Three Books Two Tales

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/23/occupy-gets-booked/

The Scream of the Butterfly--Greil Marcus Does the Doors

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/19/the-scream-of-the-butterfly/

Cratched Does California--Ghosts of Christmas Past

Selection that appears in Tripping Through the American Night...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/12/26/cratched-does-california/

Bolano's Board Game

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/09/bolanos-board-game/

December 8, 1980-Remembering John Lennon

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/12/09/remembering-john-lennon/

The Way the Wind Blew Reviews Part Three

two not so positive reviews and one from The Journal of American History
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/18307

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4468/the_way_the_wind_blew/

The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground By Ron Jacobs. (New York: Verso, 1997. viii, 216 pp. Cloth, $50.00, ISBN 1-85984-861-3. Paper, $15.00, ISBN 1- 85984-167-8.)

Ron Jacobs begins his history of the Weather Underground where most analyses of the move- ments of the 1960s leave off, with the splintering of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1968 and the "Days of Rage" in 1969. His focus is solely on Weather, which turns out to be his book's major strength but also accounts for some of its weaknesses. Jacobs's first chapter, "1968: SDS Turns Left,' recounts the disintegration of SDS into factions that included Weather, Progressive Labor (PL), the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), and others. While the reader gains a careful analysis of the ideological differences among these groups, what is lost is the context out of which this all emerged. There is no discussion of the history of SDS or even of the political careers that led members of the Weather Underground to this point. (There are some biographical tidbits in a brief appendix entitled "The Cast.") From this moment on, however, Jacobs re- tells with care the stages of Weather activity coupled with discussions of its developing theoretical positions and growing cognizance of other political issues, including the emerging feminist movement. One virtue of his work is his decision to take Weather seriously and not to indulge in the kind of sensationalistic discussions of their interpersonal, communal, and sexual side, topics that have tainted other analyses. We witness the evolution of Weather's positions from the initial "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" (1968) through "New Morning, Changing Weather" (1970) and, finally, Prairie Fire. The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism (1974).

On the other hand, some further examination of the connection between their personal and political sides, including a more textured discussion of underground life, would have more fully rounded his portrait. An added value of this work is to remind older readers and inform younger ones of the domestic political events that occurred after 1968 and 1969, events which are too often merely thought of as footnotes to 1960s history, if not altogether forgotten. We learn not only of the explosion in a New York townhouse in 1970, where members were constructing bombs, and of other Weather bombings but also of the May Day demonstrations of 1971 that aimed to shut down Washington, D.C., the various legal struggles of the Black Panthers, and the short-lived media frenzy surrounding the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and its kidnapping and subsequent conversion of the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

What is striking as one reads and remembers the attention paid to the Weather Underground is how small the cadre was, given its importance in both the movement and the media. In part, this is not unusual in the history of the American Left. Numerous well- remembered and oft-studied factions of the Communist and Socialist parties had surprisingly few adherents. Yet we would not be able to find an equivalent amount of mainstream press attention paid to these groups. Through a combination of flamboyant rhetoric, publicity- grabbing activities, and its positioning of itself at the extreme edge of the rebellious impulse of the era, Weather became the most prominent, if not the most representative, group of the last phase of 1960s activism. Jacobs's study, while keeping to a slightly too narrow retelling of their activities, nevertheless provides an accessible, readable, and compelling history of their ideas and their activities.

Alexander Bloom Wheaton College Norton, Massachusetts

The Way the Wind Blew Reviews Part Two: From Social Anarchism #26 1998

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SA/en/display/269

Drawing Conclusions on the Wall: A Review of On the Ground: an Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S.

I apologize for the typos.....

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/drawing-conclusions-on-the-wall/

Blast From the Past: A Review of My Weather Underground Book from 1998

review published August 1998 in San Francisco Bay Guardian

Guerrilla USA

A philosophical history of the Weather Underground

The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. By Ron Jacobs. Verso, 216 pages, $15.

By Daniel Burton-Rose

IN THE CRUCIBLE of late-'60s white radicalism, a fomenting militancy pushed an element of Students for a Democratic Society toward a more immediate solidarity with the Vietnamese people, one born of shared repression. As the state reacted with dumb authoritarian brutality to questions it knew were too on-point to answer, a small group of middle-class activists took the steps they felt were necessary to end the U.S. regime once and for all. Revolutionary violence was, as Weather member Bernardine Dohrn put it, "The best thing that we can be doing for ourselves, as well as for the Panthers and the revolutionary black liberation struggle...."

