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href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41746-weather-underground-speak-out-on-the-media-imperialism-and-solidarity-in-the-age-of-trump">http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41746-weather-underground-speak-out-on-the-media-imperialism-and-solidarity-in-the-age-of-trump</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Weather Underground Members Speak Out on
the Media, Imperialism and Solidarity in the Age of Trump</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Dahr Jamail - August
30, 2017<br>
<br>
<font color="#ff0000"><i><b>(unfortunately, David Gilbert who
is interviewed for this story is not identified as a
current and long-term u.s. held Political Prisoner)</b></i></font><br>
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<p>Seven months into the so-called administration of
President Donald Trump, things are going further off the
rails with each passing day. From the fires of war to
attacks on health care to the stoking of the white
supremacist far right, living in the bowels of a rotting
empire has, perhaps, never been as intense.</p>
<p>As questions swirl around the nature of contemporary
resistance, another period of rising protest comes to
mind: the Vietnam-war era, when radical political
activism in this country reached new levels.</p>
<p>In 1970, the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), a
group that emerged out of Students for a Democratic
Society, issued a "Declaration of a State of War"
against the US government, and shortly thereafter began
carrying out bombings against symbols of US Empire,
including even the Pentagon itself. Targeting mostly
government buildings and several banks -- and taking
care not to injure human beings -- the actions were
designed to "bring the war home" in order to highlight
imperial injustices against the oppressed, and the
egregious violence of US imperialism.</p>
<p>Having interviewed the <a
href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40241-storm-the-heavens-notes-from-the-weather-underground-on-resistance-to-trump"
target="_blank">founding members of this group before</a>,
Truthout now brings you their perspectives on the media,
why they did what they did, and where they see things
going from here in the US and beyond.</p>
<p><strong>The Role of the Media</strong></p>
<p>Bernardine Dohrn, one of the co-founders and a leader
of the WUO, discussed the media's coverage of the
Vietnam War and other liberation movements around the
world at that time. What she shared is particularly
poignant, given the crisis of the media in the age of
President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>She spoke of the US military being keenly aware of the
need to control the media's message during the Vietnam
War.</p>
<p>"[The Media's role was] so important that the US
military learned to never again allow independent
journalists into their war zones," Dohrn explained.
"[Significantly], the mainstream media never again
allowed images of human people, families, women or
children who suffer the consequences of US bombings or
invasions."</p>
<p>With the dominant media avoiding these
responsibilities, one of the many roles the WUO played
was, according to Dohrn, to communicate to the public
the ways in which people, cultures and whole
civilizations were suffering under US air strikes and
CIA repression.</p>
<p>"The media was plenty corporatized during the '60s and
'70s, and it was the anti-war movement in concert with
the Black Freedom Movement and the returning vets who
changed the hearts and minds of the US people from
1965-1968," she said.</p>
<p>WUO member David Gilbert told Truthout he believes it
was the strength of the anti-war movement, and the US
losses in Vietnam, that finally pushed sectors of the
media to start reporting some of the truth about the
war.</p>
<p>He echoes Dohrn's point that the media was already
corporatized back then (though the conglomerates were
not nearly as large as they are today), and the pro-war
bias of the media was just as real as it is now.</p>
<p>"An example was the use of napalm bombs, designed to
cling to and burn through flesh, on civilians," Gilbert
said. "The mainstream media completely whited-out these
horrible war crimes."</p>
<p>In fact, in January 1967 a radical magazine, Ramparts,
published a series of color photos of children and
babies burned by napalm. </p>
<p>"That's the point when some of us became absolutely
frantic to stop the war," Gilbert said. "But it also
exposed the mainstream media for what they were covering
up."</p>
<p>According to Gilbert, by 1967 a whole network of small
radical papers had a combined readership of roughly 6
million, making up a crucial wing of the movement. Of
course, it was therefore ripe for targeting by
intelligence agencies.</p>
<p>"An important part of the FBI and police offensive to
beat the radical movements was to destroy the radical
media, a campaign that's detailed in Geoffrey Rips's <em>UnAmerican
Activities</em>," he said.</p>
<p>By the late '60s, largely due to constant pressure from
the increasingly powerful anti-war movement, portions of
the media started to come around to presenting some of
the realities of the Vietnam War. Plus, by then, it was
clear the US was likely going to lose the war, US
brutality abroad was being exposed to the world, and the
political upheaval on the home front was becoming white
hot.</p>
<p>Gilbert went on to explain how, then as now, "The hawks
waged a concerted campaign to blame that on 'the liberal
media,' to the point that this lie has become accepted
today."</p>
<p>At that time, the myth of the "liberal media"
accomplished several things for the right wing,
according to Gilbert. "It's covered up the truth that
the US military machine was defeated by a Global South
nation, it's convinced the public that the 'truth lies
somewhere in between' the hawks and the media, when in
fact the media didn't do nearly enough to expose the
injustice and horrors of the war, and it's intimidated
the media, which fell into line as pure propaganda
organs in subsequent wars."</p>
<p>Naomi Jaffe, one of the WUO's founding members who
joined in solidarity with movements for Black
self-determination, agreed with Gilbert in that pressure
from the anti-war movement was a leading factor that
pushed the media to share more images of the war.
