Edited by Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones
Seven Stories Press
1974, 2006
SKU: 9781583227268
Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to "bring the war home." The Weather Underground waged a low-level war against the U.S. government through much of the 1970s, bombing the Capitol building, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison, and evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history.
Sing a Battle Song brings together the three complete and unedited publications produced by the Weathermen during their most active period underground, 1970 to 1974: The Weather Eye: Communiqués from the Weather Underground; Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism; and Sing a Battle Song: Poems by Women in the Weather Underground Organization.
Sing a Battle Song is introduced and annotated by three of the Weather Underground's original organizers—Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeff Jones—all of whom are all still actively engaged in social justice movement work.
Idealistic, inspired, pissed-off, and often way-over-the-top, the writings of the Weather Underground epitomize the sexual, psychedelic, anti-war counterculture of the American 1960s and 1970s.
About the Editors:
Bill Ayers is distinguished professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society. He is the author of fifteen books on teaching and children’s rights, as well as his recent, unflinching memoir, Fugitive Days.
Bernardine Dohrn is currently the director of the Children and Family Justice Center, and clinical associate professor at Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic.
In his past decade as an environmental activist, Jeff Jones campaigned to get PCBs out of the Hudson River, clean up toxic pollution in inner-city and rural neighborhoods and reverse global warming. He joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at 18 in October 1965. In November 1967 he traveled to Southeast Asia as part of an SDS delegation meeting with representatives of the North Vietnamese Student Union. In 1967–68 he was the SDS regional coordinator for the New York metropolitan area and was elecgted one of the organization’s three national officers in June 1969. By March, 1970, Jones was a federal fugitive facing conspiracy and riot charges. Raised a Quaker, he became a spokesman for the Weather Underground. He is one of three named public authors of Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism. After his arrest and release in 1981, Jones was a reporter for the Guardian newspaper, covering the environment, the AIDS epidemic, the Central American wars and activist political movements. In 1985 he edited Brigadista: Politics and War in Nicaragua, a book about North American solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution. He currently consults on political and media strategies for grassroots, progressive and labor groups.