A brief poem from the Women of the Weather Underground, circa 1974:

They call it terror

if you are few and have no B-52s


if you are not a head of state


with an army and police


if you have neither napalm


nor tanks nor electronic battlefields


terror is if you are dispossessed


and have only your own two hands


each other


and your rage


It is not terror


if you are New York’s Finest


and you shoot a ten-year old Black child in the back


because you think Black people


all look like


they’ve just committed a robbery


It is not terror if you are ITT


and buy the men


who line Chilean doctors up in their hospital


corridors


and shoot them for supporting the late


democratic government of their country


It is not terror but heroism


if you were captured by the Vietnamese


for dropping fragmentation bombs


on their schools and hospitals


Only those who have nothing


can be terrorists

Wow...

I was researching the Weathermen and learned that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn helped found Prairie Fire after splitting formally from the Weathermen in the late 1970s. If anyone has a copy of the 1974 book (or complete text of) "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism", I'd be very interested in reading it. It would be highly educational to read their words from that time, and to try to relate their ideas and emotions into today's terms, in today's world.

My brief thoughts on the Weathermen are that they were young, energetic, and motivated people seeking to change this country and this world for the better, but they were wholly unsure of how to do that. When you're frustrated with the enormity of fighting an entire government and all it's institutions, it's easy to lash out. I've been there myself, although to a much lessor degree. This government does need change, although in the words of the Pairie Fire Organizing Committee:

"This
system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and
elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice."

This is an incredibly obvious truth to me, and one at the heart of my mistrust for the honesty of the "change" so many hope Obama can bring. It's tough to change a system from the inside unless you have a lot of help, and even more courage and strength to do so.

I can so easily identify with the incredible rage felt by these people. I've been in the streets protesting the Iraq war. I've carried the signs and sung the songs, but nothing changed. It's just not that easy to change the course of a nation, but the very strong sense of wanting to do something fueled the actions of the Weathermen as surely as the ultimate realization that they were powerless to affect the change they so fervently believed in led to their retirement. Abject frustration is a powerful demotivator.