Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 310 - The Weather Underground: Part 1

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Tom takes the wheel and tells Joe about the time a man created a terror organization in order to get laid.

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over 5 years of bonus content. By supporting the show you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad free. Thank you for

listening and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey everybody and welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. Since you're hearing my voice doing the introduction, you can probably guess that we're gonna be talking about some things that explode. I've been kidnapped, I've been kidnapped. And if you can hear that voice, you know that I am joined by your usual host, Joe.

Hello, Joe. Hello. The controls have been arrested away from my dying mitts and we have once again handed the banner of the Legion over to Tom, our Irish terror correspondent. I mean, listen, the amount of stuff I had to read about political theory for this series, I feel like you would have killed yourself. Yeah, yeah. As I've often said, I would rather functions check an AK with my mouth than read political theory. I mean,

you're going to hear a lot about it in this episode. I don't have an AK with me because I live in the Netherlands and my constitutional freedoms are being infringed upon committing some boo-boo with a very sharp stroopwafel. Yeah, I'm going to have to just bludgeon myself to death with a large wheel of how to or like a like a clog. I'm not entirely sure I I can sharpen a field hockey stick and just go to town on my own limbs until I bleed out. Yeah. So since you are now on the other side of hosting duties, how you doing, buddy?

Oh, you know, I'm fine. We are currently having a hell of a lot of wind storms where I live, which is very common in the Hague. However, I underestimated said wind storm. I had to go grocery shopping today and like any good person who lives in the Netherlands, I go grocery shopping on my bicycle. I was nearly blown into traffic, which is impressive because the bike lane is completely separate from the road. My bike was pushed so far off the bike lane, I almost went into the street as a large semi truck was barreling past. It was a close call. I mean, like given our pre recording conversation, you do have the body mass index of a plastic bag. So and much like a plastic bag blowing on the wind, I am beautiful. Yeah. Do you ever feel like a plastic bag blowing through the wind wanting to start again. Fuck off. Yeah, we were talking before we started recording.

Last Friday, it was like the first sunny day in the UK. So like immediately I finished work and I was like, fuck it, go to the pub. And there's like there's not a huge amount of nice pubs in my area. Like I live kind of in a rough enough area in London. And I was like, you know what? I want to go somewhere a bit nicer where I can like sit outside and enjoy some drinks. So did got off the train, arrived. Of course, there's like 200 people standing outside

and there's a 20 minute queue to the bar to get a pint. So Jesus Christ. But you know what? The weather was nice. I didn't mind had my drinks and then stayed there for like the entire evening. And at one point, you know, nature calls. I had to use the toilet and I had what I can only describe as the most London experience ever. Mm hmm.

I got shamed for shitting in the cocaine toilet. OK, hold on here. Are you telling me that OK, I've been to London twice now. Okay, hold on here. Are you telling me that, okay, I've been to London twice now. So my, I don't, but I will never say I have had a London experience. You know, I've been there for work. Um, as some listeners had probably seen me there. I mean, you, you, you lived dieterily off, you know, ready meals from a Sainsbury's. So it's close enough. Yeah, that is true. Um, so you're saying if you go into a pub and I've been to a few pubs,

there's really only like a men's women's stall effectively. There's only really ever like the piss trough and then the shit hole, right? Like, so if you go into the actual closed door, it's considered a party foul cause that's where you're supposed to be doing cocaine. So essentially this bar is it's like tiny. It's I'd say like 12 square meters inside. And that's being generous.

And the only toilets are there's like two enclosed stalls, fully enclosed stalls in the bar. So like the bar counter ends, then there's two toilets. So I had to go to the toilet and queued up. And there's like a couple of people waiting in front of me. Q was moving very quickly. So I very quickly realized not a whole lot of people, you know, using the toilet, washing their hands, et cetera, et cetera.

So I go in, do my business, and I'm no more than like five minutes, probably less it up. And I'm like washing my hands and this dude starts slamming on the door and he's like, mate, mate, there's people waiting. And I'm like, OK, so then I like dry my hands, make sure to take a lot of time drying my hands, make sure they're completely dry and go out. And this dude is just like wide eyed and he's like, mate, there's people waiting. Come on. And just like wide-eyed and he's like, mate, there's people waiting. Come on. And

just like so indignant that I actually use the toilet to go to the bath, like go to the toilet. If you're going to have a dozen in a cocaine toilet, you got to have some kind of system to let everybody know it's the cocaine, cocaine toilet. Like, I don't know, hang a fucking tie from the doorknob that resembles your broken dreams is why you're doing so much coke in a pub in London. Yeah. And it was like, like, this is the thing when you move to the UK, like not just in London, but everywhere is just like everyone is doing cocaine in any place. There are people

in a Toby Carvery probably as you're listening to this right now doing bombs after their dinner. I do remember someone posting a picture to Twitter. It's probably quite a while ago now where they walked in in a Nando's bathroom and someone was doing cocaine like man who's doing lines at Nando's? Yeah. So I was like, I was just like, whatever and walk past and then just got outside and immediately texted the group chat with me, you and they was like, just got a shame for shitting in the cocaine toilet.

I think cocaine toilet might just be the name of this episode. I had a recent, it wasn't that recent, interesting bathroom experience where I was in Georgia and I was waiting in line to use the bathroom. I mean, Tbilisi, Georgia. I'm not in Atlanta. I've never been to that Georgia, weirdly enough. And the line is very very long and I noticing that there is like nobody's in line to the bathroom by themselves Except me and then it dawns on me. I'm queuing up for the fuck toilet

But like I really have to use the bathroom right and I speak no Georgian a fair amount of Georgian speak English And I asked them like yo, can I like go ahead of you, you know, because of the implication of and the guy looks me dead in the eyes like, oh no, you can go ahead. You actually have to use the bathroom. I was like, thank you. And I promptly pissed in the fuck toilet and got the fuck out of it. I didn't touch anything. No, no, no. Thank you.

Well, you know, with the idea of the fucking cocaine toilet being a matter of, you know, practical praxis, I think maybe we should get to the meat and potatoes of this episode. Joe is sighing silently. I just don't like the idea of the fuck cocaine toilet leads into the topic. It doesn't. I just needed to segue because we're nearly 10 minutes in fair enough and your job now anyway the cock destroyers Is like a talk about the episode we could just talk about that if you are there's someone listening that has not watched the live Episode and they have no fucking idea what we're talking about. So let's just leave it hanging in the air.

If you don't know what I mean, subscribe at the $10 tier on the patron. You can watch the live the video of the live shows where I just completely derail the entire show. But anyway, so Joe, before we begin, I want to ask you how much do you know about the group, the weather underground? Actually, virtually nothing. The only thing that comes to my mind is I remember at the little fringes of my memory that still works around 2008 when Barack Obama was running for president, people kept saying that he was connected to Bill Ayres. I was like, who

the fuck is that? Like, oh, he ran a terrorist organization called the Weather Underground. Like, well, that's weird. I didn't know that that meteorologist had guns. And then I just moved on with my life. That's literally all I know about it. So before we get into it, just want to acknowledge our sources. The first is Ron Jacobs, The Way the Wind Blew, published by FirstOBooks.

