For the record, with all this talk about Ayers, the Weathermen documentary is pretty amazing. You have to understand how I come at this. My Dad was in the Panthers, and the two groups were "allied" for a time in Chicago. I'd read some on them as a kid, and was--quite frankly-- fascinated. What struck was while I could understand the Panthers and their beefs with the cops, I never could get what would drive a bunch of rich white kids to start setting off bombs. It just didn't add up. The doc does a great job of putting you inside, not just their heads, but inside minds of young people at that time. It's a lovely piece of work best viewed as sort of a companion to Fog Of War.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
"...and soon we'll find out who are...the real revolutionaries..."
TC, I have some questions for you that have puzzled me for awhile.
Were the Black Panthers considered domestic terrorists? If not, why not? If so, then why hasn't having associations with former Black Panthers been a political liability for anyone?
David Horowitz has associations with many elected Republicans. Why no issue there? Congressman Bobby Rush? And lastly, has Megan McCardle ever met your dad and if so, will her associations with a 60's radical harm any future political aspirations she may have?
You might want to point out that the entire documentary is on youtube (broken up into smaller segments).
Great original music by two of the dudes from Fugazi.
the foundation i work for was a major funder of this doc! i'm ashamed to say that even tho it was nominated for an academy award, i still haven't seen it... all this ayers talk reminds that i really have to correct that!
I don't like the word terrorist, in that I don't think it has much meaning. If you scroll back through you'll see a thread where we discussed the usefulness--or lack thereof--of calling people terrorists.
Anyway, no, people haven't really called the Panthers a terrorist organization, in that, they didn't--as an organization--advocate the murder of innocents to influence the government. They carried guns. They sometimes shot at cops--though rarely, actually. But they never officially advocated just directly targeting innocents.
I think that's why no one give Bobby Rush shit. Also, they exist within a context. You have to remember--J. Edgar Hoover was off the chain. COINTELPRO was not a game.
hmmm, interesting to think about if how this would be playing out if Ayers was African-American and a former Black Panther.
I think the reason that this Ayers thing isn't really hurting Obama is because (1) nobody really cares anymore about 60s militants and (2) it doesn't feed into any other suspicions voters might have about Obama.
Obama never fell into the "angry black man" trap because there's no evidence that the stereotype fits - he doesn't have any "militant" associations in his past, he's never even been particularly associated with peaceful (but disliked by many whites) AA leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and he never appears to be angry. The whole "Michelle Obama hates America" thing gained traction because it fed into the suspicion that Obama secretly hates white people. The Reverend Wright controversy did, too.
If Ayers was a former Black Panther who was now a respected part of the Chicago education scene, Obama's association with him would be a problem because it would be further "evidence" that Obama is secretly an "angry black man who hates whitey."
But, Obama's association with a white 60s radical doesn't tell a simple story.
the Panthers didn't blow anything up. They weren't "terrorizing" anyone. It's like Malcolm to me; a lot people consider him a "Black militant" but what militant acts was he involved with or commit? the Panthers & Malcolm advocated Black self-defense. Yet the same people who today scream about owning guns for self-defense would probably consider them "radicals" for this stance
Pronk, you are wrong. See Rush, Bobby who has much closer ties to Obama than Ayers.
Given their connection to McCain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaP9eiWuX3s
I thought it was on subject to ask what is the connection with the Weathermen and the other leading black militant movement of the age, the Weather Girls?
I was always more frightened of girls than men.
You know who's an unrepentant domestic terrorist? Patty Hearst. You know who what's published by the Hearst Corporation? O, Oprah's magazine. Which means, yep, Oprah pals around with terrorists.
Hardly surprising, given that she's also a known associate of one Barack Hussein Obama.
"See Rush, Bobby who has much closer ties to Obama than Ayers."
Obama tried to unseat Bobby Rush in his first run for national office. I believe they've patched things up since then, but they come from very different political backgrounds.
I think it's hard to judge the Panthers because its difficult to cut through all of the propaganda about the organization from both sides. When I went to the Panther's film festival at Schomberg a few years ago, I thought they were the effing Rebel Alliance. Later, when I read allegations that they engaged in heroin dealing amongst other behavior, the shine wore off (When I say "they" I don't mean TNC's dad).
The Black Liberation Army, the Panther's more violent successor, certainly were terrorists.
The Security of the First World (S1W) were also a particularly nasty group of terrorists.
