Growing Up as the Child of Radical Revolutionaries

"One cold morning in 1980, when I was not yet four years old, my mother woke me while it was still dark, pressing her face against my cheek. 'We have to leave,' she whispered."

"My dad glanced behind us once to see if we were being followed, winked at me in the rearview mirror, and then swung our car toward Interstate 80, headed west."

"A decade earlier, my mother, Bernardine Dohrn, had declared war on the United States government. She and my father, Bill Ayers, helped found the militant revolutionary group the Weather Underground."

Born to parents who founded the Weather Underground, a radical revolutionary group, early childhood was spent in hiding. A vivid memory from 1980 recalls a hurried escape, with the mother waking the child in darkness to leave. The family was constantly on the run, with the father checking for followers. Memories are hazy but include sensory details of fear and uncertainty. The parents had previously declared war on the U.S. government, committing to oppose the Vietnam War, which led to their fugitive status.

Read at The New Yorker