Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Dohrn was one of the leaders of the Weathermen (a.k.a: the Weather Underground), a band of radical students and student-aged activists who emerged from the antiwar group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Weatherman won the SDS elections in 1968 and then dissolved SDS, saying, “We've smashed the pig.” The Weathermen are responsible for multiple terrorist acts, including the bombings of the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, Ft. Dix and office buildings in various U.S. cities. In fact, the group claimed credit for 12 terrorist bombings between 1970 and 1974 alone; and while no innocent civilians were killed:
1. They planned to blow up a social dance at Fort Dix. The bomb went off and blew three of the bomb builders up.
2. The police are investigating the bombing murders of two policemen attributed to Weatherman.
In other words, if no innocents were killed, it certainly wasn’t for lack of effort on the Weathermen’s part. The group’s lawlessness was hardly limited to setting explosives, as they also helped plan and execute the escape of Harvard professor and LSD advocate Timothy Leary from federal prison in 1970, furnishing him with a fake passport and smuggling him to a Black Panthers training camp in Algeria.
Bernardine Dohrn, tellingly enough, helped set the tone for the Weathermen’s militant agenda. She was arrested for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest during an attempt to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and even spent time on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. In 1969, shortly after members of the Manson Family committed the brutal Tate/LaBianca murders, Dohrn, speaking before an audience of SDS members, exclaimed, “Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.” Dohrn now claims to have made the remark in jest, “mocking violence in America.” Her recent characterization, however, injects some irony to her tale, as the Weathermen did their level best to increase the amount of violence in America during their heyday.
Ayers reportedly described the Weather Underground’s credo as such: “[k]ill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at.”
Dohrn, for her part, failed to appear in court for her assault charges in Chicago, and opted instead to become, along with Ayers, a fugitive from justice, spending a decade on the lam. During that time, she was indicted for inciting a riot, and both she and Ayers were charged with a conspiracy to bomb police stations and other government buildings. The charges against Dohrn and Ayers were later dropped, not because of their innocence, but due to the government’s bungling of the case. Dohrn resurfaced in 1980, surrendering to the police and pleading guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, for which she received 3 years probation and was ordered to pay a fine of $1500.
Two years later, Dohrn served seven months in jail for refusing to testify in front of the grand jury investigating a Brinks truck robbery in which another member of the Weathermen, Susan Rosenberg allegedly drove the getaway car. Dohrn chose not to cooperate with the government, claiming that the grand jury system was “illegal” and “coercive.”
The manager of Broadway Baby at that time? Bernardine Dohrn.
The place was also a front for fake IDs and passports.
The Chicago Tribune's John Kass brings more to the story of the Weather Underground, and its two most famous alunmi, unrepentant ex-terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Kass picks up the tale at a relatively recent period, the late 1970s and early 1980s, and brings into the mix the former Manhattan children's boutique, Broadway Baby.
So let's wait until Labor Day, when Broadway Baby may become a catchphrase. Here's why: According to a 1982 New York Times report, Broadway Baby was implicated in an investigation of a series of violent armed robberies in New York—netting more than $2 million over a two-year span—committed by former Black Panthers and Weather Underground members in the early '80s.
Their aim? Global revolution, naturally. They needed cash, but the rich white parents weren't in a giving mood. So their privileged offspring grabbed guns, pointed them at the faces of the working man and, sometimes, they pulled the trigger.
At Broadway Baby, customers often paid by check and used driver's licenses for identification. On Dec. 28, 1979, information from two customer files was used to apply for two driver's licenses at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. The fraudulent licenses were used to rent getaway cars for the gang.
The manager of Broadway Baby at that time? Bernardine Dohrn. Invetigators at the time pointed their fingers at Dohrn, who is now a law professor without a license to practice law, at Northwestern University.
Dohrn and her husband, fellow academic William Ayers, turned themselves into authorities in 1980, but the rump of the Weather Underground committed its final violent act in 1981, a Brinks trick robbery that ended up with the deaths of two police officers and a security guard.