Women’s Liberation and Sixties Armed Resistance

Abstract

O n 9 October 1969, about 50–70 women from the Weatherman gathered at Grant Park in Chicago to march toward the city’s Armed Forces Induction Center. The Weatherman was made up of extremists from the national New Left group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and was later referred to as the “Weather Underground.” The Weatherwomen, including Bernardine Dohrn, Cathy Wilkerson, and Diana Oughton, had planned to shut down the draft board office as an antiwar demonstration. They were wearing helmets, heavy gloves, and boots and were carrying Vietcong flags—a few women were even holding wooden sticks and pipes. Facing hundreds of police, they could go no farther than half a block, and a dozen women were arrested. At the park, Dohrn distinguished the Weatherwomen’s march from the actions of the feminists, saying, “We’re not picketing in front of bra factories . . . This is not a self-indulgent bullshit women’s movement.” Reminding the public of the anti–Miss America Pageant protestors in the previous year—called “bra burners” by the media—the Weatherwomen demanded women’s strength and courage as revolutionaries, fighting for antiracism, anti-imperialism, and antisexism rather than for women’s issues alone. This article focuses on those revolutionary women, especially Weatherwomen: what women’s liberation CHOONIB LEE