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href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40241-storm-the-heavens-notes-from-the-weather-underground-on-resistance-to-trump">http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40241-storm-the-heavens-notes-from-the-weather-underground-on-resistance-to-trump</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">''Storm the Heavens'': Notes From the
Weather Underground on Resistance to Trump</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Dahr Jamail - April 17,
2017<br>
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<p>Those of us living within the borders of the United
States currently find ourselves living inside the
churning engine of a hyper-militarized corporate-fascist
farce of a democracy that is spiraling into darkness.
The blades of this death-machine are grinding what is
left of our precious planet into dust.</p>
<p>Now, think back nearly five decades ago to the late
1960s. The Vietnam War was escalating dramatically and
imperialism was lurching forward rapidly enough to cause
ongoing demonstrations and political activism to spread
like wildfire across the seething country. Some were
fueled by a hunger for justice great enough they engaged
in armed struggle against the US government.</p>
<p>It was they who comprised The Weather Underground
Organization (WUO), a faction of the Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS) that took up arms in solidarity
with the Black Panthers and other militant groups with
the aim to "Bring the War Home." Going underground to
escape the relentless pursuit of the FBI and other law
enforcement, the group managed to carry out several
high-profile bombings -- including one of the Pentagon
-- over a span of several years. Each action was tied to
an act of imperial aggression abroad or within the US.</p>
<p>The Weather Underground's bombings targeted symbolic
infrastructure: The group went to great lengths to make
sure that no human was ever harmed in the bombings, and
none ever was.</p>
<p>Our current political moment brings to mind resisters
like the members of the Weather Underground. How might
they view the current crisis of imperialism the US has
brought upon itself and the planet? How would they
connect today's struggles for justice with those of the
past? What advice would they give to those working for
social justice today?</p>
<p>Truthout caught up with several former leaders of the
Weather Underground to find out.</p>
<p><strong>Revolution "Was in the Air"</strong></p>
<p>When it comes to mainstream perceptions of the 1960s,
former Weather Underground member David Gilbert says,
the struggle against imperialism is often given short
shrift.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h3>"We have to remember that the source of imperialism’s
strength, the global scope of intense exploitation, is
also its greatest weakness."</h3>
<p>"People looking at the 1960s through today's lens see
only the horrors that had to be stopped -- the napalming
of children and the massacres of villagers in Vietnam,
the jailings and assassinations of civil rights
activists at home," Gilbert, who was a founding member
of the Columbia University SDS chapter, told Truthout in
a letter from prison. "Yes, that was horrible; yes we
were furiously fighting to stop that, as well as the
many other military and economic atrocities imperialism
rains down. But that's only half the story."</p>
<p>Gilbert, was arrested in 1981for his role in a Brink's
armored car robbery. Gilbert and other white activists
were part of a group they named the Revolutionary Armed
Task Force. They were acting in solidarity with the
Black Liberation Army, with whom they worked to rob the
vehicle with the aim of acquiring funds for the
movement. During the attempted robbery, two police
officers and a Brink's security guard were killed, and
Gilbert was sent to prison for felony murder, alongside
several other activists, including his wife, Kathy
Boudin. He is currently doing time in the Wende
Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, and is not
eligible for parole until 2056. </p>
<p>Like other "Weathermen" Truthout interviewed, Gilbert
was motivated to join the radically oriented group
because "revolution was on the march around the world."</p>
<p>National liberation movements were gaining steam
throughout the Third World, and were actually able to
seize power in about a dozen countries.</p>
<p>"The most oppressed, the 'wretched of the Earth,' were
reshaping the world in a more equitable and humane way,"
Gilbert wrote. "Those of us who later formed the Weather
Underground pored over these various revolutions,
studying both how they won against imperialism's
monstrous military machines and the changes they brought
about in terms of education, health care, land reform,
and women's rights."</p>
<p>
</p>
<h3>"Perhaps even more than our revulsion for the
atrocities, we were propelled by the sense of
possibility, that revolution was in the air."</h3>
<p>Meanwhile, the US was quaking with internal upheavals.
