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SDS/WUO: Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground
David Gilbert
These essays were originally written for ONWARD newspaper (Spring and Summer 2001), a journal of anarchist news, opinion, theory, and strategy of today (www.onwardnewspaper.org). They have been slightly revised.
"We are neither terrorists nor criminals. It is precisely because of our love of life, because we revel in the human spirit, that we became freedom fighters against this racist and deadly imperialist system."
From David's court statement September 13, 1982 after his arrest.In 1965, David Gilbert was the founding chairman of the Vietnam Committee and a founding member of the SDS chapter at Columbia University, New York City. In 1967, he wrote the first national SDS pamphlet on "U.S. Imperialism." He participated in the Columbia strike of 1968 and later joined the underground resistance as a member of the Weather Underground (WUO) in 1970. He is doing a life sentence after being busted for his support role in an expropriation by a unit of the Black Liberation Army in the 1981 "Brinks case".Introduction
We study the past to draw lessons to help us liberate the future. Today's young activists are to be commended for showing much more interest than my 1960s generation did in learning from earlier movements. Still, I want to alert you to two characteristic errors in such study.
1) In looking at victorious revolutions in other countries, we mechanically applied lessons from far more advanced levels to our own embryonic stage.
2) In looking at past U.S. struggles, we saw errors as mainly the result of wrong ideas in the heads of the leaders of the day. Thus, we implicitly flattered ourselves as outstanding individuals who would naturally be more principled and intelligent. This approach way underestimates the material forces -- such as the depth of white supremacy or the repressive powers of the state -- that produce repeated errors.
This brief two-part history is neither detailed nor definitive. It is written by a participant and partisan, with the goal of contributing to today's struggles.
Students for a Democratic Society
The U.S. was rocked by widespread and tumultuous protests in the 1960s. SDS was the organization at the hearts of the radical movement among predominantly white college students. It drew special vitality from its close relationship to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the mainly Black youthful and militant civil rights group doing the most courageous field work in the South. SDS also became the spearhead for what became a massive movement against the war in Vietnam by organizing the first national demonstration against it on 4/17/65. Back then, it was unheard of to challenge "our" government's "foreign policy," so just to call for such a protest was radical, and the turnout of 20,000 people was very impressive. The work for that march also led to a defining break from SDS's parent organization, the League for Industrial Democracy, when we defied their orders to exclude Communists.
SDS, founded in 1960, received its early definition from The Port Huron Statement of 1962. The core concept was participatory democracy: beyond electing leaders, people need to directly participate in discussing and determining the decisions that affect their lives, including in the economic sphere. The compelling issues were the Civil rights movement and peace (opposing the cold war and nuclear bombs). The defining early work of SDS, along with its alliance with SNCC, was the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). Students went to live in poor communities to "build an interracial movement of the poor." While organizing success was limited, the experience was profound.
SDS hummed with a youthful vibrancy. Most of us rejected both red-baiting and the Soviet model of "socialism." Both red (communist) and black (anarchist) flags flew at our conventions. And we tried to apply participatory democracy to our own organization, with mixed results. The challenge to hierarchy felt liberating, even if often chaotic and inefficient. But there was a real problem of "the tyranny of structurelessness," where decisions are made in an informal and thereby unaccountable way.
The escalations of the war in Vietnam and SNCC's dramatic advance, in the summer of 1966, from civil rights to Black power posed new challenges and led to some tension between the old guard, steeped in ERAP, and newly activated student militants. SDS wasn't prepared for how the anti-war movement would mushroom, but did provide a radical and militant presence within the much broader coalition. SDS still naively defined the system as "corporate liberalism" as we grappled to put together our anti-racism and anti-war impetus with an economic critique.
The impact when the Black Panther Party burst onto the national scene in the fall of 1966 was electric. Their armed self-defense of their community from police brutality and their community self-help programs (free breakfast for schoolchildren, free clinics, free schools) provided a living example of revolutionary nationalism and self-determination for oppressed people. Several other revolutionary nationalist groups, all drawing on the teachings of Malcolm X, emerged in this period. At the same time, the first photos were published of Vietnamese children burned by U.S. napalm bombs -- which drove us crazy about stopping the war. SDS slogan became "from protest to resistance," with a focus on draft resistance.
