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Weathermen:
avoiding the m
Building a
Nation
I
tis ta e of militarism
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1971
NIGHT EDITOR: DAVE CHUDWIN
Supporting AFSCME: Proving
the necessity of union labor
WHEN MEMBERS of Local 1583 of the
American Federation of State, Coun-
ty and Municipal Employes (AFSCME)
walked off their jobs, they anticipated
strong student support.
The very vocal student coalition to sup-
port AFSCME, the recent SGC supportive
motions, the Diag demonstrations and
the Fishbowl rally had all indicated that
students would mobilize on their behalf.
To the workers surprise, however, stu-
dent reaction has so far been apathetic
at best, and at times overtly hostile to
the workers' plight.
In the dormitories, for example, stu-
dent reaction was one of disgust and an-
noyance at the inconveniences imposed
by the strike. "I don't care what they do
as long as they keep serving meals," said
one freshman. Another echoed: "At least
this will give me a chance to catch up
on my homework."
But it is not such attitudes that hurt
the union most, rather it is the failure
of students around the University to un-
derstand the implications of scabbing, or
not refraining from doing the jobs nor-
mally performed by union employes.
IN ORDER for the strike to be success-
ful, it is'necessary that the union prove
its employes are necessary to the func-
tioning of the University. They must
prove' their worth to the University by
demonstrating that the University can-
not stay open without them.
To aid in this effort, it is therefore
essential that students not substitute
their labor for the striking workers. The
coalition to support the strike has de-
fined scabbing as "All work normally
done by AFSCME workers or which re-
quires association with AFSCME labor."
The list thus includes all dormitory,'
kitchen, snackbar, janitorial, bus driving
and maintenance work, and "any non-
union or union worker continuing to per-
form these duties during the strike shall
be considered a scab."
Yesterday, as many of these functions
continued to be performed, it seemed ob-
vious that student labor was contributing
to jobs normally done by union labor,
especially in the kitchens. There was in-
deed confusion among some of the stu-
dent workers, p'articularly because the
union had requested that students work
toward keeping the University open.
But the requests for students to go to
classes and to demand services from the
University normally p e r f o r m ed by
AFSCME was made only to make even
more apparent the necessity for AFSCME
workers. If students keep the University
open, therefore, they only defeat the en-
tire purpose of the strike. Students must
not only go to classes as normal, but must
be scrupulously careful to avoid perform-
ing extraordinary duties throughout the
strike.
SUCH ACTION is in the students' in-
terests as well as the workers,' for if
the dorms can function without AFSCME,
then certainly they can function, under
a tight budget, without non-essential stu-
dent help as well.
Furthermore, the students owe a debt
of support to the workers. During the
Black Action Movement strike for in-
creased m i n o r i t y admissions last year
AFSCME workers risked their jobs to help
the student sponsored action. Students
can lose nothing by supporting AFSCME
-the official housing policy is that any
student workers who chooses to honor
the strike will not be penalized in any
way.
With no risk students certainly owe
workers their support.: In the end, it is
only the administration's interest which
is served when students, provide scab
work.
Those who support the strike and its
implications for humane treatment of
University non-academic employes must
support it completely. Several days with-
out "services as usual" is a small sacrifice
for humanity.
-ROSE SUE BERSTEIN
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The fol-
lowing communication from Ber-
nadine Dohrn of the Weather-
man underground is reprinted
with permission of. Liberation
News Service, which received the
statement last month.
THIS communication does not
accompany a bombing or a spe-
cific action. We want to express
ourselves to the mass movement
not as military leaders but as
tribes at council. It has been nine
months since the townhouse ex-
plosion. In that time, the future o
our revolution has been changed
decisively. A growing illegal or-
ganization of young women and
men can live and fight and love
inside Babylon. The FBI can't
catch us; we've pierced their bul-
let-proof shield. But the town-
house forever destroyed our belief
that armed struggle is the only
real revolutionary struggle.
This is a communication for our
friends. We've sent it to those in
the underground media we feel
closest to.