I never could get what would drive a bunch of rich white kids to start setting off bombs. It just didn't add up. - Oct 9. The "not adding up" is the CRUX and the NEXUS of our problems. How can there be a rational arithmetic to societal insanity? Because of greed, hypocrisy, racism, semi-racism, and tragic historical trends there is BOTH intellectual insanity and SPIRITUAL insanity in America. Do greed and hypocrisy play an important role in politics? ... in POLITICS and American LIFE... and DEATH????? Can Dave Brown summarize the situation quite concisely? The exploiter community is 2/3 spiritually insane and 1/3 intellectually insane. The exploited community is 2/3 intellectually insane and 1/3 spiritually insane. Is THIS the meaning of Karma?
I object to the use of the word "terrorist" in regard to the Weather Underground. It is ahistorical. No one back in the day, then, called them "terrorists".
Terrorists use indiscriminate violence to kill civilians to create a climate of fear to turn civilians against the government. It is precisely because they target innocent civilians that they create terror.
The Weather Underground had a completely different strategy and tactics at work. They set relatively small bombs in symbolic targets as theatrical gestures to indicate the depth of their opposition to the government and their revolutionary ambitions. They did not intend civilian casualities and were usually, but not completely, successful in that.
Most people in the antiwar and radical movements of the times did not support the Weather Underground. They had no great effect on the history of the time. They will have few defenders.
But to use language to equate them with Al Qaeda, 9-11, the suicide bombers in Israel is not accurate nor fair. But it has a purpose: when you fight terrorism, none of the rules apply, not the rules against invading other countries, not the rules against random eavesdropping, not the rules about preventative detention, not the rules against torture.
The pattern is the same as the Nixon years: what is first justified as necessary against foreign enemies, then is extended to domestic sympathizers of the foreign enemy and then to the mainstream political opponent. The Watergate burglary marked the moment when the tools used against the antiwar movement crossed over to being used against the Democratic Party. Equating Al Qaeda to Ayers and then Ayers to Obama is the same progression.
"I never could get what would drive a bunch of rich white kids to start setting off bombs. It just didn't add up."
The United States of America was in the process of killing literally millions of innocent people in S.E. Asia. Full stop. Take a good look at the civilian casualty statistics in Vietnam and Cambodia during our involvement there.
We did that.
If I was a young man at the time, I would have gone insane with grief and rage too.
""I never could get what would drive a bunch of rich white kids to start setting off bombs. It just didn't add up.""
Don't underestimate the impact the draft had on people in that age group at the time. It was immense.
"The United States of America was in the process of killing literally millions of innocent people in S.E. Asia. Full stop. Take a good look at the civilian casualty statistics in Vietnam and Cambodia during our involvement there."
Word life, and this shit is still going on in the Middle East, but Americans generally don't give a fuck about some brown folks with "funny" names.
It's funny that the "abortion is murder" fuckheads demonize anybody who even supports a woman's right to choose, but think bombing the shit out of Arab women and children is A-fucking-OK.
Since McCain flew a bomber in Vietnam, there's a very real chance he murdered some innocent people, so who's he to call people out as terrorists.
MLJ
The draft certainly did have an impact... Why doesn't someone ask Senator Mc Cain where he is going to get all the troops needed to invade Georgia , invade Iran, Pakistan and run a war in Iraq and Afghanistan all at the same time? Hmmm..
See Tom in MA 's comment above. The Weather Underground was a very small very vocal part of what was happening. It was 40 years ago and Senator Obama has stated many many many times his position on that bit of history. The Republicans are whipping this up to distract us from harder questions like how are we going to get enough troops to "Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" or will the stock market exist next year or what happens with health care when credit markets disappear....
What is so hard to understand about the Weathermen?
All revolutionary groups have been primarily composed of the relatively well-to-do student populations. Che Guevara was a med school student. Lenin became a communist while in law school in St. Petersberg. We could go around and about on the psychology of why violent revolutionary thinking is something which particularly plagues the upper middle classes, particularly while they are receiving advanced education, but the Weathermen were pretty much exactly who you would expect them to be.
In many ways, the Panthers were considerably more extraordinary. Movements like that occur far more rarely.
Remember that rich white kids were being shot by basically the same guys. And the "silent majority" at the time was full of cheers for the tin soldiers. The same "silent majority" that shot black men walking in white neighborhoods.
-Rick Pearlstein, Nixonland
I didn't participate, I was maybe 5 years too young. But we were all in it together. We still are. Racism is just one aspect of the ugly.
We lost then, but we've kept on. We were right on the principles, but maybe wrong on the implementation. We shall overcome.
"What is so hard to understand about the Weathermen?"
