It's incredibly rare to see media depict the real root causes behind acts of "terrorism" during today's War On Terror. While Weather Underground does not glorify its subjects behavior, it does create empathy on the part of the viewer... and that alone is revolutionary at this historical point in time. The Weather Underground portrays a time in America's past when the populace was activated in a way that makes today's peace movement look like armchair intellectuals. Is it really just a draft that determines how aggressive our anti-war stance will be? That is pretty sad, since, if that is true, the anti-war movement isn't actually anti-war at all, it's just anti having to fight in a war. This is a documentary about a group of activists who made a true sacrifice, giving up their own freedom to try and stop a war.
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Back in the late 1960s and through much of the 70s, a small group of terrorists who labeled themselves the Weather Underground (or, the Weathermen) resorted to very violent tactics in reaction to things such as the Vietnam War and racism. While they didn't kill anyone (other then themselves in one case), they blew up many things and even helped Timothy Leary break out of prison! Now, decades later, this film explores their actions and interviews the surviving participants.
"The Weather Underground" is an interesting film about about this terrorist group. What's also interesting is that the documentary is amazingly amoral--neither taking a pro or con sort of approach. This isn't bad--and it allows the participants themselves to make that determination--looking back at their movement and actions. Some were rather wistful--and seemed to now believe that they were completely wrong in using violence. Some excellent quotes from the ex-terrorists were the following: "...if you think you have the moral high-ground, that's a dangerous thing..." "...my feelings of guilt and shame...these things I am not proud of..." However, what was even more fascinating was the woman who disagreed, saying "...I would do it again..." This values-free approach, while disconcerting, is also quite revealing--and a bit scary. Well done and very fascinating. Worth a look. -
Okay, couldn't really focus in on the documentary. Let's just say I watched it this weekend while taking care of 2 kids which equals numerous interruptions. Overall, pretty balanced. I'm really glad that they explored the destructive side of member's decisions and behavior, and the price their family and friends paid. I do however, appreciate their passion for trying to stop the war at all personal costs. They were a little delusional and smug in their youth and 70's styling and "dig this so you can dug it later" vernacular (it's laughable today). PLUS, I found the Weathermen/women so condecending towards anyone not in their socioeconomical situation. Apparently upper hierarchy within did practice elitist behavior (sorry not being pretentious, just realizing I don't know how to spell it in American English - super-screwed without spell check as you can tell). It did FINALLY click with me why the university I attended took bomb scares seriously, even in the late 80s!
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noelartm5 November 2005This is one of the most amazing documentaries I've ever seen. Like a lot of people, I had a low opinion of the Weathermen at the beginning of the film. They seemed like selfish and unsophisticated amateur activists at first, and they were. It took a few of their own being killed by their own device -a homemade bomb- to wake them up. This was the turning point not only for them, but for the film.
Although one is a narrative and the other a documentary, this film makes for a great companion piece with Antonioni's ZABRISKE POINT. I feel like I understand that film so much better now having seen this one. In fact, a couple of WU people appeared in Antonioni's film.
The filmmakers have done an excellent job of capturing the emotional and political climate of the Vietnam War era. This is also the only documentary I have seen that shows Martin Luther King Jr. giving his personal opinion on that war. Also, it's a real ear and eye opener to hear a former Weatherman criticize modern day terrorists like Timothy McVey and those connected with the 9-11 attacks. What gives him the right to come across sounding so smug? Maybe the fact that The Weather Underground never killed anybody. If I could suggest a couple of things to the filmmakers it would be if they had only put the words "CASUALTIES: 0" with each bombing mentioned, it would have been more impressive. And secondly, I wish they'd gone into more detail about how the WU successfully broke Timothy Leary out of prison - but then as a magician never reveals, why should they?
By film's end, I had a totally opposite view of these people than I had at the beginning. So there is a real arc to the film that showed how these people had changed, thus keeping the subjects human rather that mere counter-culture stereotypes. That is a challenge for any documentary filmmaker doing a film on such controversial figures as these. -
smilin'-227 October 2003The Weather Underground presents a well-balanced view of the militant faction of the 1960s anti-war group that orchestrated a series of direct actions (including bombings) in protest of the Vietnam War and American imperialism.
