Aug 28, 1971: State Corrections Dept at Ferry Building on San Francisco Waterfront, in response to killing of George Jackson and the warriors of San Quentin. May 1970: National Guard HQ, in response to Kent State killings. June 1970: NYC PD, in response to police repression. July 16, 1970: Presidio Army Base in San Francisco, to mark eleventh anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Oct 8, 1970: Queens Courthouse, in solidarity with New York prison revolts. Oct 8, 1970: Harvard Centre for International Affairs, to protest the war in Vietnam. Feb 28, 1971: US Capitol, to protest invasion of Laos. Sept 17, 1971: NY Dept of Corrections, to protest killing of 29 inmates at Attica State Penitentiary. May 18, 1973: 103rd precinct New York, in response to killing of a 10 year old black youth by police. Sept 28, 1973: ITT HQ in New York, in response to YS-backed coup in Chile. Mar 6th, 1974: Dept Health, Education and Welfare in San Francisco, to protest forced sterilisation of poor women. May 31, 1974: Offce of California’s Attorney General, in response to killing 6 members of Symbionese Liberation Army. June 17, 1974: Gulf Oil HQ, Pittsburgh, to protest its actions in Angola. Jan 28, 1975: State Department, in response to escalation in Vietnam. June 16, 1975: Banco do Ponce, New York, in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican cement workers.
opposite: October 11, 1969. The Weathermen take to the streets precipitating Chicago’s Days of Rage. From left to right: Jim Mellen, Peter Clapp, John Jacobs, Bill Ayers and Terry Rob- bins this page: a partial list of The Weathermen bombings: date, target and reason.
1 The Weathermen’s death toll included three of their own blown up in their Greenwich Vil- lage home/bomb factory in 1970, recalibrating The Weathermen’s propensity for incurring human collateral damage. Bombings from the era did kill a small number of people, but not all were conclusively linked to The Weather- men. 2 All quotations in this article are, unless foot- noted otherwise, from The Weather Underground . Thanks also to Sam Green for his consulta- tion. 3 Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sa- rah Palin repeatedly made references to Barack Obama as fraternising with Ayers. e.g. ‘Palin Targets Obama Over Knowing Bill Ayers’, CBS2 News , Chicago. Oct 6, 2008. 4 ‘William C Ayers’. New York Times People , April 10, 2009. 5 Ibid and <http://education.uic.edu/directory/ faculty_info.cfm?netid=bayers> April 10, 2009. 6 The Weather Underground and also via a film clip of Bob Dylan <http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=srgi2DkDbPU> April 10, 2009. 7 Dreyfus, Robert. ‘Bring the War Home’ August 9 2006. <http://www.tompaine.com/ articles/2006/08/09/bring_the_war_home. php> April 10, 2009. Martha Rosler is also know for her photomontage series Bringing the War Home. House Beautiful (1967-1972) & (2004). 8 Baker, Peter. ‘With Pledges to Troops and Iraqis, Obama Details Pullout’ New York Times , February 27, 2009. 9 Scott, Shane. ‘Remarks on Torture May Force New Administration’s Hand’ New York Times , January 16th 2009. 10 Mazetti, Mark. ‘U.S. Says C.I.A. Destroyed 92 Tapes of Interrogations’ New York Times , March 2, 2009.
lice headquarters and key architectures in Washington DC were all targetted. Today, many critics still shun Ayers and his part- ners as terrorists or criminals, not worthy of credence, but it is important to probe the reason why these protagonists are still in circulation. Notwithstanding that some Weathermen served jail time, Ayers and Do- hrn avoided prosecution. ‘Ironically, the government was forced to drop most of the charges against them when it became clear how much the FBI had broken the law in pursuing the group.’ This leads to the second of my connect- ing fronts to Obama. Then, as now, the US is alleged to have contravened domestic and international law in pursing hegemony. Guantanamo Bay, abuses at Abu Ghraib, and twenty-first century US rendition pro- grams, covertly transporting detainees to secret black sites in foreign countries for detention and interrogation, have resulted in Obama’s new administration declaring that the interrogation technique of simulat- ed drowning, or waterboarding, is torture. 9 The extent to which, in 2005, the CIA com- promised evidence of interrogations was re- cently revealed: 92 videos were destroyed. 10 This renewed front of judicial compromise imperils, again, America’s ability to suc- cessfully prosecute alleged criminals. These compromises draw attention to
the ambivalent status of buildings such as the US Capitol and the Pentagon. On one hand they appear as monuments to democ- racy and defence of free-world principles; on the other they are sites of imperial and neo-colonial conquest. For this reason The Weathermen included both venues as bomb targets, or artistically what might be known as anti-monuments: ‘We have attacked The Capitol because it is a monument of US domination over the planet’. It seems Obama is aware that this sentiment still pre- vails in some quarters, as his administration is now more conciliatory, acknowledging that many peoples have been alienated by recent US foreign policy. My third and final front correlates the re- markably similar state of the nation left in the wake of The Weathermen with the post- Bush War on Terror inherited by Obama. The Weather Underground does a good job of not- ing that ‘as the 70s drew to a close, America seemed to be falling apart. Watergate, Viet- nam and recession had sapped the country’s confidence’. An analogy for 2009 of Water- boardgate, the War on Terror and recession indicates similar weather patterns between The Weathermen and Obama. These frater- nities of Chicago bring new twists, and also hope, from a weathered, sometimes wind- ed, yet still winding city.
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