Inspired by the emergence of Black Power, mounting
militant movements for self-determination grew among
Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos and Asian
Americans. The Weather Underground was made up of white
organizers who were responding to the call of Black-led
groups to put their lives on the line in solidarity with
oppressed people around the world. WUO member Bernardine
Dohrn, a leader of the group, said, "It was largely an
era of revolutionary nationalism and racial
separation. The Black Panthers called us -- not just the
WUO but the anti-imperialist, anti-racist movement --
'white mother-country radicals.'"</p>
<p>Waves of other radical movements also swelled,
including antiwar, student, women's rights, lesbian/gay
liberation, environmental and workers movements.</p>
<p>"Perhaps even more than our revulsion for the
atrocities, we were propelled by the sense of
possibility, that revolution was in the air ... and
advancing on many fronts on the ground," Gilbert
continued. "If I had to put the differen[ce] between the
1960s and today into one word it would be HOPE ... hope
that the world could be changed, was being changed,
fundamentally, by and for the vast majority on Earth."</p>
<p>In our interviews, the Weather Underground's leaders
emphasized the interconnectedness of the many struggles
afoot. Dohrn, who was a principal signatory of the
group's declaration of a state of war on the US
government, stressed the connections between the war in
Vietnam and racial injustices playing out in the US. She
explained that the Weather Underground Organization was
not singularly aimed at stopping the war in Vietnam, but
also targeted the ongoing FBI assassinations of and
attacks on members of the Black Freedom Movement, as
well as being part of the broader international struggle
for justice.</p>
<p>"We (the broad 'we') had convinced the population that
these wars were wrong and unpopular, but the US
continued its efforts to destroy the crops, the terrain
and the lives of Vietnam," Dohrn, who was placed on the
FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for three years, said.</p>
<p>Dohrn explained that the Weather Underground's bombings
against the obvious pillars of war, like the Pentagon
and the US Capitol, "showed that what looked invincible
and overpowering was also very weak and
vulnerable. These actions did not need a communiqué to
explain who was responsible and why. By then, the
sequence of WUO actions spoke for themselves, and had
established a clear pattern of damaging property, but
not human lives."</p>
<p>Over the past two decades, Dohrn has done
groundbreaking work within the fields of juvenile
justice and human rights.</p>
<p>Another founding member of the WUO was Naomi Jaffe, who
joined the group to be in solidarity with the efforts
towards Black self-determination, and because of its
Marxist ideals.</p>
<p>"We hoped to weaken the US from within, to give the
liberation forces around the world a better chance to
defeat it from without, to be part of Che's strategy of
'Two, three, many Vietnams,'" Jaffe explained to
Truthout, citing Che Guevara's model of guerrilla
warfare and destabilization.</p>
<p>Like the other three former WUO members, Jaffe
acknowledged that none of them were speaking for other
veteran activists of their generation, and noted that
they were all white.</p>
<p>"There are so many veteran activists from other sectors
of our '60s and '70s movements, particularly people of
color, who are still deeply engaged," Jaffe explained.
"I believe some of them are at Standing Rock right now
[at the time of this interview]. Some are in prison."</p>
<p>Like Gilbert, Jaffe was inspired by international
revolutionary movements. She saw that the Vietnamese
people, against all conceivable odds, were winning, and
did eventually win the war. US General Curtis Lemay had
threatened to bomb Vietnam "back to the Stone Age." Yet
the Vietnamese -- despite rampant poverty -- came
together and, through ingenuity, unity and sacrifice,
went on to defeat the world's mightiest military power.</p>
<p>"This astonishing feat accounts for the gradual coming
to consciousness of the famed US anti-Vietnam War
movement," Jaffe said. "It took being defeated by a
small poor country to awaken large numbers of US
Americans to the injustice of invading them in the first
place."</p>
<p>Jaffe pointed to the militant resistance of the
Vietnamese people as a powerful sign that things could
change in the US -- and that the violence wrought by the
US government was not inevitable.</p>
<p>"The resistance of a small underdeveloped country
against a mighty military power became a model that
created the possibility that the world might defeat US
imperialism, which I believed then, as I do now, was the
scourge of the earth," she added. "I joined the
Weathermen, not out of despair, but out of inspiration
and the hope that we too could be part of the liberation
forces that were sweeping the world."</p>
<p>Dohrn's husband Bill Ayers was also a leader and
cofounder of the Weather Underground. Looking back on
his years with the group, Ayers frankly acknowledged the
persistence today of the systems against which the
Weather Underground struggled.</p>
<p>"If you take perhaps our most straightforward and
easily understood goals, you would have to say that we
failed," he explained. "We wanted to end a particular
war, and even after much sacrifice and struggle and