And the other is Bill Ayers own own autobiography, Fugitive Days, which was published on 9-11. 2001. Yep. Oh, that is a great time for what I'm going to assume is a, you know, a vaguely violent terror organization guide to put out a memoir. I mean, like, look, we'll talk about- I assume a lot of people didn't buy this book that day. Yeah.

Like people weren't queuing up for that one. Showing up to the signing of Fugitive Days on 9-11. It's like the guy who bowled the Perfect 300 on 9-11. Just like- Nobody's gonna remember you for that. Yeah. So, we've previously talked on this show about different revolutionary and terror groups that emerged out of the 20th century, fighting for a variety of causes. We've talked about

the IRA and unionist groups in Northern Ireland who fought over what would become of the nation and their communities. The Red Army faction, which was born against the legacy of fascism in Germany and the failure of denazification and the legacy of fascism in Germany and the failure of denazification and the injustice of the Vietnam War. So the interesting thing about the Republican movement and the Red Army faction, despite having different ideologies and different motivations and being from different parts of the world, is they were both in part motivated by what was happening in the US. In our series on the troubles we spoke about how Burnett Devlin and other similar Irish Republican activists were motivated by the works of desegregationists and the civil rights movement of people, you

know, like MLK and feeling a kinship with those suffering under institutional discrimination. Red Army faction, on the other hand, being motivated by the war visited upon the Vietnamese people by the US military as a kind of proxy war against the encroaching threat of communism during the late 60s and took it upon themselves to destabilize the German government, which they saw as complicit in the ongoing atrocities. Both of these groups saw the news in the US as the news of the world, one that would also echo throughout the world.

What about what was happening in the US? And what about those who were active in the US? Who was fighting the good fight from the inside? Well, it's the 60s, right? 60s, 70s. Certainly nothing bad's happening in the US during that time. Hold that thought. And so you had you had groups like the Black Panthers who were combining community programs

and grassroots organizing with radicalism to achieve self-determination by whatever means necessary. You had other kind of regional groups who were fighting on different fronts for different things. This is the air of like the Symbionese Liberation Army. Oh, Joe, hold that thought. Hold that hold that thought for part two. Those ones.

Those dudes always confused me. But OK, we'll talk about it. Bear in mind, part two is almost 50% longer than part one. Outstanding. So instead of talking about discriminating against people fighting for the right for to be equal in life, we're talking about some college students from Michigan. God damn it. We're in Michigan.

Is it University of Michigan or Michigan State? University of Michigan. We're talking about Ann Arbor, baby. Motherfucker. Like, I'm just going to say the fact this came out of U of M. Of course it did. So it will get into it. It's not necessarily just out of you of them,

but particular people who are very prominent in it were in you of them. And you Wolverine fucks. So to understand the group that will become the weather underground, it's important to understand the landscape at the time and to do that. We have to talk about everyone's favorite topic, particularly Joe's favorite topic, student politics. Oh, let me let me guess. Let me let me try to do a too long didn't read here, right? Yeah. OK. One particular asshole is going to think he's smarter than everyone else.

Soon a group of like minded like people with self aggrandizement problems are going to coalesce around this person and then they're all gonna fuck and then that group is going to break apart. You're 25% of the way there. Fuck! Only 25%. So within the United States the anti-racist and anti-war movements constituting the new left had been growing in leaps and bounds since the late 1950s. So part of this was born out of the post-war 50s, you know, the anti-Korean

war as well. And the groups like these were taking on thousands of new members by the 1960s, and they began to develop a more radical approach in their analysis and activities. These approaches were partly reactions to the intensification of what would be the war in Vietnam, scaling up the introduction of the draft and the belief that a new kind of fascism was on the rise in the United States. This fascism was manifested politically in the new concern over law and order and experienced socially in the increasing use of brutal police methods during protests and insurrections. I don't think you really need me to give you examples of,

you know, the US state overstepping the line in terms of violence in the 60s. It seems completely foreign to me. That certainly can happen like all the time. Yep. Yep. As a means to crush both student movements and civil rights movements. No, no, that doesn't sound American at all. Yeah. But for those uninitiated, for example, during the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King's murder, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago ordered the police to shoot to kill any looters. This is what we're dealing with. That's not that surprising coming from Richard

Daly, to be completely honest. I mean, we're also not too far removed from things like Kent State happening where Kent State comes up. Of course it does. I mean, you can't talk about student movements during the Vietnam War without talking about the time that the National Guard murdered a bunch of college kids. And then there was other ones, I believe it was in Mississippi, where cops and the National Guard literally bayonetted students. Yep. So the response of the New Left to the ongoing political climate was to develop a more coherent stance towards

the liberal conservative establishment really kind of understanding the two two party system and how it affects daily life. No longer were particular racist policies or murderous acts protested. Instead, the new left sought to acknowledge the totality of social and political injustice in the U S a system that it can, it came to label as Joe's favorite word, imperialist. Well, I mean, they're not wrong. Yeah. So usually student groups do nail this one.

So the new left as it developed was composed mainly of several different youth centered groups, each having a differing stance on what was to be done. The main ones at the time that are important to the history of the weather underground are the SDS, the PL and the Yippies. The White Panthers. The what? The fucking what? We'll get there. So the SDS or the students for a democratic

for a democratic society essentially was the face of the New Left in America. Its newspaper, The New Left Notes, became the central forum through which young left wing and politically active people were gathering talking points and ideas all across the country. Now, a fun side note and a fun fact, the reason why New Left Notes and other particular underground publications were able to stay in business aside from, you know, funding from membership fees and donations, was advertising and the birth of youth culture in the 50s and 60s.

If you want to assume Gaddafi, I'm going to be honest with you. I thought you were going to go with the Gaddafi one on me. I mean, maybe Gaddafi had shares in capital records. Who knows? Maybe he was posting ads for his local people's jama Hari. Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to learn more about that sort of stuff, read a great book called Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool.

It's how companies took over the counterculture movement. But yeah, while they were partially funded by membership fees with various different groups, a lot of record labels like Capital and RCA advertised in their pages to sell that hip new rock sound to the young people. Keep this in mind for later in this episode. OK, OK. I do think it's very funny that they were running. I mean, like, I think it's very, very stupid when someone like was like, oh,

how can you be how can can you have leftist political beliefs if you still make money? You only can have true leftist ideas and beliefs if you wear a barrel for clothing and you smelt pig iron in your backyard. But there is a kind of funny irony about the newspaper surviving off of ads. Oh, Joe, I'm not faulting him for it. It's just kind of it's funny.

