isabel rose  

Initially formed as a splinter group which believed that peaceful protests were ineffective, the Weathermen were widely criticized for their use of violence as a means of social and political change. Some accused the group of terrorism, while others accused it of giving all activists, both militant and more mainstream, a bad name.

But for the Weathermen, violent action was nothing short of necessary in a time of crisis, a last-ditch effort to grab the country’s attention. And grab attention they did—in March 1970, just days after Bernardine Dohrn publicly announced a “declaration of war.” When an accidentally detonated bomb killed three Weathermen in the basement of a Manhattan townhouse, the group suddenly became the target of an FBI manhunt, and members were forced to go into hiding. The bomb had been intended to be set off at a dance at a local Army base.

How did the Weathermen arrive at this point? Some of the group’s former members, interviewed in THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, cite the murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a December 1969 Chicago police raid as a turning point. What many believed to be a government-sanctioned killing in an effort to wipe out militant groups such as the Panthers was, for the Weathermen, the final straw.

In 1960, nearly 50 percent of America’s population was under 18 years of age. This surplus of youth set the stage for a widespread revolt against the status quo: against previously upheld structures of racism, sexism and classism, against the violence of the Vietnam War and America’s interventions abroad. At college campuses throughout the country, anger against “the Establishment’s” practices turned to protest, both peaceful and violent.

As the decade continued, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an organization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr. in order to promote nonviolent protest, grew increasingly militant—as did the mostly white, middle-class “New Left,” which took cues from the civil rights movement, protested policies both home and abroad, and sparked factions like the Weathermen. By the late 1960s, activist movements had also mobilized among Asian Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, as well as a second wave of activism among women, gay and lesbians and the disabled.