Meanwhile, the inspiration of the civil rights movement, the key and assertive work of women in it, and the problems of sexism within the left, all led to a re-birth of women's liberation. An early example was SDS's first ever all women's workshop at our 6/67 national convention. The air crackled with the energy and creativity the women generated. But their report to the plenary got a raucous reception -- including catcalls and paper airplanes -- from many SDS men. Given there had been little history of struggle, it isn't surprising that men were still very sexist, but such blatant hostility was shocking for an organization that prided itself on always siding with the oppressed. That debacle was an example of the problems that pushed many women to leave the "left" and contributed to an unfortunate tension between anti-imperialism and feminism, which weakened both. Many principled women -- strengthened by the often unsung examples and leadership of women of color -- continued to struggle on both fronts, but it took an Amazonian effort to do so.
A high tide of struggle crested in 1968, with the Vietnamese's powerful Tet offensive and over 100 ghetto uprisings in the U.S. after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. These events inspired SDS-led student strikes that shut down scores of colleges. We began to name and analyze the system as "imperialism." Che Guevara's slogan of "2, 3, many Vietnams" pointed to how such a colossus could be overextended and eventually defeated. The Black rebellion was accompanied by militant upsurges of Native Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and Asians in the U.S.
The government's response was a vicious campaign of disruption and violence, called COINTELPRO for counterinsurgency program (See Agents of Repression by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall). More than 30 Panthers were killed in 1968-71, and over 1,000 were jailed. Many other groups and activists were attacked as well. While that level of repression generally wasn't used against whites, we did experience harassment, arrests and the threat of a wartime draft. More importantly, we identified with the Panthers and had vowed to stand by them. As rapidly as the movement had grown, we were still a small minority in white America. We had started out thinking all that was needed was to "shake the moral conscience of America." We now found ourselves confronting the most powerful government in world history.
Under this tremendous pressure, SDS split apart along the basic fault-line of the U.S. bedrock of white supremacy: between the desire for a potential majority base among white Americans and the exigent need for militant solidarity with Black and other third world struggles. One side (invoking a Eurocentric Marxism) said that revolution was about the working class, and used that as a left cover for retreat from fighting alongside Vietnam and the Panthers, claiming "all nationalism is reactionary." The other side (inspired by Marxist-led third world struggles) rightly saw solidarity with national liberation as a priority for any revolutionary movement worthy of that name. However, we wrongly abandoned efforts to organize significant numbers of white people, which also limited our base for anti-racist activism.
While the split moved along the horns of a real dilemma, there was a chance -- although it certainly would have been difficult to achieve -- for a larger and more working class movement base without pandering to racist trade union traditions. That strategy would have entailed reaching the growing youth rebellion with anti-imperialist politics, as well as allying with the emerging women's movement.
We were too overwhelmed by the stark life-and-death challenges, combined with our own inexperience and weaknesses, to implement such a strategy in practice. SDS splintered apart in 1969-70. One result was a series of formations that more or less reproduced the traditional white left opportunism toward the white working class. Another result was the Weather Underground Organization, an unprecedented, if seriously flawed group that carried out six years of armed actions in solidarity with national liberation struggles.
Weather Underground Organization
In a society where every single movie and TV program showed that the FBI "always got their man," the Weather Underground eluded capture and sustained armed action for six years. In white supremacist Amerika where historically just about every promising radical movement among whites (populism, women's suffrage, trade unionism) slid into compromising with racism, the WUO was known, at least at it's best, for solidarity with national liberation. In a world where "legitimate" governments bombed villages and assassinated activists but decried any armed resistance as "terrorist," the WUO carried out more than 20 bombings against government and corporate violence without killing anyone or so much as scratching a civilian.
