Underground’s ‘first major protest.’ 12 The attack took place on Chicago’s Gold Coast and ‘drew in a few hundred people to an orgy of street violence’ according to James Farrell. 13 Vandalism overran the streets throughout the three-day demonstration, resulting in six members of the Weather Underground being shot, and a further 68 arrested. 14 Jeremy Varon considered the violence experienced during this pivotal event as ‘the great catalyst [that] revealed the importance of militancy for the New Left.’ 15 The following year, and potentially the most crucial incident took place at the University of Wisconsin. Up to this point, the youth movement had been instrumental in ensuring the deaths of them only; this would soon be short lived. 16 On August 24 th , 1970, Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin was struck with high explosives late in the evening, later revealing the body of Dr Robert Fassnacht, the first civilian loss of life at the hands of the Weather Underground. 17 The movement could no longer claim to utilise symbolic bombs as their only means of revolution. As such, ‘the virtue of “doing no harm” had vanished.’ 18 Bell and Gurr argue that following this incident, those who ‘sought to demonstrate their affirmation of life and the evil of war, had murdered the innocent,’ and shortly after this event membership would dramatically fall. 19 Even prior to the dramatic rise of terrorist incidents, the FBI, under Director J. Edgar Hoover, had kept the Weather Underground and other anti-war movements under strict scrutiny, utilizing numerous agents to infiltrate the organisations in order to discover and 12 Barry M Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Chronologies of Modern Terrorism (United States: M.E. Sharpe, 2008) 13 James J. Farrell, The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1997) p. 197. 14 Rubin and Colp Rubin, p. 38. 15 Varon, p. 74-75. 16 Bell and Gurr, p. 336. 17 Ibid, p. 336. 18 Varon, p. 195. 19 Bell and Gurr, p. 336.
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