Former members of the Weathermen, a radical anti-war group, will be on campus today and Saturday as a part of a two-day program that includes workshops on peace and social activism, a discussion and a showing of the Academy Award-nominated documentary “The Weather Underground.”
The film will be shown in 180 PLC today at 7 p.m. The discussion following the film will look at social activism during the Vietnam War and how it relates to young people post-Sept. 11.
The first of Saturday’s workshops, sponsored by the UO Survival Center, will run from 10 a.m. until noon with the theme of “Looking Backward: Lessons for Activists from the Antiwar Movement.” The second workshop, entitled “Looking Forward: Building Progressive Unity and Effectiveness in the Post 9/11 World,” runs from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The documentary, by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, chronicles the Weathermen’s emergence and impact in a world shaken by war and revolution. It documents the Weathermen, who got their name from a Bob Dylan lyric, as they split from the larger, more peaceful Students for a Democratic Society.
“The Weathermen isolated themselves,” former member Carolyn Knox said. “We lost touch with the bigger movement.”
The Weathermen were responsible for bombing numerous government buildings and monuments during the ’60s and ’70s to protest the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War and other policies. Their ultimate goal, according to Mark Rudd, a leader of the movement and principal figure in the film, was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
“Our government was murdering 3 to 5 million people.” Rudd said in the documentary. “This revelation was more than we could handle.”
The discussion and workshops will feature younger activists as well as short presentations by former members of the Weathermen.
“The film and discussion are especially aimed at today’s younger activists who the filmmakers have discovered have very little knowledge of this chapter of the history of American protest and dissent,” Weathermen representative Steve Hecker said in a press release.
Rudd, Knox and former Weathermen members David Powell and Robin Marks-Fife are scheduled to speak during the discussions.