To its credit, the film is not overly sympathetic to the members of the group. Rather, it portrays them in a direct and logical manner that tends to explain their more violent activities as the desperate attempts of extremely dedicated activists to engender dynamic change in lieu of those "publicly-sanctioned" methods which they felt were not sufficiently powerful to stop the war machine (i.e., non-violent demonstrations). It should be mentioned that none of the group's bombings resulted in injuries to people, with the notable exception of 3 WU members who were killed accidentally while making a bomb that was destined for an ill-advised attack on military personnel - a seminal moment the the organization's history that "opened their eyes" to the darkness they were headed towards. One cannot help but wonder what would have transpired had that attack been carried out - this is the chilling central lesson of the film, poignantly described by one former member who plainly stated that "the violence didn't work."
At the screening I attended the audience had the good fortune of listening to two of the Weather Underground's key members in person: Bernadette Dohrn and Bill Ayers. This proved particularly interesting, as both individuals, while still espousing their anti-militarism/anti-imperialism views to strong effect, did not express the need for radical tactics as one would imagine they may (given the current climate gripping the nation). Instead, they talked of engaging the issue through learning, organized activism, personal growth and social consciousness/responsibility.
It is this dialectic that makes this film so important right now, and I think that the directors have made an important step towards educating Americans in the subject of social awareness. My only complaint is that this lesson needs a counterpoint, something to break the ultimately sad feeling that one is left with when the screen flickers off at the end. Perhaps if viewed in tandem with a film that explores the victories that have been made through non-violent protest "The Weather Underground" can achieve its best potential. -
I had actually never heard of the Weathermen before "The Weather Underground" came out. As I understand it, some people complained that the documentary glossed over some of their more violent activities (and some people think that that may have cost it the Best Documentary Oscar). But the way I see it, these sorts of documentaries are always going to stir up controversy, with different factions in society complaining about what they do and don't focus on.
No matter. I will say that the documentary brings up important questions about when it's OK to use violence against those in power. Certainly the US government's actions in Vietnam - plus its spying on radical groups - left the people who formed the Weathermen feeling that they had no other options. And of course, it brings up questions of how far we can go today, when the Bush administration labels political opponents as terrorist enablers.
So overall, I do recommend the documentary as a look at '60s radicalism (even though this is radicalism in a less than pleasant form), and also a look at government surveillance. Whether or not you agree with the Weathermen is of course up to you. As for whether or not the documentary glossed over their more violent activities, is that any different from glossing over the government's crimes? -
ThurstonHunger29 March 2005Hard to separate the film from the content here. I thought the mix of various footage and talking heads worked well. (Although one image, used at least twice crossing a street in the 70's left me perplexed...unless it was footage from one of the Weather(wo)men???)
The use of sound was deft too, never milking an emotion nor stealing a scene. Speaking of items stolen, oustered SDS leader Todd Gitlin, and his take on the happenings was interesting to me. Others on this review board talk about this being a take on history from the loser's point of view, but then he is the one who lost to those losers.
I don't see the Weathermen as losers, but certainly as marginalized folks. Whether by their own in-fighting, by the end of the Vietnam war, by the temptation of time passing, children being born and a general rise in the status of one's status quo. Or perhaps by CointelPro.
I'm not sure what is the most amazing aspect of CointelPro, its insidiousness or its effectiveness. I thought the filmmakers went pretty easy on this...but then again, maybe they felt it was a confluence of factors that helped to quell the Weather.
Still one can imagine that the levels of CointelPro now are so advanced and complicated, that it would be hard to unravel that from the actual DNA of any "revolutionary" going today. Indeed one can assume that CointelPro junior likely generates its own revolutionaries, and counterrevolutionaries and countercounter to the nth... Like some sort of runaway computer program.
Anyways...
I do think the film is a worthwhile watch, although chances are you can easily predict your response from just reading some of the reviews posted here. I will always admire the left's largest weakness...that it can doubt itself. If the film doesn't provoke questions in you, it will at least provoke responses (and hopefully not ready-made ones).
Some of my questions...
1) Is there a difference in violence against corporations versus violence against humans?
2) Does anyone else beside the sons/daughters of the elite have time to think about the "revolution?"
