The Chicago Traveler

Friday Film: The Weather Underground

by Matt B on February 15th, 2008

For the past few years, Americans have been barraged by propaganda, warning us against terrorists, demanding that we 'protect our borders,' and 'fight the war there so we won't have to fight it here.' However, we (Americans) forget that most violent acts of terrorism begin right here at home: the Ku Klux Klan, Alpha 66, the Army of God, Eric Robert Rudolph, the Earth Liberation Front, the Black Liberation Army, Theodore Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, the 2001 anthrax attacks' the list goes on and on. These were United States citizens who all felt that the best way to deliver their sociopolitical message was through violence, coercion, or intimidation.

Another such organization was 'The Weathermen.' These radical-left college students aimed to violently overthrow the U.S. government from 1969 to 1975, in opposition to the Vietnam War. They carried out attacks via bombings on government buildings, triggered only after warnings were given and the buildings were evacuated.

Chicago, like many major cities, was a hotbed of political revolution during the '60s and '70s. After a Students for a Democratic Society conference in 1969, several of the organization's members split off, adopting a more aggressive plan for legislative change. The Weather Underground, a 2002 documentary, tells the stories of these young men and women, as they attempted to 'bring the war home,' hoping to shake the ignorance and apathy they felt plagued their society:

'We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life, and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there, and you don't do anything about it, that's violence.' –Naomi Jaffe

The film features interviews with several former members, exploring the formation and eventual breakdown of the radical movement. The Weathermen did not stand alone and had major interactions with other social movements of the era, including the Black Panther Party. While their means may have been questionable, the young revolutionaries did manage to expose the U.S. government's deliberate suppression of popular public dissenters, like Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton. It is no surprise then that many of the Weathermen found themselves on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

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POSTED IN: Entertainment, Filmed in Chicago