IT IS TIME for the movement
to go out into the air, to organize,
to risk calling rallies and demon-
strations, to convince that mass
actions against the war and in
support of rebellions do make a
difference. Only acting openly, de-
nouncing Nixon, Agnew and Mit-
chell, and sharing our numbers
and wisdom together with young
sisters and brothers will blow
away the fear of the students at
Kent State, the smack of the
Lower East Side and the national
silence after the bombings of
North Vietnam.
The deaths of three friends
ended our military conception of
what we are doing. It took us
weeks of careful talking to redis-
cover our roots, to remember that
we had been turned-on to the pos-
sibilities of revolution by denying
the schools, the jobs, the death
relationships we were "educated"
for.
We went back to how we had
begun living with groups of friends
and found that this revolution
could leave intact the enslavement
of women if women did not fight
to the end and change it, to-
gether. And marijuana and LSD
and little money and awakening
to the Black revolution, the people
of the world. Unprogramming
ourselves; relearning Amerikan
history. The first demonstration
we joined; the first time we tried
to convince our friends. In the
wake of the townhouse we found
that we didn't know much about
each other's pasts-our talents,
our interests, our differences.
We had all come together
around the militancy of young
white people determined to reject
racism and U.S. exploitation of
the third world. Because we agreed
that an underground must be
built, we were able to disappear an
entire organization within hours
of the explosion. But it was clear
that more had been wrong with
our direction than technical in-
experience (always install a safe-
ty switch so you can turn it off
and on and a light to indicate if a
short circuit exists.)
DIANA, Teddy and Terry had
been in SDS for years. Diana and
Teddy had been teachers and both
spent weeks with the Vietnamese
"There's a bomb set to go off,.
dealt with the basic technological
considerations of safety. They had
not considered the future: either
what to do with the bombs if it
had not been possible to reach
their targets, or what to do in the
following days.
THIS TENDENCY to consider
only bombings or picking up the
gun as revolutionary, with the
glorification of the heavier the
better, we've called the military
error.
After the explosion, we called
off all armed . actions until such
time as we felt the causes had
been understood and acted upon.
We found that the alternative di-
rection already existed among us
and had been developed within
other collectives. We became aware
that a group of outlaws who are
isolated from the youthscommuni-
ties do not have a sense of what
is going on, cannot develop stra-
tegiesthat grow to include large
numbers of people, have become
"us", and "them."
It was a question of revolution-
ary culture. Either you saw the
youth culture that has been de-
veloping as bourgeois or decadent
and therefore to be treated as the
enemy of the revolution, or you
saw it as the forces which pro-
duced us, a culture that we were a
part of, a young and unformed
society (nation).
In the past months we have had
our minds blown by the possibili-
ties that exist for all of us to de-
velop the movement so that as
revolutionaries we change and
has been devastating. The world
knows that even the white youth
of Babylon will resort to force
to bring down imperialism.
The attacks on the Marin
County Court House and the Long
Island City Jail were because we
believe that the resistance and po-
litical leadership that is growing
within the prisons demands imme-
diate and mass support from
young people. For all the George
Jacksons, Afeni Shakurs and po-
tential revolutionaries in these
jails, the movement is the life-
line. They rebelled expecting mas-
sive support from outside.
Demonstrations in support of
prison revolts are a major re-
sponsibility of the movement, but
someone must call for them, put
out the leaflets, convince people
that it is a priority. We are so
used to feeling powerless that we
believe pig propaganda about the
death of the movement, or some
bad politics about rallies being
obsolete and bull????. A year ago,
when Bobby Seale was ripped off
in Chicago and the pmovement
didn't respond, it made it easier
for the pigs to murder Fred
Hampton. Now two Puerto Ricans
have been killed by tne pigs in the
New York jails, in retaliation for
the prisoner rebellion. What we do
or don't do makes a difference.
