Outlaws of America

Check out my man Dan Berger's new book, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity.  You can order it from the publisher, AK Press, starting on Tuesday, or pre-order elsewhere, such as Amazon, now.

He's been working on it for years, and it comes highly praised, for not only the history presented, but the critical engagement of it that can only help current activists as we continually develop our struggle

OUTLAWS OF AMERICA:
THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND AND THE POLITICS OF SOLIDARITY
By Dan Berger
$20, AK Press, 2006, 426 pp

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Outlaws of America brings to life America's most famous renegades, the Weather Underground. Based on detailed and original research, it is a gripping account of the actions and motivations of the group of white people who risked everything to oppose war and racism. At the same time, it provides a nuanced and critically engaged study demonstrating the Weather Underground's contemporary significance.

This engaging, and timely book tells the untold story of the Weather Underground, from its incendiary beginnings to its tumultuous end. In an unsparing critical analysis, Berger uses dozens of in-depth interviews with former Weather Underground members and other long-time activists to trace the group's evolution in relation to the civil rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements. From the Students for a Democratic Society of the 1960s through the political trials of the 1980s, Outlaws of America is a history of the Weather Underground that clearly resonates today. It is essential reading for students, activists, and anyone concerned about both the state of the world and what to do about it.

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

"Impressively reconstructed from ambitious oral histories and from the written record, Outlaws of America powerfully situates the white revolutionary New Left in an era of possibility and state terror, of internationalism and Black Power.  It captures the dreams and tragedies of the Weather Underground in a way that has utterly eluded the canned histories of the Sixties."
--DAVID ROEDIGER, author of The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class

"Hopefully, Dan Berger represents an emerging generation of radical activist scholars in the United States who are neither blinded to the flaws of the Sixties' movements, nor arrogantly rejectionist, but who acknowledges the critical importance of learning from those movements. In a meticulously researched study of the Weather Underground, Berger writes a gripping story, drawing important lessons for the younger generation of activists."
--ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ, author of Outlaw Woman: Memoir of the War Years

"Dan Berger gives us a highly readable personal and global history. Berger is a master historian and storyteller who manages to reveal and recreate what the lived experience of the sixties was like for a group of militant idealists who wanted to make a difference."
--HERNÁN VERA, co-author of White Racism: The Basics

"Meticulously researched, Outlaws of America demolishes prominent myths of the Sixties, especially the notion of the Two Sixties, one Good and the other Bad. Dan Berger's loving recounting of the movement's later phase provides us with fresh insight into our history. Unafraid to be critical, Berger's recounting of the Weather Underground's evolution gives us the inside story. We have waited a long time for a book like this. It will be essential reading for activists wishing to rekindle popular insurgencies and radical action."
--GEORGE KATSIAFICAS, author of The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968

"The Weather Underground has long been more of a mystery than what meteorologists predict above ground, a reality that activist and scholar Dan Berger seeks to rectify in Outlaws of America. With each meticulously researched chapter Berger generously and honestly walks us through the emergence, philosophy, and the demise of the Weather Underground, a white anti-imperialist organization willing to take on white privilege through all kinds of weather, including the previously uncharted weather working underground.  With each transition in the life of the organization, Weather activists reckoned with a compelling question: if you had to choose, would it be immortality without knowledge or mortality with freedom? This question was the wellspring for strategy through the late 1960s and early 1970s when revolution was a word of celebration, on the tip of activists' consciousness across the United States and beyond. By drawing upon the voice of compassion offered by activist and political prisoner David Gilbert as the touchstone throughout the book, Berger treats us to a deep understanding of why commitments taken up by the Black Power and anti-imperialist struggle thirty years ago continue to accompany us now. This book is welcome company for all those who want their history straight up, who seek to honor the vulnerable, circuitous, imperfect and brave struggle for racial justice in US history."
--BECKY THOMPSON, author of A Promise and a Way of Life: White Antiracist Activism

RELEASE EVENTS:

Wednesday, February 15, 7:30 p.m. Kaffa Crossing (www.kaffacrossing.com), 4423 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia (215.386.0504). "Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity" book reading and discussion. Featuring Dan Berger. Sponsored by Wooden Shoe Books. 

Sunday, February 19, 9:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas at Austin. Historians Against the War conference (www.historiansagainstwar.org). "What Activists and Historians Can Learn From Each Other." Featuring Dan Berger ("Anti-Imperialist Lessons and Legacies of the Weather Underground"), Peter Dimock, Carolyn Rusti Eisenberg, Kenneth Long, Roger Peace, Margaret Power, and Shanti Marie Singham. 

Sunday, February 19, 7:30 p.m. Monkeywrench Books (www.monkeywrenchbooks.org), 110 E. North Loop, Austin TX (512.407.6925). "Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity" book reading and discussion. Featuring Dan Berger.

Thursday, February 23, 7 p.m. Penn Bookstore (http://upenn.bkstore.com), 3601 Walnut Street, Philadelphia (215.998.7595). "Outlaws of America" and "Letters From Young Activists" book reading and discussion. Featuring Dan Berger.

Monday, February 27, 7:30 p.m. Brecht Forum (www.brechtforum.org), 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune; A,C,E, or L to 14th St & 8th Ave or 1,2,3, or 9 to 14th St & 7th Ave) NYC (212.242.4201). "Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity" book reading and forum on Black Power and white anti-imperialism. Featuring Dan Berger, George Katsiaficas, Michael Tarif Warren, and Laura Whitehorn. Co-sponsored by the Brecht Forum and Resistance in Brooklyn.

Wednesday, March 15, 7 p.m. House of Our Own, 3920 Spruce Street, Philadelphia (215.222.1576). "Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity" book reading and discussion. Featuring Dan Berger.

Comments

[Ringo the Gringo]

The Weather Undergroud wanted to start a race war. They were a bunch of losers who, because of their own stupidity, ended up murdering innocent people and accomplishing nothing.

They were no different than the Manson Family - delusional, racist, drugged up killers.

[adwred]

Scott -

Hey this looks awesome; do you have a link to the speaking tour lists? I would like to attend and want to see if there's anything closer to CT than NYC. email it to me if you have it.

[scott]

hey adwred,
those are all the events that i know of, but you can email dan to see if there are anymore:

Dan@lettersfromyoungactivists.org

[science is useless]

The Wethermen (so much for the inclusion of women, the sexist prigs) were the antithesis of anarchists. Its manifesto used such terms as "revolutionary organization of communists" and the declared purpose was the revolutionary overthrow of the Government of the United States, and of capitalism. I guess they must have been disappointed when the workers and unwashed unenlightned masses chose to give their bourgeosie murder campaign a pass. Perhaps it explains why so many of the fearless bombers magically become suburban capitalist consumers of excess driving gas guzzling cars. maybe the GAP or A&F can come out with a clothing line called Militant Wear For Spoilt White Brats That Want to Pretend They Really Care About Someone Besides Themselves.

[Austin Delgadillo]

ringo the gringo might do well to read this book and get corrected on claims that the WUO was trying to start a "race war" or that they murdered innocent people. out of all their bombing campaigns, no one was hurt or died because the organization took great care to make sure that this wouldn't happen. in fact, the only people who ended up dying as a result of WUO activities were three members of the group itself. they were in the process of constructing a bomb, and it went off in their apartment. and to science is useless, i would offer the same challenge. check out the book before you unconstructively slam things.