that it stood for Students for a Democratic Society thought they knew what it meant — unrest, protest, civil disobedience, anti-capitalism, anti-war, anti-authority. In a word for comfortable, moderate America — trouble.”
In a word: counter-culture.
The 60s spawned The Movement, that included the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, and the counter-cultural movement: communal living instead iof capitalism. sex, drugs and rock and roll was the anti-authority culture (with roots in the beatnick era), and it evolved to include the pro-choice people, the homosexual community, and generally breaking the mold that had been constructed post- WW II, that thrived in the 50s.
Disdain for the cultural and political mores underscored The Movement. Politically, the dominant paradigm for many was socialism.
But back then, the Silent Majority stood in opposition to The Movement, and elected Nixon.
Will The New Silent Majority rise up and defeat Obamanation? A conglomeration of flyover state voters, Reagan democrats, Bradley Effecters, the Religious Right and the fiscally conservative base, coming together and showing true strength in numbers?
Sarah Palin is our ray of light.
ping
Weather Underground Organization (Weatherman)
[420 pages in all on pdf]
In 1976, the FBI’s Chicago Field Office prepared a summary which described the activities of the Weather Underground Organization, also known as Weathermen. This organization described itself as a revolutionary organization of communist men and women. The FBI’s analysis of its motivations, beliefs, and international travels are outlined in this summary.
Some excerpts from the 1976 report linking the organization to foreign governments...
From the moment in October, 1967, when Radio Hanoi announced the formation of the South Vietnamese Peoples Committee for Solidarity with American People (by the National Liberation Front (NLF), the political arm of the Viet Cong) with the objective of establishing relations with “progressive organizations and individuals in the United States,” a political front was enjoined in behalf of the national interests of the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam (DRV) (and the NLF), the purpose of which was to intensify the anti-war sentiment in the United States. From the initial meeting between the Vietnamese and leading anti-war activists held in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in November, 1967, to the July, 1969, meeting with leading Weatherpeople held in Havana, Cuba, the influence of Vietnamese representatives on the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leadership became sharply pronounced. At the same time, the example of the Cuban revolution became the guide for the emerging American student revolutionary. With an increasing number of trips to Havana where the youthful revolutionary could learn at first hand how to create revolution, the influence of Cuba on the developing WUO [Weather Underground Organization] was enormous.
The WUO obtained their revolutionary methodology from the Cubans and Vietnamese and, importantly, put into practice what they had learned from them. The Weathermen, of course, did not just happen to come about during the June, 1969, SDS National Convention. They fully admit their radical heritage began during experiences gained in SDS and as shown herein their international contacts with representatives of the DRV and NLF which began in 1967 increased their anti-imperialist consciousness so that by 1969 they had solidified their revolutionary commitment to include the maximum optimum of armed struggle. So, when Huynh Van Ba, representative of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (PRG), instructed the WUO to “look for the person who fights hardest against the cops...Don’t look for the one who says the best thing. Look for the one who fights,” the campus base was forgotten and the WUO began to recruit the greasers and assorted oddments who had displayed their hatred of authority in direct combat with police.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2020261/posts
The result? The result you can see -- most of the people who graduated in the 60's, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems.[snip]"To promise people all kinds of goodies, and the paradise on Earth. Uh to destabilize your economy to eliminate the principal of free market competition; and to put a big brother government in Washington D.C.;"
Gateway has some good info here:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/06/maoist-hardliner-and-former-weatherman.html
One person mentioned in that article that deserves further scrutiny is Max Elbaum. Gateway had this to say about him:
“An excellent profile of that maoist milieu is available in a book called Revolution in the Air by Max Elbaum, a first hand participant whose sympathy for the maoism of the period does not get in the way of an excellent account of these idiot savants of the left.”
If you want to read a real eye opener, I found this interview with him about his book on the communist movement during the 60’s to now at some communist website.
Here it is:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/jacobs161006.html
(Snip)
“Revolution in the Air also includes a detailed discussion of the ways in which the new communist movement’s stress on the centrality of anti-racism and internationalism contributed to the initiative it held at various times. Many pages are devoted to examining the ways new communist groups constructed disciplined, hard-working, self-financed, multi-racial organizations, where the bulk of members held working-class jobs, rooted themselves in exploited communities, and did their political work as “volunteers.” The book describes the movement’s ideological frameworks and organizational models,...”
(end snip)
‘COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS’....just like their ‘dear leader’ Obama.
(snip)
“Regarding the leftists who continue to work in and with the Democrats — how much of this activity do you think can be attributed to the Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition of the 1980s — a phenomenon that you write involved hundreds of the new communist participants?”
(end snip)
It is a chilling read.....take a look.