The springboard for these advances was the historical context. The 60s and 70s were unprecedented in world history for the number of revolutions in a short time, as national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America overthrew colonialism and neocolonialism; it was also a high tide of Black and other third world struggles within the U.S. These events spurred growing radicalism among white people. The WUO was not formed as a narrow conspiracy but instead was a focal point within a much broader surge of anti-war militancy, as thousands of military buildings and Bank of America branches were burned to the ground and as hundreds of thousands of people joined demonstrations that broke government windows, disrupted meetings of bigwigs and resisted arrest.
Weather's exciting breakthroughs coexisted with costly mistakes. The earliest and most visible came during the first six months (late 69 to early 70), while we were still aboveground; our sickening and inexcusable glorification of violence, which grievously contradicted the humanist basis for our politics and militancy. We thereby handed effective ammunition to all who wanted to discredit our priority on third world struggles and our move toward armed struggle (AS). To this day, almost all "history" about the WUO makes the mania of those six months the whole story, without looking at our correcting of that error and the ensuing six years of solid and humane anti-imperialist action.
In my opinion, the basis for our early aberration was in the life-and-death crisis that split apart SDS. We were white middle class kids who -- witnessing saturation bombings of Vietnam and the murder of the Black Panthers we admired -- felt compelled to make the leap into AS. Instead of admitting our fear and inexperience and developing a suitable transitional strategy, we psyched ourselves up by glorifying violence and with macho challenges about individual courage. This frenzy was accompanied by basic related errors: 1) Sectarianism -- a scathing contempt for all who wouldn't directly assist AS (the sectarianism was mutual as most of the white left vehemently sought to discredit AS) 2) Militarism -- making the military deeds and daring of the group all important rather than the political principles and the need to build a movement on all levels.
Early Weather's grave sins of commission were glaringly visible. The opposite movement sins of omission, that usually aren't even noticed, can be even more lethal. The terrible passivity of most of the white left to the early attacks on the Panthers gave the government a signal that it would not face widespread political costs for proceeding with its full-fledged COINTELPRO campaign, which killed scores and jailed thousands of Black, Native and Latino activists.
Weather's militarism culminated in 3/6/70 when a frantic bomb-making effort, including anti-personnel weapons, resulted in an accidental explosion in a safehouse (known as the Townhouse explosion) that killed three of our own beautiful, young comrades. This tragedy set off intense internal struggle that resulted in a qualitative change to a more integrated use of AS to help mobilize and radicalize a potential mass base among white youth. Just two months later, young people poured into the streets over a million strong in angry response to the state's killing of four anti-war protesters at Kent State University, and student strikes occurred on nearly 1,000 campuses across the U.S. At the same time, the dire need for anti-racist leadership was painfully revealed by the failure to respond in a similar way when the police killed two Black students at Jackson State.
The WUO's recovery from militarism didn't magically put everything into perfect balance. While seeing a potential base in youth culture was right, we quickly repeated traditional missteps based in white supremacy. For example: 1) Our dearth of material aid for Black, Latino and Native armed groups (even underground, whites had much greater access to resources and faced much less danger of random police harassment); 2) To appeal to white youth, we endorsed "soft drugs" (pot and LSD), with little appreciation of drugs as a form of chemical warfare against the ghettos and barrios; 3) We failed to respond to the Panther 21's very constructive criticism of our initial backsliding on drugs and militancy; 4) There were subsequent moments of awful inaction, such as during the Native American occupation and government siege of Wounded Knee in 1973.
Not surprisingly, our other major internal weaknesses were based in sexism, heterosexism and class. Women's participation and percentage of leadership were very strong, but in practice, a woman had to be part of a heterosexual couple to be a top leader. We had little program around women's liberation, and we failed to make a serious effort for the needed alliance between anti-imperialism and feminism. Internal struggle on sexism was very inadequate, which dovetailed with a defacto homophobic culture. While many lesbian and gay comrades felt the strength to come out while underground, there wasn't real space for an affirming L/G culture; out L/Gs didn't make it to leadership positions; and we had no political program around L/G issues. Similarly, our middle class background meant we did a poor job at outreach to more working class sectors of youth.