Their efforts are the twisting tale that Ron Jacobs tells in his history of the Weather Underground, The Way the Wind Blew. Jacobs -- a worker at the University of Vermont library and avowed New Leftie -- gives a documentary history that includes photos, posters, and underground comix. The Way the Wind Blew transplants you to a time of widespread domestic government repression and foreign aggression. A time in which change was not just an ideal but an imperative.

The history of Weather is the story of radicals for whom nothing could come too fast. Weather needed to immediately end everything it hated about the U.S. government, and it did not have time to waste on tolerating the unconvinced -- those who could have given it the numbers to realize its goals. Weather denounced the U.S. working class as hopelessly blind to its own oppression, supporting imperialist war and racism. In fits of self-righteousness Weather stomped into working-class communities and berated youth as "pigs," often getting an ass-kicking as their payback. With the Days of Rage in Chicago, Weather whipped up efforts to "tear the motherfucker apart" but experienced only low turnout and unfocused street violence.

Jacobs has written a history of ideas rather than personalities. His book is more instructive than either the flat-out denouncements of paramilitary violence or the uncritical celebrations that have thus far constituted the history of late-'60s and '70s guerrilla movements. Jacobs traces Weather's long ambivalent dance with youth counterculture. At times the group saw youth's lack of a stake in contemporary society as the hope for a new nation, but Weather retained a great "distrust of its own potential base of support." Militant feminist analysis by Weather women made the Weather men realize that the men themselves were also capable of counterrevolutionary thoughts. This epiphany made them acknowledge "that individuals were capable of change, whatever their previous prejudices." It was a step from revolutionary purity to real-world maturity.

As the war in Vietnam escalated, Weather's military actions seemed less extreme to New Left folks. A bomb in the Pentagon in May 1972 was well-received in the antiwar community. Conversely, as the war wound down it became clear that there would be no galvanizing force of comparable strength for the next decade. Weather foundered.

So Jacobs goes on to tell of the flip side of the Jerry Rubin and Eldridge Cleaver-style '80s sellouts -- terribly fractured guerrilla cells trying desperately not to drown in the political tide turning away from an open society. Because of Weather's death in a flurry of acronyms, The Way the Wind Blew seems like a book without a conclusion. For that reason it is somewhat unsatisfying. But at closer look, the tapered anticlimax captures the nature of the period and the feeling of the participants. In the end, both they and you want more.

Jacobs admires Weather Underground members for their dedication and strength. Indeed, he dedicates his book to "those who gave their lives and freedom in the struggle against racism and imperial war." The book explores what Weather got right and what it screwed up. To read it is to understand one of the most fascinating attempts to create revolutionary change in modern American history.

(Daniel Burton-Rose is the editor of The Celling of America.)

We Are Not Liberals

http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/04/07/misrepresenting-the-left/

The Nature of the Beast Revealed: The Swing of That Truncheon Thing

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/23/the-swing-of-that-truncheon-thing/

Passion Ruled the Day-A Review of Mark Rudd's Underground

http://sdonline.org/53/passion-ruled-the-day/

Transcontinental Occupation--A Conversation with Peter Bohmer

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/18/transcontinental-occupation/

Nothing Left To Lose

Back in the mid-1970s a lover and I hitchhiked from Maryland's D.C. suburbs to Orange County, California. We lasted a week in that Republican purgatory, then hitched up to Berkeley. Within a couple weeks, my friend and I were collecting unemployment, living in Oakland and familiarizing ourselves with the street scene along Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue and San Francisco's Haight Street. Although I had been quite involved with various anarchist and communist radicals in the DC area, I was primarily interested in participating in what remained of the counterculture by the time I moved to Berkeley. Politics had both worn me out and disillusioned me.

Yet, politics wouldn't leave me alone. I ran into former Black Panthers, White Panthers and leftover Weather Underground types while I did bong hits. One of my friends was a communist organizer who knew lots of radicals from all over the Bay Area. Soon, several other friends from the suburban tracts we had left behind had joined us. We got an apartment. My lover and I eventually went our own ways while remaining housemates.

A couple close friends of mine who were quite political asked me if I was interested in joining their cell. What, I asked, would this entail? I was told that I would have to share everything with them and be willing to undertake "armed" activities. We had several long and deep discussions. I seriously considered their offer, but declined for political and philosophical reasons. We remained good friends and they decided not to engage in so-called armed actions. I was relieved for a number of reasons.

The people I met and hung out with on Telegraph Ave. were some of the most colorful and free individuals I have ever known. Some paid for their freedom with their lives. Some traded it in for something else. Some lost it to the law. Nonetheless, they did have some freedom to lose. Maybe, because (let me refer to a rock tune) they had nothing else left to lose.

