[scottw]

60's....70's....80's....when exactly did they change or rehabilitate Spence? you know...if these people were right-wingers....all of the hair on Janet Napolitano's back would be standing straight up.....


Prairie Fire 1974

With the help from Clayton Van Lydegraf, the Weather Underground sought a more Marxist-Leninist ideological approach to the post-Vietnam reality.[99]:68 The leading members of the Weather Underground (Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and Celia Sojourn) collaborated on ideas and published their manifesto: Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism.[15] The name came from a quote by Mao Zedong, "a single spark can set a prairie fire." By the summer of 1974, five thousand copies had surfaced in coffee houses and bookstores across America. Leftist newspapers praised the manifesto.[100]

Abbie Hoffman publicly praised Prairie Fire and believed every American should be given a copy.[101] The manifesto’s influence initiated the formation of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee in several American cities. Hundreds of above-ground activists helped further the new political vision of the Weather Underground.[100] Among other things, the manifesto called for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and the establishment of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat as a means to achieving its social goals:


"The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.... Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit.... Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted.... It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle. Without mass struggle there can be no revolution. Without armed struggle there can be no victory."[102]

Essentially, after the 1969 failure of the Days of Rage to involve thousands of youth in massive street fighting, Weather renounced most of the Left and decided to operate as an isolated underground group. Prairie Fire urged people to never "dissociate mass struggle from revolutionary violence." To do so, claimed Weather, was to do the state's work. Just as in 1969-70, Weather still refused to renounce revolutionary violence for "to leave people unprepared to fight the state is to seriously mislead them about the inevitable nature of what lies ahead." However, the decision to build only an underground group caused the Weather Underground to lose sight of its commitment to mass struggle and made future alliances with the mass movement difficult and tenuous.[99]:76–77

By 1974, Weather had recognized this shortcoming and in Prairie Fire detailed a different strategy for the 1970s which demanded both mass and clandestine organizations. The role of the clandestine organization would be to build the "consciousness of action" and prepare the way for the development of a people's militia. Concurrently, the role of the mass movement (i.e., above ground Prairie Fire collective) would include support for, and encouragement of, armed action. Such an alliance would, according to Weather, "help create the 'sea' for the guerrillas to swim in." [99]:76–77

According to Bill Ayers in the late 1970s, the Weatherman group further split into two factions — the May 19th Communist Organization and the "Prairie Fire Collective" — with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers in the latter. The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding and establishing an above ground revolutionary mass movement.