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Ea large part of family life will seem normal to the young children within it; only hindsight can bring relief to what was once strange. Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s early years were spent being chased by the FBI; His parents belonged to the revolutionary Weather Underground, a group dedicated to overthrowing the US government.
At the age of three he had been taught by his parents how to recognize plainclothes policemen on the street. “It was like playing a game – dressing up or making believe,” she recalls. He vividly remembers the long night walks between the bunkers. As well as fellow revolutionaries, his family encountered terrorists, members of the IRA and abortion activists, as well as countless undocumented workers.
In line with his son’s view of life as a fugitive, Dohrn tells us the story of the Weather Underground and his parents’ role in it. The group was founded in 1969 by student activists who were outraged by the atrocities committed against civilians during the Vietnam War. At first they called themselves the Weathermen, inspired by a Bob Dylan lyric (“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”) until, considering the women they didn’t include, this was changed.
Dohrn’s mother, Bernardine, was their leader, and she was the boss of her family, too. Dohrn worshiped him. She wrote: “I wanted to be like her. FBI Director J Edgar Hoover was not pleased, calling her “the most dangerous woman in America”. Her photo in an FBI wanted photo, looking young and tough in a biker jacket, became famous – although he scoffed at the passion that inspired her.
The Weather Underground wanted to show the brutal reality of the Vietnam War by bringing the war to the US. They organized several days of demonstrations and violence in Chicago in 1969, which were carried out by the police and 250 arrests, where 23 police officers were injured and many protesters were injured – including six who were shot, although not killed. After attempting to make nail bombs in 1970, when three members shot themselves outside the Greenwich townhouse they were working in, the group stopped attacking people directly. But he continued to commit violence. After sounding the alarm, they bombed the FBI headquarters, the Capitol, the State Department and the Pentagon.
The damage was great, but the US government was not in danger. The Weather Underground was small, unmoved to support it (although, in an anti-racist spirit, it joined the Black Panther Party). Meanwhile, Dohrn’s parents faced a dilemma: how can they properly care for their children while simultaneously trying to improve the situation? Bernardine’s love for her family took second place to her political commitment, which had to be preserved “even with her ruined children as collateral”.
Surprisingly, Dohrn’s parents did nothing. Her father, Bill Ayers, was never arrested, while Bernardine served only seven months between 1982 and 1983. Perhaps most surprisingly, Dohrn is not against him. Instead of following his parents in revolutionary politics, he has become a playwright and film writer. His book is full of historical counter-culture: Dohrn’s parents got Timothy Leary out of prison, for example. Then there is its compelling, episodic power, which this book derived from a series of podcasts, Mother Country Radicals. Where the podcasts come in is the addition of Dohrn’s intimate stories and thoughts on his childhood, including his interactions with the world – then, as now, in struggle. Even more of it. Bringing lawsuits can work. Politically moderate, he emphasizes the parallels between the causes of violence of his ancestors and our time when he says: “We are in a new era of authoritarianism in America and counting races.”
