The Local Is Global: Philadelphia’s Weatherwomen Bring the War Home to Pennsylvania

Local and state histories need not be parochial. This article examines the intersection of Pennsylvania with swirling global revolutionary winds in the 1960s and 1970s, especially the Weathermen (later called the Weather Underground). It further studies how Philadelphia produced a radical pacifist, direct action, pre-figurative political impulse within the New Left. Led in the Keystone State by Philadelphia-educated women, or Weatherwomen, the movement intersected with global revolutionary actions. The Weathermen, a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, were the products of a relatively sophisticated and systematic set of transnational revolutionary ideas. Philosophically led by the young French radical Regis Debray and Latin American revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, these globally minded radicals built and promoted a revolutionary program aimed to topple Western liberal capitalism.