Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974 [Paperback]

Bernardine Dohrn (Editor), Bill Ayers (Editor), Jeff Jones (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2006

Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to "bring the war home." The Weather Underground waged a low-level war against the U.S. government through much of the 1970s, bombing the Capitol building, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison, and evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history.
Sing a Battle Song brings together the three complete and unedited publications produced by the Weathermen during their most active period underground, 1970 to 1974: The Weather Eye: Communiqués from the Weather Underground; Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism; and Sing a Battle Song: Poems by Women in the Weather Underground Organization.
Sing a Battle Song is introduced and annotated by three of the Weather Underground’s original organizers—Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeff Jones—all of whom are all still actively engaged in social justice movement work.
Idealistic, inspired, pissed-off, and often way-over-the-top, the writings of the Weather Underground epitomize the sexual, psychedelic, anti-war counterculture of the American 1960s and 1970s.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

BILL AYERS is distinguished professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society. He is the author of fifteen books on teaching and children’s rights, as well as his recent, unflinching memoir, Fugitive Days.
BERNARDINE DOHRN is currently the director of the Children and Family Justice Center, and clinical associate professor at Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic.
In his past decade as an environmental activist, JEFF JONES campaigned to get PCBs out of the Hudson River, clean up toxic pollution in inner city and rural neighborhoods and reverse global warming. Raised a Quaker, he became a spokesman for the Weather Underground. After his arrest and release in 1981, Jones was a reporter for the Guardian newspaper, covering the environment, the AIDS epidemic, the Central American wars and activist political movements. In 1985 he edited Brigadista, politics and war in Nicaragua, a book about North American solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution. He currently consults on political and media strategies for grassroots, progressive and labor groups.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (June 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583227261
• ISBN-13: 978-1583227268
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #381,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sing A Battle Song, January 26, 2011

By 

Whitney (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974 (Paperback)

This book has been an excellent primary resource for my thesis research. It saved me a lot of time and toil because it not only contains the WUO communiques but Prairie Fire, their political statement. The editors, who were all figureheads of the WUO did a fine job of giving the reader insight into the communiques by explaining different events, people, and language in the communiques so that anyone who wants to study them is not left wondering what and whom the writers are referring to. There are also several helpful timelines of WUO events and historic events that influenced and shaped their ideology. Being a poet, I also enjoyed the different poems that the members had written during their time underground. If you are an aspiring scholar who is interested in this organization this book will be great for you. I think that this book can also help people who have heard a lot about the organization but need a concrete resource to give them a better understanding of what they stood for. (Sometimes people get carried away with one aspect of an organization, such as government overthrow, and completely ignore the other aspects which are just as historically significant).

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what we can learn, October 29, 2010

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Mary Hatten - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974 (Paperback)

Even someone like me who has been politically active all her grown life can learn something from this book. I was really pleased to see profits are going to the Rosenberg Fund for Children which helps provide comfort and needed money to children of activists. Also most of us did not have a very accurate idea of what the Weathermen actually did.