Weathermen

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First edition of Osawatomie
Stop the Terror at Pine Ridge ; 1975 Osawatomie underground magazine article and leaflet in solidarity with accused members of the American Indian Movement two years after the Wounded Knee occupation

The Weathermen (also Weather Underground Organization , Weatherman , Weather People ) were a radical left-wing militant underground organization in the United States that was active in the late 1960s to the 1970s. Most of all, they bombed government buildings.

history

Origin and concept

The name Weathermen comes from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues , in which it says: “You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” (“You don't need a weather announcer to know where the wind is blowing from ").

1969 was published in the American Student Association Students for a Democratic Society (SDS, dt. Students for a Democratic Society ), a pamphlet entitled You do not need a weatherman . The editors of this leaflet expressed their solidarity with the fighters of the Viet Cong and the Black Panther Party and portrayed the white workers in the USA as racist and unrevolutionary .

The subsequent dispute in the SDS ended with the split off of the faction then called Weathermen , which saw itself as a “revolutionary organization of communist men and women”.

Actions

In the late summer of 1969, the Weathermen started so-called high school jailbreaks . The actions were designed to attract high school and community college students to the movement. In October 1969 the Weathermen in Chicago organized the " Days of Rage " against the Vietnam War . The demonstrations ended in fierce street battles with the police and one dead. In 1970 the Movement declared war on the state apparatus and the members went underground. The trigger for this was the shooting by the police of Fred Hamptons , chairman of the Illinois section of the Black Panther Party . In the years that followed, this led to a series of bomb attacks on state, mainly military and police facilities, in which, however, people were never killed.

Due to feminist influences, the name was changed to the gender-neutral Weather People in 1970 , and later to Weather Underground . In the 1970s, the Weather People were mainly active in the drug subculture and influenced the Yippies there . The most spectacular action was the liberation of the psychologist Timothy Leary from prison in 1970.

Fragmentation and end

After some internal disputes, legal branches emerged in the mid-1970s, such as PFOC ( Prairie Fire Organizing Committee ), but also illegal branches such as the ARU ( Armed Resistance Unit ). The FBI drafted a report in 1976 attesting to the surveillance of the group. Today the FBI describes the group as a "former domestic terrorist group". The Weather Underground carried out other armed struggles and attacks, such as the attack on the US Senate in 1983 , until the mid-1980s . Since then, her trail has been lost in legal anti-fascist organizations (against the Ku Klux Klan ). Some members later surrendered to the police. In many cases, however, the trials ended in an acquittal when it became known that the FBI had used illegal investigative methods against the group (see also COINTELPRO ).

Prominent members of the Weather Underground included Kathy Boudin , Mark Rudd , Matthew Steen , Bernardine Dohrn, and Bill Ayers .

Aftermath

During the 2008 US presidential campaign, Bill Ayers hit the international headlines when Sarah Palin , Republican Party's vice-presidential candidate , accused Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama of being in contact with terrorists, Bill Ayers.

When it was learned that Obama's environmental adviser, Van Jones, was working in an environmental group with a founding member of the Weathermen, Jeff Jones, it sparked yet another scandal. Conservative Republicans began a campaign and got him to resign in September 2009.

Movies

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dan Berger: Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. P. 114 ff
  2. ↑ FBI: 1975 Terrorism Flashback: State Department Bombing . Retrieved October 13, 2008
  3. ↑ Obama's “green jobs czar” - WND
  4. ↑ USA: Republicans force Obama advisors to resign