This blog is about interrogation. I have more questions than I have conclusions. If you want someone with a pat answer to every question, you're--with all due respect--in the wrong place. Just because you have a clear-cut perspective on an issue doesn't mean that everyone else does, if only because we don't all come from the same place. Furthermore, if you read the post, that's one of the reasons I liked the movie. It put it all in context.
And lastly, has Megan McCardle ever met your dad and if so, will her associations with a 60's radical harm any future political aspirations she may have?
Why would she run for office? It's just like why Chris "Tweety" Matthews won't run for office. They talk with out thinking too much.
By resisting civil rights and escalating the war in Vietnam, the 60’s establishment lost legitimacy with just-short-of a critical mass of society. The Weatherman were just a tiny splinter of the widespread opposition, from which they were cut off because of their underground status.
Most of the violence then was from the right: John Kennedy ‘63; Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner ‘64; Liuzzo ‘65; Malcolm ‘65; Orangeburg ‘68; Dr. King in April, 68; and two months later, Robert Kennedy.
The most peaceful guys back then were the chickenhawks like Bush and Cheney, who supported the war, but were afraid to fight in it.
The Panthers didn't practice or advocate random attacks on civilians, but they certainly terrorized a good deal of Oakland. Everyone remembers the breakfast program, but the Panthers in the Bay Area were involved in all kinds of protection rackets. Check out Hugh Pearson's invaluable bio of Huey Newton, In the Shadow of the Panther. He starts out sympahetic, but ends up pretty horrified by the violence and corruption of the Panthers, actions that can't be blamed on the very real persecution coming from the FBI.
It's a solid documentary, and it's interesting that you place it side by side with The Fog of War because both films make their subjects seem a little self-serving, a little too glib about just what they were doing. But that's what makes them both so good--they don't pretend to have some sort of false objectivity. They tell the story from very particular points of view and leave the viewer to parse it out a bit.
"This blog is about interrogation. I have more questions than I have conclusions."
That's why I keep on coming back here. Too few writers are willing to admit that part of writing is public self-education and admitting you don't have answers to everything. Too many pundits try to be experts on everything and end up saying nothing.
I do not consider myself as having a black and white mentality, but I cannot put myself in the shoes of the Weather Underground.
These people were bombing American institutions. They used actual live munitions to advance a political agenda. Sorry, there'll need to be more explanations (read: apologism), before I'll begin to be swayed an iota.
Will an apology from the Weather Girls make them acceptable to you Kuros?
It is a gay anthem and a camp classic.
hey now. the weathermen and women were a group of 200 or so rich, pampered white kids, who hated their dads, because they were hyper-rich. who was bill ayers father? the ceo of the commonwealth edison the power company that fed juice to chicago. in 196x ayers blew up a statue. his of weather buds blew themselves up. they would have made a real statement if they blew up their dads. but they didn't 'cause, in ayers case, his dad helped him stay underground. and the other families got high priced lawyers to get their kids light or no sentences, except for a few assholes.
they joined their fellow oppressed black bro's to rob banks to fund...who? themselves. the panthers knew they were flamers and wanted nothing to do with them. the bp's were so infiltrated by domestic intel agencies they didn't know who to trust among themselves let alone some white punks.
some rehabbed themselves after they got their hatred for daddy out of their system, e.g., ayers. dohrn has always been a useless wacko. their ridiculous 'days of rage' were a gang of jerks running around and breaking windows. they were a sideshow to a sideshow. they weren't serious about anything. they were plain stupid.
so 40 years later ayers and obama meet. ayers, now a prof, has a tea at ayers when he's running for the state legislature. to call ayers a 'terrorist' when he was a kid, insults terrorists.
ayers was a punk, sorta like mccain was he was a kid flying around and crashing jets left and right with daddy bailing him out. so, the truth is that mccain and ayers are the same: hated daddy, never lived up to him, too chickenshit to kill him, and lived off of daddy's power. that's the real joke about this.
so? lissen up. today, mccain and his dipstick '50's cheerleading demagogue are far worse 'terrorists' than the shitburd weathertrons. they have a following of people who are just as angry as the weatherdoods.
By the time the Weather group took their distinct path, they were at odds with not only the Panthers but damned near everyone else on the Left. They were held in contempt as irresponsible, politically destructive and monomaniacal by the rest of us.
The Panthers, incidentally, need to be understood in terms of their regional factions as much as anything else. Chicago had one of the better Panther formations - Fred Hampton had come not from the lumpen elements but had been a youth leader of the NAACP prior to his attraction to the Panthers. The trajectory of Bobby Rush, as opposed to most of the Oakland Panthers, is some indication of differences.
