Enemy Number One--Bob A. Feldman

50th Anniversary of Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold's Death On W. 11th Street: Conclusion

SNCC Worker Ralph Featherstone  and Attorney Bill Kunstler

Revisiting March 8, 1970 Attack on Black Panther Party Office in Philadelphia

Coincidentally, less than 48 hours after Upper West Side Movement organizer and 1967-68 Columbia SDS vice-chair Ted Gold was killed, and on the same day Ted’s body was identified, a firebomb exploded in the office of the Black Panther Party’s Philadelphia chapter, at 47th and Walnut St. in Philadelphia. According to a March 8, 1970 Liberation News Service article:

“A firebomb exploded in the Black Panther Party office…early Sunday morning, March 8 [1970]. It was the fourth attack against the office in recent months.

“A bystander reported he saw smoke and flames pouring out of the first floor Panther office about 2 a.m., Sunday. He observed the plate glass window of the office was broken as if an object had been thrown through it. He called the police and fire department and went to get the residents of the upper floors out of the building. It took the police 25 minutes to arrive. The fire department made it to the scene a few minutes after the police even though the nearest firehouse is only six blocks away.

“`Someone is out to get us,’ said a Panther spokesman at the office…Two days before the firebombing, the mimeograph (chain and all), a record player and an electric heater were stolen from the office.

“The Panther spokesman said, `This is part of the national attack against the Panthers.’”

How SNCC Staff Members Ralph Featherstone and “Che” Payne Were Killed 50 Years Ago

Just 3 days after the three explosions at 18 W.11th St. in Manhattan, on March 9, 1970, SNCC staffers Ralph Featherstone and William “Che” Payne “were driving along Route 1 in Maryland when a bomb exploded beneath the floorboard of their car,” according to the SNCC digital.org website; and, as the New York Times reported, “the explosion” that killed Ralph Featherstone and “Che” Payne “occurred two miles from the courthouse where pretrial hearings were being held for Mr. Featherstone’s close friend,” former SNCC chairperson “H. Rap Brown, who” was being “charged with arson and incitement to riot” (and who, after changing his name to Jamil Al-Amin, was later sentenced to life without parole in Georgia in 2000, in a different court case, despite maintaining his innocence).

Jet Magazine published an article about the explosion, that killed the two SNCC staff members 50 years ago in Bel Air, Maryland, in its March 26, 1970 issue, which noted that “Featherstone, a long-time friend of Brown’s and reportedly a key witness in Brown’s defense, was hurled 50 feet from the car he was driving when a blast ripped through the right side of his 1964 blue and white auto;” and “Blacks in predominantly white populated Bel Air insisted that Featherstone and Payne were murdered since they were returning to Washington [D.C.] when the blast occurred.”

Police in Maryland originally claimed that the two SNCC staff members were planning to bomb the courthouse where H. Rap Brown was being tried in Bel Air or a police station there. But as the Medium.com website observed, “SNCC members and other supporters believe the two men were assassinated; killed by a car bomb placed in or on their vehicle” and “even the police” later admitted “that Featherstone and Payne were driving back to Washington at the time of the explosion, thus casting doubts on the original claim of them planning on bombing the courthouse.” In addition, a community leader from Baltimore, former Urban Coalition of Baltimore Director Walter Lively, told the Jet Magazine reporter 50 years ago that “we don’t want the police to push the idea that here were two fools, who were expert with explosives who just blew themselves up,” according to the March 26, 1970 Jet Magazine article.

An article in the March 11, 1970 issue of the New York Times also reported that the then-attorney for H. Rap Brown, antiwar and Civil Rights Movement attorney William Kunstler, “who also visited the wreckage at the state police barracks, rejected any inference that Mr. Featherstone had knowingly transported "explosives." According to the same article:

“He said he had known Featherstone for years adding `I don’t think that sort of thing was Ralph Featherstone’s bag.’ Besides, he said, Featherstone’s car was heading away from Bel Air…`Why should they be leaving town if they came here to blow something up’ Mr. Kunstler asked…” 

Following Ralph Featherstone’s death, SNCC also released a statement to the press asserting that “he was murdered by the powerful forces in America that in their fear have decided to behead the Black militant movement” and “they are blaming the victim for the crime, still acting as if they can blot out ugly truth by destroying the people who speak it.”

In an article that appeared in the March 23, 1970 issue of Hard Times magazine (that was included in Harold Jacobs’ late 1970 Weatherman book), Andrew Kopkind noted that “in the months before he was blown to bits by a bomb in Bel Air, Maryland, Featherstone and several others were running a book store, a publishing house and a school in Washington” and “Featherstone and his companion, Che Payne, were most probably murdered by persons who believed that Rap Brown was in their car.” According to Kopkind, “Featherstone had gone to Bel Air on the eve of Brown’s scheduled appearance at the trial to make security arrangements” since the former SNCC chairperson “had good reason to fear for his safety in that red neck of the woods;” and “no one who knew the kind of politics Featherstone was practicing, or the mission he was on in Bel Air, or the quality of his judgment, believes that he was transporting a bomb—in the front seat of a car, leaving Bel Air, at midnight, in hostile territory with police everywhere.”

According to a March 14, 1970 Liberation News Service article, “the explosion happened two miles from the courthouse where…Rap Brown was to go on trial for having made speeches which `caused’ the 1967 rebellion of Cambridge, Maryland’s black community;” and “before Payne’s badly mangled body was identified there had been speculation that Rap might have been the second passenger in the exploded car.” The same article also noted:

“Bel Air police, worried about the reaction of Black communities in Baltimore, Washington and around the country, almost immediately put forward to the press the idea that the two young black men must have blown themselves up in an inept attempt to blow up some police station or something. Maryland’s governor Marvin Mandel put the National Guard on alert, and the prosecuting attorney in Rap’s case showed up at the site of the explosion to proclaim that the police theory seemed like a good one to him.

“`All those who have known Ralph Featherstone know that the brother would not have been carrying incendiary devices in his car’ said a close friend and fellow worker of Featherstone’s. A SNCC spokesman said, `Nobody who knows Maryland and nobody in the black community believes they were carrying that bomb themselves, but that it was planted or thrown into the car specifically for the murder of Rap Brown. 

“`The people who are spreading the story that they blew themselves up are trying to build a panic, a bomb scare, to crush all public opinion against the repression that they’re building up,’ the SNCC spokesman continued. `They’re laying the groundwork for revitalizing the McCarran Act, for “Operation Dragnet” to round up all dissidents.’

“`You’d have to be a fool to ride to Rap Brown’s trial in a well known movement car knowing you’re being watched and followed, and carrying a bomb with you,’ another movement veteran remarked.

“Black movement people in Maryland are convinced that Featherstone and Williams, who were in Maryland trying to prepare a safe entry for Brown into Bel Air, were killed by KKK or John Birch Society forces, both of which are active in the area, or by some of the more official right-wingers often closely associated with them. `It is significant to note that the car that was driven and destroyed had been used over the past five years throughout the black belt of the South,’ a movement leaflet here explains. `The car was well known to state and federal authorities, Ralph and William’s presence in Bel Air was almost certainly known. A bomb must have been planted at some point during the night under the right front seat of the car.’

“Featherstone, a former SNCC National Programs Secretary, was [nearly] 31 years old at the time of his death…Che Payne was [around] 29 at the time of his death…”

But as Sue Thrasher observed in another March 14, 1970 Liberation News Service article, “the authorities in Maryland, or nationally for that matter, are not interested in finding out who is responsible for the death of Ralph Featherstone and William Payne” because “it is too easy to exploit their deaths in such a way as to make further repression even easier” and “to try to make sure that the left in this country is intimidated and destroyed.” 

