Domestic Communist bombing-terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers helped start Barack Hussein Obama's
political career from their home.
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers believed that young Americans should work to overthrow
the United States government from the inside.
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Within
the next 14 days we will attack a symbol of American justice."
- Former Underground Member Bernardine Dohrn
The
Weathermen sought to overthrow the U.S. government.
While Bernardine Dohrn
led the Weathermen, the organization conducted a series of bombings against the U.S. government and symbols of authority in
the early 1970s, bombing federal buildings and police stations. Dohrn was a principal signatory on the group's "Declaration
of a State of War" in 1970 that formally declared "war" on the U.S. Government, and completed the group's transformation
from political advocacy to violent action. Dohrn also co-wrote and published the subversive manifesto Prairie Fire in 1974.
The Weathermen and Weather Underground
were suspected in various bombings — police cars, the National Guard Association building, the U.S. Capitol and the
Pentagon, and took credit for a number of them. Dohrn allegedly participated in many of the group's revolutionary activities.[10]
In the two months before the March
6, 1970, Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in which three members of the group were killed as a bomb was being constructed,
all members of Weatherman went underground.
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Weathermen
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® Encarta ® Encyclopedia
Weathermen,
or Weather Underground, revolutionary group organized in the United States in 1969. Numbering only a few hundred young men
and women, the Weathermen sought to overthrow the U.S. government. They preached and practiced a doctrine
of armed struggle.
The Weathermen were an
offshoot of the New Left group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The SDS fell apart in 1969 over members’ inability
to create a compelling political strategy to produce a more just society and to end racism and the Vietnam War (1959-1975).
The Weathermen were one of the small groups that emerged out of the SDS’s disintegration. Their name came from a song
by Bob Dylan that claimed, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” They believed
that the United States exploited people around the world and so deserved to be defeated by Communists in Vietnam and elsewhere;
they also believed that young Americans should work to overthrow the government from the inside.
The Weatherman
launched a campaign of violence to promote world Communism. In October 1969, they roared down Chicago streets, breaking
windows, attacking police, and vandalizing cars. In these “Days of Rage” and subsequent actions, the Weathermen
tried to “bring the [Vietnam] war home” to the streets of America. In March 1970 three Weathermen died when they
accidentally detonated a bomb that was believed to be meant for Columbia University in New York City. The Weathermen eventually
claimed responsibility for setting off about 20 bombs, including a small one in the United States Capitol.
The Weathermen, who changed their name to
the nonsexist Weather Underground, conducted terrorist activities through much of the 1970s. They attracted publicity but
failed to advance their goal of a revolution. Most Americans rejected their ideas and were repulsed
by their violent activities. Their actions contributed to the discrediting of left-wing political alternatives
in the United States. By the late 1970s many of the members of the Weather Underground had given up the revolutionary struggle
and turned themselves in to authorities. Many were jailed for their violent crimes.
Contributed By:
David Farber
Microsoft
® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2004.
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