Weather UnderGround

Dear Mr. Lindorff,

I think your remarks on the Weather Underground's positive effect on the old new left, and SDS in particular, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s are misguided and off the mark. I am sure Ayers has become a progressive force in Chicago and applaud him for his transformation.

But my personal experience of the WU and Ms. Dohrn at Colombia and Cornell found them to be a mostly upper- and upper-middle class, immature, narcissistic group of misguided ultra-leftists who had no understanding of the working class or the need to build a mass base. They were, in fact, an impediment to efforts to build a broader based anti-war movement. They engaged in divisive sectarian tactics in scores of meetings I attended, and further divided an already divided student left. Unlike the Panthers, or the IRA, for instance, they had absolutely no base within the working classes. For a guerrilla army, even a small one, to have an effect on the struggle against imperialism it must be rooted in working-class and poor communities. The Panthers came out of the streets of Oakland. They were born there. The IRA were all products of the historic nationalist communities in the north of Ireland, both rural and urban. The IRA had only 500 ASU [operational volunteers] in the field at any given time, yet fought the Brit imperialists to a standstill. The ANC's armed wing was also rooted in the same types of working-class and rural communities. The Weather Underground was rooted in the middle and upper-middle classes of the US and had no base whatsoever in working-class and poor communities.

They were a farce.

I was there. I knew many of them. They were legends in their own mind. That said, I have no doubt Ayers has transformed himself into a decent man who works for a progressive agenda. We all grow up. The WU was an immature, narcissistic bunch of mostly rich kids, who played at revolution and whose only base was in the townhouses of their rich parents.

Dan Cassidy