Time to Re-Investigate Featherstone-Payne Deaths and Fully Release FBI’s “Townhouse Papers”?

So perhaps there needs to be a new official investigation into how Ralph Featherstone and Che Payne were killed 50 years ago on a highway in Bel Air, Maryland launched in 2020? And 50 years after the deaths of former Columbia SDS vice-chair Ted Gold, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins on W. 11th Street in Downtown Manhattan, perhaps any remaining still-restricted pages in the National Archives related to the FBI’s investigation of what happened there on March 6, 1970 should be deposited on the Upper West Side in Columbia University’s Butler Library in 2020?

(end of article)

50th Anniversary of Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold's Death On W. 11th Street: Part 7

1967-68 Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold

Fifty years after the death of Columbia SDS’s 1967-1968 vice-chairperson Ted Gold, it’s still difficult to ascertain to what degree Ted and the other New Left antiwar Movement radicals meeting in the 18 W.11th St. townhouse were under FBI, NYPD and/or CIA surveillance between Feb. 24, 1970 and high noon on March 6, 1970. One reason might be because no FBI documents containing references to Ted that were produced by FBI informants or FBI agents between Feb. 16, 1970 and March 9, 1970 were apparently released to 2003 Family Circle book author Susan Braudy, after Ted’s FBI file was de-classified.

Another reason might be that although “all FBI documents” related to its surveillance of Weatherman organization members “can be found in the National Archives under Record Group 60, Department of Justice File 177-160-33,” as late as 46 years after Ted’s death there were still “thousands of still-restricted pages concerning the FBI investigation of the March 6, 1970 New York explosion,” according to Professor Arthur Eckstein’s 2016 Bad Moon Rising book. But, as Bryan Burrough noted in his 2015 Days of Rage book, after NYPD Detective Albert Seedman “set up a command post in a basement across the street” from the burning site of the collapsed townhouse, the command post was “soon filled with…a milling squadron of clean-cut FBI men…”

What Happened Before, During and After First Explosion 50 Years Ago On W. 11th St.?

As J. Kirk Sale indicated in his Apr. 13, 1970 Nation magazine article, “the details of what happened in this tragic explosion” that killed Ted, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins “are still murky”—even 50 years after Ted’s death. According to Newsweek’s March 23, 1970 “The House on 11th Street” article, after the first of three explosions that demolished the townhouse, “neighbors helped two young men over a backyard fence and saw a third escape by the same route.” And in his 1973 book SDS, Sale also noted that “out through the back garden …at least three people…made their way over the walls into adjoining gardens” and “they immediately disappeared and were never identified.”

In addition, according to footnote 3 on page 260 of Professor Eckstein’s 2016 Bad Moon Rising book, “Nina Herrick, who in March 1970 lived at 19 West 10th Street, and whose small backyard thus backs on the small backyard of the Wilkerson townhouse” told Eckstein in a Feb. 8, 2016 interview that “she and her husband heard the explosion and saw three people…running from the back of the townhouse and west toward Sixth Avenue.” Yet Herrick also told Eckstein that “neither she nor any of her neighbors on West 10th Street were ever interviewed by the New York Police Department or the FBI;” although, according to the same book, “as for the townhouse explosion,” the FBI’s New York office “had sent an initial report to” then-FBI Director J. Edgar “Hoover on March 13” in 1970, Hoover “had ordered a vigorous `correlative’ investigation,” and “the order from Hoover to begin conducting a specific investigation on the townhouse explosion went out on April 2” in 1970.

Ted’s body was found by NYPD officers “crushed in the rubble with his mouth wide open” at “around 7” p.m. on Friday, March 6, 1970, according to Bryan Burrough’s 2015 Days of Rage book; and “police found” Ted’s “body beneath the collapsed front wall” of the townhouse and “an autopsy showed” that he “had died from asphyxia compression,” according to a March 10, 1970 Columbia Daily Spectator article. A de-classified FBI document, dated March 26, 1970 (contained in Ted’s de-classified FBI file), stated that Ted’s death was “caused by a crushed chest.” And, coincidentally, the Associated Press reported that, on the same evening when Ted’s body was found at 18 W.11th St in Manhattan, a speech by Chicago 8 Trial Defendant Jerry Rubin at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey was “delayed by a bomb scare.”

 But it wasn’t until Sunday evening on March 8, 1970 that the body “crushed in the rubble” was identified as Ted’s body. According to a de-classified March 9, 1970 teletype document marked “urgent” (also contained in Ted’s de-classified FBI file), “as of March eight seventy cause of explosion had not been determined by NYCPD Bomb Squad” and “Identification Division of FBI on March Eight Seventy identified fingerprints of dead man found at site of explosions as Theodore Gold aka Ted Gold, BuFile One hundred-four five zero six seven eight, NY File one hundred one six one six-eight three.” The same de-classified teletype also noted that “Gold was a key activist” and “Gold had been characterized as head of WF of SDS in NYC.” In addition, an article by Linda Charlton that appeared in the March 9, 1970 issue of the New York Times noted that “”the identification of” Ted “as the former Columbia student was made at the morgue” by “a New York Times reporter and morgue personnel on the basis of photographs.”

The same March 9, 1970 New York Times article also initially reported that “Mr. Gold, according to a news editor at” WCAU-TV in the Philadelphia area, “was a founder of a New York City group calling itself the Mad Dogs.” But a March 11, 1970 Village Voice article noted that “a Times story implying that Gold was one of the founders of the Mad Dogs, a Columbia SDS faction, was said to be `absolutely incorrect’ by someone who knew Gold.”

In a 2007 book, titled Flying Close To The Sun: My Life and Times As A Weatherman (that was published 37 years after Ted’s death and 32 years after Dave Dellinger’s 1975 More Power Than We Know book), Cathy Wilkerson (who, with Kathy Boudin, was soon named as one of the two identified Weatherman group members who escaped from the front of the destroyed townhouse) wrote that after a second explosion, “I was barely able to notice another explosion as I concentrated on climbing, still holding on to Kathy and both of us barefoot, out through the hole and over more debris onto the sidewalk,” “Teddy had left the house I thought” and “it never occurred to me that Teddy had still been in the house.”

And in a 2001 book, titled Fugitive Days (that was published 31 years after Ted’s death and 26 years after Dellinger’s 1975 book), former Weatherman faction leader Bill Ayers wrote that “I met with two of the comrades who’d come out of the explosion alive, burned and bleeding” and “we talked about time before the blast, and I pressed for details, but they didn’t know a thing beyond speculation about what had gone on in the last hour.”

But in a 2012 book, Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, The Weather Underground and Beyond (that was published 42 years after Ted’s death and 37 years after Dellinger’s 1975 book), the still-imprisoned co-founder of Columbia SDS and former Weatherman, Dave Gilbert, wrote that his Weatherman collective in Denver, Colorado received a telephone call in “the middle of the night” (apparently on either March 6 or March 7, 1970) in which the caller stated:

“Three of our people, including Teddy, were killed in an explosion yesterday. I can’t go into details on the phone, but we think the police did it.”

Dave also recalled that “while I knew Teddy was in New York City, I had no idea who was in his collective or what they were doing;” and “in the context of what was being done to the Panthers,” the “`police attack’ version was entirely credible…and in Denver we were under intense surveillance.” (end of part 7)

50th Anniversary of Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold's Death On W. 11th Street: Part 6

1967-68 Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold

Was Ted under FBI, CIA or NYPD Surveillance during His Last Three Weeks Alive?

