Splicetoday

Writing
Feb 19, 2009, 11:28AM

A break in the weather

Less public than Bill Ayers, Machtinger was a founding member of the Weather Underground. His essay offers some much-needed context to the history-glossing offered by Ayers in the NYT last year.

Still, there are shades of grey:

Prior to the Townhouse disaster, the WU had been obsessed with critiquing bourgeois ambivalence or cowardice, which allegedly was holding people back from armed resistance, with little notion or fear that unrestrained militancy could become inhumane as well as dangerous for the movement. At the Flint conference in December 1969, Weather leaders evoked Charles Manson and attendees danced while making the sign of the fork, a Manson symbol.

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