success at persuading people to oppose it, the war
ground on for 10 excruciating years, and 3 to 6 million
people were thrown into the furnaces of death; and then
we wanted to end empire and usher in a world of equality
and mutual recognition, a world without war, and look
where we are."</p>
<p>According to Ayers, they had set out to lay siege to
white supremacy and create a society built on a
foundation of racial justice and yet, decades later,
massive disparities (life expectancy, infant mortality,
incarceration, school success, employment, premature
death) are still etched sharply along the color line,
still reflecting the pervasive entrenchment of white
supremacy.</p>
<p>"We wanted to eradicate poverty and upend economic
exploitation, and yet the yawning chasm between haves
and have-nots intensifies," Ayers, whose current work
focuses on education justice among other areas, said.</p>
<p><strong>Then and Now</strong></p>
<p>Many people now feel a sense of urgency for deep
change. But Jaffe wonders why folks haven't felt that
same urgency for decades "particularly in relation to
the destruction of the Earth and US aggression and
slaughter around the world."</p>
<p>While she is finding hope and solace in the increasing
political awareness the Trump administration has
generated, along with the Black Lives Matter Movement,
which has challenged "the culture of normalization of
contempt for Black lives," she remains horrified by what
has become "normalized" in the US.</p>
<p>"2.3 million people, mostly of color, in prison; a
dozen countries destroyed and their populations exposed
to monumental suffering; the extinction of species," she
said. "How do we challenge this normalization now and
prevent it from overcoming the anti-Trump outrage?"</p>
<p>Jaffe said the biggest difference between what we are
facing today and what the world faced in the '60s and
'70s is not in the magnitude of white supremacy and
brutality. "Remember that the Black Panthers and other
liberation forces arose in response to police killings
similar to those being exposed today," she said.
Instead, the difference is the level of global
resistance.</p>
<p>"Our generation saw resistance and liberation movements
around the world that had a vision of global justice, a
common enemy in US imperialism and racism, and a chance
of success," she said. "Those movements were largely
crushed by US and European military and economic power;
even the liberation movements that won militarily and
politically, like Vietnam and South Africa, were more
often than not overwhelmed afterward by the force of
Western economic dominance."</p>
<p>Jaffe sees the convergence of three massive events in
this moment as a trenchant history lesson for us: the
election of Trump; the death of Fidel Castro, at 90
years old -- about 60 years after the Cuban revolution;
and one of the largest and most defiant Native American
resistance movements in this country's history, which
occurred at Standing Rock.</p>
<p>"Win or lose, every resistance redefines the moment,
carries the torch forward for the next generation, and
keeps alive the possibility of a better world," Jaffe
said.</p>
<p>Ayers sees many parallels between the 1960s and today.</p>
<p>"In 1965 I felt that the terms of the struggle were
stark: a humane future versus annihilation, love versus
hate, humanity versus the machine, balance and peace
versus chaos and war," he explained. "I was driven by
the 'fierce urgency of now' and the palpable choice
between barbarity and community. That sense only
intensified by 1968 and 1969."</p>
<p>Today, he sees the stakes as being both higher and more
transparent, with "the furnaces of war more intense and
the chaos rising, the waters rising, the world on fire."</p>
<p>"Look at the country today: a trillion dollars a year
on war, invasion and occupation, a tiny group of
over-privileged -- under 5 percent of the world's people
-- on the wrong side of any hope for a world in balance
and gobbling up the common and collective resources in a
drunken frenzy of consumerism, acting as if large swaths
of humanity and the earth itself are entirely disposable
... and more."</p>
<p>Despite that bleak analysis of our current predicament,
Ayers still finds hope, and feels the "fierce urgency"
even more strongly than he did five decades ago.</p>
<p>"I have enormous hope and confidence that the current
generation, all of us, can and will find new ways to
resist the madness and to build toward a world at peace
and in balance, powered by love, joy, and justice,"
Ayers said.</p>
<p>Dorhn, too, pointed to the political currents that have
persisted across the decades, and noted that the
election of Donald Trump reminds us of the kind of
country we live in: a place rife with "naked white
supremacy, armed neo-fascist forces becoming united with
each other at the border, in statehouses, in rural areas
from Oregon to Oklahoma to North Dakota."</p>
<p>She believes the Trump election serves as a wake-up
call for everyone to realize that the progress we've
made is not nearly enough, and yet is at risk of being
dramatically reversed. Those reversals have already
become apparent: the withdrawal from the Paris Climate
Agreement, the restriction of voting rights, the
proliferation of lying media sources driven solely by
profit, the unraveling of the US/Iranian/European
agreement on reducing nuclear weapons, and intensifying
US hostility toward Cuba, to name a few examples.</p>
