Editing Weather Underground (section)

===SDS Convention, December 1969===
After the Days of Rage riots the Weatherman held the last of its National Council meetings from December 26 to December 31, 1969, in [[Flint, Michigan]]. The meeting, dubbed the [[Flint War Council|"War Council"]] by the 300 people who attended, adopted Jacobs' call for violent revolution.{{sfn|Berger|2006}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}} Dohrn opened the conference by telling the delegates they needed to stop being afraid and begin the "armed struggle." Over the next five days, the participants met in informal groups to discuss what "going underground" meant, how best to organize collectives, and justifications for violence. In the evening, the groups reconvened for a mass "wargasm"—practicing [[karate]], engaging in physical exercise,<ref>{{Cite book|title=English-Turkmen political dictionary|author=Хатамова, Р. К. (Розыхал Кабуловна)|oclc=290644615}}</ref> singing songs, and listening to speeches.{{sfn|Berger|2006}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}}{{sfn|Varon|2004}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}}{{sfn|Jacobs|1997}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}}<ref name="ThaiJones">Jones, ''A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience,'' 2004.</ref><ref name="Elbaum">Elbaum, ''Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che,'' 2002.</ref>

The War Council ended with a major speech by John Jacobs. Jacobs condemned the "pacifism" of white middle-class American youth, a belief which he claimed they held because they were insulated from the violence which afflicted blacks and the poor. He predicted a successful revolution, and declared that youth were moving away from passivity and apathy and toward a new high-energy culture of "depersonalization" brought about by drugs, sex, and armed revolution.{{sfn|Berger|2006}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}}{{sfn|Varon|2004}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}}{{sfn|Jacobs|1997}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}}<ref name="ThaiJones"/><ref name="Elbaum"/> "We're against everything that's 'good and decent' in honky America," Jacobs said in his most commonly quoted statement. "We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mother's nightmare."{{sfn|Varon|2004|p=160}}
Two major decisions came out of the War Council. The first was to go underground and to begin a violent, armed struggle against the state without attempting to organize or mobilize a broad swath of the public. The Weather Underground hoped to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country.{{sfn|Sale|1974}}{{Page needed|date=November 2024}} In fact, the Weathermen eventually created only three significant, active collectives; one in California, one in the Midwest, and one in New York City. The New York City collective was led by Jacobs and Terry Robbins, and included [[Ted Gold]], [[Kathy Boudin]], [[Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson|Cathy Wilkerson]] (Robbins's girlfriend), and [[Diana Oughton]].<ref name="Wilkerson"/> Jacobs was one of Robbins's biggest supporters, and pushed the Weathermen to let Robbins be as violent as he wanted to be. The Weatherman national leadership agreed, as did the New York City collective.<ref>Good, "Brian Flanagan Speaks," ''Next Left Notes,'' 2005.</ref> The collective's first target was Judge John Murtagh, who was overseeing the trial of the "Panther 21".<ref name="Bingham2016">{{cite book|author=Clara Bingham|title=Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3ZhVCgAAQBAJ&pg=PR17|date=2016|publisher=Random House Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-679-64474-3|pages=17–}}</ref>

The second major decision was the dissolution of SDS. After the summer of 1969 fragmentation of SDS, Weatherman's adherents explicitly claimed themselves the ''real leaders'' of SDS and retained control of the SDS National Office. Thereafter, any leaflet, label, or logo bearing the name "Students for a Democratic Society" (SDS) was in fact the views and politics of Weatherman, not of the slate elected by Progressive Labor. Weatherman contained the vast majority of former SDS National Committee members, including [[Mark Rudd]], [[David Gilbert (activist)|David Gilbert]], [[Vernon T. Grizzard (SDS VP)|Vernon T. Grizzard]] and Bernardine Dohrn. The group, while small, was able to commandeer the mantle of SDS and all of its membership lists, but with Weatherman in charge there was little or no support from local branches or members of the organization,<ref>Pages 184 and 190, Rudd, Mark, ''My Life with SDS and the Weathermen Underground'', William Morrow (2009), hardcover, 326 pages, {{ISBN|978-0-06-147275-6}}</ref><ref>Pages 127 and 136 in the essay "1969" by Carl Oglesby in ''Weatherman'', edited by Harold Jacobs, Ramparts Press (1970), trade paperback, 520 pages, {{ISBN|0-671-20725-3}} {{ISBN|978-0-671-20725-0}} Hardcover: {{ISBN|0-87867-001-7}} {{ISBN|978-0-87867-001-7}}</ref> and local chapters soon disbanded. At the War Council, the Weathermen had decided to close the SDS National Office, ending the major campus-based organization of the 1960s which at its peak was a mass organization with 100,000 members.{{sfn|Varon|2004|pp=158–171}}