Vietnam War Weathermen

During this time the members of SDS created a direct-action group called The Weather Underground Organization, better known as The Weathermen with the slogan from a Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with a quote “You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows”, their leader was Mark Rudd, a former member of SDS and Vice-president of RYM. With these former members of SDS who joined the Weathermen like, Karen Ashley, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Terry Robbins, Steve Tappis and many others. They felt that this was desperate decision because of the slow efforts to stop the Vietnam war and bring the U.S soldiers home. Also, the Weathermen felts that they needed to fight the internal force (the police department) with violence because, since 1965 the soul and body of these movements were student
activities and now they’re just frustrated with the lack of progress in the efforts of stopping the war. The Weathermen predict thousands of young militant citizens would come and protest violating against the system (the government).
But when the group showed up to Lincoln Park on October 8, there was on estimate of three hundred people represent for the protest. The Weathermen and other protesters were wearing football helmets and shoulder pads running through the streets with weapons, with the goal of attacking the federal and local government buildings, at the end of the first night two protesters were shot and forty-five people arrested. The second night of “Days of Rage”, the police and officials give a statement that the Weathermen and protesters are dangerous and, that they will use violence to restore peace and control to the city. Many other protest groups saw the Days of Rage and the Weathermen as very precarious and risky for them, because they felt that the Weathermen were resorting to terror-violence to complete their mission. On October 11, 1969, was the last day for the “Days of Rage” protest, the Weathermen gather at the Lincoln Park police statue, that they destroyed earlier that week of
protest. They walked into downtown and started attack police officers and government officials on the street and it escalated into street fights between protesters and police officers, an example of the violence that occurred that day was when a protester broke the neck of Richard Elrod, a local attorney of Chicago and later became a judge for Cook County. At the same time on the other side of city, SDS formed a peace protest/march where, thousands of workers and students gather for the same reasons as the Weathermen, but without the use of violent. The “Days of Rage” wasn’t very successful because it was missing the whole point of the peace movement and they used this an outlet to express their frustrated and to rebel against the authorities.