It gets “better”
THE man spoke in “a low, hard tone,” recalled the operator on duty at the Capitol switchboard. His message was equally ominous: “This building will blow up in 30 minutes. You will get many calls like this, but this one is real.” At 1:32 a.m., 33 minutes after the phone warning, a dynamite bomb demolished an unmarked, out-of-the-way men’s room in the Capitol basement. It was only the fourth time in history that protesters had brought violence to the domed symbol of U.S. democracy.*
(snip)
The “Weather Underground”—like “Weather People,” a self-appellation for the Weatherman—sent a letter to the Associated Press claiming credit for the explosion as a protest over American involvement in Laos. They were rebuffed by Attorney General John Mitchell: “In the past we have noticed that every time you have had one of these unfortunate occurrences, there have been quite a number of communications sent to newspapers or different offices, and it does not necessarily mean that the writer is representative of the parties that carried out the activity.”
(excerpt)
Copy and pasting this here because it will be removed from the website on Oct. 6th.
“In 1995 former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and
Bernadine Dohrn helped launch Barack Obama’s political career at
a small function in their Chicago home.
Bill Ayers also hired Obama to head the Annanberg Challenge, a
$50 million fund which enabled Obama to fund organisations which
could enhance his political career.
Later Ayers worked with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund,
together doling out millions to leftist causes.
Obama has consistently tried to minimise his relationship with
Ayers and Dohrn. The couple themselves, seem intent on
maintaining a low profile-until at least after the election.
Both parties realise that Obama’s opponents will seize on any
links to Ayers and Dorhn in order to discredit the Senator.
But are Ayers and Dohrn really out of the picture? Could they
still be helping their friend from “underground”?
I recently profiled Progressives for Obama (PFO). Founded
earlier this year, PFO unites all the main leftist currents
behind the Obama campaign-the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the
CPUSA offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism (CCDS), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)and
former members of the ‘60s radical organisation Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS)and its terrorist splinter group Weather
Underground Organisation.
PFO aims to not only put Obama in the White House, but to build
a huge united “progressive” movement that can force the new
President to move America massively to the left. The influence
of the CPUSA on the Roosevelt administration that produced the
“New Deal” and the pressure of the CPUSA and SDS/New Left that
pressured Johnson into the great social changes of the ‘60s are
the model for this new movement.
But this begs the question. Who founded Progressives for Obama?
In early 2006, a group of former SDS members and sympathisers,
led by DSA activist Paul Buhle joined with some a new generation
of college students to re-found Students For a Democratic
Society. The movement now has over 130 chapters across the USA.
More importantly Buhle and co also founded an SDS support group
for older activists-Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS). SDS
is the muscle behind the new protest movement and was very
prominent in the recent violence at the Republican National
Convention at St Paul Minnesota. MDS is the brains behind the
SDS brawn.
A review of the 2006 MDS board reveals some interesting
connections.
Elliott Adams-leader of the CPUSA front Veterans for Peace
Senia Barragan-(Student Representative)-new SDS
David Barsamian-a leftist brodcaster with close ties to Noam
Chomsky
Noam Chomsky-Well known linguist, writer and activist. A member
of both DSA and the CCDS Advisory Board.
Carl Davidson-A founder member of SDS, later a Maoist ativist
before becoming a leader of CCDS in 1992.
Bernardine Dohrn
Bill Fletcher Jr-A former Maoist. A leader of DSA and the AFL-CIO
Bert Garskof-Involved with SDS the 60s, a close friend of Bill
Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
David Graeber-Former member of the SDS, turned anarchist.
Tom Hayden-Founder and leader of the SDS
Gerald Horne-A member of the editorial board of Political
Affairs, theoretical journal of the CPUSA.
Michael James-A former member of SDS
Robin DG Kelley- A former member of the Communist Workers Party,
more recently close to CPUSA.
Michael Klonsky-Son of CPUSA member Robert Klonsky. A former
member of SDS, who later led the pro-Chinese, Communist Party
(Marxist-Leninist). Mike Klonsky works closely with Bill Ayers
on educational projects.
Ethelbert Miller-Chairman of the board of the notoriously
leftist and Cuban linked Washington based think tank, Institute
for Policy Studies.
Charlene Mitchell-A leader of CCDS, former high ranking member
of CPUSA.
Michael Rossman (deceased)-A Californian New Leftist, with close
ties to SDS.
Mark Rudd-A former leader of the SDS and the Weather Underground.
Howard Zinn-A well known Marxist historian.
The connections between those listed above, Obama and
Progressives for Obama are many fold.
