Weather Underground - Legacy

Legacy

Widely known members of the Weather Underground include Kathy Boudin, Mark Rudd, Terry Robbins, Ted Gold, Naomi Jaffe, Cathy Wilkerson, Jeff Jones, Eleanor Raskin, David Gilbert, Susan Stern, Bob Tomashevsky, Sam Karp, Russell Neufeld, Matthew Landy Steen, Joe Kelly, Brian Flanagan, Laura Whitehorn and the still-married couple Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Most former Weathermen have successfully re-integrated into mainstream society, without necessarily repudiating their original intent.

Weatherman was referred to in its own time and afterwards as "terrorist." The group fell under the auspices of FBI-New York City Police Anti Terrorist Task Force, a forerunner of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The FBI, on its website, describes the organization as having been a "domestic terrorist group," but no longer an active concern. Others either dispute or clarify the categorization, or justify the group's violence as an appropriate response to the Vietnam war, domestic racism and the assassinations of black leaders.

In his 2001 book about his Weatherman experiences, Bill Ayers stated his objection to describing the WUO as "terrorist." Ayers wrote: "Terrorists terrorize, they kill innocent civilians, while we organized and agitated. Terrorists destroy randomly, while our actions bore, we hoped, the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate. No, we're not terrorists." Dan Berger, in his book about the Weatherman, "Outlaws in America," comments that the group "purposefully and successfully avoided injuring anyone... Its war against property by definition means that the WUO was not a terrorist organization."

However, their claims that they never attacked or intended to attack people are disputed by others. Weather Underground member Mark Rudd, reminiscing in 2005 about the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, said: "On the morning of March 6, 1970, three of my comrades were building pipe bombs packed with dynamite and nails, destined for a dance of non-commissioned officers and their dates at Fort Dix, N.J., that night." Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon professor of politics and history at Emory University in Atlanta, said in 2003, "The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence. I don't know what sort of defense that is."

Bill Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was quoted in an interview to say "I don't regret setting bombs" but has since claimed he was misquoted. During the presidential election campaign of 2008, several candidates questioned Barack Obama's contacts with Ayers, including Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Ayers responded in December 2008, after Obama's election victory, in an op-ed piece in The New York Times:

We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.... The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.

Brian Flanagan has expressed regret for his actions during the Weatherman years, and compared the group's activities to terrorism. Flanagan said: "When you feel that you have right on your side, you can do some pretty horrific things." Mark Rudd, now a teacher of mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College, has said he has "mixed feelings" and feelings of "guilt and shame."

These are things I am not proud of, and I find it hard to speak publicly about them and to tease out what was right from what was wrong. I think that part of the Weatherman phenomenon that was right was our understanding of what the position of the United States is in the world. It was this knowledge that we just couldn't handle; it was too big. We didn't know what to do. In a way I still don't know what to do with this knowledge. I don't know what needs to be done now, and it's still eating away at me just as it did 30 years ago. —Mark Rudd

A faction of the Weather Underground continues today as the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. Their official site reads:

We oppose oppression in all its forms including racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and imperialism. We demand liberation and justice for all peoples. We recognize that we live in a capitalist system that favors a select few and oppresses the majority. This system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice.

The site further supports armed violence:

We also respect the right of people to take up armed struggle against colonialism for the liberation of oppressed peoples