It's funny. Wait until we talk about a particular event that happens in August 1969, which happens later in this episode. OK. So the SDS were the largest group nationally, and within it, there were also factions like the PL or Progressive Labor, who were an older sectarian group of Marxist Leninists who are anti-Soviet and anti-nationalist. The idea of nationalism will come in quite strongly later in this episode. You're telling me that this student movement had various different factions that didn't

see eye to eye? I don't believe you. Joe, we have another eight pages of this. Of geosteas. Also like, it's kind of funny that the one Marxist-Leninist group in the US during this time, not the one, but this one, managed to get on its feet and move and also still hate the Soviet Union. It's like, you must have not been popular at parties. I mean, even these parties for unpopular people. There was only once they go to a party full of like of theory brains, you know?

Yeah. There was also the Yippies or the Youth International Party who were more focused on radicalizing the burgeoning youth culture in the US and were a more radical offshoot of the anti-war free speech rhetoric of the SDS. So, and we'll talk about this in a second, how essentially all these groups placed emphasis in different places and it essentially creates the weather underground. Okay. So, Yippies is a terrible name, I should point out. Yeah.

Sounds like a daytime show for children. Like the Wiggles, but for political ideology. The Yippies would have been like a grey alternative name for the Red Army factions. Oh yes Yippie! We asked fighting denotification. Just don't ask us to go on a hunger strike. Don't ask us to shower. So one thing that united all of these groups was their opposition to US hegemony, both domestically and abroad. And this manifested in support among the groups for the civil rights movement and the end to US imperialism abroad. By the mid 1960s, most of these groups were focused on organizing demonstrations in

support of equality and the small scale protesting of businesses and organizations still racially discriminating against African Americans and other minorities after the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. It was around this time that Bill Ayers from Ann Arbor, one of the founding members of the Weather Underground, would attend University of Michigan and be exposed to the hip new happenings of radical politics of the 1960s. Well, what was his major? Do you know? So have a guess Joe what he was studying. Like the easy answer is political science, right? So I'm going to go with anthropology.

He was studying American studies. The fuck does that mean? It's like politics, economics, philosophy. It's like PPL stuff. Huh. Got to say, I assumed it was, it was either going to be the most obvious thing ever in like a polysci major or the weirdest major on earth. Like, Oh no, this guy was actually a biology major, a pre-med or something. So during his first stint at University of Michigan in the early 60s, Eyre Wood was part of a fraternity, and he would also meet art student Ruthie Stein,

who he quote was a brilliant painter and radical thinker who first introduced him to the world of activism. He found himself surrounded by student activists and politics. He was stunned to find out that the movement was also filled with strong women who were fighting not only for their own liberties, but who were also conscious

of the intersections between their struggles and those of other marginalized people. This is a quote from Bill Ayers book, Fugitive Days. The place was wady with women. I was like a bee in a honey pot. Everything golden and delicious and sticky. I felt I felt lucky to be in a place so concentrated

with such beautiful women and blessed to be living in a perfect world where generations of women were being born on every continent and in every country every day of the year. I might die here, I thought. But what a lovely way to go wallowing with the Ann Arbor women. Imagine you're at a party and someone comes up and hits on you. So they, Hey, you look real sticky. I mean, I want to let this person inside of me right now.

I mean, to be fair, I, uh, I did text you yesterday saying that Bill Ayers got laid once and became a terrorist. I mean, that probably is what kept him around for the meetings. Like, you know, he was introduced to activism and you know, he's young. He probably would have bounced off of it, but he's just like, I could stick around here a little bit. Look how sticky all these women are. Through his studies Ayers was exposed to the world of political theory through people like Rousseau, Thoreau and Marx and very quickly began to recognize the contradictions at the

heart of American society. In his own book by his own admission, he read the Communist Manifesto, tried to read Das Kapital, but said it was unassailable and too dense. So you know. Well, Marx is a shitty writer. I mean, like even people who appreciate his political ideology will probably agree with me that he's not he doesn't have the best prose. OK, that's not a controversial statement to say, I think. Yeah, Marx would have been better off writing YA fiction in a much more digestible form than maybe we live in a socialist world.

And if Marx really just, you know, put his nose to the grindstone and put out the isekai he always wanted to write. I mean, to be fair, China did make the Karl Marx anime, so they did. Yeah. I forgot about that. I said that's it. That's for when we finished G Gundam. No, no, no. I mean, to be fair, I already posed to the people, the lovely people on our discord.

Should I make Joe watch Blade Runner 2049? And I love that movie. No, then people's responses. No, you should. He should make you watch come and see. I love that movie. No. Then people's responses. No, you should. You should make you watch. Come and see. I love that movie. So this is another quote from Ayers. That week, Ruthie Stein and this is kind of indicative of the political climate

at the time and the activism that was going on that week. Ruthie Stein took me to my first picket line at a pizza joint in North Maine called Angie's where Vincent Angie's husband, a manager, had a nasty habit of refusing to see black people for you take out only, he would say. And we ring the entrance chanting slogans we'd heard on the news from the South and singing freedom songs. One night, Barfly showed up and let a gang of four in for a slice. And when he saw me, he cursed, pushed me and showed me to the ground,

scraping my skin off one elbow. I'd never felt happier. So this is they're kind of doing small scale grassroot stuff, which is cool. You know, sure. Yeah. And then Ayers took a bus to Detroit to meet Reverend Gabriel Star, a leading figure in the local civil rights movement who had number he'd gotten from Ruthie. Bill wanted to help with the emancipatory struggle

for civil rights, but he was a middle class white boy from suburban Ann Arbor. So what could he do? Starr put him in touch with a possible contact. I will say he's the first middle class white boy from Ann Arbor to ever have anything close to this kind of introspection. You should see today he would have he would have got grills. Star put him in can't in touch with a possible contact in New Orleans who could could use some help. And so Bill tried to hitchhike his way to New Orleans. He got picked up by a truck driver around the same age as him and asked us like, you know, where are you going? He's like, I'm going to New Orleans. He's like, I'm going to Baton Rouge.

And Bill Ayers asked why and the guy just responded, Oh, easy pussy. Look, say what you will about truck drivers, but at least they're honest. And you know, since he's going specifically to Baton Rouge to get laid, he's not going to ask you to suck his dick to drive him there. You got, you got two bonuses going for you. You're not going to have to give him any ass to ride that truck. They are driving from Michigan to Baton Rouge. That is a long fucking drive. So while on this drive, the guy was constantly doing trucker speed. He was like telling Bill Ayers like dirty jokes and that were like, he was delivering in like rapid succession

of like the only a speed freak could do. And then a hyper fixation, but only on racist jokes. So then eventually the truck driver reveal himself to be very racist. He was saying like N word this N word that all my problems. Next thing he pulls out a revolver and he's like, first one I see down there and going to shoot. Jesus. I mean, like how terrified is this college kid? Like, obviously we know what Bill Ayers becomes eventually, right? But like, how terrified must you be to be locked in the cab of a truck with a guy yoked to the gills on trucker speed,

constantly talking about fucking and racism, and then he pulls out a loaded gun? I mean, like, also bear in mind, like, Bill Ayers' dad, Thomas G. Ayers, was eventually be the chairman and chief executive of Commonwealth Edison. So he's he's a fair amount of like, you know, reality shield privilege going on. And then now he's locked in a very small space with the man off of his gourd off speed, waving a loaded gun around.

