The Weathermen Underground, remember them?

[fencesitter]

Saw a documentary on them the other day, What a difference in time. Although I would never condone their bombings, I understand their frusration and hopelessness in conventional ways of change. Talk about loose security in those days. Could you imagine breaking into the FBI and stealing classified documents on citizen surveilance? That was rich. Bombing the Capitol?? The Pentagon?!? Incredible.

[benburch]

1. I wouldn't be so confident of our current security arrangements.

A sufficiently motivated and intelligent radical would still find a way to do it.

[bowens43]

2. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows....

[agitpropagent9]

3. regardless of their politics or frustration

they were terrorists who destroyed property and used fear as a weapon. and they would have murdered young soldiers and their dates at fort dix, had they not been so stupid as to blow themselves up.

[fencesitter]

7. This is true..

They crossed the line of activism into all acts of terrorism, the mindset of sacrificing the innocent to the percieved greater good. Sad. After blowing themselves up, they made an effort to make sure all area were clear after the bombs were set, by calling in threats, or setting the charges in the wee hours, but still, a bomb is a bomb.

[mhr]

8. So What Do You Propose People Do - Give Up

Media owned by big business - no hope there

Voting machines rigged by big business - no hope there

Most politicians paid for by big business - no hope there

Singing Shambhala won't cut it anymore.

In many ways the situation is worse today than it was in the 60s.

[T Wolf]

11. Very few, even here, will speak the truth.

mhr, I agree with you that there is no hope through "conventional" means to put this country back on the correct path. The forces of fascism aligned against freedom are much more powerful and have much more control now than they ever did.
Until those who make the decisions that are destroying this "grand experiment" in democracy start to personally suffer for their actions, things will not change. Without consequences, there are no costs for bad behavior.
I fear for the world that my daughters will have to live in.

[mhr]

14. Yes, My Problem Is That I Have A Gift For Stating The Blindingly Obvious

Unlike others my vestment in the status quo is very low: No Wife, No Kids, No Mortgage, No Retirement Savings, etc.

Hence, change for me is a very fluid thing. For others, the fear of change prevails out of fear for their perceived security and status.

Part of me hopes that this country does suffer economically just to wake folks up. Part of me hopes that that would not be necessary.

Regrettably, even Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives are oft times too wedded to the status quo, even if that status quo is slowly grinding the life out of them.

[iconoclastNYC]

4. No but I remember Timothy McVeigh N/T

[davidinalameda]

5. they sang "It's Raining Men"

didn't they?

[ET Awful]

6. Actually, it was "The Weather Underground" whose members

were referred to as Weathermen (or more accurately, the group began as "The Weathermen" then morphed into "The Weather People" and finally settled on "The Weather Underground". They were a splinter (more radical/extreme) group/offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society.

[papau]

9. Indeed they were the SDS kids who's fathers made more than $ 30,000 a yr

A bit of a joke - but much truth also.

The parents provided living costs with no questions asked. less wealthy could not afford the lifestyle.

[Sugarbleus]

10. Weather Underground...I remember well. eom

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. A tiny group, never more than a couple dozen people, made into

a major bugaboo. At the same time there were tens of thousands of KKK, Minutemen, John Birchers, the forerunners of the RW militia movement, who have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of law enforcement officers, not to mention the killing of civilians and each other. But the RW crimes were always treated as individual, disparate crimes, while the ineffectual radical left was deemed a movement and a menace.

edited for spelling

[sendero]

13. I'd just moved out of the house..

... in 1973 when a "girlfriend" gave me a book: "Diana: the Making of a Terrorist".

This book documented the short life of the protagonist, Diana, who was a WU member who died in a explosion in a bomb-making apartment.

It was my first exposure to politics, to larger issues. The Weather Underground was not the answer but there was an important question.

Oh yeah, she also gave me "Autobiography of a Yogi", another quite interesting book of the times :)