Mark Rudd - Revolutionary Youth Movement and Weather Underground

Revolutionary Youth Movement and Weather Underground

In 1969, as SDS membership grew rapidly, members' views concerning both goals and methods began to diverge widely. Rudd felt that SDS was not doing enough to protest the war in Vietnam. He was a leader of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a faction of SDS, which advocated a more militant course of action while other factions within SDS were becoming concerned about Rudd's increasingly vocal calls for violent confrontation and hardline Communist sentiments. The 1969 SDS convention effectively splintered and ended the organization. Rudd and other former RYM members ultimately formed Weatherman, a self-proclaimed "organization of communist women and men." The new organization was intent on overthrowing the government through violent actions. Spreading communism was a priority for the members of Weather, as when Rudd told other members of SDS, “ Don’t be timid about telling people we’re Communist. Don’t deny it, be proud of it.”

Read more about this topic:  Mark Rudd

Famous quotes containing the words youth, movement, weather and/or underground:

    Man’s own youth is the world’s youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth’s granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

    ... contemporary black women felt they were asked to choose between a black movement that primarily served the interests of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women.
    bell hooks (b. c. 1955)

    Whenever the weather licks the pilot instead of him lickin’ the weather, he’s finished. The first time makes the second time easier. And the first thing he knows, he’s in trouble when the weather is perfect.
    Frank W. Wead (1895?–1947)

    ... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)