Osawatomie (periodical)
Osawatomie was a quarterly magazine published by the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), beginning in March 1975 and continuing for six issues.
Background
After the publication of Prairie Fire: the Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) continued to establish a media presence by publishing a quarterly magazine entitled Osawatomie. Osawatomie debuted in March 1975 and gave the WUO an outlet to solidify the organization, its purpose, and its politics. It was also the WUO’s attempt to establish the organization in a position of leadership of the New Left. The magazine was named Osawatomie in honor of John Brown, a white abolitionist who, in 1856 in Osawatomie, Kansas, led a small group of anti-slavery forces in an armed fight to prevent the state of Kansas from becoming a slave state and with whom the WUO is symbolically linked through the tradition of militant white anti-racism.
Description and History
Each issue of Osawatomie included editorials, book reviews, a “Toolbox” section in which certain communist ideas were explained in everyday language, and news about other anti-imperialist struggles around the world. Each issue also included a “Who We Are” section which gave a brief history of the WUO in which the Organization claimed responsibility for “over 25 armed actions against the enemy,” in this case, the U.S. Government. The "Who We Are" section also outlined the five key points of the WUO program which included eliminating U.S. imperialism from the Third World; peace, by opposing “imperialist war and U.S. intervention;” fighting racism by building an anti-racist base among the working class and supporting self-determination for oppressed peoples; struggling for freedom of women against sexism; and fighting for socialism by organizing the working class.
