Much of this discussion was fueled by the killing of two party leaders of the Black Panthers, Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, by Chicago police. Members of the group discussed the need to instruct themselves in the use of firearms and bombs in order to target and attack sites of power in the United States and discussed the need to kill police. By the end of the weekend, 284 people, including local youth and SDS members, had been arrested total bail amounted to more than $1.5 million.įrustrated with the inefficacy of traditional forms of political protest after “Days of Rage” and other antiwar demonstrations throughout November 1969, Weatherman members called for a national “war council” meeting of the SDS that December. The demonstrations had a low turnout-as low as 100 by some counts-as well as several incidents of random pointless rioting. That message of confrontation and violence was echoed in Weatherman’s signs and slogans, which read, “Bring the war home” and “The time has come for fighting in the streets.” However, “Days of Rage” proved to be only minimally successful. On October 6, 1969, Weatherman members blew up a statue in Chicago’s Haymarket Square that commemorated the policemen who had died in a riot in 1886. At the Harvard Institute for International Affairs, the group smashed windows, tore out phones, and beat professors.įrom October 8 to 11, 1969, Weatherman worked to organize thousands of young people in a direct assault on the police, whom they called “pigs.” The group called this a “National Action,” but newspapers called it “Days of Rage.” The protests were to begin on the second anniversary of the death of Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and were to coincide with the trial of the “Chicago 8”-eight men charged with conspiracy for their actions during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago one year earlier. In one action in the Northeast, it tried to recruit members at community colleges and high schools by marching into classrooms, tying up and gagging teachers, and presenting revolutionary speeches. Weatherman launched an offensive during the summer of 1969. The article became the founding statement of Weatherman. The article, the title of which was taken from a song by American musician Bob Dylan, asserted, among other things, that black liberation was key to the movement’s anti-imperialist struggle, and it emphasized the need for a white revolutionary movement to support liberation movements internationally. At the SDS national convention in June 1969, the Third World Marxists presented a position paper titled “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” in the SDS newspaper, New Left Notes. The original Weatherman, the “action faction” of the SDS, was led by Bernardine Dohrn, James Mellen, and Mark Rudd and advocated street fighting as a method for weakening U.S. government that would bring about its downfall. Members of the Weather Underground sought to advance communism through violent revolution, and the group called on America’s youth to create a rearguard action against the U.S. The Weather Underground, originally known as Weatherman, evolved from the Third World Marxists, a faction within Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the major national organization representing the burgeoning New Left in the late 1960s. Weather Underground, also called Weather Underground Organization, formerly Weatherman, militant group of young white Americans formed in 1969 that grew out of the anti- Vietnam War movement. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! ![]() ![]() ![]()
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