Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity.

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. By Dan Berger (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006. 432 pp. $20.00).

Recent treatments of the Weather Underground, including the 2002 theatrical release of an Oscar-nominated documentary by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, have introduced a whole new generation to the organization and its historical significance. Recent historical works devoted to the topic, such as Jeremy Varon's Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (2004) and Thai Jones' A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience (2004), have heightened this interest. In addition, numerous recent novels also address the theme. Among these works are Liza Nelson's Playing Botticelli (2000), Neil Gordon's The Company You Keep (2003), Jay Cantor's Great Neck (2003), Russell Banks' The Darling (2004).

Since readers have become captivated again with the Weathermen and their history, the recent release of Dan Berger's fully researched history of the Weather Underground is well timed in its efforts to inform such a resurgence of interest. What distinguishes this account is the care taken to conduct oral histories with many individuals who participated in landmark events; Berger interviewed both WUO members and other figures for the purpose of adding depth and reflection to his study. Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity is a thorough-going study of the organization's origin, purpose, and history. Berger combines previously available source material with original field research to develop his portrait of Weatherman/Weather Underground Organization.

Berger makes no secret of the nature of his interest in the Weather Underground. He takes an explicitly activist stance and approach to his subject. This activist orientation shapes both his research process and his writing product. In a post-9/11 era, Berger takes pains to distinguish among militancy, militarism, and terrorism--suggesting that the militancy of the Weather Underground should not be dismissed as mere terrorism. Berger clearly believes today's activists can find valuable guidance in this particular chapter from the history of protest in the United States, and he describes the Weather Underground as, among other things, a "model for white people's participation in antiracist movements." (273) This is not to say that Berger overlooks the group's shortcomings. For example, he laments the organization's consistent "hostility to feminism." (292) Despite the important contributions of feminists to WUO, both aboveground and below, there was considerable conflict within the group's membership about incorporating anti-sexism alongside anti-racism and anti-imperialism within Weather's priorities. Furthermore, Berger discusses the way Weather's decision to go underground, however strategic, "complicated notions of democracy" within the group. (290) The secrecy of life underground left most members informed only on a 'need to know' basis, rendering broad-based dialogue about goals and deliberation over methods nearly impossible.

Nonetheless, Berger finds it useful to explore the "lessons and legacies" of the Weather Underground. (269) Indeed, Outlaws in America takes its narrative frame from a series of interviews with a key WUO member, David Gilbert, conducted during visiting hours in prison. In this way, Gilbert's story functions as a lens through which to see the motives behind involvement in groups such as the Weather Underground. Berger's framing device gives a human face to the organization, and Gilbert proves to be characteristically articulate about the organization's history and insightful about its relevance to issues today. Gilbert's incarceration also dramatizes two of Weather's favorite causes--the critique of the prison industrial complex and the call for release of America's political prisoners.

With any study of this kind, in which Berger must piece together fragments of an embattled and later underground existence, there are bound to be points in historical dispute, if not debate. For example, some might challenge his contention that the "Weather Underground never had more than a few score members." (288) Other disparities may be less contentious, such as the differing testimony regarding specific elements of the organizational history. A case in point is the uncertainty regarding which Weather member was hung by his feet out a window by the Chicago Police. Berger identifies Robert Roth as the person in question, while Bill Ayers' 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days suggests it was Terry Robbins. (274) (1) At this point, however, it may be more important to remember that Chicago Police felt they could dangle citizens out windows with impunity than it is to decide conclusively which person was the object of a given attack. Presumably, it could as easily have been any member of the group. Despite his thoroughness, Berger does not probe some lingering questions, such as the voices behind pseudonyms used in Weather publishing (examples include "Celia Sojourn" and "Joe Reed") in publishing. Such issues await further historical inquiry. Berger's book includes backmatter helpful to the reader/researcher, including a WUO timeline, detailed notes, bibliography, and index. He also appends capsule biographies of his named interviewees, with the exception of Terry Bisson, Rob McBride, and Claude Marks. There are some other slightly curious omissions. Berger's book mentions only briefly some of the individuals who have written about their experiences with WUO [such as the late Susan Stern, who authored With the Weathermen: The Personal Journal of a Revolutionary Woman (1975)], and does not even index some Weather members who have granted substantive interviews in the past [such as Brian Flanagan, who figures prominently in the Green/Siegel film].

Berger's book should appeal to readers who share his enthusiasm for the subject, especially youth who seek in his case-study a "toolkit that new generations can use to develop both a vision of a better society and the means of creating it." (302-303) Those with a distaste for histories written from an activist point of view will likely take exception to the ardor of Berger's engagement with the group and its goals. Those looking for a short version of WUO's history would do well to go directly to Berger's central interviewee by either viewing the Gilbert interview provided as an extra on the "Weather Underground" DVD or by reading Gilbert's pamphlet, SDS/WUO: Students For a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground Organization (2002). Those preferring reprints of Weather treatises may now consult a book-length collection of reissued material in Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones' Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiques of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974 (2006). Their book will offer three rare and out of print Weather publications: Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, Sing a Battle Song, and The Weather Eye: Communiques from the Weather Underground.

On balance, Berger does an exceptional job; Outlaws of America is by far the most precise and comprehensive historical account of the Weather Underground's history. It is one of just two book-length studies with this focus, taking its place beside Ron Jacobs' The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (1997). In Jacobs' own review of Outlaws in America, he praises Berger's research, noting that and how his own earlier work had been constrained by the climate of suspicion and the consequent reluctance of participants to be forthcoming in their responses. (2) Jacobs credits the wider and more frank involvement by Weather interviewees in Berger's book to the success of the Green/Siegel documentary and the historical groundwork Jacobs and others set in place. One of Berger's considerable strengths as a writer is the care he takes to situate his discussion of WUO in the context of other groups, especially those with which Weather expressed solidarity. He strives to conceptualize the Weather Underground as part of a larger network of organizations whose members sought to function as agents of social change and global justice.

Rather than presenting WUO as an historical artifact, Berger invokes the group as an historical precedent for today's aspiring activists. In this sense, Outlaws of America makes companionable reading to the work Berger co-edited last year with Kenyon Farrow and Weatherkid Chesa Boudin, Letters From Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out (2005). (3) Theirs is a volume devoted to giving voice to the next wave of youth activism. As Berger observes, "History, too, is a hopeful weapon, if you use it right--which is why education has been central to freedom struggles from time immemorial." (4) Outlaws in America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity represents Berger's affirmation of that premise.

Linda S. Watts

University of Washington, Bothell 

ENDNOTES

1. Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Boston, 2001), 177.

2. Ron Jacobs, "Volunteers of America: A Review of Dan Berger's Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity," Alternative Press Review (February 25, 2006), available at http://www.altpr.org/.

3. This title appears to be a play on, or even reply to, the title of a book written by one of the Weather Underground's most vocal detractors, Todd Gitlin: Letters to a Young Activist (New York, 2003). Boudin is the son of Weather Underground members David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, and was raised by two founding members of Weatherman, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, when his parents went to prison.

4. Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin, and Kenyon Farrow, eds., Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out (New York, 2005), 230.