Yeah. So upon arriving in New Orleans, Ayers soon found disappointment as his contact turned out to be a lecherous creep who was more interested in invade invading Ayers personal space than any sort of revolution. Bill dejected, kind of bummed around the one to liberate that ass. Yeah. He like kind of mooched around the French quarter before hitching hiking his way to Baton Rouge, where he ended up signing on as a merchant marine on a boat loaded with wheat bound for Greece. Why not? As one does, you know? Yeah. And there's also another quote from if you wonder what

they got up to while he was a merchant marine everywhere, we stopped. Ketta, Tangiers, there was a mad dash for a nearby whorehouse in a bar where we all acted the fool and pretended to be best friends and comrades for a few hours. Buying drinks, spending money, each of us ironed with little syphilis assassination kits, heavy clumsy condoms, tiny alarming needle nose tubes of infection fighting goo to squeeze up our shafts after sex dispersed by bones., the third mate who acted as the ship's nurse.

I mean, okay, as disgusting as that is, that is exactly what I assume merchant marines are doing. In the 60s. Yeah. Those dudes were sticky with venereal disease. Yeah, once again we're coming back to sticky people. I assume they still are as well. I don't want to say that they've gotten any better. They're still sailors. It's the only Marines we support. That's fair. That's fair. Then one day while in Rome Ayers was reading a copy of the Herald

Tribune. The front page was about an American buildup in a country that he had never heard of before. Vietnam. Soon, Ayers was on a boat on his way back to Ann Arbor and back to his studies at University of Michigan. Fun fact that's in the book that isn't very well known. Bill Ayers was going to enlist in the army to go to Vietnam. He liked the idea so much. He's like, nah, fuck a draft. I'll get on the ground floor. Yeah. And his brother talked him out of it and he never told anyone. I can imagine it would be unpopular. Yeah. Yeah.

As a vaguely left wing political leaning veteran. Good choice on his part. Good choice. It's not worth that smoke, man. His choice to go back to university was informed of like what was going on at home. You see, at around this time, universities around the country had become a hotbed for radical new ideas and radical politics. This was due in part to, you know, student organizing, but also many elite universities such as Colombia, for example,

who are not only involved in the R&D for the US military, but also the displacement of African-Americans. Columbia in particular, in order to build a new museum, was going to displace a large part of the community in Harlem. So in the fall of 1967, a letter written by the 100 member Columbia chapter of the SDS and signed by hundreds of students asked the university's president, Grayson Kirk, to end the school's participation in both the redevelopment of this area in Harlem, but also in R&D. The petition was

ignored and when questions about his failure to respond, Kirk replied that the letter did not carry a return address. Okay. As funny as it would be if the return address thing mattered, right? Because like petitions don't get anything done, right? Like you can submit a petition with 100,000 signatures on it and the universities then tell you to fuck yourself. But how funny would it be if that was actually the case? It's like the guy

club is like, man, I'd really like to listen to these students. But someone forgot to put a fucking address on this. I have a very well thought out response. If only I had the address. Yeah, I really wish I could engage in meaningful dialogue with these with these student activists. But, you know, they're they're said they're they're general secretary or whoever it is that sent out the letters,

forgot their put their address. Yeah. So Colombia's refusal to acknowledge its involvement in the evils of U.S. society, a.k.a. racism and imperialism, and to reconsider its own position and to reconsider its position, forced radicals into fighting back with their own kind of force. On April 23rd, 1968, Columbia students who were members of the SDS marched on administrative buildings in order to demand a removal of disciplinary action against the students placed on probation

because of previous protests. And the scene eventually descended into a violent confrontation with police where they were like tearing down fences around redevelopment. There was a handful of arrests. The students then proceeded to occupy the campus buildings for the next three ish weeks. And on the 17th of now, it's the 60s. What are you going to do?

Like, it's true. I mean, outside of schoolwork, it's not like you can go, you know, play on the Internet. You do something. Hot chip and charging day phone hadn't been invented yet, so all they could do was lie. But on the 17th and 21st of May, this came to an end when 712 people in total were arrested over the Jesus yeah over the course of like the overall occupation it came to an end they were like bucket you're gone members of the SDS in 68, 69 and will become a central figure within the weather underground. So within the liberated buildings themselves, the students and their allies had adopted

a new way of life that in a sense embodied the revolution that they had talked about for so long. Are we talking about like a hippie Chaz situation going on here? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Hours were spent in long discussion of tactics, politics and logistics of how to achieve their goals. In addition, for most of the participants, this was the first time in their lives that

they had power to use or abuse. For most, such a realization was a liberating experience and expression of the sense of community, which Ayers and others of the Ann Arbor SDS had talked about previously. It was in these spaces that divisions within groups started to form, though disagreements over how to develop revolutionary action among the people, what form it should take and to what end it should be directed. Work this were debated. Primarily, the focus was on the role of nationalism in the liberation of the nation. Progressive Labour, the Marxist-Leninist section within the SDS said, all forms of

nationalism are weak to manipulation for the powers that be and were a distraction from the power of uniting communities around common goals rather than identity. The SDS, on the other hand, saw nationalism and national liberation as forces that weren't antithetical to each other and used the Black Panthers, black nationalism as an example of a radical force for good that used the idea of nationalism. Bernadine Dorn emphasized the panther stance on the issue in an article entitled White Mother Country Radicals in New Left Notes.

I'm pretty sure they're an indie band. Dorn wrote that the Panthers have been open and aggressive opponents of black capitalism and firm supporters of the line that anti capitalism is fundamental to black liberation. So they're kind of they're getting 50 50 right, but it's like they can't necessarily agree on things. And further on, the article Dorn elaborated at the SDF on an earlier STS statement making made after shootings by police of black students attempting to desegregate a bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina, saying the best thing that we can do for ourselves, as well as for the Panthers and the revolutionary

black liberation struggle, is to build a fucking white revolutionary movement. Okay. There was also some other points of contention among all the groups. One of them, women, what are they about? What do they do? I don't know. Never, never a good, uh, good question to come up in any of these meetings. It's like whenever Andreas Bodders are talking about women, it's like, Oh no. Yeah.

See, the thing is, is that, um, so obviously there was quite a lot of women that were involved in these groups. They were involved in like grassroots organizing community outreach. What they were all arguing about like, oh, you know, are we doing enough to make them equal or are women suited to, you know, clerical admin? Who knows? Should should women be equals or should we exploit them? Hmm. Keep that in mind for episode two.