In the month before 1967-68 Columbia SDS vice-chairperson Ted Gold's death, two underground collectives of the Weatherman faction of SDS were apparently operating in Manhattan. According to Bryan Burrough’s 2015 Days of Rage book, “one…was headquartered in a Chinatown apartment under [former Columbia SDS member and Weatherman] J.J.’s supervision” where Mark purportedly also “took a bed there;” and “the second underground Weatherman faction collective active in Manhattan in February 1970 apparently included a “dozen or so members” who “were initially spread across several” other “Manhattan and Brooklyn apartments,” according to the same book.

Ted apparently only first visited the 18 W.11th St. townhouse, on the street where he was killed, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1970 (just 10 days before his death), according to the 2015 Days of Rage book; and by “the following day,” Ted and four other members of the Weatherman collective he was in “had moved” into the townhouse, according to the same book. But the Days of Rage book also claims that 9 days before Ted’s death “at least a half-dozen members of the collective” still “lived elsewhere.”

On Feb. 21, 1970, three days before Ted first visited the 18 W. 11th St. townhouse, the Weatherman collective “cell” he was in apparently had “set off three fire bombs at the home of Judge John Murtagh, then presiding over the case of the New York `Panther Twenty-0ne’” (that a jury later found innocent of then-Manhattan D.A. and Columbia University Trustee Frank Hogan’s trumped-up Apr. 2, 1969 charge that these arrested members of the Black Panther Party’s New York City chapter were about to “bomb” department stores and public places in New York City), according to J. Kirkpatrick Sale’s SDS book. And in its Feb. 24, 1970 issue, the Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper also reported that “detectives at the 26th Precinct” had “found shreds of glass on the floor of the burned room” of the Columbia Law School Building’s International Law Library and believed “the fire was set off by Molotov cocktails.” In addition, Spectator noted that “the same night as the fire at the Law School, three bombs were detonated at the home of State Supreme Court Justice…Murtagh” but “police officials declined to speculate a possible connection between the two incidents.”

According to Professor Eckstein’s 2016 Bad Moon Rising book, on Monday, March 2, 1970 (4 days before Ted was killed) then-U.S. President Richard Nixon next “ordered” his White House Chief of Staff H.R. “Haldeman to begin a nationwide campaign to politically isolate the antiwar radicals;” and “Richard Nixon in early March [1970]—before the townhouse explosion—was urging the FBI to use investigatory and surveillance techniques against the New Left which the FBI itself thought were dangerous,” “Nixon was impatient with any hesitation on grounds of legality regarding methods for going after the radicals” and he “offered to give political cover to the FBI.” And on Monday evening on March 2, 1970, Nixon “spoke at 9:47 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, at a dinner given in honor of” then-French “President Pompidou,” in which then-Columbia University and Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] trustee and CBS board member “William A.M. Burden…presided at the dinner,” according to the Public Papers of Richard Nixon 1970 book.

In addition, Professor Eckstein’s 2016 Bad Moon Rising book observed, for example, that a March 2, 1970 memo from Nixon stated that “from now on we are going to take a very `militant’ position against these people,” “I consider this new direction being of the highest priority” and “I want absolutely no deviation from it.”  Jeremy Varon’s 2004 Bringing the War Home book also noted that “a month before the explosion” in which Ted was killed “FBI Director Hoover had” apparently “characterized Weatherman as the `most violent, persistent and pernicious of revolutionary groups.’”

On Tuesday, March 3, 1970 (the day after Nixon wrote his March 2, 1970 memo), “neighbors” of the 18 W. 11th St. townhouse that Weatherman faction member Cathy Wilkerson’s father owned “on 11th Street” apparently “watched” as Ted “supervised the unloading of crates from a van” (3 days before he was killed), according to Bryan Burrough’s 2015 Days of Rage book. And a member of an FBI surveillance team on W. 11th St. may have also been possibly watching Ted both supervising the unloading of crates from a van on March 3, 1970 and at the moment when Ted was killed at the front of the 18 W. 11th St. townhouse, at around noon on Friday, March 6, 1970. For, as Susan Braudy noted in her 2003 Family Circle book:

“In front of the burning house, an FBI agent who had been part of the surveillance team keeping watch on the young radicals quickly snapped pictures of the house’s crumpling brick Greek-revival façade. Since the buildings on the block were of significant design interest, he had been posing as an architectural historian.”

Yet if "an FBI agent who had been part of the surveillance team keeping watch on the young radicals" was present on the W.11th Street block on the day Ted was killed, why did the FBI's surveillance team apparently allow, according to Kirkpatrick Sale's 1973 SDS book, "a white station wagon" to double-park" in front of the Town House "while several heavy boxes were unloaded" and "carried into the cellar" by the young radicals on the morning of March 6, 1970, where there were "perhaps a hundred other sticks of dynamite" and "a number of already constructed pipe bombs," without at least questioning the young radicals who were under surveillance on that morning?

According to an article by James A. Naughton, titled “U.S. To Tighten Surveillance of Radicals”, that appeared in the Apr. 12, 1970 issue of the New York Times, “a Nixon aide who is aware of the Justice Departments intelligence operations” also “said that `We knew of the New York bomb factory in a Greenwich Village townhouse, but only just before it exploded on March 6 [1970].’”

On Wednesday, March 4, 1970, Columbia SDS’s former chairperson, Mark Rudd, was apparently first told by the leader of the Weatherman collective holding meetings inside the 18 W. 11th St. townhouse, Terry Robbins, “what his group was planning;” and that same day (while the townhouse was apparently under FBI surveillance) Mark “dropped Terry off at 18 W.11th St.” without going inside, according to Mark’s 2009 Underground book.

In his 2015 Days of Rage book, Bryan Burrough wrote that one of his unidentified sources purportedly claimed that the following incident occurred inside the 18 W. 11th St. townhouse the night before Ted was killed:

“There was…at least one naysayer. He will be called James. He was one of the Columbia alumni; he had been J.J.’s roommate at one point. James was a member of the collective who did not live in the townhouse. According to a longtime friend, `the target had been bothering him for days. Finally, right at the end, he went nuts. This was the night before. He just went crazy, crying and screaming. “What are we doing? What are we doing?” And you know what Teddy Gold told him? [He said] `James, you have been my best friend for 10 years. But you gotta calm down. I wouldn’t want to kill you.’ And he was serious.”