3) What exactly was so great about Timothy Leary? And did he get productized into Zoloft? Or whatever is the latest offensive attack missile into the Drug War? Leary didn't have quite the funding that today's corporate cartels have, but it sounds like he sure did have $ome.
Well that's just my own ongoing boredom/irritation with legal and illegal drugs. Of these three, the most important is the first.
I'm surely no supporter today of the ELF, but one device in the film, of painting action-reponse pictures of the Weatherbombing made violence seem nearly rational. Although nowhere near as methodical as shots of airplanes and their almost pretty dropping of death.
I thought Mark Rudd's comment that all violence is perceived as either criminal and/or insane may not be far off the mark. He talked about this as one way that the Weather was blown over rather than up. But as I get older, it does seem that non-violence is the ONLY way.
Of course, I have my doubts....
6/10 -
howard.schumann9 February 2004By the late 1960s, the undeclared war in Vietnam had dragged on for four years despite assurances from our political leaders that we had turned the corner. While massive protest marches brought the issue to the attention of millions, they did little to stop the war. By the early 70s, Richard Nixon was President, the war had escalated to Laos and Cambodia, protesting students were murdered at Kent State, over 30,000 Americans and countless more Vietnamese were dead and there was no end in sight. Impatient with non-violence and radicalized by the continually escalating casualty count and the deafness shown by political leaders, more militant groups such as The Weathermen and Black Panthers began to emerge.
The Weathermen (later The Weather Underground), a radical faction of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), waged a small-scale war against the US government during the 1970s that included bombing of the Pentagon and the Capitol buildings, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison, and evading a nationwide FBI manhunt. Nominated for an Academy Award, directors Sam Green and Bill Siegel's compelling documentary, The Weather Underground, candidly explores the rise and fall of the protest group over a six year period as former members speak about what that drove them to "bring the war home" and landed them on the FBIs ten most wanted list. Though tough questions were not asked, it is nonetheless a balanced and engrossing documentary that puts the last serious student movement in this country into historical perspective without either romanticizing or trivializing it.
Using FBI photographs, news accounts, archival war footage and interviews with Weathermen, SDS leaders, and FBI agents, the documentary explores the limits of protest in a free society and the odds faced by those confronting state and corporate power. Included are scenes of napalm bombing in Vietnam, the murder of Black leaders Fred Hampton and George Jackson, and excerpts of talks by President Nixon. The documentary contains interviews with seven of the original Weathermen, all White, middle class, and well educated: Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Brian Flanagan, Naomi Jaffe, Laura Whitehorn and David Gilbert. These were not weekend hippies or armchair activists but people so committed they cut themselves off from family and friends for nearly a decade.
While the movement began by targeting all (White) Americans, after the explosion of a homemade bomb in Greenwich Village, NY in 1970 killed three of their members, they determined that no one should die as a result of their direct action and no one did. In spite of their belief that civil disobedience was the only alternative, the radicalism of the group alienated many of the people they were trying to convert and forced them to go underground, eventually surrendering to the FBI. Today most are still active in professional capacities in support of these ideals and still convinced of the evils of the capitalist system and the need for genuine democracy.
While their acts can be understood on the basis that it was a time of worldwide revolution and by the failure of marches on Washington to stop the escalation of the war, questions as to whether or not their tactics were effective are still being debated. If nothing else, they exposed the FBI's sinister CointelPro program, an attempt to infiltrate and destroy left wing organizations. Though today the goal of a truly just and humane society seems farther away than ever, as director Siegel pointed out referring to The Weather Underground, "It's clear they didn't have the entire answer, but their impulse that the world can be a more progressive, humane place is worth considering. They made huge mistakes but also had an impulse that things needed to change." The impetus for that change is still alive. -
ReelCheese26 August 2006Decent documentary recalls the exploits of the Weathermen, a radical anti-war organization that operated in the United States during the 1960s and '70s. We see how this small group hid bombs in public buildings (though never with the intent of killing), planned for a revolution and eventually went underground to avoid the FBI -- all with the aim of ending the Vietnam war and overthrowing the federal government.
"The Weather Underground" is as much a retrospect as it is a character study. Lots of people oppose war, but what motivates a tiny faction to take such extreme action? This is a cautionary tale of sorts, warning of the dangers of what happens when one side believes it has "right" on their side. The Weathermen so strongly believed in their cause, and that some magical revolution was on the way to change everything, that they come off as kind of pathetic and sad.