The Co-Conspirator's Tale is motivated partially by these experiences. It is something of a speculation about what might have happened if my friends and I had decided to create that cell and engage in bombings, etc. Simultaneously, it is a contemplation on the nature of a system where (as Mick Jagger sings) "every cop is a criminal," and a sanctioned one at that.

My previous novel Short Order Frame Up examines similar aspects of our society, although it is the racism of the system and the cops who work for it that are called into question. The corruption in The Co-Conspirator's Tale does not even have the tawdry principles of a racist pair of cops to dignify it. In fact, the only motivation is to protect and preserve a system built on lies and maintained by deceit and power.

Occupy--What Next?

What happens next with the Occupy movement? Should every camp fight for its continued existence or should those unable to sustain a livable environment for the campers because of the authorities or lack of logistical support pack it up? We always figured on having to make these decisions sooner or later because of the winter weather that is bound to come. However, the recent deaths in and near the Occupy camps in Salt Lake City, Burlington, VT., and Oakland forces the folks in those areas to think about the next move. Other camps have reported rapes. This movement is bigger than the camps, but the camps have been crucial in expanding the movement by providing a place for supporters to gather, an actual piece of turf to defend and identify with, and, for those warriors that have no other place to live, a home.

Each of the camps mentioned above are different in terms of their demographic makeup, the local politics, the police forces arrayed against them and the level of community support. Oakland has seen the most aggressive police action, while Burlington has probably seen the least. However, as soon as I heard that a shot had been fired in the Burlington camp I knew that the local authorities would manipulate whatever happened into a way to close the camp. That is exactly what they did. After inviting occupiers to meet with the Mayor and other officials inside City Hall (which is adjacent to the Occupy site), the police quickly went into the encampment, threw up a yellow tape and threw folks out. A couple folks were arrested for resisting this attempt (one was released immediately and the other was released a few hours later), but the move had been made. Nobody has been allowed back into the Occupy site except for a few folks who were allowed to retrieve their belongings after the police searched them and the belongings. The city is now calling the camp unsafe and is on record as refusing any more camping. As I write a GA is gathering. The future is uncertain. Just as it is in Oakland where the police forces are considerably less friendly and the big business that runs Oakland tightens the screws on the Mayor and police to clear the camp. Meanwhile, in other cities up and down the West Coast, eviction notices have been served on at least three other camps, with the police itching for a fight in at least two of those towns. (November 14-Both Portland and Oakland were shut down with massive displays of police force that were met with mass resistance.  November 15 New York was cleared).

So, back to the question: what next? Are those camps that have been placed in limbo the most important aspect of the movement? Should we go down swinging to protect them? For those that found the camps to be a safe place to live where they were making a difference, they may well be. At the same time, will the extra police surveillance and harassment certain to accompany any further camping at these sites turn them into places where the presence of (or fear of the presence of) police make political organizing difficult or impossible? I myself would find it hard to discuss the squatting of a foreclosed building with cops in and out of uniform within hearing distance.

Although I am not as big of a fan of Gandhi as many people in the movement, the history of the movement to chase the British out of India that he is identified with is instructive. In terms of the current discussion, the most relevant fact is that he and his fellow organizers were able to recognize when a tactic they were using had failed or at least run its course. When they acknowledged this (with much discussion no doubt) they moved on to another. The same could also be said of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and others involved in the movement for black liberation. Both movements never strayed from their goal, but both were quite keen at recognizing what should be the next set of tactics. If I were to express the goal of the Occupy movement, it would be this: redistribute the wealth hoarded by the wealthy few fairly. This simple statement has created space for those who want to effect this change from all walks of life except perhaps from that so-called 1%.

Some camps may (and should) remain the thriving alternative spaces they have become. At the same time, we must ask ourselves what the next set of tactics should be. Getting arrested for defending a piece of land that the cops will take back by any means necessary has to be weighed against the potential of the multitude of possibilities that exist for this movement. At the same time, should an Occupy camp choose to defend its turf, then the rest of the movement must do what it can to support that decision.

Occupy and the Homeless: Tragedy in Vermont

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/11/tragedy-in-vermont/

Good Guys and Bad Guys in Oakland

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/11/good-guys-and-bad-guys-in-oakland/

Writing Red

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/04/writing-red/

The Fight for the Postal Service: Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/28/wait-a-minute-mr-postman/

A Look at the Occupy Movement: In a Manner Neither Forceful Nor Foolish

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/21/in-a-manner-neither-forceful-or-foolish/