Yet at least one of the Columbia alumni who was one of Ted’s best friends for many years denies that he “had ever been J.J.’s roommate,” denies that he “was ever a member of the” Weatherman “collective who did not live in in the townhouse” and denies that Ted allegedly “told him” that “I wouldn’t want to kill you” on “the night before” Ted, himself, was killed. (end of part 6)

50th Anniversary of Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold's Death On W. 11th Street: Part 5

1967-1968 Columbia SDS Vice-Chair Ted Gold

Ted’s January 1970 Political Activity and Arrest in Pennsylvania 

In January 1970, 1967-1968 Columbia SDS Vice-Chairperson Ted Gold apparently “was among those who argued shortly after Flint against putting a picture of” Charlie “Manson on the cover of” an early 1970 issue of the Weatherman group’s FIRE! newspaper because “he felt, and most concurred, that there was ultimately nothing progressive or even political about Manson’s violence,” according to the New School University Professor Jeremy Varon's 2004 Bringing the War Home book.  That same month Ted “was arrested along with seven other Weathermen” for protesting at “a Philadelphia television station” on Jan. 10, 1970, “after it broadcast what they called a `slanderous’ TV documentary on the Black Panthers,” according to an article that appeared in the Apr.13, 1970 issue of The Nation magazine. Ted and the other arrested Weathermen explained the reason for their protest action at CBS’s WCAU-TV station, according to an article that appeared in the Jan. 12, 1970 issue of the Philadelphia Free Press newspaper, in a leaflet which stated the following:

“On Tuesday, January 6, Pig AmeriKKKa escalated its brutal attack on the black liberation struggle by means of a slanderous TV documentary about the Black Panther Party. Behind the façade of liberalism, CBS henchman Mike Wallace accused the party of wanton violence, the desire to be martyrs, and even of corrupting little children’s minds about the good things in AmeriKKKa…We want Channel 10 in Philadelphia to publicly refute these lies, since they spread them in Philly…”

During January 1970, Ted had (according to March 1968 to September 1968 Columbia SDS chairperson Mark Rudd’s 2009 book Underground) apparently also “argued for keeping the” SDS National Office in Chicago “open and maintaining some presence on campus” in the 1970’s, “even as part of” the Weatherman “organization went underground.” 

Former Columbia SDS Member and Weatherwoman Dionne Donghi’s February 1970 Arrest

According to an article, titled “Unsettled Accounts” that appeared in the Berkeley Tribe antiwar underground newspaper on Aug. 21, 1970 (and was republished in the late 1970-published Weatherman book that Harold Jacobs edited), a former Columbia SDS member and New York SDS regional office organizer (with whom Ted had both searched in late June 1969 for a house to rent in Queens for a Weatherman collective to move into and been, along with Ted, a member of the Weatherman group that returned from visiting Cuba in mid-August 1969), Dionne Donghi, “was busted by the FBI for interstate transportation of stolen weapons” in Chicago in February 1970. But, according to the same Aug. 21, 1970 Berkeley Tribe article, “the U.S. Attorney threw the case out, and told Dionne and her lawyer that the bust had been set up by an informer inside Weatherman.”

In his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives sub-committee on Oct. 18, 1974, the now-deceased FBI informant Larry Grathwohl claimed Dionne (whose father, a former CBS-TV News foreign assignment desk head in the 1950’s and early 1960’s named Frank Donghi, had also been NBC News’ Saigon Bureau Chief in Vietnam during the last six months of 1968, prior to later dying in California of an apparent overdose of sleeping tablets in March 1969) had been the “primary leadership person” of the Weatherman collective in Cincinnati in February 1970.  In addition, Grathwohl also testified that “when the collective was disbanded” that month, he sent a revolver to Dionne in Chicago “which the FBI turned over to the IRS, and she was arrested on that charge, but charges were dropped because the FBI would not let me testify.”

Yet during the same month that Dionne and her lawyer “were told in Chicago by the U.S. Attorney that Dionne’s arrest had been set up by an informer inside Weatherman,” Ted and Mark Rudd (according to Mark’s Underground book) apparently loaded together “a VW van full of New York” SDS “regional office files and mailing lists” and dumped “them onto a garbage barge at the sanitation department’s pier on West Fourteenth Street” in Manhattan. (end of part 5)

Naomi Jaffe Speaks At Book Reading for U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert's `Love & Struggle'

Columbia SDS Founder & 1968 Columbia Strike Leader David Gilbert's Autobiography Published By PM Press

The long-awaited autobiography of U.S. and New York State political prisoner David Gilbert, Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond, was recently published by the West Coast-based PM Press publishing group.

Prior to his arrest and imprisonment on October 20, 1981 in Rockland County, New York, Gilbert was a founder of the Columbia University and Barnard College chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a New School SDS organizer, and a staff member of National SDS’s New York City Regional Office during the 1960s. He also co-authored National SDS’s sequel to its earlier Port Huron Statement, the Port Authority Statement , in 1967. And during the 1970s, Gilbert was an anti-imperialist activist in the Weather Underground (who would later be featured in a 21st-century documentary film about the Weather Underground that was nominated for an Academy Award).

As PM Press observes in its website description of Gilbert’s Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond book:

“David Gilbert arrived at Columbia University just in time for the explosive '60s. From the early anti-Vietnam War protests to the founding of SDS, from the Columbia Strike to the tragedy of the Townhouse, Gilbert was on the scene: as organizer, theoretician, and above all, activist. He was among the first militants who went underground to build the clandestine resistance to war and racism known as “Weathermen.”

“…And he was among the last to emerge, in captivity, after the disaster of the 1981 Brinks robbery, an attempted expropriation that resulted in four deaths and long prison terms. In this extraordinary memoir, written from the maximum-security prison where he has lived for almost thirty years, David Gilbert tells the intensely personal story of his own Long March from liberal to radical to revolutionary.

“Today a beloved and admired mentor to a new generation of activists, he assesses with rare humor, with an understanding stripped of illusions, and with uncommon candor the errors and advances, terrors and triumphs of the Sixties and beyond. It’s a battle that was far from won, but is still not lost: the struggle to build a new world, and the love that drives that effort. A cautionary tale and a how-to as well, Love and Struggle is a book as candid, as uncompromising, and as humane as its author.”

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Parts 12 & 13

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 12 & 13 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“…Our task is not to avoid...repression; that can always be done by pulling back…Sometimes it is correct to do that as a tactical retreat, to survive to fight again.

“To defeat repression, however, is...to go on building the Movement…; in which case, defeated at one level, repression will escalate even more. To succeed in defending the Movement, and not just ourselves at its expense, we will have to successively meet and overcome these greater and greater levels of repression.

“…To survive and grow in the face of that will require more than a larger base of supporters; it will require the invincible strength of a mass base at a high level of active participation and consciousness, and can only come from mobilizing the self-conscious creativity, will and determination of the people.

“…Therefore, clearly the organization and active, conscious, participating mass base needed to survive repression are also the same needed for winning the revolution. The Revolutionary Youth Movement speaks to the need for this kind of active mass-based Movement by tying citywide motion back to community youth bases, because this brings us close enough to kids in their day-to-day lives to organize their `maximum active participation’ around different kinds of fights to push the `highest level of consciousness’ about imperialism…

“This will require a cadre organization,…self-reliance among the cadres, and an integrated relationship with the active mass-based Movement…

“How will we accomplish the building of this kind of organization? It is clear that we couldn’t somehow form such a party at this time, because the conditions for it do not exist in this country outside the Black nation. What are these conditions?

“One is that to have a unified…organization it is necessary to have a common revolutionary theory which explains, at least generally, the nature of our revolutionary tasks and how to accomplish them. It must be a set of ideas which have been tested and developed in the practice of resolving the important contradictions in our work.

“A second condition is the existence of revolutionary leadership tested in practice…

“Thirdly, and most important, there must be the same revolutionary mass base mentioned earlier, or (better) revolutionary mass movement. It is clear that without this there can’t be the practical experience to know whether or not a theory, or a leader, is any good at all…

“…There are two kinds of tasks for us.

“One is the organization of revolutionary collectives within the Movement. Our theory must come from practice, but it can’t be developed in isolation. Only a collective pooling of our experiences can develop a thorough understanding of the complex conditions in this country. In the same way, only our collective efforts toward a common plan can adequately test the ideas we develop…Just as a collective is necessary to sum up experiences and apply them locally, equally the collective interrelationship of groups all over the country is necessary to get an accurate view of the whole movement and to apply that in the whole country…

“The most important task for us toward making the revolution, and the work our collectives should engage in, is the creation of a mass revolutionary movement…A revolutionary mass movement is different from the traditional revisionist mass base of `sympathizers.’…It is a movement diametrically opposed to the elitist idea that only leaders are smart enough or interested enough to accept full revolutionary conclusions. It is a movement built on the basis of faith in the masses of people.