It will require courage and close
families of people to do this or-
ganizing. Twos and threes is not
a good form for anything - it
won't put out a newspaper, or-
ganize a conference on the ware or
do an armed action without get-
Illegal strike': Facing
the reality of union rights
Vietnamese but is cared for as a
prisoner. Nixon is now waging a
last ditch moral crusade around
the treatment of these Amerikan
war criminals to justify all his im-
pending atrocities.
THE demonstrations and strikes
following the rape of Indochina
and the murders at Jackson and
Kent last May showedareal power
and made a strong difference. New
people were reached and involved
and the government was put on
the defensive. This month t h e
bombings could have touched off
actions expressing our fury at
double-talking Laird and his crew
-war research and school admin-
istrators and travelling politicians
are within reach of our leaflets.
our rallies, our rocks.
Women's lib groups can find in
Nguyen Thi Binh a sister for
whom there is love and support
here. Her proposals for peace must
be explained and Bloody Dick's
plans to use more bombers to re-
place the GIs who are refusing to
fight exposed as the escalation
and genocide it is. Vietnamization
Indianization limited duration
protective reaction suppressive
fire horseshit. It seems that we
sometimes forget that in Viet-
nam strong liberated women and
men live and fight. Not as ab-
stract guerilla fighters, slugging
it out with U.S. imperialism in
Southeast Asia, but as people with
values and loves and parents and
children and hopes for the future.
People like Thai, a fighter in
the Peoples Liberation Armed
Forces who was in Hue during
Tet and at Hamburger Hill a year
later, or Than Tra, an organizer
in the mass women's organization
and the students' movement in the
cities, who had not seen her lover
in nine years. They travelled for
a month to come to Cuba to meet
with us. to sing and dance and ex-
plain how it is in Vietnam. There
is nothing brutal or macho about
runs and bombs in their hands.
We can't help thinking that if
more people knew about them, the
anti-War movement would never
have allowed Nixon and Agnew to
travel to so many cities during the
past election with only the freaks
at Kansas State and the people of
San Jose to make our anger at his
racism known to the world.
THE HEARTS of our people are
in a good place. Over the p a s t
months, freaks and hippies and
a lot of people in the movement
have begun to dig in for a long
winter. Kent and Augusta and
Jackson brought to all of -us a
coming of age, a seriousness about
how hard it will be to fight in'
Amerika and how long it will take
us to win. We are all beginning to
figure out what the Cubans meant
when they told us about the need
for new men and new women.
People have been experimenting
with everything about their lives.
fierce against the ways of the
white man. They have learned how
to survive tgether in the poison-
ed cities and how to live on the
road and the land. They've mov-
ed to the country and found new
ways to bring wild free children,
People have purified themselves
with organic food, fought for sex-
ual liberation, grown long hair.
People have reached out to each
other and learned that grass and
organic consciousness-expanding
drugs are weapons of the revolu- .
tion. Not mandatory for everyone,
not a gut-check, but a tool - a
Yacqui way of knowledge. But
while we sing of drugs the enemy
knows how great a threat our
youth culture is to the rule, and
they employ their allies - t h e
killer drugs smack and speed to 4
pacify and destroy young pople.
No revolutionecan succeed with-
out the youth, and we face that
possibility if we don't meet t h i s
threat.
People are forming new famil-
ies. Collectives have sprung up
from Seattle to Atlanta, Buffalo
to Vermont, and they are units of
people to trust each other both to
live together and to organize and
fight together. The revolution in-
volves our whole lives: we aren't.
part-time soldiers or secret revo-
lutionaries. It is our closeness and
the integration of our personal
lives with our revolutionary work
that will make it hard for under-
cover pigs to infiltrate collectives.
It's one thing for pigs to go to a
few meetings, even meetings of a
secret cell. It's much hardsr for
them to live in a family for long
without being detected.,
One of the most important
things that has, changed since
people began working in collect-
ives is the idea of what leadership
is. People - especially groups of
sisters - don't want to follow
academic ideologues or author-
tarians. From Fidel's speeches ani 4
Ho's poems we've understood how
leaders grow out of being deeply in
touch with movements. From
Crazy Horse and other great In-
dian chiefs we've learned that the
people who respect their tribe and
its needs are followed freely and
with love. The Lakotas laughed at
the whites' appointing one man
to be chief of all the Lakota trib-
es, as if people wouldn't still go
with whichever leader they
thought- was doing the r i g h t
thing!
