Letters

Dear SUN, 

I'm sad to say that I found your review of Prairie Fire [SUN No. 19, Sept. 27] disappointing. Right now we need to find unity, to combine our strengths and build coherent political organization. Your review doesn't help us do this. The main reason. I think, that it doesn't contribute to our political understanding is that you don't have an historica! perspective. You make armed struggle into something stract and vague, and don't place it in a real social context. You briefly mention events from the Weather past, but don't analyze concrete historical conditions. The picture which accompanied the review-depicting Weatherpeople in the Days of Rage demonstration in 1969-and the headline, "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows" suggest that we're back in 1969, and that Iittle or nothing has changed since then. But the Weather Organization is not frozen back in 1969. It has changed qualitatively.

There is not universal agreement about our history, racism, and imperialism, as you suggest. In fact, there is a great deal of debate on these subjects. Prairie Fire sums up the collective movement experience of the sixties, and early seventies. It offers an analysis. There are important sections which contribute to a new understanding of the changing composition of the working class, an evaluation of the sixties, and insurgent cultures here. The book provides the framework for a political strategy.

You unfortunately focus on the question of armed struggle to the exclusion of other equally, if not more important questions. I think that by doing this you distort Prairie Fire, and the Weather Underground organization. The Weather organization is significant not simpiy or only because it carries out "military" actions. If it was only a military organization it would not be a revolutionary organization. The Weather Underground is not a terrorist group. This was the painful lesson which the townhouse explosion taught them and us too. The Weather Underground is an organization of communists armed with the ideology of MarxismLeninism, and convinced of the necessity of mass work. Take away any of these critical elements-take away communist organization, or take away ideology, or take away mass work, and you remove the possibility for revolution. A successful revolution depends on the dialectical interconnections between ideology, party, the masses, and armed actions. From my reading of Prairie Fire, the Weatherpeople understand the need for a synthesis of all these elements. Your review distorts because it focuses on one aspect and neglects the other equally important aspects.

Prairie Fire is not a call for armed struggle now. It calls for mass work, political education and organization. It asks us to "arm the spirit," not take up arms. It is helpful in this context to see the bombings by the Weather Underground as "armed propaganda." The aim of the bombings is mostly to edúcate people-not to cause material destruction. They are symbolic. They identify the enemy- the State, the corporations, the CIA, the police. They reveal the weakness of monopoly capitalism, and the U.S. govemment. They express solidarity with the oppressed, and give encouragement to friends and allies. They disrupt the orderly working of the political and economie system.

The history of the last ten years seems to me to say that we need both mass and clandestine work, that we need sabotage, sit-ins, petitions drives, electoral campaigns, study groups. They have been and still can be complimentary. The war in Vietnam was brought to an end by people in this country because they were committed to ending the war "by any means necessary." We shouldn't forget this lesson.

The "prairie fïre" the Weatherpeople call for is not a literal conflagration, but the fire of ideas, and of firey people joined together to help destroy imperialism and build a socialist society. Through this book the Weatherpeople tell us that rage must be educated, that it must be protracted, that it must be tested in practice that it must be united with a burning love for the people.

Solidarity,

Jonah Raskin San Francisco, California