Second point of contention was the role of youth in the movement. So all of these groups centered obviously around students and young people. But it being the 60s, there was a lot of young people that weren't in colleges. So the role of the uneducated and the working youth and how to radicalize them beyond just like cool hippie culture was a point of contention as well. The role of workers in the revolution. This is something we are not going to expand on because we do talk about it

in a second. And then finally, drugs, whether drugs were mind opening, revolutionary device or something fun to do. OK, I'm going to go ahead and say that they probably had a hard split on that one at some point to keep all four of those points in mind. Part two. And so the first major act of this new radical politics was the disruption of the DNC in Chicago in August

1968 for a demonstration organised by the Yippies and a coalition of the local Black Panthers, the Young Lords and other radical groups. This was in part inspired by the rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April. This gathering descended into chaos when over 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Grant Park on August 28th were met with violent suppression from the police. The rioting went on for four days and nights, and by the end of it, there were 668 arrests and 425 protesters ended up in hospital. This led to the Chicago 8 trial, which you've probably heard of, in which eight of the organizing figures such as Bobby Seale were indicted

on charges of crossing state lines in order to incite a riot. So by now, the bar had been set up for what action was deemed necessary to shake up the system. By June 1969, SDS offices around the country were involved in protesting the US involvement in Vietnam. In Michigan, Bill Ayers, who had returned from his travels and resumed his studies, was now the head of the local SDS chapter, nicknamed the Jesse James Gang in Ann Arbor, and was involved in organizing pressure

campaigns on faculty and the university, as well as organizing fellow students and young people to protest the draft and the mistreatment of students exercising the right to free speech. You can't call yourself the Jesse James gang. Now, do they mean like the bandit Jesse James, I'm assuming? Okay, not a single horse. Not the guy who married Sandra Bullock. No, we're not sure about that. Maybe they're really into Orange County choppers. You can't call yourself the Jesse James gang unless you're riding a horse and robbing a train. Otherwise it's false advertisement.

I mean, they were probably doing precursors to ketamine. So maybe they were the horses. I don't know. Whatever they're into. They're, they're into horse play, clip clop play, whatever the fucking word is for it. We're not invoking clopping on this fucking. I was right. It's it's clip clopping. This is my episode, Joe. Does that mean they get really, really, really turned on

by that scene in Money Python, the Holy Grail, the coconuts? Imagine, you know, the first ever film of like the horse, like running to like see whether or the horse galloping to see whether all four hooves were off the ground at once. That was a really pivotal moment for furries, I bet. Finally, I feel represented. Discord began to appear in the pages of the New Left Notes and on the 18th of June, during the SDS National Convention in the day, in that day's issue of the New Left Notes appeared.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. This was the essentially the debut manifesto of what would become the weather underground taken its title taken from a Bob Dylan song called Subterranean Homesick Blues. All right. I'm assumed the the entire like manifesto needs to be read in the voice of having like a 10 pack a day smoking habit. I mean, like Bob Dylan.

I, I have sections from it in a couple of sentences, so I'm going to try and do it in Bob Dylan voice, but, um, it's primary drafters included SDS members, uh, whose name will be, you know, become to be associated with the weather underground Bill Ayers, Mark Road, Bernardine Dorn, Jim Mellon, Terry Robbins, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, etc. The document caused the schism among various different factions of the SDS, primarily over the use of violence to achieve their means of their means of revolution. All right, I'm going to do Bob Dylan voice for this next thing. In every case, our aim is to raise anti imperialist and anti racist consciousness and the tab between the working class youth and all working people

to the struggles of the third world people rather than merely joining fights to improve material conditions, even though these fights are certainly justified. This is not to say that we don't take immediate fight seriously or fight hard in them, but that we are always upfront with our politics, knowing that people in the course of the struggle are open to a class line ready to move beyond narrow self-interest. Well done. It ain't me, babe To be fair, Subterranean Homesick Blues is like Dylan's kind of statement of politics in the sixties, so it makes sense. Also fun fact, Bob Dylan smelled really fucking bad

in the sixties. Everybody smelled really bad in the sixties. Like Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell herself being problematic in her own right for doing blackface and then putting said picture of blackface on the cover of an album. All right. Bull choice. Yeah, she said that she hated sharing a mic with Bob Dylan because he smells so bad. It's impressive to smell so bad that even people in the sixties in a movement of people who all smelled awful were like, God damn,

bro. You have like a cartoon stink lines coming off of you. And then on the topic of black liberation, the more oppressed to choose in another way between allegiance to the white mother country and black leadership as white mother country radicals, we should try to be in shops, hospitals and companies where there are black caucuses, perhaps organizing solidarity groups, but at any rate pushing the importance of black liberation struggle to whites, handing out free Huey, that's Huey P Newton literature, bringing guys out to panther rallies and so on. Just one guy, just one white guy could play a crucial role in countering UAW counterinsurgency. So once again, white people vastly overestimating

their importance. You know, I'm, uh, I'm really happy to hear that they felt, um, so strongly about Huey Lewis in the news. It's hip to be white. Huey Lewis in the news, as if AI created music after you typed in the prompt music for white people. So the Weathermen were not stately joining the cause of black liberation, but also the liberation of all oppressed people worldwide.

Subsequently, they also identified the importance of of young people in the movement in their dispatch towards a revolutionary youth movement. Although a few weather members prided themselves on read. You're going to enjoy this joke. They're not that different from you. Although a few weather members prided themselves on the reading of political theory, seemingly preferred to draw their theory from praxis. And road is even quoted in Kirkpatrick sales book, which is an account of the SDS as bragging that he hadn't read a book in a year. One book which was widely widely read in the collectives was Regis Debray's handbook on

guerrilla warfare in Latin America revolution in the revolution. The importance to weathermen of Debray's book is impossible to like overstate. It's like super important to how they operate going forward. In addition to underground newspapers and other you know left publications, copies of Revolution and the Revolution were found in every single Weather Members house and all their hideouts. OK. OK. So they have a fandom going on. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they're doing slash Rick.

Additionally, the weather took on to raise operational philosophy of revolutionary groups operating in small groups of cells, also called focos in order to maintain secrecy, but to also prevent infiltration by authorities. I assume it's kind of like a leaderless resistance type situation, right? So broad goals will be set by a central leadership and their methods and outcomes were determined by each small autonomous group. So broad goals were set by, you know, head of the SDS and other groups. And then they would undertake the action. And how that action would come about would be decided by them. While these groups were undertaking their quote, quote missions

and consciousness and information would be spread in order to raise sympathetic support for their cause. Those within the autonomous groups would form a revolutionary vanguard. You love that phrase, Joe. Nobody who's not the most fucking ridiculous loser on earth has ever seriously used those terms at any point after like 1931. And this vanguard will uphold the ideals of the revolution acting as examples to the uninitiated. Just imagine the most inflated sense of self you have to have, to be like, no, only I can spread consciousness

to the ignorant masses and be their banner-carrying Vanguard champion. Oh, I have a numerical value to, in a second, to tell you how inflated their ego was. Outstanding. That's not often a metric that we have. But it was in this dramatic stepping out as an organization that the Weathermen would sow the seeds of their own failure. Their decisive politics and sectarianism within the SDS and the general New Left movement meant that central leadership and the creation of a mass movement will be difficult as disagreements over basic details and the tactics of mass mobilization of the public and the raising

of consciousness necessary to create a revolutionary vanguard would give way to squabbles over revolutionary purity, something that has never happened anymore. Everybody's got that figured out. Wait, wait, I'm getting a text message from the United Red Japanese Army. Fuck. So after the convention in June, the weathermen, alongside the revolutionary youth movement to because we all have a sequel, and we're firmly in control of the SDS with the majority of its leadership

coming from one of the two groups, despite only representing four percent of the overall SDS membership nationwide, which was 100,000 people. Wow. Okay, so they think very highly of themselves. They're Marx's purest warriors. Weathermen and RYM2 were unified in their opposition to progressive labor, mostly because of its attacks on the Black Panther Party and black nationalism in general.