Something this doc could have used a bit more of was balance. There are voices in the film that essentially say, "You did what???", but not nearly enough considering just how extreme the Weathermen were. Still, it's an enjoyable effort whether you're old enough to remember this group or not. -
BreanneB30 June 2005I thought that this movie was not only excellent but also very informative about a very tragic and horrific period of time in our country's history. This film shows the actual people that were involved in some way or another and clips of news reports and other real life things. Although, you don't see the infamous and high profile Weathermen Judith Clark and Kathy Boudin in the main film, you can hear Boudin talking in one of the extra features. Clark, was sentenced to 75 years to life for the deadly armored car heist that left 3 law enforcement officers dead, Boudin, received 20 years to life, and Boudin's Husband David Ritter received the same as Clark did. Although, Boudin, was paroled from prison in August 2003 and left in October, after serving 22 years. I personally think like many others that she should have gotten the exact same sentence as the other two. She only received leniency because her father was a big time lawyer. There should have been no special treatments at all for her.
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Ronin4719 October 2003An extremely disturbing documentary about The Weather Underground, a radical, left-wing terrorist group in the late 60's/early 70's who bombed federal buildings in order to provoke social change.
This movie is troubling because of its even-handedness. The "Weathermen" certainly aren't good guys, but they aren't exactly bad guys either. Judging from the horrifying footage from Vietnam we're shown (including real pictures from the My Lai massacre) and the overwhelming oppression by the white establishment of the 60's, it's easy to see how these kids felt forced to resort to violence. But they neglected the age-old wisdom that two wrongs don't make a right.
The editing is outstanding. Footage and facts from the past (narrated by Lili Taylor) is intercut with present-day interviews with some surviving members (some repentant, some not) and through most of the film, the music consists only of a creepy, atonal electric drone in the background, which heightens the uneasy, upsetting feel of the film.
Above all, this movie is about when the hippie zeitgeist of the 60's slipped into a darker, more disturbed area, which graphic photos of the Manson family murders and the Altamont concert disaster illustrate to devastating effect.
I'm much too young to know firsthand about how the American climate was during this time period, but judging from films like this, it was an extremely difficult time during which the lines between good and evil were even more blurred than usual. The Weather Underground were misguided and they were terrorists, but it's true that they were fighting an obscenely corrupt system. Ironically, they thought they were bombing in the name of peace. -
The Weather Underground was an interesting storytelling of the protest group the Weather Underground. They played an interesting role during a heated time in America from 1970-1980, raising awareness and raising tension throughout the nation as they were growing in notoriety for setting off bombs (literally) in public government buildings every time the US took part in any atrocity. Their message was "Bring the war home" referring to the Vietnam war, which is documented in having a huge death toll by the hands of the US soldiers overseas. If people didn't do anything about the war, they would show Americans what war was by creating war here in the States.
This DVD is packed with excellent footage that I've never seen. It offers a viewpoint from the director of what exactly this group of around 30 individuals were thinking about when they decided to take on the US government and its grounds for staying in Vietnam and other actions which the gov't helped in doing. There are plenty of extras on the DVD, including a great commentary by two of the more outspoken members of the Weather Underground, who shed light on their views of other members and their words (which happen to clash with what might've been true). There is full videos of footage from their meetings and a commentary from the director.
I can't say if everything that was on the DVD was true for the time, even when everything seems to be in order historically and fact-worthy. As I watched this documentary, though, I got a deeper sense of a mission gone a-wry and a real-to-life feel of drama and a meaning to life beyond capitalism and sitting at home while people die for this country and don't speak up against the Vietnam war (which happens to resemble the most recent 2003 Iraq war best). The DVD might be sending messages out about protesting wars and government actions and how essential it was to this group, and in a way, it makes the viewer feel a slight empowerment to set things right today during our Iraq war, but most of us would probably end up like the group before the Weather Underground (the SDS: students for a democratic society) whom the Undergrounds were a part of, but split because of their blatant inactivity against the gov't when the call came.
