Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman

I was part of the SDS in the 1960s. I too went with the Weather Faction and considered myself Weatherman from the Conference in Chicago until after Townhouse. I still think of before and after Townhouse. Many of the reviews of Weather memoirs talk about the violence committed by Weather, yet there was far more violence committed by the right wing from the civil rights worker murders through the killing of the Panthers. Cathy's book is a rarity. Most of what is written of this period is through the eyes of the male participants. Their books so often relegate women to invisibility. This book helps rectify some of that erasing of women from movement history. It has been trendy to retroactively apply the term terrorist to Weather, yet most of the violence was directed towards property rather than people.

The Weathermen were an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the 1960s' most active anti-war groups. But the Weathermen differed with their radical counterparts in calling for revolution against the United States immediately -- first, because political conditions, they felt, were right, and second, to draw police attention off the Black Panther Party and African-American organizers. The Weathermen waged a largely successful guerrilla campaign in the United States, Author Wilkerson was intimately involved in the Weathermen. She eventually served prison time for crimes committed during that period, after coming out of hiding in 1980 and turning herself in. Wilkerson's life, activism and the tumultuous period in which the Weathermen operated are the subjects of this book. Wilkerson writes about her personal growth, political contradictions and struggle to find a place in a revolutionary movement that was largely male dominated and filled with its own contradictions. Inside herself, Wilkerson fights feelings of guilt over her well-off status, and questions the rhetoric of the Weathermen in comparison to the practices she sees in the organization. Many of its members, though intelligent and psychologically strong, were involved in activities most people would never experience, and all often faced varied political, moral and ethical questions, which Wilkerson discusses candidly. This text contains her firsthand account of the 1970 Greenwich Village explosion that catapulted the Weathermen into the national spotlight. In addition, this is one of the few books on the Weathermen in which the author so forwardly addresses the status of men in power and the position of women in the group. At times, Wilkerson's recollections are less than flattering, Yet, it is these stories, and the other tales told as part of a one-of-a-kind life journey, that make this text worth reading.

Cathy Wilkerson gives a thoughtful memoir of her life in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Weather Underground. She also provides enough personal background to explain how she became involved in US radical politics in the 1960s. Her final chapter Reentry gives a brief summary of her life afterwards. Wilkerson is famous for being one of the two people to survive the 1970 explosion of the Greenwich Village townhouse where a bomb was being assembled. This incident is described in chapter 10 of the book. She is careful not to discuss the motivations or actions of others in the movement which, while understandable, gives a certain limitation to her story. Yet as the reflections of an American radical this is an excellent book, providing insight into her personality, the movement, and the events of the time. What stands out clearest in this writing is the support that Wilkerson and the Weather Underground wanted to show for the Black Panthers in the fight against Racism in the United States. The hardest part for readers to understand today may be the Maoist/Leninist revolutionary tactics that were the signature belief of this faction of the radical left. In the opening pages of the book Wilkerson quotes Carl Sandburg: "You can't hinder the wind from blowing. Time is a great teacher. Who can live without hope?"

Flying Close to the Sun was an interesting look at how SDS and other anti-war activists decided that confrontation, even violent confrontation was the only true way to exact meaningful politcal change. It also showed that many new leftists were anti-Vietnam war but not anti-war. I am sure many would be all too comfortable in the culture wars of today. Ms. Wilkerson comes across as a person with strong beliefs and a true committment to back them up with action. Yet, she also comes across as self-absorbed and naive. She didn't seem concerned that her father's town house had been destroyed and that other innocent people could have been killed. She acknowledged that her cohorts had shown terrible judgement in messing with explosives but didn't seem to realize the town house explosian damaged the anti-war movement and helped move this country to the right. The book was still a great read and did a nice job of describing the political climate of the late sixties. It showed, through her own strainted family relations, the dynamics of what was then labeled as the "generation gap." Yet, at times I thought the book wasn't reflective enough even though it looked back events almost 40 years old.

So many books about the Sixties and so few have the depth of the personal, along with a clear understanding of the political. Cathy's humanity constantly asserts itself as she weaves her experiences in this fascinating book. She shows herself to be an excellent writer. A difficult book to put down... Even if one doesn't agree with all facets of her analysis, it would be almost impossible not to be moved to consider very carefully all of her criticisms and observations. Anyone who reads this book will become wiser about the complexities inherent in attempting to solve social problems.