“The task of collectives is to create this kind of movement…This will be done at this stage principally among youth, through implementing the Revolutionary Youth Movement strategy discussed in this paper. It is practice at this, and not political `teachings’ in the abstract, which will determine the relevance of the political collectives which are formed.

“The strategy of the RYM for developing an active mass base, tying the citywide fights to community and citywide…movement,…fits with the world strategy for winning the revolution…which will dismember and dispose of US imperialism…” (end of excerpts from Parts 12 & 13).

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 10

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 10 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“One way to make clear the nature of the system and our tasks working off of separate struggles is to tie them together with each other: to show that we’re one `multi-issue’ movement, not an alliance of high school and college students, or students and GIs, or youth and workers, or students and the black community. The way to do this is to build organic regional or sub-regional citywide movements, by regularly bringing people in one institution or area to fights going on on other fronts.

“This works on two levels. Within a neighborhood, by bringing kids to different fights and relating these fights to each other—high school stuff, college, housing, welfare, shops—we begin to build one neighborhood-based multi-issue movement off of them. Besides actions and demonstrations, we also pull different people together in day-to-day film showings, rallies, for speakers and study groups, etc. On a second level, we combine neighborhood `bases’ into a citywide or region-wide movement by doing the same thing; concentrating our forces at whatever important struggles are going on and building more ongoing interrelationships off of that.

“The importance of specifically neighborhood-based organizing is illustrated by our greatest failing in RYM [Revolutionary Youth Movement] practice so far—high school organizing…We’ve been unwilling to work continuously with high school kids as we did in building up college chapters. We will only reach the high school kids who are in motion by being in the schoolyards, hangouts and on the streets on an everyday basis. From a neighborhood base, high school kids could be effectively tied in to struggles around other institutions and issues, and to the anti-imperialist movement as a whole.

“We will try to involve neighborhood kids who aren’t in high schools too; take them to anti-war or anti-racism fights, stuff in the schools, etc.; and at the same time reach out more broadly through newspapers, films, storefronts. Activists and cadres who are recruited in this work will help expand and deepen the Movement in new neighborhoods and high schools. Mostly we will still be tied in to the college-based movement in the same area, by influencing its direction away from campus-oriented provincialism, be recruiting high school kids into it where it is real enough and be recruiting organizers out of it. In its most developed form, this neighborhood-based movement would be a kind of sub-region. In places where the Movement wasn’t so strong, this would be an important form for being close to kids in a day-to-day way and yet be relating heavily to a lot of issues and political fronts which the same kids are involved with…

“Another failure of this year was making clear what the RYM [Revolutionary Youth Movement] meant for chapter members and students who weren’t organizers about to leave their campus for a community college, high school, GI organizing, shops or neighborhoods. One thing it means for them is relating heavily to off-campus activities and struggles, as part of the citywide motion. Not leaving the campus movement like people did for ERAP [Education Research Action Project] stuff; rather, people still organized on the campus in off-campus struggles, the way they have in the past for national actions. Like the national actions, the citywide ones will build the on-campus movement, not compete with it.

“Because the Movement will be defining itself in relation to many issues and groups, not just schools (and the war and racism as they hit at the schools), it will create a political context that non-students can relate to better, and be more useful to organizing among high school students, neighborhood kids, the mass of people. In the process, it will change the consciousness of the students too; if the issues are right and the Movement fights them, people will develop a commitment to the struggle as a whole, and an understanding of the need to be revolutionaries rather than a `student movement.’…” (end of part 10 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Even More Excerpts from Part 9

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are even more excerpts from Part 9 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“SDS has not dealt in any adequate way with the women question; the resolution passed at Ann Arbor did not lead to much practice, nor has the need to fight male supremacy been given any programmatic direction within the RYM [Revolutionary Youth Movement]. As a result, we have a very limited understanding of the tie-up between imperialism and the women question, although we...guess that the breakdown of the family is crucial to the women question. How do we organize women against racism and imperialism without submerging the principled revolutionary question of women’s liberation? We have no real answer, but we recognize the real reactionary danger of women’s groups that are not self-consciously revolutionary and anti-imperialist.

“To become more relevant to the growing women’s movement, SDS women should begin to see as a primary responsibility the self-conscious organizing of women. We will not be able to organize women unless we speak directly to their own oppression. This will become more and more critical as we work with more oppressed women. Women who are working and women who have families face male supremacy continuously in their day-to-day lives; that will have to be the starting point in their politicization. Women will never be able to undertake a full revolutionary role unless they break out of their woman’s role. So a crucial task for revolutionaries is the creation of forms of organization in which women will be able to take on new and independent roles. Women’s self-defense groups will be a step toward these organizational forms, as an effort to overcome women’s isolation and build revolutionary self-reliance.

“The cultural revolt of women against their `role’ in imperialism (which is just beginning to happen in a mass way) should have the same sort of revolutionary potential that the RYM [Revolutionary Youth Movement] claimed for `youth culture.’ The role of the `wife-mother’ is reactionary in most societies, and the disintegration of that role under imperialism should make women more sympathetic to revolution.

“In all of our work we should try to formulate demands that not only reach out to more oppressed women, but ones which tie us to other ongoing struggles, in the way that a daycare center at U of C [University of Chicago] enabled us to tie the women’s liberation struggle to the Black Liberation struggle.

"There must be a strong revolutionary women's movement, for without one it will be impossible for women’s liberation to be an important part of the revolution. Revolutionaries must be made to understand the full scope of women’s oppression, and the necessity to smash male supremacy.” (end of third section of excerpts from part 9)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: More Excerpts from Part 9

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some more excerpts from Part 9 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“What does it mean to organize around racism and imperialism in specific struggles? In the high schools (and colleges) at this time, it means putting forth a mass line to close down the schools, rather than to reform them, so that they can serve the people. The reason for this line is not that under capitalism the schools cannot serve the people, and therefore it is silly or illusory to demand that. Rather, it is that kids are ready for the full scope of militant struggle, and already demonstrate a consciousness of imperialism…To tell a kid in New York that imperialism tracks him and thereby oppresses him is often small potatoes compared to his consciousness that imperialism oppresses him by jailing him…And even where high school kids are not yet engaged in such sharp struggle, it is crucial not to build consciousness only around specific issues such as tracking or ROTC or racist teachers, but to use these issues to build toward the general consciousness that the schools should be shut down. It may be important to present a conception of what schools should or could be like (this would include the abolition of the distinction between mental and physical work), but not offer this total conception as really possible to fight for in any way but through revolution.

“A mass line to close down the schools or colleges does not contradict demands for open admissions to college or any other good reform demand. Agitational demands for impossible, but reasonable, reforms are a good way to make a revolutionary point. The demand for open admissions by asserting the alternative to the present (school) system exposes its fundamental nature—that it is racist, class-based, and closed—pointing to the only possible solution to the present situation: `Shut it down!’ The impossibility of real open admissions—all black and brown people admitted, no flunk-out, full scholarship, under present conditions—is the best reason (that the schools show no possibility for real reform) to shut the schools down. We should not throw away the pieces of victories we gain from these struggles, for any kind of more open admissions means that the school is closer to closing down (it costs the schools more, there are more militant blacks and browns making more and more fundamental demands on the schools, and so on). Thus our line in the schools, in terms of pushing any good reforms, should be `Open them up and shut them down!’