MANY OF these changes have $
been pushed forward by women
both in collectives with men and
in all womens' collectives. Th e
enormous energy of our sisters
working together has not only
transformed the movement inter-
nally, but when it moves out it
is a movement that confuses and '
terrifies Amerika. When asked
about the sincerity of Mme. Binh's
proposals Ky says, "Never trust a
woman in politics". The pigs re-
fuse to believe that women can
write a statement or build a so-
phiscated explosive device or fight
in the streets. o
It's up to us to tell women in
Amerika about Mme. Binh in
Paris: about Pham Thi Quyen
fighter in the Saigon underground
and wife of Nguyen Van Tro;
about Mme. Nguyen ThiDnh,
leader of the first South V ie t-
namese Peoples Liberation Armed
Forces until the uprising in Ben
Tre in 1961: about. Celia San-
chez and Heidi Santamaria w ho
fought at Moncada and In the
H a v an a underground: about
Bernadette Devlin and Leila Kha-
led and Lolita Lebrun; and about
Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur, and
Mary Moyland here.
We can't wait to organize peo-
ple until we get ourselves togeth-
er any more than we can act
without being together. They
must go on at the same time. None
of these changes that people are
going through are rules and prin-
ciples. We are in many different
regions of the country and a r e
building different kinds of lead-
ers and organizations. It's n ot
coming together into one organi-
zation, or paper structure of fac-
tions or coalitions. It's a New
Nation that will grow out of the
struggles of the next year.
-WEATHER UNDERGROUND
THE UNIVERSITY'S recent opposition
to the strike by maintenance and
service employes on the grounds that "a
strike by public employes is illegal" un-
der c u r r e n t Michigan statutes seems
based on a questionable rationale.
For supporters of a ban on public em-
ploye strikes have generally argued that
any strike in the public sector causes a
breakdown in emergency services. While
this may sometimes be true, it certainly
does not provide a basis for denying pub-
lic employes the right to.strike any more
than such an argument ought to be used
with reference to the private sector.
Many strikes in the private sector could
easily have consequences as disastrous as
a public worker's strike. For example, a
walkout that cripples a commuter rail-
road and prevents workers from reaching
their jobs causes as much of an emer-
gency as a strike by public school teach-
ers that prevents c h i l d r e n from go-
ing to school. Similarly, s t r i k e s. by
Teamsters can prevent the delivery of
perishable foods, medical and industrial
supplies and a rather general breakdown
in services, especially in a large city.
HERE THIS argument hardly seems ap-
plicable, since the chief possibility
for damage is to the workers in the event
of a lengthy strike. Since contract talks
broke off yesterday morning, no negotiat-
ing sessions have been held and none are
scheduled. The union appears to be wait-
ing for the University to seek an injunc-
tion while the University apparently
hopes that economic pressure on the
workers will produce a settlement.
And the University's plans may have
some substance, for AFSCME has no
strike fund. This will be especially diffi-
cult for workers here, since union mem-
bers have for years received such min-
strike, and this will prove damaging be-
cause the low wages of all workers have
kept them from saving money.
UNFORTUNATELY, such a situation is
generally ignored by the callous pub-
lic, concerned only with its own con-
venience. This is reflected in another and
slightly more complex argument com-
monly used against public strikes.
It maintains that since the government
is not trying to make a profit, negotia-
tions with the government are really
talks with a public which ought to be
kept in mind by the workers. But pro-
ponents of this "sanctity of public em-
ployment" concept only ignore the needs
of government workers.
Like their counterparts in private in-
dustry, government employes must live
with inflation and are entitled to im-
provements in their wages and bene-
fits.
