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Weather Underground

This article is about the United States militant organization. For the weather forecasting service, see Weather Underground (weather service). For other uses, see Weather Underground (disambiguation).

Weather Underground
Leaders
Dates of operation1969–1977
Group(s)
Active regionsUnited States
Ideology
Political positionFar-left
Part ofStudents for a Democratic Society
Allies
OpponentsUnited States
Battles and wars

The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan.[2] Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership.[3] Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.

The FBI described the WUO as a domestic terrorist group,[4] with revolutionary positions characterized by Black Power and opposition to the Vietnam War.[3] The WUO took part in domestic attacks such as the jailbreak of Timothy Leary in 1970.[5][6] The "Days of Rage" was the WUO's first riot in October 1969 in Chicago, timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970, the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government under the name "Weather Underground Organization."[7]

In the 1970s, the WUO conducted a bombing campaign targeting government buildings and several banks. Some attacks were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with threats identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. Three members of the group were killed in an accidental Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, but none were killed in any of the bombings. The WUO communiqué issued in connection with the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, indicated that it was "in protest of the U.S. invasion of Laos". The WUO asserted that its May 19, 1972 bombing of the Pentagon was "in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi". The WUO announced that its January 29, 1975 bombing of the United States Department of State building was "in response to the escalation in Vietnam".[7][8]

The WUO began to disintegrate after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973,[9][page needed] and it was defunct by 1977. Some members of the WUO joined the May 19th Communist Organization and continued their activities until that group disbanded in 1985.

The group took its name from Bob Dylan's lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965).[10] That Dylan line was also the title of a position paper distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a "White fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical movements[11] to achieve "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and form a classless communist world".[12]

  1. ^ Grathwohl, Larry; Frank, Reagan (1977). Bringing Down America: An FBI Informant in with the Weathermen. Arlington House. p. 110. Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weatherman.
  2. ^ Bryan Burrough (2016). "3 - "You Say You Want A Revolution" The Movement And Emergence Of Weatherman". Days Of Rage - America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-14-310797-2. Archived from the original on May 28, 2023.
  3. ^ a b Wakin, Daniel J. (August 24, 2003). "Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded". The New York Times. Retrieved June 7, 2008.
  4. ^ "Weather Underground Bombings". Federal Bureau Of Investigation. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference PBS-Lens-2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Lambert, Laura (August 31, 2017). "Weather Underground American Militant Group". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved December 4, 2018.
  7. ^ a b The Weather Underground, produced by Carrie Lozano, directed by Bill Siegel and Sam Green, New Video Group, 2003, DVD.
  8. ^ The Weather Underground. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. 1975. pp. 1–2, 11–13. Retrieved December 20, 2009.
  9. ^ Jacobs, Ron (1997). The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. Verso. ISBN 978-1-85984-167-9. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
  10. ^ "WEATHERMEN GOT NAME FROM SONG". The New York Times. January 30, 1975.
  11. ^ Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press. p. 95.
  12. ^ See document 5, Revolutionary Youth Movement (1969). "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows". Archived from the original on March 28, 2006. Retrieved March 3, 2014.