“Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” - Abbie Hoffman
In the coming months I will probably be talking about my dissertation a great deal. It is going to consume a vast amount of my brain space and time.
My question is: How did the tactics used by the antiwar New Left cause their collapse?
This is an interesting but ultimately complex question. No one has ever written anything that combines the three main groups I will be looking at; The Weather Underground, SDS and The Yippes.
The Weather Underground have fascinated me from the first time I studied them last year. Essentially a terrorist group, they set about trying to 'bring the war home' by blowing up government and other public sector buildings in response to the Vietnam War. They were originally called The Weathermen, but changed their name once they were forced to go underground when the FBI started hunting them.
SDS or Students for a Democratic Society were a campus based organisation that also protested the Vietnam War, but were eventually overtaken by the organisers of The Weathermen. Originally a peaceful organisation, they begun involving themselves in more confrontational methods of protest.
The Yippes were co-formed by Abbie Hoffman, a man who was partly insane (not literally), and partly genius. He once claimed if everyone focused enough they could levitate the Pentagon, yeah, you see what I mean. He was arrested for drug possession on many occasions and had numerous run ins with the police and FBI. He is awesome, I love him.
So there we are, a very short run down of something that will take up my life for the next six months. Here is the documentary that sparked my idea for the project. A frank look at The Weather Underground that uses old footage and modern days interviews with the members. It is ace. Everyone should watch it to see direct action in, well, action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV7GSff4fIA
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