As we said earlier on, progressive labor weren't a fan of nationalism. Also its criticisms of the NLF and North Vietnam's willingness to negotiate to end the war. Really? really? They're going to sit in the confines of like Ann Arbor and like yell down at Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas who have been fighting for decades at this point through the end of Chinese War and then the American War and probably even the Japanese occupation period. But like they're going to be like, how dare you, sir? Have

you no self-respect? Yeah, they're disparaging Ho Chi Minh in between mouthfuls of Coney dogs. But any lasting unity between the two groups is unlikely because they disagreed on almost everything else, especially strategy. Both believed that armed revolution was necessary in the United States, but the timing of the revolution and the role of white workers in it were a source of much, much contention. By late August, Mike Klonsky, the nominal leader of RYM2, quit the National Organizing Committee for the SDS, primarily because of his opposition

to the weatherman's dismissal of the white working class as hopelessly reactionary. Time is a flat circle, Joe. I what I read that line, I actually put down my book and walked away like history doesn't repeat itself, but times rides this left both the national organizing committee and the national offices completely in the hands of the weather bill aires mark, Terry Robbins, Kathy Buden and the three national officers of RYM to regarded the call for mass demonstrations in the fall as a call for a united front against imperialism, which would by linking workers struggle struggles with the war in Vietnam and the black colonies, convinces the masses of working people to

stand against imperialism. Given the weatherman's belief that the United Front politics were not necessary in the United States because of its late stage capitalist development, this caused some problems. OK, how can you how? What was their goal here? Like they have these incredibly broad global ideas, right? But they have it seems like they're missing the whole middle ground where like they're fucking stupid.

Hold that thought. According to the weathermen, any efforts to reform the system, the schools, the workplace, the army, etc. were merely attempts to gain more privilege for the privileges for the already privileged white population. Okay. They also fucking hated the army. Sure, that part doesn't surprise me in any way.

Like it's like fundamentally like hating cops, hating the military, they're the armed security of the state. Got it. That part, fine. So reforming any of these things is not okay. It's impossible in their heads. So like the only ideas that they have is like, let's just like spark a war that's going to kill half the country so we can destroy everything. Like, are they doing like fucking Ann Arbor year zero shit? Joe hold that thought.

God damn it. God damn it. Mark Road and Terry Robbins wrote a public reply to Klon's keys letter of resignation quote, Here in the United States, the struggle of the people do not necessarily raise consciousness or build a revolutionary movement. Much to the contrary, they often obscure the differences between the colony and the mother country, obscure white skin, obscure internationalism. Mm hmm. This still answers nothing, though. Like those are a lot of words that say nothing.

I mean, look, like Bob Dylan said, the answer, my friend is blown in the wind. You know, like how many roses a man walked down before he becomes a man? I don't know. I don't think a shortage of blow was these people's problems. Like, again, this is something super common with every terror group we've ever talked about, whether it be, you know, the comical, darkly comical idiots who all beat themselves to death in a Japanese forest to the, you know, the Red Army faction to even the Republicans and provosts, right? Like they have these incredibly huge ideas, which I'm not necessarily saying is bad, right? But it seems to be like they have no self image of where they're currently

sitting in like, you know, like a college annex in Ann Arbor of like, how do you get from this group of 15 people or whatever to impacting something in a global stage with doing nothing in the intermediary? You know what I mean? So in response to that, Mike Klonsky's view was that the working class must be won over by addressing their issues with patience and not arrogance. And he and the rest of revolutionary youth movement to began organizing their own fall protests in Chicago. Mike Klonsky went on to be the head of the communist party in the US. So whereas Bill Ayers is being quoted by Barack Obama. Yeah, well, whose politics was more thought out? Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

I will say that like he has a point. Nobody really like like I'm never going to say that I'm going to be like a social activist or a political person or anything. But like I lack the patience, admittedly, and also the will and the drive. But like I there is something to be said, like nobody really likes being lectured by some ignorant pricks. Yes, empathy is very important when you're trying to get someone on your side.

But the planned protests in October were supposed to be a mass showing of the new radical politics supported en masse by the youth of the nation. But there was a little event in August that you may know about that beat him to it. Joe, have you ever heard of Woodstock? Uh, so we were talking OG Woodstock. We're not talking Limp Bizkit like sexual assault Woodstock. I mean, I think the first Woodstock was just also that without Limp Bizkit. Yeah, except it was like Jimmy Page playing the most brownest notes ever. Like, yeah, I think.

Yeah, I think I'm vaguely familiar with Woodstock. Korn played there. Yeah. Meanwhile, in the first 60s, metal core. Yeah. Like in 60s, Woodstock, they were using corn as currency. But the real metal core. Yeah. I don't really need to go too much into Woodstock. Probably heard of it, but Woodstock represented a watershed moment in the, in the counterculture where the anti war new left hippie movement broke into the mainstream in the news, on television, in music and culture. And as a reporter for the Chicago underground paper, the SEED wrote about it. Woodstock was a massive pilgrimage to the electrified Holy Land where

high energy communism replaced capitalism because the immediate negative forces of the outside world, cops, rules and prices had been removed or destroyed. And also bathing. Yes. I, this episode doesn't need to be two hours long. I am not going to talk about my particular opinions on Woodstock because I'm sure it was fun. That's my opinion on it. Despite how much I love the Grateful Dead.

I hate hippies. Maybe it's because I'm a punk, but you know, enough. Yeah. But Woodstock was not without its faults. As the weathermen saw it, Woodstock was organized by large record companies and the so-called hip capitalists who sought to hijack the movement for profit. Hmm. OK. This expression of radical free love and free association underneath was nothing more than the moneymaking scheme, because, as I said earlier,

record companies were already hip to the new sound, both musically and politically. And through sponsoring publications like the new left notes, they could gain access to new markets. Yeah, it's not like today where the true sound of the people unfettered by big record labels is, you know, SoundCloud rappers. Yeah. Your favorite Lil Xan. Exactly. You know, the revolutionary attitude of just being sleepy all the time. Yeah. Lil Xan, who's now bankrupt.

You know, he did a lot of legwork to deserve that. He had a lot of legwork to deserve that. He had a lot of Zans to deserve that. But while all this was happening, do you want to have a guess where members of the Weather Underground were? I'm going to assume not at Woodstock. Yeah. Do you have any locations in mind? I already don't like these guys, so I'm going to say Ohio. Maybe a certain island in the Caribbean, very close to the United States. They were in Cuba.