However, she was quite critical of the overall role the
media played during Vietnam.</p>
<p>"Remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Not a hint of independent
reporting ever questioned it until long after the war
was over," Jaffe told Truthout. "The body counts?
Regular reports of how the US was winning by killing
more 'Viet Cong' every week than could possibly have
existed overall."</p>
<p>Bill Ayers, who is married to Dohrn, was also a leader
and cofounder of the WUO.</p>
<p>"Empire always, then and now, cloaks itself in the
garments of mystification and deceit," Ayers said. "The
message from the corporate media was unambiguous: the US
loves peace and fights only when it must, and always
selflessly in defense of freedom and democracy."</p>
<p>For example, Ayers says, the New York Times announced
that it saw the "light at the end of the tunnel" -- the
turning point when the war would at long last be turned
around and won -- days before the decisive defeat during
the Tet Offensive in 1968. In 1966, Walter Cronkite, CBS
anchor and the most trusted journalist of his
generation, presented a fawning interview with the
puppet and fascist Nguyen Cao Ky and called him the
George Washington of Viet Nam.</p>
<p>"The lies and misdirection go on and on," Ayers said.
"And don't believe the narcissistic media today
rewriting its role in moving the country against the war
50 years ago, making itself a forerunner and a major
actor, heroizing its efforts and turning reality on its
head."</p>
<p>Ayers said it wasn't the media that played a role in
helping end the war in Vietnam, it was, by far, the
decisive actions of the Vietnamese people themselves "in
defeating the most potent military force on earth." He
pointed out, "Vietnam was engaged in an authentic social
revolution, deep and broad, in which peasants and
workers were massively engaged in the overthrow of
colonialism and foreign control as well as feudal
relationships and capitalism itself."</p>
<p>Moreover, Ayers said, this revolution was part of "the
anti-colonial and Third World moment, a context that
allowed us to understand the revolution in Vietnam as
part of a world phenomenon sweeping from South Africa to
Egypt to Chile to Indonesia."</p>
<p>He also pointed to "the important role of the
underground -- popular or alternative or movement --
press in the US, and its ability to tap international
sources like the Cuban media, for example, to uncover
the truth of events."</p>
<p>He sees the typical narrative -- the idea that the
military draft made the war real in the eyes of the US
public, and the media cemented that reality, helping to
end the war -- as skewed. It "buys into a simplistic and
largely self-serving explanation," Ayers said. "The
Vietnamese revolution and war resistance at home
impacted the media coverage, not the other way around."</p>
<p><strong>A Mandate for Solidarity</strong></p>
<p>The WUO was grounded in a politics of solidarity with
the oppressed, including economic, status and race-based
oppression.</p>
<p>"The most immediate impetus to underground action was
the government's refusal to end the war and, most
particularly, the lethal attacks on the Black Liberation
Movement," Gilbert said, of why he joined. "Twenty-eight
Black Panthers were killed between 1968 and 1971. So,
first and foremost we moved on to illegal actions as a
fundamental mandate for solidarity, in the context, as
argued above, of the sense of responsibility, of world
revolution."</p>
<p>Gilbert referred to the bombings carried out by the WUO
as "armed propaganda," as there was no pretense of
having a military impact, in addition to the fact that
the bombings were carried out with the greatest care not
to kill or injure any people.</p>
<p>"The point of the actions is their effect on
consciousness by spotlighting the forces -- government
and corporate -- responsible for damage and death to the
oppressed, and to show people that there are still
creative and daring ways to fight the powers-that-be
despite repression," Gilbert explained. "Each action was
accompanied by a well-reasoned communiqué explaining the
