"“From my very first memories, I knew that the FBI was chasing us,” he says. “My parents tried to explain it in terms [like] we were like Robin Hood or we were like the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars. So I knew in the way a kid knows that our lives were precarious.”"
"“Once she helped found the Weather Underground, I would say the mission was to overthrow the United States government,” he says. The Weather Underground planted bombs in empty police cars, the Pentagon and other places they considered symbols of the opposition, giving advance warning to people in those buildings to prevent casualties."
"“It was a contradiction that reared its head in all sorts of ways, most dramatically when they committed crimes and left their children behind,” he says. “But I think ... my mom couldn't have been somebody who decided to abandon the movement and just settle down and have kids. She had to try to do both.”"
Zayd Ayers Dohrn spent much of his childhood underground and fleeing authorities. His mother, Bernardine Dohrn, was a leader in Students for a Democratic Society, opposing the Vietnam War and racism. Along with Bill Ayers, she helped found the Weather Underground, committed to armed resistance against the government. Dohrn recalls knowing the FBI was chasing his family and that his parents tried to explain their situation in child-friendly terms. He describes his mother as liberal and progressive, becoming radicalized after assassinations of Black civil rights leaders and the escalation of the Vietnam War. The Weather Underground planted bombs in symbolic locations while giving advance warning to reduce casualties. Bernardine Dohrn was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for years. Dohrn later became a playwright and screenwriter and wrote a memoir examining the tension between revolutionary commitment and raising children.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]