They were in Cuba meeting delegates from Vietnam and the NLF. All right. I didn't see that coming for them. Really punching above their weight in this situation, I must say. Yeah. So like all while this is going on, they are communicating with like the NLF and the North Vietnamese. They're like exchanging information back and forth because obviously they needed information to be put in stuff like the New Left Notes and other publications that there was communication going back and forth. How seriously they saw these people is debatable. They're not going to Jordan. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to Akron,

Ohio, maybe. Is Akron the Jordan Valley of the U.S.? Oh, you know, there's certain questions that should just never be voiced aloud. It's one of them. What if Ho Chi Minh had a Coney dog? I mean, there is a timeline where Ho Chi Minh would love some fucking Coney dogs, but the Americans only go fuck himself. Unfortunately, we will never get where Ho Chi Minh would love some fucking coney dogs, but the Americans only go fuck himself Unfortunately, we will never get national Ho Chi Minh coney The trip lasted five weeks and was involved tours of the Cuban countryside long discussions and even some work in the sugarcane fields I'm sorry, but that is very funny Like you know these college kids are probably like, but you want us to do what?

I mean, it's people who go work for like fucking UNESCO and shit now. Just like go to Africa to build wells. Yeah, yeah. They're they're they're like a British eaten grad who spends a weird amount of time in Palestine. And we're going to me. You should have. I was having such a great time in Kenya.

Yeah. I don't worry about the other six months I spent in Southeast Asia by myself. But afterwards I had, I had the most, just the most electric trying electrifying experience in the like a Burundi. But like, you know, when you think about it, like a hundred, 120 years ago, all those people were just like T.E. Lawrence and Ord Wingate. Yes. Yes. They just can't commit horrific crimes against humanity anymore for the vibes. So they have to, they work for some, like, uh, some NGO or think tank that only exists

to swallow massive amounts of grants and then do nothing. Yeah, like now those guys are like shaming me for shitting in the cocaine toilet and like, Oh my God, mate, bring that Kenyan child over here. It'll look so good on the gram. God. Back in the US, the FBI and like the general conservative supporters in the US Congress were convinced that the troop was for guerrilla training. I could see that. I could see that. Or turning them into spies somehow. Like these are both valid concerns, I think. You know, you went to Cuba to hang out the NLF. Questions will be raised.

But the thing is, even the FBI sources in Cuba and the CIA sources in Cuba were like, nah, they're just like working in the sugar cane fields. They made these dumb ass white boys work in the sugar cane fields. I think we're good, guys. Yeah. Nothing concrete came out of the meetings, but the inspiration they provided intensified the group's commitment to the struggle of the Vietnamese people and to a revolution in the US. October 8th, 1969 was set as the date for what will become known as the Days of Rage. Oh yeah, I've heard this one before. I mean, the Days of Rage now is just something that

Alex Jones likes to repeat a lot. October 8th was set as the date, and on the 6th of October, they started to arrive into Chicago and their supporters didn't have anywhere to stay. The place they'd organized to stay were closed. Logistics is hard. So they had to find beds, sleeping on benches, et cetera, et cetera. Thankfully, the Constitution does not cover having random militant college kids be courted in your home.

Only soldiers. So when the days of rage began, the weatherman found that they had a bit less than the tens of thousands of supporters. They expect to show all underestimate that, did they? Yeah, there's a couple of hundred and when they gather that's embarrassing good thing they didn't good thing they didn't like you know block out hotel rooms or something like a wedding party and you know they expect like oh like 20,000 of my fellow militant vanguardist folks are gonna show up it's like I

actually just like Pete and Jim from Akron. It's like, oh, yeah, my my dad works for, I don't know, like GM. Unlike I have a summer internship waiting for me at General Dynamics. I'm here to do militancy. I'm going to be the fucking like assistant to a senator in like two years. So they were all fairly well protected and decently armed. So a lot of them wore football helmets and shoulder pads and motorbike helmets, while others carried the while others carried steel pipes, chains, baseball bats.

No guns, though, oddly. I mean, it's America, right? Like they can just I mean, it's America in the 60s. You could buy some decent fucking hardware at any store I mean that I'm not saying like, you know do a Mass shooting or something but like you're you're calling it the day of rage and you're plotting a violent revolution Yet you're armed with a chain like you were literally bringing a knife to a gunfight a chain. Like you were literally bringing a knife to a gunfight. Actually, you didn't even bring a knife to a gunfight.

You brought a stick to a gunfight. Yeah. And you know what? That only works for, you know, members of like the divine fists of the Boxer Rebellion, not you, Chad. But despite the disappointing turnout, the leadership of the demonstration eventually showed up in in full camouflage fatigues. And then the speech making began. Oh, you hate the army that you dress that you dress in camouflage. Interesting.

Yeah. Also, why are you wearing like camo in an urban environment? You should just wear a fucking bulls jersey. That's camouflage for Chicago. You're just wearing like the babe red, orange and yellow camo pants. Fuck, yeah. It's looking like a modern warfare to lobby. Everybody's gathered around their babe camo. And then there's this one guy wearing a blackhawks jersey and a bulls hat.

They're like, I'm good. good no one's gonna fucking notice me yep so they acknowledged that the turnout was a bit disappointing and they appealed to all those present that they were the only non-racist whites in America and the only true revolutionaries willing to put their lives on the line to fight the Chicago police. All right. That's that's one hell of a title to give yourself. Like that's I believe the term would be that some moxie that they have. There's one problem with that, Joe. Were they all white? It wasn't true. In fact, of course it wasn't fucking true.

Nobody has to stand at a podium and loudly announce they're the least racist white people in America. You shouldn't have to say that. It only raises more questions. In fact, two weeks earlier, nearly 10,000 activists showed up to fight police in the exact same park in a demonstration against the Chicago aid trial. They missed that one, huh? They didn't get the invitation. They didn't check the Google calendar. The first night, the demonstrators marched

south towards the Drake Hotel where Judge Hoffman lived, Hoffman being the presiding judge over the Chicago trial. And they were breaking windows of cars and storefronts along the way. After they charged police barricades, the police put down the riots with their own counterattacks using tear gas, nightsticks, guns and cars. Cars. Yeah. You know, look, I know it probably means that they ran over protesters with their cars But part of me likes to think that like the police the police brutality

infrastructure had Increased to the point. They're like no we've invented a trebuchet that just launches police cruisers at protesters We've had to think outside the box just for funsies We've had to think outside the box just for funsies. While some of the weathermen were shot by police and injured, no one was killed. It's kind of miraculous. I mean, they weren't exactly wearing body armor. You're fucking, you know, a college football helmet is not going to stop a nine millimeter. You're kind of fucked.

And like you can watch footage of this online. There is lots of footage of this riot happening. Other activists criticize the weatherman's tactics. And Carl Davidson, the leader of the SD of the SDS at the time, told a local news outlet, we thought it was off the wall. We really thought it was silly, counterproductive, that it wasn't going anywhere. That's the best we thought of it. Another fraction of the SDS organized peaceful marches,

along with the Black Panthers to protest the Vietnam War and the enduring racial inequality, drawing, you know, thousands of demonstrators two weeks earlier. But the weathermen drew news coverage. So that's why it's remember. Why do you think that is? What's cameras work like this is the thing is that like you know if it bleeds it leads the old fucking saying

of sure sure sure but this one the days of rage got more news coverage and the other ones yeah because also because it was lots of white people see that's what I figured I was wondering if maybe, I don't know, there was something more to it than that. I don't know why I thought that. I should think better. The second and subsequent third days were more muted on October 10th.

