Weather Underground

ON OCTOBER 28, 2013, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Bill Ayers, former member of Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground and author of the memoirs *Fugitive Days* (2001) and Public Enemy (2013). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. The Weather Underground symbol on the cover of *Prairie Fire*. About the letters to police and journalists that would accompany Weather Underground bombings in the 1970s, Ayers writes in *Fugitive Days*, 'Each letter had a logo hand-drawn across the page -- our trademark thick and colorful rainbow with a slash of angry lightning cutting through it. [Read More]

_ON OCTOBER 17, 2010, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Max Elbaum, author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che, to discuss the New Communist Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. The interview was aired during two episodes of Radical Minds on WHPK – FM Chicago, on October 26 and November 9. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview._ Spencer A. Leonard: To start off in the broadest possible way, how and when did the New Communist Movement emerge? [Read More]

_ON NOVEMBER 9, 2010, Platypus hosted the public forum, “Rethinking the New Left,” moderated by Spencer A. Leonard. The panel consisted of Osha Neumann, a former member of the New York anarchist group in the 1960s, Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers; Mark Rudd, former member and national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later a member of the Weather Underground; Tim Wohlforth, founder and national secretary of the Young Socialist Alliance in 1959; and Alan Spector, a full-time organizer for SDS for more than five years in the 1960s. [Read More]

A panel discussion held on May 29, 2010 at the second Platypus International Convention at SAIC. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Greg Gabrellas Pam C. Nogales C. Spencer A. Leonard Description The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the rise of a new militancy and sectarianism on the Left. Whether in the case of the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the Gay Liberation Front, or many other currents on the Left, developments from that time did much to shape the New Left’s legacy as it comes down to the present. [Read More]