I loved the film for what it was as a film. I gave the rating for this one a 7 out of 10 stars. There were times when you didn't want to side with the WU. They turned into misguided individuals which can distort their own views to take on any cause of help that the US gave other countries, which cannot be held completely responsible on the US' part. The director had a weird way of showing the transition from their peace-loving group to this more active, bombing group (a typical shot of the ocean on the beach for about a minute or so), but other than that, I got a real education of what they were doing, what the Black Panthers felt about them, and their sense of realism and understanding in the growing world at the crazy time of the late 60's and early 70's. Also included were awesome ambient and funk cuts from the likes of Aphex Twin and Sly and the Family Stone. I loved it, check it out. -
samalden-spector3 November 2019I watched this when I was a teenager, and it left me very uninformed about the roots of this fashionable fad of Left Wing violence we are experiencing. As a consequnce of being so wildly uninformed, I pissed off a lot of sensible moderate, conservative people who were familiar with what happened in this era. Thank God I was never the sort ot be a True Believer. But if you go around referring to these people as "activists" uncritically a lot of sensible people will never speak to you ever again. The Weather Underground claimed to stand for things... and took credit for a lot of things. This documentary has a pretense at evenhandedness, but really presents the following choices:
1. They were the good guys. 2. They were misguided good guys.
But not:
3. They were dangerous and stupid. 4. They were legitimately bad people who had fun doing violent things. 5. They were driven by narcisism. And a cringey white savior complex. 6. What they did was terrorism; violence for the purposes of inspiring fear and creating political change outside of the consensual, democratic process. Not activism. 7. They damaged the cause of "anti-racism" by appropriating the black sturggle to push communism and anti-American sentiment. 8. They weren't very important. But they've obviously continued to weild influence: they all sought positions in academia. And their kids/protiges seek public office even today. Look at the SF DA race. -
jc_aston27 August 2004Little has been written in the popular media about the Weathermen. My only knowledge came from a dictionary of hip neologisms and a well-known pocket-sized journal which conflated them with the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the killing by one of it's ex-members 10 years later, after he had joined a completely different group. A nice try to produce the mental impression 'tainted, don't believe in', but this film reverses it by trusting you with the details. It contains great archive footage. Crucially, it contains no noodling left-wing speeches, but shows people who were completely unimpressed with the Weathermen, and one member who seems to have rejected the methods they used. Despite these differences, all are given an equal chance to explain their motivations, and that makes it a really fascinating documentary. Steal this film.
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timnil4 July 2004This was a sobering documentary about The Weathermen, a radical offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society, which was a student reform group in the mid 1960's. The Weathermen opposed the Vietnam war, racial oppression and the privilege of the wealthy; but what set them apart from other radical groups of the period was their embracing of violence as a means of accomplishing their goals.
The film describes the group's rise from within the general student left of the mid 60's and then their split to take a more action oriented approach. Several of the key members of the group are interviewed at length and these interviews are contrasted with film footage of the same people during that radical period. One gentleman who is now a community college professor has profoundly mixed feelings about the events with which he was involved. But for the most part the interviewees remain idealistic and even optimistic about the struggle they were involved in.
This is an important film and should be discussed not only due to it's value to history, but in conjunction with the events of the past couple of years. What's ironic is that The Weathermen were terrorists, destroying buildings and putting people in danger to draw attention to their cause. Why the radicalism in the wake of an unpopular war then but not now? Could we be heading in a direction again where people need to make difficult choices in order to stand up against what they feel is unjust? -
view_and_review15 February 2021The Weather Underground, to many people, were radical left-wing terrorists. Probably the liberal equivalent of the Proud Boys and those who recently invaded the Capitol. But as they say, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
I watched this documentary to get a better idea of who they were and what they were about, and this documentary did that. There is a lot of historical footage with a sound overlay of a handful of surviving members giving a present day interview (it looks to be late 90's). Some of the footage is very jarring, but I think it helps paint a picture.