“The spread of black caucuses in the shops and other workplaces throughout the country is an extension of the black liberation struggle. These groups have raised and will continue to raise anti-racist issues to white workers in a sharper fashion than any whites ever have or could raise them. Blacks leading struggles against racism made the issue unavoidable, as the black student movement leadership did for white students. At the same time these black groups have led fights which traditional trade-union leaders have consistently refused to lead—fights against speed-ups and for safety (issues which have become considerably more serious in the last few years), forcing white workers, particularly the more oppressed, to choose in another way between allegiance to the white mother country and black leadership. As white mother country radicals we should try to be in shops, hospitals, and companies where there are black caucuses, perhaps organizing solidarity groups, but at any rate pushing the importance of the black liberation struggle to whites, handing out Free Huey literature, bringing guys out to Panther rallies, and so on. Just one white guy could play a crucial role in countering UAW counter-insurgency.

“We also need to relate to workplaces where there is no black motion but where there are still many young white workers. In the shops the crisis in imperialism has come down around speed-up, safety, and wage squeeze—due to higher taxes and increased inflation, with the possibility of wage-price controls being instituted.

“We must relate this exploitation back to imperialism. The best way to do this is probably not caucuses in the shops, but to take guys to citywide demonstrations, Newsreels, even the latest administration building [sit-in], to make the Movement concrete to them and involve them in it. Further, we can affect consciousness and pick up people through agitational work at plants, train stops, etc.,…, handing out leaflets about the war, the Panthers, the companies’ holdings overseas or relations to defense industry, etc….” (end of second section of excerpts from part 9)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 9

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 9 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“How do we reach youth; what kinds of struggles do we build; how do we make a revolution? What we have tried to lay out so far is the political content of the consciousness which we want to extend and develop as a mass consciousness…Yet we are faced with a situation in which almost all of the people whose interests are served by these goals, and who should be, or even are, sympathetic to revolution, neither understand the specific tasks involved in making a revolution nor participate in accomplishing them. On the whole, people don’t join revolutions just because revolutionaries tell them to. The oppression of the system affects people in particular ways, and the development of political consciousness and participation begins with particular problems, which turn into issues and struggles. We must transform people’s everyday problems, and the issues and struggles growing out of them, into revolutionary consciousness, active and conscious opposition to racism and imperialism.

“This is directly counter posed to assuming that struggles around immediate issues will lead naturally over time to struggle against imperialism…This error is classical economism…

“On the one hand, if we, as revolutionaries are capable of understanding the necessity to smash imperialism and build socialism, then the masses of people who we want to fight along with us are capable of that understanding. On the other hand, people are brainwashed and at present don’t understand it; if revolution is not raised at every opportunity, then how can we expect people to see it in their interests, or to undertake the burdens of revolution? We need to make it clear from the very beginning that we are about revolution…

“In every case, our aim is to raise anti-imperialist and anti-racist consciousness and tie the struggles of working-class youth (and all working people) to the struggles of Third World people, rather than merely joining fights to improve material conditions, even though these fights are certainly justified. This is not to say that we don’t take immediate fights seriously, or fight hard in them, but that we are always up front with our politics, knowing that people in the course of struggle are open to a class line, ready to move beyond narrow self-interest.

“…What we must stress is the systematic nature of oppression and the way in which a single manifestation of imperialism makes clear its fundamental nature. At Columbia it was not the Gym, in particular, which was important in the struggle, but the way in which the Gym represented, to the people of Harlem and Columbia, Columbia’s imperialist invasion of the black colony. ..And the Richmond Oil Strike was exciting because the militant fight for improvement of material conditions was part and parcel of an attack on international monopoly capital. The numbers and militancy of people mobilized for these struggles has consistently surprised the left, and pointed to the potential power of a class-conscious mass movement…

“The masses will fight for socialism when they understand that reform fights, fights for improvement of material conditions, cannot be won under imperialism. With this understanding, revolutionaries should never put forth a line which fosters the illusion that imperialism will grant significant reforms. We must engage in struggles forthrightly as revolutionaries, so that it will be clear to anyone we help to win gains that the revolution rather than imperialism is responsible for them. This is one of the strengths of the Black Panther Party Breakfast for Children Program…Probably the American Friends Service Committee serves more children breakfast, but it is the symbolic value of the program in demonstrating what socialism will do for people which makes the Black Panther Program worthwhile.” (end of first section of excerpts from part 9)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: More Excerpts from Part 8

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some more excerpts from Part 8 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“The contradictions of decaying imperialism fall hardest on youth in four distinct areas—the schools, jobs,…the army, and the…courts. (A) In jail-like schools, kids are fed a mish-mash of racist, male chauvinist, anti-working class…lies while being channeled into job and career paths set up according to the priorities of monopoly capital. At the same time, the State is becoming increasingly incapable of providing enough money to keep the schools going at all. (B) Youth unemployment is three times average unemployment. As more jobs are threatened by automation or the collapse of specific industries, unions act to secure jobs for those already employed. New people in the labor market can’t find jobs, job stability is undermined (also because of increasing speed-up and more intolerable safety conditions) and people are less and less going to work in the same shop for 40 years. And, of course, when they do find jobs, young people get the worst ones and have the least seniority. (C) There are…soldiers under thirty who are…forced to police the world, kill and be killed in wars of imperialist domination. And (D) as a `youth problem’ develops out of this, the…courts enforce curfews, set up pot busts, keep people off the streets, and repress any youth motion whatsoever.

“In all of this, it is not that life in America is toughest for youth or that they are the most oppressed. Rather, it is that young people are hurt directly—and severely—by imperialism. And, in being less tightly tied to the system, they are more `pushed’ to join the black liberation struggle against US imperialism. Among young people there is less of a material base for racism—they have no seniority, have not spent 20 years securing a skilled job (the white monopoly of which is increasingly challenged by the black liberation movement), and aren’t just about to pay off a 25-year mortgage on a house…

“While these contradictions of imperialism fall hard on all youth, they fall hardest on the youth of the most oppressed (least privileged) sections of the working class. Clearly these youth have the greatest material base for struggle. They are the ones who most often…get the worst jobs if they get any, who are most abused by the various institutions of social control, from the army to decaying schools, to the…courts….They are the people whom we can reach who at this stage are most ready to engage in militant revolutionary struggle.

“The point of the revolutionary youth movement strategy is to move from a predominant student elite base to more oppressed (less privileged) working-class youth as a way of deepening and expanding the revolutionary youth movement…This is part of a strategy to reach the entire working class to engage in struggle against imperialism; moving from more privileged sections of white working-class youth to more oppressed sections to the entire working class as a whole, including importantly what has classically been called the industrial proletariat…

“The above arguments make it clear that it is both important and possible to reach young people wherever they are—not only in the shops, but also in the schools, in the army and in the streets—so as to recruit them to fight on the side of the oppressed peoples of the world…” (end of second section of part 8 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 8

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from the first section of Part 8 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

"In terms of the above analysis, most young people in the US are part of the working class. Although not yet employed, young people whose parents sell their labor power for wages, and more important who themselves expect to do the same in the future—or go into the army or be unemployed—are undeniably members of the working class. Most kids are well aware of what class they are in, even though they may not be very scientific about it. So our analysis assumes from the beginning that youth struggles are, by and large, working-class struggles. But why the focus now on the struggles of working-class youth rather than on the working class as a whole?

