Perhaps, there was something to be said for non-violence as a strategy. In the end, the liberals were outraged-but look how far that has gotten us.

Still, it never made any sense in practice. To fight back was to say that you were a man, because the struggle was everything. The struggle made sense-it was what you did in your gut. The struggle, not the reason behind the struggle, was the revolution.

After the experience of University Hall, everything changed. Struggling was now the only logical thing for many radicals, and initiating violence made sense strategically. (A Weatherman wall poster in Chicago said, "We have to go on the offensive-not just fight back.")

A Weatherman said in an interview, "Up until the Convention almost all white radicals had no sense of actually making a revolution. You had all sorts of people in the movement for all sorts of crazy reasons. Very few said, I'm in this for good. I'm going to risk my life making revolution. We've come to the point where it's necessary to weed out those who really don't want a revolution."

In Chicago, something was beginning.