But even folks who held the Weathermen in contempt for their politics of narcissism (i.e. "rage" was the key and everyone who wasn't with them was against them) felt on the verge of some kind of apocalypse. The murder of Fred Hampton, which was literally an assassination - even the then-very-conservative Chicago Tribune's investigations led to that conclusion - on the heels of the Chicago Convention police riots, and the '68 assassinations of MLK and RFK contributed mightily to an atmosphere of deep despair among folks who lived through that era, particularly in the Chicago area. But the Weathermen tended to be upper-middle class and/or bred in elite schools. Their politics were an outgrowth of an arrogance that those environments too-often breed. While they obviously made personal sacrifices, they exuded an arrogance and self-righteousness that had little or nothing to do with politics. They carried "vanguard" elitism to the absurd extreme and deliberately destroyed what was left of SDS as a mass student organization. Some of the worst elements ever of the US left.
And I'd also recommend the Hugh Pearson book as a demythification of the Oakland Panthers, who also had a pretty negative impact on the Bay Area left when all was said and done. The internal bullshit, cultishness and corruption of the Panthers is quite stunning, horrific and ultimately very, very tragic in retrospect. All of this stuff was mirroring the insanity that "mainstream" America was belching up in the Nixon era, but the job of people engaged in politics is to develop a coherent strategy, not knee-jerk reactions or imported "ideology" that replaces critical thinking and analysis. A lot of this garbage was symptomatic of the lack of anything resembling mature leftwing politics in the wake of the McCarthy era and the complicity of mainstream liberalism in Cold War hysteria.
Ta-Nehisi:
I'm sorry if my question (What is so hard to understand about the Weathermen?) came off as flippant, but it wasn't. I know I don't comment much, but I've been talking to you since well before the blog came to the Atlantic. I do understand that pat answers aren't what you are about.
But I mean it as a real question: in light of what we know about who makes up violent revolutionary groups, what is it about the Weathermen that you find extraordinary? I liked the movie too, and it did put them in perspective. But my question was merely asking for a bit more from you about why it was difficult to understand how well-off white kids would become revolutionaries. I apologize if it came off as something else.
"When you feel you have Right on your side, you can do some horiffic things."
A befitting definition of The Fog of War. And a sentiment we should remind ourselves of...often.
"they would have made a real statement if they blew up their dads"
Unfortunately, middle-class psychological complexes were at the root of an awful lot of the youthful left's behavior at the time. Blowing up "their dads" was explicit in their rhetoric and would have only made the entire project even more transparent as little more than the pathology of priviliged white kids.
I also think it's ironic that Obama is being burdened with the willingness of the post-Daly-Sr. Chicago establishment - which is more-or-less liberal - to rehabilitate one of their own "prodical sons." That is just total bullshit. Obama is being held to a standard that no man could possibly meet. The irony, of course, is that a narcissitic little shit who has been propelled in every aspect of his career by the most elite family ties conceivable - and who did in fact kill innocent people with bombs in pursuit of a lost and wholly disreputable cause in the Sixties - is trying to smear Obama for having served on charitable boards with Ayers decades after his relatively minor transgressions. That, of course, would be John Sydney McCain III. (His wife Cindy's father also has ties to the Phoenix mob, who were "terrorists" in their own right. Google Phoenix journalist Dan Bolles - a victim of terrorism by the scumbags who controlled distribution of liquor - among a host of other "vices" - in Arizona.)
I got into the Panthers when I was in high school--read every damn book on them ever written I think. Anyway, the idea of some kids from the hood, or just some black kids in general getting so pissed off about racism that they decided that they needed to defend themselves against the cops didn't sound that crazy to me.
But the Weathermen were beyond that. They didn't just need to defend themselves--they actively bombed places. My favorite scene in the movie is where Fred Hampton explains why him and the Panthers wouldn't support the Weathermen, basically calling them suicidal. Of course Fred is dead, and Ayers is still kicking.
Again, the privilege thing set up an obvious conflict to me. I thought the film did a great job of explaining it.
Sorry - That's "Don Bolles", not "Dan". The Hensley family link is via Kemper Marley, who was an Arizona mobster considered the priime suspect in investigative reporter Bolles' murder by car bomb.