political issues involved."</p>
<p>Ayers explained that they acted because they were
outraged at the injustices, and because they thought a
more just world was within their reach -- that their
sacrifices would count for something.</p>
<p>"These elements are each indispensable if we are to
ignite a progressive social struggle," he said. "Knowing
that things are unjust or terrible is never quite
enough. We always need a vision and a palpable sense of
the world we're fighting for."</p>
<p>Ayers noted that this vision is essential for a sense
of sustained motivation, at both the individual and the
collective levels.</p>
<p>"The world is as it is, a mass of contradictions and
tragedies, rich with beauty and human accomplishment and
possibility, vicious with human denial -- an organism
that both drains us and replenishes us, gives us life
and kills us," he said. "What gets me up in the morning
is all the unnecessary suffering, the undeserved pain,
and also a sense that we can and must do better." </p>
<p>Jaffe pointed out that US "mainstream society" -- the
recipient of the loot of US global dominance -- does not
represent the majority of humanity. </p>
<p>"Our view of 'mainstream' needs to be global and relate
to those whom Arundhati Roy calls 'the subjects of
Empire,'" she said. "One of the most electrifying
breakthroughs in consciousness for me, as I think for
many others of my generation, was Malcolm X exhorting us
to stop referring to people of color as 'minorities,'
because people of color are the vast majority of the
people of the world."</p>
<p>All of the WUO members agreed that the confluence of
consciousness between the most oppressed groups in the
US and the rest of the world created the wave of hope
and possibility that -- without ever being "mainstream"
-- came to define the '60s and '70s. That type of
confluence is crucial, Jaffe said, for any real
liberation.</p>
<p>"It would necessitate the overthrow of the US ruling
class and its role as the dominant world power," she
said. "But understood as being in the interests of the
vast majority of humanity, that goal becomes
imaginable."</p>
<p><strong>Sense of Urgency</strong></p>
<p>An imaginable set of goals is essential because,
Gilbert points out, our resistance to the US ruling
class must take on a sense of great urgency.</p>
<p>"Capitalism has us hurtling towards a climate
catastrophe that could ruin the Earth as a habitat for
any sizable human population and, of course, has
exterminated or threatened countless other species," he
said. "Already, the effects of climate change have
killed huge numbers of people, greatly intensified local
conflicts over diminishing resources and created large
numbers of desperate climate refugees."</p>
<p>Gilbert sees climate disruption as having the potential
to unite people around the world behind a shared goal.
However, he says, climate disruption doesn't affect
everyone equally, and it's crucial to center the most
marginalized people, who tend to be the most impacted.</p>
<p>"The movement can't be on the terms of a relatively
privileged, small sector," Gilbert said. "We always need
to put the interests, visions, aspirations of the most
oppressed, the vast majority, in the forefront."</p>
<p>Ayers also sees the need for a massive social
revolution. He argues that we must become even <em>more</em> radical,
in the <a
href="https://gustavus.edu/gwss/events/angeladavisflier.pdf"
target="_blank">strict sense of the term</a> -- we
must reach more thoroughly to the root of things.</p>
<p>"We need to study, learn, organize, talk to strangers,
mobilize, display our ethical aspirations publicly," he
said, adding that on the important issues of the last
two centuries, political radicals from Jane Addams and
Emma Goldman, to John Brown and Harriet Tubman, to
Eugene Debs and W.E.B. Du Bois, have gotten it right.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h3>For every remembered leader there were hundreds,
thousands putting their shoulders on history's wheel."</h3>
<p>"The legacy continues with the work of Ella Baker and
Septima Clark, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X ...