“…At this stage, we see working-class youth as those most open to a revolutionary movement which sides with the struggles of Third World people; the following is an attempt to explain a strategic focus on youth for SDS.

“In general, young people have less stake in a society (no family,…etc.), are more open to new ideas (they have not been brainwashed for so long or so well), and are therefore more able and willing to move in a revolutionary direction. Specifically in America, young people have grown up experiencing the crises in imperialism…This crisis in imperialism affects all parts of the society. America has had to militarize to protect and expand its empire…Further, the huge defense expenditures—required for the defense of the empire and at the same time a way of making increasing profits for the defense industries—have gone hand in hand with the urban crisis around welfare, the hospitals, the schools, housing, air and water pollution. The State cannot provide the services it has been forced to assume responsibility for, and needs to increase taxes and to pay its growing debts while it cuts services…The private sector of the economy can’t provide jobs, particularly unskilled jobs. The expansion of the defense and education industries by the State since World War II is in part an attempt to pick up the slack, though the inability to provide decent wages and working conditions for `public’ jobs is more and more a problem.

“As imperialism struggles to hold together this decaying social fabric, it inevitably resorts to brute force and authoritarian ideology. People, especially young people, more and more find themselves in the iron grip of authoritarian institutions…The anti-authoritarianism which characterizes the youth rebellion turns into…a refusal to be socialized into American society. Kids used to try to beat the system from inside the army or from inside the schools; now they desert from the army…

“The crisis in imperialism has brought about a breakdown in bourgeois social forms, culture and ideology. The family falls apart, kids leave home, women begin to break out of traditional `female’ and `mother’ roles. There develops a `generation gap’ and a `youth problem.’ Our heroes are no longer struggling businessmen, and we also begin to reject the ideal career of the professional…We reject the elitist, technocratic bullshit that tells us only experts can rule…Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Temptations brought us closer to the `people’s culture’ of Black America. The racist response to the civil rights movement revealed the depth of racism in America, as well as the impossibility of real change through American institutions. And the war against Vietnam is not `the heroic war against the Nazis’; it’s the big lie, with napalm burning through everything we had heard this country stood for. Kids begin to ask questions: Where is the Free World?...

“The breakdown in bourgeois culture and concomitant anti-authoritarianism is fed by the crisis in imperialism, but also in turn feeds that crisis, exacerbates it so that people no longer merely want the plastic ‘50s restored, but glimpse an alternative (like inside the Columbia buildings) and begin to fight for it. We don’t want teachers to be more kindly cops…” (end of first section of part 8 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 7

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 7 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“…Why should young people be willing to fight on the side of Third World peoples? Before dealing with this question about youth, however, there follows a brief sketch of the main class categories in the white mother country which we think are important.

“Most of the population is of the working class, by which we mean not simply industrial or production workers, nor those who are actually working, but the whole section of the population which doesn’t own productive property and so lives off of the sale of its labor power…

“As a whole, the long-range interests of the non-colonial sections of the working class lie with overthrowing imperialism, with supporting self-determination for the oppressed nations (including the black colony), with supporting and fighting for international socialism. However, virtually all of the white working class also has short-range privileges from imperialism, which…tie them to a certain extent to the imperialists, especially when the latter are in a relatively prosperous phase. When the imperialists are losing their empire, on the other hand, these short-range privileged interests are seen to be temporary (even though the privileges may be relatively greater over the faster-increasing emiseration of the oppressed peoples). The long-range interests of workers in siding with the oppressed peoples are seen more clearly in the light of imperialism’s impending defeat. Within the whole working class, the balance of anti-imperialist class interests with white mother country short-term privilege varies greatly.

“First, the most oppressed sections of the mother country working class have interests most clearly and strongly anti-imperialist. Who are the most oppressed sections of the working class? Millions of whites who have as oppressive material conditions as the blacks, or almost so: especially poor southern white workers; the unemployed or semi-employed, or those employed at very low wages for long hours and bad conditions, who are non-unionized or have weak unions; and extending up to include much of unionized labor which has it a little better off but still is heavily oppressed and exploited. This category covers a wide range and includes the most oppressed sections not only of production and service workers but also some secretaries, clerks, etc. Much of this category gets some relative privileges (i.e. benefits) from imperialism, which constitute some material basis for being racist or pro-imperialist; but overall it is itself directly and heavily oppressed, so that in addition to its long-range class interest on the side of the people of the world, its immediate situation also constitutes a strong basis for...fighting through to revolution.

“Second, there is the upper strata of the working class. This is also an extremely broad category, including the upper strata of unionized skilled workers and also most of the `new working class’ of proletarianized or semi-proletarianized `intellect workers.’…The long-range class interests of this strata, like the previous section of more oppressed workers, are for the revolution and against imperialism. However, it is characterized by a higher level of privilege relative to the oppressed colonies, including the blacks, and relative to more oppressed workers in the mother country; so that there is a strong material basis for racism and loyalty to the system….Another consideration in understanding the interests of this segment is that, because of the way it developed and how its skills and its privileges were `earned over time,’ the differential between the position of youth and older workers is in many ways greater for this section than any other in the population. We should continue to see it as important to build the revolutionary youth movement among the youth of this strata.

“Thirdly, there are `middle strata’ who are not petit bourgeoisie, who may even technically be upper working class, but who are so privileged and tightly tied to imperialism through their job roles that they are agents of imperialism. This section includes management personnel, corporate lawyers, higher civil servants, and other government agents, army officers, etc…

“Fourthly, and last among the categories we’re going to deal with, is the petit bourgeoisie…The petit bourgeoisie consists of small capital—both business and farms—and self-employed tradesmen and professionals…The direction which this opposition takes can be reactionary or reformist…There are various issues, like withdrawing from a losing imperialist war, where we could get support from them…” (end of part 7 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Parts 5 & 6

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Parts 5 and 6 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“. In reality, imperialism is a predatory international stage of capitalism…

“…When the petit bourgeoisie's interest is for fighting imperialism on a particular issue, but not for overthrowing it…, it is still contributing to revolution to that extent…Someone not for revolution is not for actually defeating imperialism either, but we still can and should unite with them on particular issues…

“What is the strategy of this international revolutionary movement? What are the strategic weaknesses of the imperialists which make it possible for us to win?...

“The strategy…is what Che’ called `creating two, three, many Vietnams’—to mobilize the struggle so sharply in so many places that the imperialists cannot possibly deal with it all. Since it is essential to their interests, they will try to deal with it all, and will be defeated and destroyed in the process.

“In defining and implementing this strategy, it is clear that the vanguard (that is, the section of the people who are in the forefront of the struggle and whose class interests and needs define the terms and tasks of the revolution) of the `American Revolution’ is the workers and oppressed peoples of the colonies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Because of the level of special oppression of black people as a colony, they reflect the interests of the oppressed people of the world from within the borders of the United States; they are part of the Third World and part of the international revolutionary vanguard.