I know that we normally like documentaries that take the same view as ourselves. Occasionally, we may break from that dogma and watch a documentary because we are truly interested in the topic and/or we're truly ignorant of the topic. I say that to say: watch this documentary if you want to know about this group and you want a fuller picture of the goings-on in America in the late 60's-early 70's. -
hohumdedum226 May 2004Though many today look at the events of the 60's, in particular the anti-war movement, as something of a joke, there was true heart in what many of the activists tried to do. The weather underground were not your typical anti-war movement. To be exact, they opposed the war by bringing the war home, which is interesting. I wonder what would happen today if a group existed like the weather underground? Some would say they do, and point the finger at terrorist groups. To a certain extent, they MAY be right, but the cause has been totally distorted. These people thought they were onto something, but unfortunately due to the end of the war in Vietnam, their direction seemed pointless. In our world today, there is a need for a voice to be heard similar to the WU, but the problem exists in the intentions, and many would akin it to vicious acts of terrorism such as those of notorious terror factions. Most likely, anyone involved in society today in something similar would be either killed, executed on death row, or thrown into one of our interment camps. Just a thought though.
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This outstanding Oscar nominated documentary is very informative about a period of American history, that most Americans don't know much about. A group of revolutionaries, calling themselves "The Weathermen", planned to overthrow the US government in the seventies because of the Viet Nam war. Archival footage and interviews with members of the group is fascinating to say the least. They were not terrorists and no one was killed by the actual Weathermen group. Around 1970 they went underground for 11 years being hunted constantly by the FBI, and conducted property and building bombings to protest acts of the US government. It all came to an end when the War ended, but their story is as amazing today and as it was then, in fact, their cause is just as important today because our government is repeating history with the ridiculous Iraq war. Two excellent commentaries, one with the co-director and the other with two of the leaders of the group are highly informative. I love historical documentaries, and this one is extremely well done.
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alexanderleon030231 August 2008Good documentary. Should be watched by anyone thinking about voting for Barak Obama for president in 2008. Obama remains friendly with Bill Ayers the unrepentant terrorist portrayed here. This should open the eyes of some of his supporters as to some of the shady associations that Obama continues to keep. How could the people of the US vote for a man that is friendly with terrorists and racist preachers and felonious slum lords is beyond me. This film just highlights some of the radical thinking and reprehensible actions of a group that Obama apparently doesn't condemn. I don't agree with everything the government does either but if I wanted to protest I would do it in a civilized manner as is accepted here in the US. But to actually carry out bombings and thankfully not killing anyone innocent(except for their own)that is criminal and to be associated with a former yet unrepentant terrorist and still want to be President of the US is not acceptable. Lets hope this November we send a strong message to Obama that his shady associations are not in conformity with holding the highest office of service this country has to offer. Watch this documentary you democrats and beware of your choice in Nov 2008.
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eschwartzkopf4 August 2004"The Weather Underground" is well-made -- so much so that it's fairly easy for nine out of ten viewers to buy into the premise that this is a somewhat-objective documentary. Some of us who remember the era of the late 1960s and 1970s with less nostalgia for the anti-war movement have a different POV; this film is a very well-engineered play by the members of the Weather Underground to appear as anti-heroes as likable as Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John.
It's a clever work. To escape the terrorist tag, much is made of the fact that the successfully planted bombs never killed anyone. Of course, this may also represent a streak of amazing luck, given that all of the devices were fairly crude in construction and could've easily killed plenty of people with a misfire.
Of course, one planned bomb did go wrong, destroying a New York townhouse in March 1970. "The Weather Underground" notes this, along with shots of the grieving father of one of the bomb casualties Diane Oughton. What the film doesn't reveal is that two women survived the blast, and one's name was Kathy Boudin.
Doesn't ring a bell if you've seen the film? The name's only seen for a fleeting 10 seconds or so when the camera pans over a list of names. Boudin, however, was as famous as any of the other members depicted. The daughter of a well-known lawyer, Boudin eventually married fellow Weatherman David Gilbert, who's the guy in the film that's still in jail. He's there because he was convicted of aiding the robbery of a Brinks armored truck in 1981, when three people were killed -- and Boudin was convicted as well. Gilbert and Boudin had a son -- Chesa Boudin -- who was raised by Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn (also prominent figures in the film) and is now a Rhodes Scholar.
