Son of radicals, Zayd Ayers Dohrn grew up underground & on the run
5/18/202644 min
"From my very first memories, I knew that the FBI was chasing us," Zayd Ayers Dohrn 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."
His mother, Bernardine Dohrn, was a leader of the '60s radical student group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which opposed the war in Vietnam and racism. Along with his father, Bill Ayers, she helped found the Weather Underground, a group committed to armed resistance against the government.
Dohrn spoke with Terry Gross about his radical childhood on the run, visiting his mom in prison, and the questions he needed to ask his parents. His book is ‘Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground.’
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Julio Torres says he doesn't need to prove himself to anyone.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn· Guest0:05
When someone makes me feel like I have to prove something to them, I just walk away.
Speaker 00:09
Really?
Zayd Ayers Dohrn· Guest0:10
I'm like, "Seek help."
Speaker 00:12
[laughs] Watch or listen to that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPRWildcard.
Terry Gross· Host0:21
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As the child of parents who were radicals in the '60s and revolutionaries in the '70s, my guest, Zayd Ayres Dorn, spent his early years underground with parents who were on the run, disguising themselves with fake identities. Zayd Ayres Dorn's name gives you a sense of his story. His mother, Bernadine Dorn, was a leader of the '60s radical student group SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, which opposed the war in Vietnam and racism. She and Zayd's father, Bill Ayres, helped found the more militant faction that split off from SDS in 1969 and became the Weather Underground, committed to armed resistance against the government. For years, Bernadine was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. Zayd is also named after Zayd Malik Shakur, the Minister of Information for the New York Black Panthers, who designed some of their clothes as well as their disguises, and was killed after a traffic stop that ended in a shootout with police in 1973.