Weatherman

aka Weatherman Organization, Weather Underground, Weather Underground Organization (WUO)

Weatherman, a militant group of young white Americans that grew out of the anti-Vietnam War movement, engaged in bombing campaigns across the United States for more than five years. Weatherman sought to advance communism through violent revolution, and the group called on America's youth to create a rearguard action against the U.S. government that would bring about its downfall.

Weatherman evolved from the Third World Marxists, a faction within Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the major national organization representing the burgeoning new left in the late 1960s. Led by Bernardine Dohrn, James Mellen, and Mark Rudd, this “action faction” of the (by this point skeletal) SDS advocated street-fighting as a method for weakening U.S. imperialism. At the SDS national convention in June 1969, the Third World Marxists presented a position paper titled “You Don't Need a ...