Carl Davidson worked closely with Obama in Chicago in the mid
‘90s and with another former SDS activist Marilyn Katz organised
the famous 2002 peace rally in Chicago where Obama first came
out publicly against the Iraq War. Davidson is the webmaster for
the Progressives for Obama website.
Bert Garskof is active in the Obama campaign in Connecticutt. He
recently wrote this comment on the website Foreign Policy in
Focus.
We must realize that the only way to hold Obama, as President,
to the progressive agenda is to maintian and build the grass-
roots state/County organizations that were built only to elect
him...We must remember that the most significant progressive
changes have only been instituted into law after grass-roots
activism forced the issue...we can maintain our more progressive
values and work as organizers within the grass-roots election
campaigns.
We need to convince the new people and the many veterans of
electoral wars that this is a unique opportnity. we can create 2-
way communication with the People’s President - truly make him
the People’s President if we create methods and structures that
work to connect in an on-going way - the President, his staff
and grass-roots Obama groups for discussion of what the grass-
roots thinks and wants.
Gerald Horne, an historian who has studied the Hawaiian
Communist Party-was first to publicly reveal the connection
between Barack Obama and his boyhood mentor, secret CPUSA member
Frank Marshall Davis.
Mike Klonsky was a blogger on Obama’s website until negative
publicity forced his withdrawl. Klonsky’s brother Fred and wife
Susan are both listed as endorsers of the Progressives for Obama
website.
Bill Fletcher was the initiator of the Progressives For Obama
project which he co-founded with Tom Hayden. The other two
founders of PFO were writer Barbara Ehrenreich, who is a member
of both DSA and MDS and actor/activist Danny Glover who is close
to some DSA members.
Mike James, Robin DG Kelley and Mark Rudd are all listed as
endorsers of the Progressives for Obama website.
A quick trawl of the internet reveals several other MDS linked
activists listed as endorsing Progressives for Obama.
They include MDS founders Paul Buhle and Thomas Good (a former
communist turned anarchist who has referred to himself as an
“unrepentant Weather supporter.”), Texan former SDS activists
David Hamilton and Thorne Dreyer, Chicago based Obama fundraiser
Marilyn Katz, Marxist academics Rosalynn Baxandall and Immanuel
Wallerstein, plus Cornel West, an academic and DSA member who
refers to Obama as his “comrade.”
Another interesting turn-up is Rashid Khalidi, nominated
unsuccessfully for the MDS board. Khalidi was a close friend of
Obama’s from his time in Chicago in the 90s. Khalidi has been
accused of ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and
has written for the pro-Obama, Chicago based DSA/IPS linked
journal “In These Times”.
Three of the four founders of Progressives For Obama, Bill
Fletcher, Tom Hayden and Barbara Ehrenreich have served on the
MDS board, as has the PFO webmaster Carl Davidson. Several MDS
activists are endorsers of PFO.
Obviously, Progressives for Obama is an MDS creation.
While Bernadine Dohrn’s high level role as an MDS board member
is clear, Bill Ayers’s is less so.
From the MDS website
Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) held its first national
convergence at Loyola University, from November 8 through 11
(2007)with the participation of the newly inspired SDS, Students
for a Democratic Society.
One of the events listed is;
10 am-10:50 am Room 412 Resisting Endless War: Tom Good, Elaine
Brower, Bill Ayers
Below are four Youtube videos of Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers
speaking at an November 2007 SDS reunion at Michigan State
University.
Note Dorhn’s reference to the new SDS and MDS. Note references
to the overthrow of capitalism, visits to Chavez’s Venezuela and
building a “new movement”.
These people are still revolutionaries.
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are involved in an organisation
uniting three Marxist parties, a host of ‘60s radicals and
terrorists and a new generation of militant activists.
That organisation has spawned a spin-off organisation
specifically designed to put Barack Obama in the White House and
to bring about massive social change across the US.
Ayers and Dohrn helped launch Barack Obama’s political career.
Do they guide it still?”
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.legal/browse_thread/thread/3672b6b4de3b5623
Not sure how to find these videos...BUT WE NEED TO ASAP!! Anyone have any ideas? I need to go to bed but will check back in the morning.
mark for later
Look up Students for a Democratic Society & Revolutionary Youth Movement
BTT. I'm taking my Geritol and going to bed. Peace, baby. Groovy... (Sound of sobbing...)
I really wish all of the old farts would get over the 1960s. You don’t see me going around asking all of you to “understand” grunge and 90210.
Found the videos. A Townhall blogger has more info on this whole list.
Videos are here.
Can anyone archive?
You just proved my point (although inadvertently.) No one is asking that you “understand” the 60’s. But to understand Obama you must understand the past of those who have shaped his life.
Thanks..I found them too. Look at post 17...lots of good info a townhall blogger did on all of the names at the link!
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