socialist, Dohrn took a moment, looked the man square in the eyes, and memorably replied, “I consider myself a revolutionary communist.”
Together Dohrn and JJ became a force of nature in the SDS universe; years later, friends would term their loud bouts of sex “animal mating.” From the beginning, they had their eyes on seizing overall control of SDS. They were stars, and that summer they took their newfound fame and ambitions to Chicago, which was the site not only of SDS’s national headquarters but of that August’s Democratic National Convention, which drew thousands of protesters into pitched battles with Chicago police. Their apartment, near downtown, became the epicenter of SDS politics, especially for those who shared JJ’s apocalyptic views. Many of the brightest SDSers, including several who would achieve prominence in Weatherman, swung by that autumn to crash, drop acid, and ogle Dohrn as they listened to JJ’s rambling, amphetamine-fueled soliloquies on Che and Debray and every other revolutionary topic imaginable. One was Jeff Jones, a handsome Southern California kid who looked—and some thought acted—like a dim-witted blond surfer. Another was Howie Machtinger, a scrappy University of Chicago PhD candidate. An SDS contingent from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was especially significant. It was led by Jim Mellen, a thirty-five-year-old activist; his protégé Bill Ayers, a lippy, hedonistic rich kid whose father was chairman of Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison; Ayers’s girlfriend, Diana Oughton; and their close friend Terry Robbins, a wiry, intense SDS ambassador at Kent State.
As this group coalesced around JJ and Dohrn in the winter of 1968−69, political violence was spreading on campuses across the country, much of it fueled by the Vietnam War’s escalation and the new Nixon administration’s vow to crack down on student protesters. By one count, incidents of bombings and arson, mostly Molotov cocktails thrown in the night, had increased to forty-one that fall, a 300 percent rise from the spring. ROTC facilities burned in Delaware, Texas, Berkeley, and Oregon and at Washington University in St. Louis, where an SDSer was convicted of arson. Campus buildings were bombed at Georgetown, the University of Michigan, New York University, and four California colleges. When the ROTC building at the University of Washington burned, students danced by the light of the flames, chanting, “This is number one / And the fun has just begun / Burn it down, burn it down, burn it down.” For the first time underground newspapers began publishing instructions on the making of Molotov cocktails. Homemade bombing manuals began circulating at SDS meetings and rock concerts. A rash of bombings occurred in Detroit that winter; small devices exploded five times outside the city halls in Oakland and San Francisco.
To apocalyptic revolutionaries, it was a sign of the coming conflict. In Chicago, JJ and Dohrn were emboldened. By the spring, when they relocated to a spartan apartment on North Winthrop Avenue—JJ, it was said, had demolished their furniture in an LSD rampage—their circle had begun to think of themselves as the future of SDS and of the Movement. They planned to run for all the top leadership positions at the SDS convention that June, but to win they would need to defeat a set of rivals who were, if anything, even more strident and doctrinaire than they: a hard-core Maoist group called Progressive Labor, known as PL. As a statement of principles and a way of contrasting themselves with PL, they began writing what would become a defining, sixteen-thousand-word manifesto: the infamous “Weatherman paper.” Chewing amphetamines like gum, JJ banged out most of it on a typewriter in the kitchen, passing around pages for the others to review. When they were done, he and ten others, including Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, and Bill Ayers, signed their names.
One
Together Dohrn and JJ became a force of nature in the SDS universe; years later, friends would term their loud bouts of sex “animal mating.” From the beginning, they had their eyes on seizing overall control of SDS. They were stars, and that summer they took their newfound fame and ambitions to Chicago, which was the site not only of SDS’s national headquarters but of that August’s Democratic National Convention, which drew thousands of protesters into pitched battles with Chicago police. Their apartment, near downtown, became the epicenter of SDS politics, especially for those who shared JJ’s apocalyptic views. Many of the brightest SDSers, including several who would achieve prominence in Weatherman, swung by that autumn to crash, drop acid, and ogle Dohrn as they listened to JJ’s rambling, amphetamine-fueled soliloquies on Che and Debray and every other revolutionary topic imaginable. One was Jeff Jones, a handsome Southern California kid who looked—and some thought acted—like a dim-witted blond surfer. Another was Howie Machtinger, a scrappy University of Chicago PhD candidate. An SDS contingent from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was especially significant. It was led by Jim Mellen, a thirty-five-year-old activist; his protégé Bill Ayers, a lippy, hedonistic rich kid whose father was chairman of Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison; Ayers’s girlfriend, Diana Oughton; and their close friend Terry Robbins, a wiry, intense SDS ambassador at Kent State.
As this group coalesced around JJ and Dohrn in the winter of 1968−69, political violence was spreading on campuses across the country, much of it fueled by the Vietnam War’s escalation and the new Nixon administration’s vow to crack down on student protesters. By one count, incidents of bombings and arson, mostly Molotov cocktails thrown in the night, had increased to forty-one that fall, a 300 percent rise from the spring. ROTC facilities burned in Delaware, Texas, Berkeley, and Oregon and at Washington University in St. Louis, where an SDSer was convicted of arson. Campus buildings were bombed at Georgetown, the University of Michigan, New York University, and four California colleges. When the ROTC building at the University of Washington burned, students danced by the light of the flames, chanting, “This is number one / And the fun has just begun / Burn it down, burn it down, burn it down.” For the first time underground newspapers began publishing instructions on the making of Molotov cocktails. Homemade bombing manuals began circulating at SDS meetings and rock concerts. A rash of bombings occurred in Detroit that winter; small devices exploded five times outside the city halls in Oakland and San Francisco.
To apocalyptic revolutionaries, it was a sign of the coming conflict. In Chicago, JJ and Dohrn were emboldened. By the spring, when they relocated to a spartan apartment on North Winthrop Avenue—JJ, it was said, had demolished their furniture in an LSD rampage—their circle had begun to think of themselves as the future of SDS and of the Movement. They planned to run for all the top leadership positions at the SDS convention that June, but to win they would need to defeat a set of rivals who were, if anything, even more strident and doctrinaire than they: a hard-core Maoist group called Progressive Labor, known as PL. As a statement of principles and a way of contrasting themselves with PL, they began writing what would become a defining, sixteen-thousand-word manifesto: the infamous “Weatherman paper.” Chewing amphetamines like gum, JJ banged out most of it on a typewriter in the kitchen, passing around pages for the others to review. When they were done, he and ten others, including Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, and Bill Ayers, signed their names.
One
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