“The vanguard role of the Vietnamese and other Third World countries in defeating US imperialism has been clear to our movement for some time. What has not been so clear is the vanguard role black people have played, and continue to play, in the development of revolutionary consciousness and struggle within the United States…

“The black colony, due to its particular nature as a slave colony, never adopted a chauvinist identification with America as an imperialist power, either politically or culturally. Moreover, the history of black people in America has consistently been one of the greatest overall repudiations of and struggle against the state. From the slave ships from Africa to the slave revolts, the Civil War, etc., black people have been waging a struggle for survival and liberation. In the history of our own movement this has also been the case: the civil rights struggles, initiated and led by blacks in the South; the rebellions beginning with Harlem in 1964 and Watts in 1965 through Detroit and Newark in 1967; the campus struggles at all-black schools in the South and struggles led by blacks on campuses all across the country. As it is the blacks—along with the Vietnamese and other Third World people—who are most oppressed by US imperialism, their class interests are most solidly and resolutely committed to waging revolutionary struggle through to its completion. Therefore it is no surprise that time and again, in both political content and level of consciousness and militancy, it has been the black liberation movement which has...defined the terms of the struggle…

“…Within this country increased oppression falls heavier on the most oppressed sections of the population, so that the condition of all workers is worsened through rising taxes, inflation and the fall of real wages, and speedup. But this increased oppression falls heaviest on the most oppressed, such as poor white workers and, especially, the blacks, for example through the collapse of state services like schools, hospitals and welfare, which naturally hits the hardest at those most dependent on them.

“This deterioration pushes people to fight harder to even try to maintain their present level…

“…Can the black liberation struggle—the struggle of all blacks in the country—gain…liberation by concentrating on building base areas in the South in territory with a concentration of black population?

“…If the best potential for struggle in the South were realized, it is fully conceivable and legitimate that the struggle there could take on the character of a fight for separation; and any victories won in that direction would be important gains for the national liberation of the colony as a whole. However, because the colony is dispersed over the whole country, and not just located in the black belt, winning still means the power and liberation of blacks in the whole country.

“Thus, even the winning of separate independence in the South would still be one step toward self-determination, and not equivalent to winning it; which, because of the economic position of the colony as a whole, would still require overthrowing the state power of the imperialists, taking over production and the whole economy and power, etc.” (end of parts 5 and 6 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 4

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 4 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“What is the relationship of the struggle for black self-determination to the whole worldwide revolution to defeat US imperialism and internationalize its resources toward the goal of creating a classless world?

“No black self-determination could be won which would not result in a victory for the international revolution as a whole. The black proletarian colony, being dispersed as such a large and exploited section of the work force, is essential to the survival of imperialism. Thus, even if the black liberation movement chose to try to attain self-determination in the form of a separate country (a legitimate part of the right to self-determination), existing side by side with the US, imperialism could not survive if they won it—and so would never give up without being defeated. Thus, a revolutionary nationalist movement could not win without destroying the state power of the imperialists; and it is for this reason that the black liberation movement, as a revolutionary nationalist movement for self-determination, is automatically in and of itself an inseparable part of the whole revolutionary struggle against US imperialism…

“…If necessary, black people could win self-determination, abolishing the whole imperialist system and seizing state power…

“Blacks could do it alone if necessary because of their centralness to the system, economically and geo-militarily, and because of the level of unity, commitment and initiative which will be developed in waging a people’s war for survival and national liberation. However, we do not expect that they will have to do it alone, not only because of the international situation, but also because the real interests of masses of oppressed whites in this country lie with the Black Liberation struggle, and the conditions for understanding and fighting for these interests grow with the deepening of the crises. Already, the black liberation movement has carried with it an upsurge of revolutionary consciousness among white youth; and while there are no guarantees, we can expect that this will extend and deepen among all oppressed whites.

“…The possibility of blacks winning alone cannot in the least be a justification for whites failing to shoulder the burden of developing a revolutionary movement among whites…

“…The only…path is to build a white movement which will support the blacks in moving as fast as they have to and are able to, and still itself keep up with that black movement enough so that white revolutionaries share the cost and the blacks don’t have to do the whole thing alone…” (end of part 4 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 3

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 3 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“The struggle of black people—as a colony—is for self-determination, freedom, and liberation from US imperialism. Because blacks have been oppressed and held in an inferior social position as a people, they have a right to decide, organize and act on their common destiny as a people apart from white interference. Black self-determination does not simply apply to determination of their collective political destiny at some future time. It is directly tied to the fact that because all blacks experience oppression in a form that no whites do, no whites are in a position to fully understand and test from their own practice the real situation black people face and the necessary response to it. This is why it is necessary for black people to organize separately and determine their actions separately at each stage of the struggle.

“It is important to understand the implications of this. It is not legitimate for whites to organizationally intervene in differences among revolutionary black nationalists. It would be arrogant for us to attack any black organization that defends black people and opposes imperialism in practice. But it is necessary to develop a correct understanding of the Black Liberation struggle within our own organization, where an incorrect one will further racist practice in our relations with the black movement…

“…Huey P. Newton has said, `In order to be a revolutionary nationalist, you would of necessity have to be a socialist.’ This is because—given the caste quality of oppression-as-a-people-through-a-common-degree-of-exploitation—-self-determination requires being free from white capitalist exploitation in the form of inferior (lower caste) jobs, housing, schools, hospitals, prices…

“…Much of the black petit bourgeoisie is actually a `comprador’ petit bourgeoisie (like so-called black capitalists who are promoted by the power structure to seem independent but are really agents of white monopoly capital), who would never fight as a class for any real self-determination…Many black petit bourgeoisie, perhaps most, while not having a class interest in socialist self-determination, are close enough to the black masses in the oppression and limitations on their conditions that they will support many kinds of self-determination issues, and, especially when the movement is winning, can be won to support full (socialist) self-determination…” (end of part 3 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)

The 1969 Weatherman Statement Revisited: Excerpts from Part 2

It’s not likely that the New York Times will mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1969 Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] National Convention in Chicago by reprinting excerpts from the position paper of the Weatherman faction of SDS. So following are some excerpts from Part 2 of this historic position paper (that originally appeared in the June 18, 1969 issue of New Left Notes) which might interest U.S. anti-war activists in 2009—during the current U.S. historical era of “endless permanent war abroad and economic depression at home”:

“Not every colony of people oppressed by imperialism lies outside the boundaries of the U.S.. Black people within North America, brought here 400 years ago as slaves and whose labor, as slaves built this country, are an internal colony within the confines of the oppressor nation. What this means is that black people are oppressed as a whole people, in the institutions and social relations of the country, apart from simply the consideration of their class position, income, skill, etc., as individuals. What does this colony look like? What is the basis for its common oppression and why is it important?

“One historically important position has been that the black colony only consists of the black belt nation in the South, whose fight for national liberation is based on a common land, culture, history and economic life…

“This position is wrong; in reality, the black colony does not exist simply as the `black belt nation,’ but exists in the country as a whole. The common oppression of black people and the common culture growing out of that history are not based historically or currently on their relation to the territory of the black belt, even though that has been a place of population concentration and has some very different characteristics than the north, particularly around the land question.

“Rather, the common features of oppression, history and culture which unify black people as a colony (although originating historically in a common territory apart from the colonizers, i.e., Africa, not the South) have been based historically on their common position as slaves, which since the nominal abolition of slavery has taken the form of caste oppression, and oppression of black people as a people everywhere that they exist. A new black nation, different from the nations of Africa from which it came, has been forged by the common historical experience of importation and slavery and caste oppression…

“What is specifically meant by the term caste is that all black people, on the basis of their common slave history, common culture and skin color are systematically denied access to particular job categories (or positions within job categories), social position, etc., regardless of individual skills, talents, money or education. Within the working class, they are the most oppressed section…Token exceptions aside, the specific content of this caste oppression is to maintain black people in the most exploitative and oppressive jobs and conditions…

“Thus, northern blacks…have a single class interest, along with all other black people in the US, as members of the Black Proletarian Colony.” (end of part 2 excerpts)

(New Left Notes 6/18/69)