You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.

Prairie Fire

The Weather Underground’s ideology changed direction in the early 1970’s. With help from former Progressive Labor member, Clayton Van Lydegraf, the Weather Underground sought a more Marxist-Leninist approach. The leading members of the Weather Underground collaborated on ideas and published their manifesto: "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism."[6] By the summer of 1974, five thousand copies had surfaced in coffee houses and bookstores across America. Leftist newspapers praised the manifesto.[29] Abbie Hoffman publicly praised Prairie Fire and believed every American should be given a copy.[30] The manifesto’s influence initiated the formation of the 'Prairie Fire Organizing Committee' in several American cities. Hundreds of above-ground activists helped further the new political vision of the Weather Underground.[29] In the late 1970s, the Weatherman group further split into two factions — the "May 19 Coalition" and the "Prairie Fire Collective" — with Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers in the latter. The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding, with members facing the criminal charges against them, while the May 19 Coalition continued in hiding. A decisive factor in Dohrn's coming out of hiding were her concerns about her children[citation needed]. The Prairie Fire Collective started to surrender to the authorities from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The remaining Weatherman Underground members continued to violently attack US institutions.