You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows (1969)

About this record

The founding political document of the Weather Underground Organization, presented at the June 18, 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) National Convention in Chicago by the faction that called itself the Revolutionary Youth Movement. Co-authored by Karen Ashley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd, and Steve Tappis. The paper takes its title from a line in Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and lays out the analysis of U.S. imperialism, white-skin privilege, anti-racist solidarity with Black liberation, and the necessity of armed struggle that would shape both the Weather Underground's 1970s clandestine practice and — through the 1974 Prairie Fire manifesto — the above-ground Prairie Fire Organizing Committee that succeeded it.