So why not have Boudin in the film? It's because, at the time of the production, she was up for parole (since granted) on the Brinks robbery conviction, and the filmmakers didn't want to ruin her chances for getting out of jail. It's a curious circumvention of truth, but it's pretty much the main theme of "The Weather Underground:" We were actively looking to overthrow the government, we blew up buildings, we helped rob armored cars, but, hey, it all came out OK. One of us even got on Jeopardy! -
jasonmayer9 February 2004The people in the film made many astute points. Rudd points out toward the end that violence is seen by the public as mental illness or some other chaos unless perpetrated by the government--in that case, violence is normal. I'm glad the Weathermen existed. How flat and hopeless the history of activism would be today without them. It seems that nowadays there is a stereotype of the college leftist activist as being a weak member of a highly privileged class who simply feels guilty about the privilege but is ultimately all talk--wants to keep his wealth in the end. The Weathermen defy this stereotype, putting themselves in full danger of losing everything and accomplishing incredible strategic feats against the government like freeing Timothy Leary and bombing government buildings. I suspect that such a defiance of stereotype is why I, who am college educated and a leftist activist type, never knew the names of the Weathermen, while I knew the names of the most prominent Black Panthers, like Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale. It is a movement almost entirely ignored, even by leftist academics. As the film wraps up, one thing that is telling is that none of the featured Weathermen sold out and became capitalists like so many members of SDS. They're all currently doing things for the good of society even if they're no longer bombing buildings. Also, we learn from the film that people didn't simply lose interest in the left and anti-war/anti-capitalist activism, preferring to embrace the glorious consumerism of Reagan's America. The government beat it out of people. Particularly, the government killed the Weathermen's effectiveness when they forced them underground. Maybe the reason we don't have mass uprisings in the U.S. as in other countries is because our government is the most effectively repressive, it being the most powerful in the world.
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swillsqueal17 April 2007Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan
"Weather Underground", soon to be a major motion picture....see the film, but read this first.
Weatherman said, "We are everywhere." And they were. But, there weren't very many of them. Max, I'd say about 700, if you include active sympathizers. Still, that was a lot of people, mostly kids, who took up the challenge of making a political revolution in order to help stop the Vietnam War and to participate in what the Weather Underground ideologically understood as a world revolution in the late '60s-mid '70s. That was one of the BIG problems with Weatherman. They didn't think too deeply about history or theory. They were the self-described "action faction" of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They weren't going to wait around while a bunch of armchair revolutionaries were intellectually masturbating while black, brown, red and yellow people were being oppressed by white honkeys. No sir-ree, Bob. They were going to stop the Vietnam War by, "bringing the war home" and align themselves with the oppressed peoples of the Third World and people of colour at home in order to meaningfully participate in the anti-imperialist peoples' war. "We chose to become guerillas", they announced as they watched television and saw what they called imperialist soldiers wreaking a "destruction of peoples' culture."
Weatherman's goal was to invigorate anti-war struggle at home by trying the dialectically opposite strategy of the non-violent peace movement. "Piece Now!" was their slogan, the rifle their image. Revolutionary violence was their method. In many ways, Weatherman was an outgrowth of the identity politics of violence which grew out of disillusionment with non-violent tactics identified with Martin Luther King, but you wouldn't know this just by watching "Weather Underground".
Malcolm X proclaimed that "violence was as American as apple pie" and that black people would achieve their liberation from racism, "by any means necessary." Cities burned. H. Rap Brown cheered urban uprisings by ghetto dwellers from LA to Detroit with his famous, "Burn, Baby Burn!". King's attempt at creating an integrated, non-violent mass movement was slowly being challenged by people like Stokely Carmichael and the ideology which stated that blacks needed their own movement–let other "races" deal with getting their acts together. The old ideas of there being only one race, the human race were outmoded, they said and thus a substantial part of a New Left ideology of "identity politics" was born.
The politics of class was not altogether discarded, it was just put in the back seat. The driver's seat was to be occupied by new, more up-to-date, modern ideas. The Revolution was seen as an ultimate coming together of the oppressed peoples of the world, especially people of colour who would surround the urban centres of the First World, and as Mao's People's Liberation Army had done in 1949, come crashing through the gates of the cities from the countryside, seething with Third World revolutionary struggles.
But what were the people *without* colour to do?
What would be their role?
Weatherman thought they saw the prevailing wind. They needed no more understanding, no weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The Black Panthers were correct about the political situation in the USA, they thought. They agreed that the "honkey" proletariat was bought off. The working class was too conservative and comfortable within its "white skin privilege".