<p>Dohrn emphasizes that today is a time for telling the
truth and being reliable as individuals, acting on those
truths, and organizing among those who disagree. Her
prescription for moving forward? "Resistance,
counter-offensives, poetry, art, music, dance and more
organizing."</p>
<p><strong>"We Have a Chance to Win"</strong></p>
<p>Despite the dramatic march of US imperialism since the
height of their actions in the late '60s and early '70s,
all four former Weather Underground members retain a
remarkable sense of hope.</p>
<p>Gilbert expressed solidarity and appreciation for the
many activists who are fighting imperialism worldwide.</p>
<p>"The times and conditions are so different today that
the WUO isn't exactly replicable or a direct model," he
explained. "The aspects of our history that do apply are
our sense of urgency, our passion, our commitment to
fundamental change; and most crucially, the basis for
that: a deep identification with all oppressed peoples
worldwide."</p>
<p>Gilbert believes now people must continue to find
creative ways to resist. He says it's vital to make the
human costs of climate disruption and other major issues
more vivid and immediate to large numbers of people.</p>
<p>"To recapture that crucial sense of hope and
possibility," he added. "We want to identify with and
fight alongside the vast majority of the world."</p>
<p>Gilbert noted that never before in world history has
there been a ruling class as powerful and destructive as
today's, nor have the challenges the world faces ever
been as formidable or daunting as they are currently.</p>
<p>"But we have to remember that the source of
imperialism's strength, the global scope of intense
exploitation, is also its greatest weakness, with
literally billions of people having a fundamental
interest in revolutionary change," Gilbert said. "The
very scope ... of the system also makes it unstable and
volatile in ways that will undermine its viability,
which may open up dramatic new possibilities. There's
literally everything in the world at stake. When we
fight, with love in our hearts, we have a chance to
win."</p>
<p>Dohrn noted that it is important to work to connect
today's various struggles, uniting whenever ethically
possible. She mentioned a few of the dots that we must
connect: "War and global warming. Indigenous rights and
clean water. De-militarizing borders and immigrant
rights. Exposing police violence against people of
color. Demanding universal health care and
housing. Free, universal public education that rejects
testing, privatization and drilling for 'correct'
answers. Expanding the arts, the humanities and
thinking. Acting with love and solidarity."</p>
<p>Jaffe, like the others, stressed that it is of the
utmost importance to get politically involved, in
whatever way one feels pulled to do so. The evils
embedded within the system go way beyond Trump, she
emphasized, and circumstances necessitate something
revolutionary in response.</p>
<p>"That 'something' has to be with other people, face to
face, and in some way build survival, community,
resistance and solidarity," she said. "In the wake of
the Trump victory, a lot of that is happening all over
the country -- rallies, vigils, sanctuary cities,
anti-Islamophobia and pro-LGBTQ rights marches,
political strategy meetings ... all valuable."</p>
<p>Ayers also saw multiple points of entry for activists.</p>
<p>"The challenge is to dive in where you are, whatever
your issue, location, or talent, and then to reframe
every issue, and connect the issues to one another," he
said. "War and warming, work and Black lives, human
rights and environment. When the upheaval is upon us we
must be prepared to find one another, link up, and storm
the heavens."<br>
________________________________<br>
</p>
<div>
<h2><a
href="http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/44706">Dahr
Jamail</a></h2>
<div>
<p>Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the
author of <em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608460959?ie=UTF8&tag=dahjamsmiddis-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608460959"
target="_blank">The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who
Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan</a></em>
(Haymarket Books, 2009), and <em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931859612?ie=UTF8&tag=dahjamsmiddis-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1931859612"
target="_blank">Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in
Occupied Iraq</a></em> (Haymarket Books, 2007).
Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as
well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over
the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn
Award for Investigative Journalism, among other
awards.</p>
<p>His third book, <em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Mass-Destruction-Iraq-Disintegration-Responsible-ebook/dp/B00ML3KAN6"
target="_blank">The Mass Destruction of Iraq:
Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible</a></em>,
co-written with <a
href="http://truth-out.org/news/item/24170-from-the-desk-of-william-rivers-pitt"
target="_blank">William Rivers Pitt</a>, is
available now on Amazon.</p>
<p>Dahr Jamail is the author of the book, <em>The End
of Ice</em>, forthcoming from The New Press. He
lives and works in Washington State.</p>
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