Speaking of rebels: An interview with Dan Berger

Recently, AK Press of Oakland, CA, published Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity by Dan Berger. Berger is also a co-editor of Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out from Nation Books. He is currently touring North America with Andy Cornell, a contributor to Letters from Young Activists. I recently had a chance to speak with Dan about his book and the tour. AGR: Why write a book about the Weatherman/Weather Underground? Dan Berger: Well, a lot of reasons actually. I was grappling–a lot of younger white folks actually–were grappling with a lot of political issues and issues of race and trying to figure it out. Weather was one of the groups that kind of stuck out in recent left history. They offer a lot of lessons about anti-racist work and the left. Plus, I had a personal relationship with David Gilbert, one of the former members and now a political prisoner, as you know. And that really sparked my interest as a young activist in a conservative region. Anti-racist work was at the heart of their analysis and practice, and I was interested in how they did it and why. The group gets a lot of focus for its flashy tactics, but in the process its politics–and the context in which it emerged–often get left out. I wanted to take a step in addressing the politics and the historical context. AGR: What kind of response have you got to the book since it came out? Berger: It's been very exciting. It came out in February 2006 and I've been doing a lot of talks since. The goal of the book was really to share what I'd learned, particularly with other young, white activists–to get them to discuss the lessons and the responsibility of white activists in anti-racist struggle. Another great thing has been the opportunity to travel around the country and discuss politics and find out about all these different organizing projects-to see what people are doing in various parts of the country. It's also been very important and humbling to meet and build relationships with a wide number of activists from different generations–former Weather people and lots of others who have different views but are comrades. AGR: In terms of some members of Weather's insistence on armed struggle, what do you think today's radicals can learn? What about other aspects of their praxis? Their theory? Berger: What I focus on in the book and in conversations is that the most important lessons are not the tactical ones. Armed struggle was obviously an important part of Weather's strategy and why they get so much attention. But I think the more crucial lessons, the aspects of the group that best help us respond to today's realities, are political and analytical. The best thing was that here was a group of white people in the US that saw things in terms of international solidarity–solidarity with the black liberation struggle in the US and solidarity with the national liberation struggle in Vietnam and the various struggles against colonialism at the time, both outside the US and in the US. Obviously the situation is very different today, and so we're trying to figure out how to apply solidarity in a different political moment. For example, there is no National Liberation Front of Iraq the way there was in Vietnam. The black liberation and the Puerto Rican liberation struggles are still there, but don't have the same national visibility and strategy the way they did thirty or forty years ago. And yet, opposition to white supremacy and the need for anti-racist white solidarity remain fundamental. The lessons aren't really about blowing things up, but how do we act in solidarity? I think Weather offers a number of examples or answers to that, both positive and negative. The last two nights we were in Albany and Troy, NY, and Naomi Jaffe–a former Weather member–put it wonderfully when she said that those acts of solidarity with people of color and anti-imperialist struggles were what Weather did best and what Weather did worst. The questions that statement raises are where the lessons are. How do white people in the US work for, and how do we understand our own stake in the struggle for racial justice? AGR: One of my favorite quotes about that subject was made by former Black Panther David Hilliard during the Revolutionary People Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1969. He was criticizing whites that wanted to work in black communities against racism and said, essentially, that racism was white people's problem, not blacks. You know, it was certain white people that created the system we live in–a system that is inherently racist. Berger: Yeah, that's why Black Power came into being. You know, not just the phrase but the move by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (in winter 1965-1966 SNCC became an all African-American organization) and the book by Stokely Carmichael and Hamilton both said that racism was a white problem and that whites needed to work in white communities against white supremacy. Malcolm X articulated these politics as well. Weather tired to understand this and their work is still important in defining the terms for white people today–even though the context is very different and some of the organizational forms are also different. I think people understand that dealing with racism is a priority–not just a priority but a reality that people have to work with. Look at the labor movement, where there are efforts to follow the leadership of immigrant workers in opposing the anti-immigrant backlash. I think there is a lot of positive anti-racist organizing going on. AGR: Do you think there is still a tendency within the Left to separate issues of race from issues of class? I mean, how would you compare your experience and conversations with activists today to the experiences described by older activists and the information regarding this that you came across while you were researching and writing your book? Berger: I think it's a mixed bag. It was a mixed bag back then and it is still one now. There are some folks that say that you make class as the distinct thing and then deal with racism within that context. Then there's the opposite. Overall, however, I think that many people are trying to understand the ways that race and class are so fundamentally linked-that dealing with one necessitates dealing with the other, and that the only way to have a radical movement in this country is for it to be anti-racist at its core. And being anti-racist requires an analysis and a program around class and economics. AGR: Yeah, given the fundamental role the enslavement of Africans and their descendants played in the development of the US economy. Berger: Right, especially in the US context. Not only in their treatment of blacks, but also in US foreign policy do you see race and racism playing out. So, I think that we can learn a really valuable lesson from Weather because they were part of a tendency in the Left that linked imperialism, the third world and racism. When they talked about the "third world," it was a political identification and not just a racial one. That is, talking about "third world people" fighting imperialism, and acting as whites in solidarity with those struggles within and outside the US, was based on an analysis of where people fit in a global system. This was a conscious analysis that began to define how class relationships are often color-coded. I think that this awareness needs to be part of our analysis as we build movements for radical social change today. AGR: Back to the tour. Are you and Andy talking about both books: Letters From Young Activists and Outlaws of America? Berger: Yeah, we are. It depends on the venue-sometimes we only do Letters events and other places it's just Outlaws. But often we're doing both books. We're really kind of mixing it up as we go. AGR: So you're both staying involved in the ongoing conversation as you travel around? Berger:Absolutely–talking about politics and organizing with various activists and community groups across the country! AGR: One more question. Why do you think Weather is the subject of so many books and films, both positive and negative, fiction and nonfiction? Berger:That is a huge question and I think it is an important question. One of the things I try and do in the book is to really look at Weather in its context because I think it really has gotten a disproportionate share of attention. Maybe that's because of its tactics, its form or because it had an overly big sense of itself. That's one way of saying it. Other people would say it was because Weather was incredibly arrogant. I think that in their first year they had built up such a hype around themselves and their tactics. Some people think that they are one of the best things to come out of the 1960s and others think they are the worst, that they are to blame for all the failure of the movements for change. I think both perceptions are inaccurate for a couple reasons, but the main reason is because they look at the group in isolation instead of as just one part of a global struggle. In looking at it in isolation and making it devoid of political content, those who lionize or demonize Weather don't help us learn the lessons from a period of massive ferment.... AGR: Yeah, I remember when we all spoke out in Oakland last May and (former Weather member) Scott B. kept on saying how Weather was just one little group in a very large struggle. He went on to say that this was not only the case in terms of the politics but also in terms of tactics. Berger: Exactly. When you look at the history of that period there were hundred of actions of armed struggle, hundreds of bombings just in the US. The two dozen bombings that Weather did over a period of seven years were just a tiny fraction of that. So it is very important to see the group in the broader context as part of a movement. One person I interviewed emphasized that Weather was just one thing–it led some parts of the movement and followed others. In addition, by focusing only on Weather in either a wholly positive or negative way perpetuates the myth that Weather was an anomaly, not part of something much, much larger. Plus it keeps the focus on tactics instead of the politics. I hope that my book and your book [The Way the Wind Blew] and other contributions will show this in the broader context and will help us be more successful in building something today. Dan Berger and Andy Cornell will be at Malaprop's Bookstore, 55 Haywood St., in Asheville on June 10 at 7pm. For more information, call (828)254-6734, www.malaprops.com.