Andrew Gilbert and brucds
please, please, never mention the pearson book in an intelligent conversation about the panthers. pearson worked closely with david horowitz to get the book done. horowitz has been grinding an axe against the panthers and the left for decades. there are a sea of good books out there, but shadow of the panther is not one of them. its been discredited over and over. rather than being good its the worst book on the panthers.
garvey
garvey - Pearson's book is hardly the last word, but it's a useful corrective to the romanticized, self-serving accounts that characterize most of the Panther memoirs I've read. Hilliard seems to come closest to opening up - probably because anything less than including some of his admissions would have robbed him of any credibility.
Horowitz is an opportunistic scumbag with a Manichaean bent - probably always was - but his brief against Huey Newton and Elaine Browne regarding the murder of Betty van Patter is IMHO likely closer to the truth than a lot of old lefties would want to believe. Interviewing Horowitz and using some of his sources would be mandatory for anyone who wanted to dig into the Oakland Panther story. Pearson came out of Pacific News Service when he wrote that book, which hardly puts him beyond the pale of solid investigative reporting. I fear too many people turned their heads and went into denial when the Panthers devolved into a thuggish personality cult.
I've heard stories from my parents about contemporaries plot to 'ring in the revolution' by stealing the Liberty Bell.
The uncanny thing about 1968 is that left-wing kids all across "the west" had convinced themselves that revolution was coming... Perhaps they went to the barricades because of Che, Sartre, Fanon, or Nkrumah. Perhaps it was a mixture of envy and rebellion against "the greatest generation" who had participated in the true global struggle. Or Perhaps it was because the had an inflated impression of their own ability to create revolution.
It was almost certainly _not_ because of serious exposure to Marx. Perhaps a brief dalliance with Marxian tracts gave SDS and the Weathermen a guilty envy of the Panther's Proletarian chops.
Some of it is, I think, demographic. It's unhealthy for a society to have too many unsupervised 19 year-olds.
One thing though: history suggests that would-be revolutionaries and ruling class both wildly underestimate the toughness and stability of mass society -- the remarkable thing about Russia/1917, China/1947-48, and, for that matter, France 1789 is that revolution occurred, but that it didn't occur far earlier.
It's astounding to realize just how inflated and unrealistic are 'terrorists' views of their own ability to change or reshape society. The United States focused a significant portion of its GDP to bombing Germany into submission during World War, but it still took Russian troops in Berlin to force surrender. It is a mystery how the Weathermen convinced themselves that American society was so very much weaker and more susceptible to revolution.
"What is so hard to understand about the Weathermen?"
This blog is about interrogation. I have more questions than I have conclusions. If you want someone with a pat answer to every question, you're--with all due respect--in the wrong place. Just because you have a clear-cut perspective on an issue doesn't mean that everyone else does, if only because we don't all come from the same place. Furthermore, if you read the post, that's one of the reasons I liked the movie. It put it all in context.
I think that what he's politely trying to say, TNC, is that you're kind of dense about rich white people and white people in general. Here with the, "gee, why would rich whites have rebelled in the 60s, they had nothing to complain about," in other recent posts with the "now you whites know how we feel when a dumb black guy gets put on TV." Because in fact, we don't feel anything when there's a dumb white person on TV. Nothing. Whites don't think of themselves as white, feel racial pride, or feel racial embarrassments. To the extent whites think of themselves in racial terms, it's as Italians, Jews, Russians, etc. It's just that a little more thought or knowledge about the lives of whites would be helpful when you're always commenting on racial issues.
The italics are supposed to extend to the end of the second paragraph.
brucds
Your point on romanticism and criminality is a documented point and well taken. Still a much better source of looking at the panther from this perspective would be Flores Forbes, Will You Die For Me. The major problem with Pearson is most readers will have no idea what so ever of what to believe and what not to believe. Check his sources. The problems begin when you see that Pearson’s interviews were mostly done with a few west coast panthers. Why? When at the time he could have interviewed as many folks as he chose. Why depend on one of the Panthers major detractors? Would you do a book on Obama and depend on McCain for your major source. Me thinks not.
I am in the middle of reading a book called "The Sixties Unplugged" and just read a part on the free speech movement. The author is a leftist, but had a lot of contempt these far left groups. One of the distinctions that needs to be made is that these groups despised liberals and the democratic party. Mainstream liberalism at the time was supporting LBJ and his Great Society as well as his Gulf of Tonkin resolution. So a bombthrower like Bill Ayers of the 60's would never have supported the political establishment in the form of any democratic party nominee.