The nature of the student support for
the strike thus seems somewhat depend-
ent on the success of the University in
outwaiting the workers. In the short run'
students must obviously demand enough
services that the University cannot pos-
sible remain open and withstand a pro-
longed strike.
In the long run, however, the work-
ers will certainly need economic as well
as moral support. Given an extended
strike, dormitories could thus follow
the example of Alice Lloyd in giving
AFSCME members in their building an
interest-free loan. Subsequently, o t h e r
forms of aid such as clothing collections
and food donations might well become
necessary.
T H E S E MEASURES, of course, might
well entail unexpected sacrifices from
students. However, given the fact that
"We became aware that a group of out hiws who are isolated from the
youth communities do not have a sense of what is going on, cannot de-
velop strategies that grow to include hirge numbers of people, have become
'us' and 'theni' .,. . People become revolutionaries in the schools, in the
army, in prisons, in communes and on the streets. Not in an underground
cell."
.....**.......*.*.*.*............... ......... ...... ......... .y::::::;':.4 .v".: ::."::: :":::::::::':.".;::.^:..mas s a m m m m a
in Cuba. Terry had been a com-
munity organizer in Cleveland and
at Kent; Diana had worked in
Guatamala. They fought in the
Days of Rage in Chicago. Every-
one was angered by the murder of
Fred Hampton. Because their col-
lective began to define armed
struggle as the only legitimate
form of revolutionary action, they
did not believe that there was any
revolutionary motion among white
youth. It seemed like black and
third world people were going up
against Amerikan imperialism
alone.
Two weeks before the townhouse
explosion, four members of this
group had firebombed Judge Mur-
tagh's house in New York as an
action of support for the Panther
21, whose trial was just beginning.
To many people, this was a very
good action. Within the group,
however, the feeling developed
that because this action had not
done anything to hurt the pigs
materially it wasn't very import-
ant. So within two weeks time,
this group had moved from fire-
bombing to anti-personnel bombs.
Many people in the collective
did not want to be involved in the
shape the cultural revolution. We
are in a position to change it for
the better. Men who are chauvin-
ists can change and become revo-
lutionaries who no longer embrace
any part of the culture that stands
in the way of freedom of women.
Hippies and students who fear
black power should check out Rap
Brown's Die Nigger Die and
George Jackson's writings. We can
continue to liberate and subvert
attempts to rip off the vulture.
People become revolutionaries in
the schools, in the army, in pris-
ons, in communes and on the
streets. Not in an underground
cell.
BECAUSE we are fugitives, we
could not go near the movement.
That proved to be a blessing be-
cause we've been everywhere else.
We meet as many people as we
can with our new identities; we've
watched the TV news of our
bombings with neighbors and
friends who don't know that we're
Weatherpeople. We are often
afraid but we take our fear for
granted now, not trying to act
tough. What we once thought
would have to be some zombie-
ting caught. Our power is that
together we are mobile, decen-
tralized. flexible and we come into
every home where there are child-
ren who catch the music of free-
dom and life.
The women and men in jails are
POWs held by the United States.
When an Amerikan pilot is shot
down while bombing a North Viet-
namese village, he is often sur-
rounded. by thousands of people
who have just seen their family
and homes destroyed by the bombs
he was delivering. Yet the man
is not attacked and killed by the
1
Letters to The Daily
Support AFSCME
To the Daily:
THE WHITE PANTHER party
stands in firm solidarity with the
striking University employes
whose righteous demands h a v e
been consistently rejected by the
plantation bosses who run the
U~niversity in the interests of the
These demands are modest at
best and must be met by the Uni-
versity. We call on our brothers
and sisters on campus to support
the AFSCME strike by honoring
the picket lines, refusing to let
themselves be duped by the ad-
ministration into working as scabs
and strike-breakers and bysac-
tively participating in the strike
ican ruling class which the Uni-
versity is designed to serve.
The same tactics used against
revolutionary youth and black and
other colonial peoples by t b e
power structure now were perfect-
ed during years of repression of
the American workng class move-
ment.We have to recognize not
only our common cause with op-