# Weather Underground

> revolutionary impatience crossing into clandestinity and political violence

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:american-1960s:weather-underground` |
| Family | American Radical Politics of the 1960s |
| Domain | History |
| Kind | movement |
| Archetypal function | The New Left |
| Epistemic status | sourced_claim; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Weather Underground belongs to the **American Radical Politics of the 1960s** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

A faction emerging from SDS pursued underground organization and bombings, while avoiding intentional fatalities in its announced targeting practice; its strategy isolated it from broad constituencies and remains ethically contested.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Weather Underground, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The New Left.** revolutionary impatience crossing into clandestinity and political violence

## Gift

A warning that moral urgency can expose tolerated violence and complacency.

## Wound / Shadow

Certainty, secrecy, and militancy sever the coalition needed for change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Weather Underground to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The New Left enters through Weather Underground. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** At what point does commitment destroy the public capacity it sought to awaken?

## Game function

**role.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Weather Underground; another player names a countermove. Initiative 5.

## Relationships

- **legitimizes — Youth International Party:** Youth International Party legitimizes Weather Underground by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(cultural_historical; supported)_
- **mobilizes — Black Panther Party:** Weather Underground mobilizes Black Panther Party by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(cultural_historical; supported)_
- **enables — Consent Decree:** Consent Decree enables Weather Underground by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **mobilizes — Seizure of the State:** Weather Underground mobilizes Seizure of the State by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Weather Underground from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Weather Underground is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: cultural_historical, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
Sentinel factors: political violence; real people; contested historical interpretation. These are descriptive handoff annotations, not a verdict and not a mutation of Engine Output.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Weather Underground: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [The Port Huron Statement](https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111huron.html) — Students for a Democratic Society, 1962. New Left critique and participatory-democracy program.
- [COINTELPRO Records](https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro) — Federal Bureau of Investigation Vault, 1956–1971. Government records concerning covert disruption of political organizations.
- [Church Committee Reports](https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm) — U.S. Senate, 1975–1976. Investigations of intelligence abuses and subsequent oversight reforms.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