THe author of this book argues that a lot of the failings of these leftist groups were because of the narcissism in these groups. They were so egocentric that they really only thought of what was important to them without trying to reach outside of that narrow range. Many of the leaders craved attention and some of them turned into jokes. Buffoonery isn't a great MO if you are trying to start a revolution.
Doug,
Good point. Even watching the Weather Underground, there is a sense of "play-acting" there. I don't doubt they believed what they believed, but ego and showmanship is on full display.
These people were bombing American institutions. They used actual live munitions to advance a political agenda.
I love the self righteousness of the demand for an apology that follows. The folks who put all their effort into working through non-violence found that the people on whom they were pinning their hopes kept getting shot in the head. With live munitions! This while their government was forcing them to go do bad things overseas (with live munitions!) that did nothing to advance the agenda.
I'm glad I didn't live through that.
Most of us were very aware that Marxism - at least as practised in Russia - wasn't a solution either. See the Realist's iconic "my turn" cartoon.
On the topic of why the privileged might rebel ... rebellion really isn't about deprivation. In my experience, people don't reben because they see that they're missing some kind of material good. Rebellion is about deprivation of a spiritual good - it's about trying to feel like a hero when you think there are no other options open to you to feel worthwhile. You could be the child of billionaires, and that means nothing if you're nothing.
"...what would drive a bunch of rich white kids to start setting off bombs."
I'm just glad Ayers is white. The atmosphere would be so much uglier right now if he'd been a Panther. Not that a former Panther would ever have been able to "launch Obama's political career."
I don't like the word terrorist, in that I don't think it has much meaning.
Gerry Adams is now deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. John McCain had a tizzy about the prospect of Obama retiring the special envoy position to NI.
Anyway, that period of the 60s? Fucked up. It produced a lot of people who did fucked-up things.
You know what the fascinating thing for me is? I'd heard about Ayers since the primary, and I only found out he was a white guy this past week.
I went to see the doc at the Three Penny in Chicago. Bill Ayers was there and spoke a bit afterwards. I guess I'm a terrorist!
Nolabyrd: "I love the self righteousness of the demand for an apology that follows."
I did not demand an apology. I said that much of these explanations on this thread were apologism.
The Weather Underground committed unlawful acts of open rebellion, and injured innocents. No Tu Quoque about the wrongs of the US government during that period is going to ever justify the acts of terrorism by the Weather Underground.
Yes, terrorism. They used violence to advance a political agenda. It doesn't have to be on the scale of Al Qaeda to qualify as terrorism.
TNC: "But the Weathermen were beyond [the Panthers]. They didn't just need to defend themselves--they actively bombed places."
Precisely.
I met many people like this in Portland, OR over the years. Most of them were white, college educated, and from upper middle class families. Many hoped that the "Battle in Seattle" was the first shot of the next revolution. At the heart of this was a recognition that things are genuinely messed up in this country. But there was also a sense of theater, a unspoken knowledge that one could play the role of the anarchist in their 20's and safely walk away to a better life later. That luxury, of course was never available to people in the inner cities.
I think you're right; the Weatherman documentary was very good. But there were a few troubling and rather odd sins of ommission:
1) the prominence given to Brian Flannagan (sp?), who now runs a bar in NYC. Brian F's main claim to fame was that during the "days of rage" he got in a fight with Chicago corporation counsel Richard Elrod, in which the latter broke his neck. This was a big deal at the time (although Elrod may have been the instigator of the fight), but I was really surprised that this was not mentioned in the documentary.
2)the film makers let Bernadine Dohrn off the hook entirely by not mentioning her infamous and truly bloodthirsty speech at the Weatherman council meeting at Flint, Michigan, after the Days of Rage. I remember being appalled at the time when I read transcripts (in the underground press) of her terrible remarks about the Mansons, Sharon Tate, etc. No doubt Ms. Dohrn wishes to forget this ever happened but it's part of the history of Weatherman. And I think it would have been appropriate for the interviewers to ask her what she thought about it, these decades later.
"And I think it would have been appropriate for the interviewers to ask her what she thought about it, these decades later."
About the sickening Manson gang eulogy, Dohrn now says it was a joke. Funny she didn't try to make that correction at the time.
Also, a commenter earlier had too narrow a definition of terrorism. Terrorism is the use of violence by *small groups* to seek political ends, no matter who the target is. This is a substitute for mass action, as we said back in the day.
I was a student radical at the time, but one appalled by the Weathermen. I just posted to my blog (onscreen-scientist.com) a short reminiscence from 1974 in Berkeley called "My Appointment with the FBI and a Long-Delayed Connection," which might be of interest to some.