There were related problems in our internal life. We embraced the theory of democratic-centralism; but in practice, the organization was very hierarchical. Leadership tended to become manipulative and commandist, while cadre tended to curry favor with leadership. Criticism/self-criticism was used to compete and maneuver for power rather than to build people. While a strong organization was key to survival (and lone fugitives had a much harder time), that reality made social ostracism a potent bludgeon against political dissent. As far as I know, there is still no clear-cut successful model for combining the two critical needs of a fully democratic internal process and of tight discipline for fighting a ruthless state.
To me, a crucial lesson is that activists must consciously grapple with the powerful pull of ego that can lead us to put our own position and leadership above advancing the interest and power of the oppressed. Organizationally, we need to strive to live our political ideals -- anti-racism, feminism, democracy, humanism -- in our personal relationships.
Despite these serious weaknesses, six years of impressive successes resulted from what was right about anti-imperialism. Contrary to the spy movie mystifications that are all about sophisticated techniques and technology, our survival underground was based on popular support from radical youth and the anti-war movement. That was the key to solving needs such as ID, money and safehouses. There were moments when the FBI hunt was breathing down our neck, but popular support meant that information was kept from the state and instead flowed to the guerrillas.
Our stage of struggle was "armed propaganda," with no illusion of yet contending for military power. Instead, the purposes of actions were to: 1) draw off some of the repressive heat concentrated on Black, Native and Latino movements, 2) create a leading political example of white solidarity with national liberation, 3) educate about key political issues, 4) identify the institutions most responsible for oppression, and 5) encourage others to intensify activism despite state repression. We also provided examples of non-armed struggle (i.e. spray painting), pursued dialogue with the aboveground movement by writing to and reading responses in radical newspapers, and even developed our own underground print shop. We wrote and published the book Prairie Fire, a well-developed statement of the politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism.
The WUO's more than 20 bombings included the U.S. Capitol Building after the U.S. expanded the war in Indochina by invading Laos in Febuary 1971; the NY State prison headquarters after the 9/71 massacre at Attica; and Kennecott Copper Company on the anniversary of the bloody 1973 coup against democracy in Chile. Every action was accompanied by a well-reasoned communiqué articulating the political issues. While there are no 100% guarantees, we placed the highest priority on avoiding civilian casualties, and fortunately succeeded.
The FBI never broke the WUO, but in 1976-77 we imploded from our own weaknesses. The downfall came from drifting back into the traditional failures of the white left, with the politics of the "multinational working class," and a plan to surface from the underground to be central to "leading" the "whole U.S. revolution." These positions negated the independent and leading role of people of color within the U.S. and at the same time undercut autonomous women's formations. When those forces sharply criticized us, we -- with our vitality sapped by the lack of internal democracy -- couldn't deal with it and instead split apart amid harsh recriminations.
The WUO was born in the era of the breathtaking rise of national liberation, in opposition to the U.S. foundation of white supremacy and on the heels of exciting movement victories met by fierce government repression. Our demise was also rooted in heavy historical realities: 1) COINTELPRO (along with internal weaknesses) had decimated the Black, Native and Latino leadership that had inspired progressive motion among whites; 2) our strongest base, the anti-war movement, shrank drastically after the U.S.'s 1973 withdrawal from Vietnam; 3) we didn't realize that we hadn't done nearly enough to develop anti-war consciousness into a deeper anti-racism and anti-imperialism.
In learning from history, we need to break from the mainstream culture that defines people as either purely "good guys" or purely "bad guys," which can lead to the self-delusion that getting certain basics down guarantees that everything else we do is right. The WUO made giant errors along with trailblazing advances. Hopefully both are rich in lessons for a new generation of activists.
Note: These essays, plus introductory notes and timeline, can be ordered as a pamphlet from AK Press (pamphlet published by AG Press).
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August 2, 2003