The weathermen continued their demonstrations marching through the loop. This is Chicago CBD or premiered business district with over 300 protesters. The weathermen were being watched by multiple lines of riot officers and over two and a half thousand national guardsmen who were brought in that day. Don't worry. I think like Hoyt and his Ann Arbor friends really like their odds in this situation.

So despite being watched by the police and two and a half thousand national guardsmen, they eventually broke through the lines and started smashing car windows. How? That's work. Look, work that is it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give them the first compliment. I didn't respect your game. You know, I didn't expect the the BAPE camouflaged monster energy brigade to bust through like in five to one odds on the street. Yeah, you were not familiar with their game. That's I was not. I retract many of my statements, but that is impressive.

That is very impressive. They smashed, you know, car windows, storefronts. And this only lasted for 15 minutes, though. And yeah, I mean, look at everybody around them. And half of the weathermen people, half of the weathermen members were arrested. It's one of those situations. I don't like I'm not exactly sure how many of you it's going to take to what my ass. But I can see how many you're going to use.

And the following day, the weathermen rallied at a statue of a policeman that they had bombed a few days earlier. OK, so they're blowing things up at this point. Yeah, but this is like this isn't these are like very small scale, like a bit more than a firecracker, but not like a bomb that could blow up a building. OK, OK. So they once again tried to head to the loop, clashed with police, and it ended up being a vicious melee that resulted in 300 arrests and 48 police injuries.

And the number of injuries to protesters is, quote unquote, unknown. Most of them, I would assume. Certainly everybody that get arrested. Yeah, like famously during the confrontation, Richard Elrod, and who was a state prosecutor, broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. Jesus, how the fuck did that happen? Just get his ass whooped.

Elrod said he tried to tackle a 22 year old protester who then kicked him in the neck with steel toed boots. What? They usually like, I tried to tackle a prot- first of all you're an attorney, why are you tackling a protester? And then this protester whipped out like a fucking crane kick wearing steel toed boots and knocked his fucking head off. Well, Flanagan, who was charged with the attack on Elrod, who was acquitted of all charges, would bear that in mind shock claims that Elrod hit the concrete wall when he dove at him. So he just like dived head first into a wall.

He just literally stepped out of the way. Yep. I, you know, I was going to say, I'm willing to bet that, uh, one of the fucking protesters just hit him with a goddamn tombstone pile driver and you know, he or KO'd him. Nobody expects the RKO'd on nowhere during the days of rage. The left wing or KO. Um, but with that, the revolutionary knockout, baby. But with that confrontation, the days of rage ended. The weathermen had in some ways brought the war home, which was their goal throughout all of these demonstrations and since their the publication

of their manifesto. That tracks with what I expect. Yeah. But the protests also bolstered their reputation as the police as the enemy of the people and hurt the causes they espoused by associating anti-war and anti-racism protests with violence in the eyes of the public. That could be alienating, yeah.

In a long magazine feature, unabashedly sympathetic to the police and the city that ran the month after the days of rage, the Chicago Tribune claimed that the police widely condemned scarcely a year ago for their violence, which led to the Chicago Eight trial and their conduct during the Democratic Convention had never enjoyed so much public acclaim. Right, right. Like, I'm not saying this is like I support the police or anything, obviously. Fuck the police. Yeah, but like if you are a normal person at home who is critical of the war and critical

of racism, which those people did exist, right? It's not gonna look great if someone expousing the same ideas as you is like chain whipping cops in the street and shit like that. I know we laugh about the stuff on the show because to us it is funny. It is very funny that an attorney broke his fucking neck Superman diving in a protester, that is funny to me. However, if your mom and you're like, if, if your mom and dad or whatever are watching TV at home,

people that have progressive ideas that are not radical, like they won't look at that favorably, right? Like the decency is situation of everything, right? Most of the members of the weathermen were arrested and Were bailed out within a week by their friends and family According to law enforcement records come pick me up from revolutionary jail Hold that thought Joe and

According to law enforcement records there was a total of 284 arrests 40 of them on felony charges and several serious injuries and their parents came up with that money. Yep. Because they're all like trust fund kids. We'll talk about this in the next episode. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that that that bit about how privileged they were actually wasn't a bit that just their life. I mean like look how much of the weathermen like came from like Columbia or other elite universities. Fair enough. Yeah. They didn't just get on there on like, you know, merit. That's not a thing that happens. Nobody's like, no, no, I got

into an Ivy because of like hard work and good grades. Of those arrested, 104 were college students, mostly from the Midwest and New York. Another 20 were high school students and the rest were either part-time or full-time activists. 57 police were hospitalized and over $1 million of damage was caused to the property in the city of Chicago. The failure of the Days of Rage and the subsequent SDS convention in Flint, Michigan, which would go on to be called the war convention. OK, December would be the true turning point for the weather underground. And that is where we will pick up next episode. All right. I got to say, I don't know what I was expecting.

I don't know much about the weather underground like that that part in the beginning wasn't actually a joke. I know nothing. I have to say I'm kind of impressed with how, let's be honest here, a group of overly privileged, arrogant dickheads was actually capable of some pretty serious on the ground shit. Like, and there's more of it, you know, there's more to it than like marching around and whatever, which is

impressive on its own to to organize and everything but like to go toe-to-toe with the entire Chicago Police Department and thousands of National Guardsmen and they end up in the same Hospital as you it's just like look man. I don't necessarily agree with everything you're doing, but that is Impressive yeah credits work credits to unlike, to be fair, you know, those the figures of the arrest, like 284 arrests, only 104 were students. Like there was a lot of people who were like they were like hardcore activists and organizers who were like very familiar with scrapping with the police. Yeah. Were there as well.

Like they're like Bill Ayers was like known for being a street fighter at that point. You had to find other people that were, which, you know, fair enough. Good on him for noticing. Yeah, sometimes you need a Joe to do your Joe work. We're all good at something. OK. I'm never going to say I'm good at organizing. I am good at some things. So we will pick up part two of the weather underground next week.

If you want to hear me talk more about history, I have another history podcast called Beneath the Skin, show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. And Joe, you have this show. I do. I do normally. This is the only podcast that I host most of the time. And if you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just five dollars gets you years and years and years of bonus content

and our entire back catalog, as well as Discord access. Every regular episode, we do early stickers, ebooks. One half of Tom's mustache will be mailed to you via the Chicago police. That's that's not true. But yeah, you get stuff and you keep this show running and by research materials, pay all sorts of cool stuff, which we then turn into content for you to consume with your ear holes. That's my sales pitch. I'm not good at it.

So I got under until next time, don't get VD in Tangiers. Don't tell me what to do.