Edited by Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeff Jones
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 from 1970 to 1974, during their most active period underground: 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 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.
A longtime activist and former leader of the Weather Underground, BERNARDINE DOHRN acted from 1991 to 2013 as a Clinical Associate Professor at Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic. She it he co-editor of Sing a Battle Song and lives in Illinois.
A longtime radical activist, Bill Ayers is a retired professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly having held the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar. He is the founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society. Ayers is co-editor of Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqués of the Weather Underground 1970-1974, and the author of fifteen books on teaching and children’s rights, as well the recent memoir Fugitive Days.
Over the past decade, environmental activist JEFF JONES has campaigned to get PCBs out of the Hudson River, to clean up toxic pollution in inner city and rural neighborhoods, and to reverse global warming. Raised a Quaker, he later became a spokesman for the Weather Underground and edited the collection of their statements, poetry, and comminuques in Sing a Battle Song. After his arrest and release in 1981, Jones became a reporter for the Guardian, covering the environment, the AIDS epidemic, the Central American wars and activist political movements. Jones currently consults on political and media strategies for grassroots, progressive, and labor groups.