and on up to today," Ayers added. "Of course, as Ella
Baker said, 'Martin didn't create the movement, the
movement created Martin,' and it's true: For every
remembered leader there were hundreds, thousands putting
their shoulders on history's wheel."</p>
<p><strong>Dwelling in Possibility</strong></p>
<p>Today, future prospects certainly appear dire on many
fronts.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, all of the WUO members Truthout
interviewed still have their eyes fixed on the goals of
true justice and liberation, and they believe it remains
possible to bring about that liberated world. From the
US's rigid educational system to its brutal
incarceration system to the violence of borders, Ayers
says a wholly different vision is within reach. The
promise of that radical vision is what sparked WUO's
actions decades ago, and it remains relevant.</p>
<p>"We wanted to say goodbye to schooling that's arid,
dry, self-referencing and self-satisfied, to teaching as
a trivial pursuit of the obvious, to deference,
didacticism, ego and complacency in a heartless world,
to prisons and border guards and walls -- whether in
Palestine or in Texas -- and to quarantines, deletions
and closures," Ayers explained. "We wanted to welcome
the unknown, to say hello to jumping off the edge, to
endlessly learning how to live again and how to love
anew, to the dance of the dialectic."</p>
<p>During the advent of the WUO and its time of existence,
Ayers said they tried to embrace relentless curiosity,
simple acts of kindness, the complexity and wonder of
humanity, the poetics of resistance, history, agency,
world peace and inner peace. They wanted to embrace the
surprising and contradictory harmonies of love at all
times -- the hope that love held out for a better world.</p>
<p>In other words, it wasn't a small vision.</p>
<p>"We wanted free love and free land, free food and free
housing, dancing in the streets and daring to taste it
all with a kiss," Ayers said. "So, my expansive and
expanding dreams are not realized, of course, not yet,
not in my lifetime, but neither are they dimmed nor
diminished. I've tried to live with one foot in the mud
and muck of the world as it is, and another foot
striving toward a world that could be, but is not yet.
Like other freedom lovers, I'm still trying to dwell in
possibility."</p>
<p>Dohrn draws much strength from the many current justice
movements like Black Lives Matter, and Undocumented and
Unafraid, because, "They point to the world we want to
live in, as they invite solidarity and build unity."</p>
<p>Jaffe acknowledges that while the Trump victory
"certainly stirred many to action," she believes that
hope, not despair, is the best spur to action. She
believes it is necessary to have a radical analysis that
goes beyond the mainstream tenets emerging in the
post-election furor.</p>
<p>"We need an analysis that sees Democrats and
Republicans as two wings of the same ruling class and
Trump not as a blip on the march of progress," she said,
"but a continuation of the white supremacy,
corporatization, totalitarian surveillance, mass
incarceration, and global aggression that are firmly
grounded in [the US's] 400-year history of enslavement
and genocide."</p>
<p>Ayers commented that he has no nostalgia for the '60s,
which have now been thoroughly commodified and sold back
to us as a set of distorted myths and symbols.</p>
<p>"It happened -- and it was neither as brilliant and
ecstatic as some would have it, nor the devil's own
workshop as others insist -- and it's time to move on,"
he said. "Whatever it was, it remains prelude to the
necessary changes and fundamental upheavals just ahead.
Let's get busy living, loving, linking arms and rising
up right now."</p>
<p>What do we need in order to jump in? Ayers sees the
necessary tools everywhere.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h3>"Organize, mobilize, agitate, resist, build the social
movement, connect. Repeat for a lifetime."</h3>
<p>"Humor and art, protest and spectacle, the quiet,
patient intervention and the angry and urgent thrust --
and the rhythm of and recipe for activism is always the
same: We open our eyes and look unblinkingly at the
world as we find it; we are astonished by the beauty and
horrified at the suffering all around us; we dive into
the wreckage and swim as hard as we can toward a distant
and indistinct shore; we dry ourselves off, doubt that
our efforts made enough difference, and so we rethink,
recalibrate, look again and dive in once more," Ayers
said. "Organize, mobilize, agitate, resist, build the
social movement, connect. Repeat for a lifetime."</p>
<p>___________________________________</p>
<p>You can write David Gilbert, # 83-A-6158<br>
Wende Correctional Facility<br>
3040 Wende Rd.<br>
Alden, NY 14004-1187<br>
</p>
<br>
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