Truemors
Who is Billy Ayers?
Born December 26th 1944, the Illinois born American radical is currently a renown Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education and a recent recipient of Chicago’s citizen of the year award for his involvement in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a highly successful education reform project that funnelled million of private and public dollars into failing public school’s in some of Chicago’s most vulnerable neighbourhoods.
Some, like Republican Presidential candidate Sen. McCain will assure you that Bill Ayers is a terrorist. I’ve chosen the word "radical" but this is a hair, all to fine, that I am just not looking to split at this moment in time, instead I would like to focus just on the facts themselves.
And who are the Weathermen?
October 6, 1969
Bill Ayers and associates blew up a statue commemorating the Haymarket riots in a blast that broken nearly 100 windows. The statue is dedicated to the policemen killed during a riot by labour activists in 1886. The commemorative would be re-built by Chicago Mayor Daley and blown-up again by Ayers and Co. before the Mayor finally staffed the statue with it’s very own 24 hour police guard.
October 8-11, 1969
Riots broke out in several upscale Chicago’s neighbourhoods, 287 protesters organized by the Weathermen, a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) breakaway group are arrested over a four day period. Just three months after the Weathermen stormed the SDS national convention they took to the street of Chicago in an attempted to do the same. The incident was hardly a revolt and barely a rebellion but this would be the first in a long string of National incidents involving an organization co-founded by Bill Ayers, the Weathermen.
December 6, 1969
The Weathermen’s responsibility for the bombing of several Police cruisers, parked in a precinct parking lot at the corner of Halsted and West Addison would not be revealed until the release of the group manifesto, Prairie Fire in the early nineteen-seventy’s. In the book the group claimed their actions were in response to the shooting of Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police just two days earlier.
December 27-31, 1969
The Weathermen would become the Weather Underground (WUO) an organization dedicated to committing "strategic" acts of sabotage against the United States government. The seventies, the WUO felt was to be the end of peaceful resistance and the beginning of a new strategy, a siege on the American government.
March 6, 1970
Before the Weather Underground had a chance to strike, the bomb bit back. The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion claimed the lives of WUO members Theodore Gold, Bill Ayers girlfriend Diana Oughton and Ayers co-radical Terry Robbins. Cathlyn Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin survived the blast that was caused by a short circuit in one of several nail filled pipe bombs that the five had been assembling in the home once owned by Charles E. Merrill, co-founder of financial service giant Merrill Lynch. Following the townhouse blast many of the groups members were forced underground and permanently labelled, the Weather Underground Organization.
What exactly is the Weather Underground?
July 27, 1970
Another bomb blast on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.
The site United States army base at The Presidio in San Francisco, California.
September 12, 1970
WUO members are funded, $20,000 to help psychedelic Dr. Timothy Leary escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.
October 8, 1970
In retaliation for the killing of black-activist and fellow radical Jonathan Jackson, who carried a gun into a courtroom, held said courtroom hostage and attempted to abduct Judge Harold Haley before being gunned down in a hail of bullet that claimed the lives of two of Jackson’s accomplices as well as Judge Haley, the Weather Underground bombed the Marin County courthouse.
October 10, 1970
The Queen’s traffic-court building was bombed in support for the New York prison riots.
October 14, 1970
In protest to the ongoing war in Vietnam, WUO bombed the Harvard Center for International Affairs. This culminated a set of three bombings in just six days, all three of which the WUO claimed were justified responses to American injustice.
March 1, 1971
Presidential recognition, Richard M. Nixon denounced the bombing of the United States Capitol building as "shocking acts of violence that will outrage all American"
August 29, 1971
Always Quick to respond the Weather Underground wasted no time leveeing a counter attack to the prison yard shooting of Black Panther, American militant and Author of the controversial book Soledad Brother George Jackson by bombing the Office of California Prisons. Jackson was gunned down during what prison records "show" was a failed escape attempt that ended in the prison yard at San Quentin’s maximum security lockup. Jackson is reported to have used a gun smuggled in by his attorney to take over his tier at the internationally recognized penitentiaries. Six were killed, 3 prison guards and 3 inmates including Jackson himself. The record of these event has been challenged by many jail-house witnesses, all however lacking the credibility required to launch a formal inquest. Was there even a gun at all? Had Jackson been planning an escape? Unfortunately these question veers out of the realm of fact and into the listless bounds of hearsay, something I promised at the beginning to attempt to avoid. No viable alternative to the event of August 21, 1971 have ever been produced. Period. End of story. Next subject.
September 17, 1971
United States Corrections would again feel the sting of WUO bomb’s when the New York Department of Correction in Albany, New York was blasted in response to the killing of nearly thirty inmates at the Attica State Penitentiary.
October 15, 1971
The pre-thanksgiving gift from the Weather Underground delivered to the door of William Bundy’s office at the MIT research center was truly a piece de resistance for any young, thriving militant groups working through the turmoil of the American nineteen-seventies. Most of the country, especially those on the far left felt Bundy was the "head" that needed to be chopped in response to America’s poor planning surrounding the Vietnam war. The bomb blast injured no one and did nothing to scar iron-horse William Bundy who survived for nearly thirty-years after the blast ripped through his MIT office, only succumbing to age, at 83.
May 19, 1972
The headquarters for the United States Department of Defense, the Pentagon would be the Weather Undergrounds next target in retaliation for the bombing raids by the US military in Hanoi, Vietnam.
May 18, 1973
Bombing the Pentagon can send the most radical of protesters into hiding for at least a year, the Weather Underground were no exception. One year in seclusion, re-grouping, re-moulding and possibly even recruiting. WUO bounced back onto the radical scene bombing the 103rd Police Precinct in New York in reaction to the killing of a ten-year-old black youth, Clifford Glover, which occurred at the hands of two of New York’s finest.
September 1973 - September 1975
The WUO would be responsible for seven more bombing before slowly disbanding throughout the late nineteen-seventies. All attacks were carried out, as per WUO standards, ITT was bombed for alleged involvement in a Chilean coup, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare office in San Francisco was hit for the forced "sterilization" of poor women.
The office of the Attorney General of California, Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters, the Anaconda Cooperation and the State Department would all fall victim to WUO bombs. In September of 1975, the Kennecott Corporation would become the final target of a Weather Underground bomb.
December 3, 1980
Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn turned themselves over to authorities, Ayers never serves a day behind bars for his involvement in the Weather Underground Organization well his wife walked away pending only a probationary term.
Zoltan Black
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