Weatherman felt guilty about the oppressive nature of their "race". The real revolutionaries would come from the lumpen-proletariat, people who didn't have jobs and who were "outlaws in the eyes of America": dope smoking students and hippies. To Weatherman this meant white youth. Weatherman was composed of white youth. "They dressed like students. They dressed like hippies", to borrow an image from an old Talking Heads song describing underground life.
According to Weatherman ideology, "every long hair is a Yippie." "America's youth is behind enemy lines," they proclaimed. It was their job as "communist cadre" to "lead white kids." "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks," they announced. They vowed to fight alongside and support black, brown, yellow and red people. "Never again will they fight alone," they wrote in their communiques. This anarcho-Maoist-Fidelista potpourri is only hinted at in "Weather Underground". The best the film producers can do in terms of critical understanding of the group is to trot Todd Gitlin on camera. The former SDSer turned social-democratic academic, manages to whine about how the Weatherman faction of SDS "stole" the organization's name and occupied its National Office.
Weatherman WAS audacious. "Dare to struggle; dare to win" was their favourite Maoist aphorism and they literally LIVED that slogan. Their members were like people portrayed in "Fight Club", alienated about the flatness of sterile comfort and determined to punch a hole in the soft, killing machine which surrounded them. Even if their theory was half-baked, one had to admit, you had to have guts to declare war on the "pigs" and on America herself. And after their penultimate violent demonstration, "The Days of Rage", October 8-11, 1969 failed to draw more than around 150 to 200 white kids to Chicago to show how dirty, dangerous and violent they could be at smashing windows and physically fighting the cops/ "pigs", the group decided to go underground, write America off and act as guerillas, fighting behind those enemy lines, "bringing the war home", "shooting to live" in solidarity with the black, brown, red and yellow peoples of the world who would come eventually, in a kind of whirlwind of revolutionary, racial vengeance. -
palmay725519 January 2006Having lived through the late l960's when I went to college, the film illustrated some of the difficult choices a concerned young adult faced at the time. Mark Rudd's comments came across as poignant to me. Approaching my 56th birthday, I can state unequivocally, of course, that a better understanding of those times has come to me, and of what courses of action to have taken. Incidentally, I wrote a letter to Mark Rudd at his current job at a college in New Mexico, only to relate my harmless proximity to one Yippie event in 1970 - the "takeover" of a portion of the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California. At the risk of being blacklisted from future postings - life itself is full of risks, always magnified when you have something genuine to say - I wish to inform all of you that the FBI is still intercepting Mark Rudd's mail, as evidenced to me (and this is not a casual observation, but a trained observation) by Nicholas Cage's ensuing derisive movie, "The Weatherman". Or are some of you still unaware of our Government's collusion with the multi-billion dollar film industry? While our Government pursued an unnecessary war and violated every constitutional protection against domestic excesses, Mark Rudd and the others should have probably just formed a chess club. Who wants their home surreptitiously entered, their mail intercepted, and multi-million dollar films made from the details of these government crimes? Have a nice day. Emile Zola said "the truth must come out", but he never met the present U.S. Government.
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salad_days-116 June 2006The Weather Underground is a great documentary because the people it follows have remarkable pasts. Mainstream media has been reluctant to shed any kind of light on American revolutionaries because if it did, the masses would realize that these so called "radicals" actually make a LOT of sense - and the status quo would be jeopardized (perhaps). Which is not to say The Weather Underground (and the Weathermen) didn't make tactical mistakes, because they did, and the filmmakers did not neglect to include some of the stupider aspects of their movement. The drugs and sex and early period of indiscriminate violence are included. Members of the Weathermen speak frankly about some of the mistakes, and it is interesting to see how their opinions have changed since the sixties and seventies. For the most part, though, the members of SDS and the Weathermen were/are very logical, passionate, and educated revolutionaries. Watching this documentary was kind of eye opening for me because apparently (I was born after the era...) revolution was viewed as imminent, people were aware and organized, ready to take action, and it was not so ridiculous to think that positive change could happen. At times the members of the Weather Underground seem a little bit confused and detached. Others, like David Gilbert, (you really should watch the interview with him in the 'features' section) are still very committed and sharp. Overall it's a fascinating and inspiring film, you should check it out.