image copyrightZayd Ayers Dohrn
Even when I was very little, I was taught revolutionary lessons... I was taught to recognize undercover cops and FBI agents in a crowd... I was taught how to speak in code on the phone... To me, it was almost like a game.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn did not have a typical childhood.
There were no Disney characters on the walls of his room. Instead, portraits of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh looked down on him.
For years he was unable to attend preschool. Family camping trips weren't about roasting marshmallows but, on at least one occasion, exploring a federal prison before planning an escape.
When Zayd was born, his mother, Bernadine Dohrn, was one of the most wanted fugitives by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
He was the leader of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war organization that sought to make inequality and racial injustice visible in the United States through a campaign of bomb attacks against emblematic government buildings, such as the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
His father, Bill Ayers, was also a co-founder of the group.
As a result, the family lived under false identities, moved frequently, and were constantly alert to the threat of arrest.
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Troubled years
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For Zayd, however, this was just normal life.
"I knew the FBI was after us. They never lied to me about it. They explained it to me in a way they thought a kid could understand. You know, they compared us to Robin Hood. We were outlaws who stole from the rich to give to the poor, things like that."
His parents came from well-off white, middle-class families.
His mother was a brilliant law student at the University of Chicago. But after African-American social leader Martin Luther King Jr. came to town and supported activists' rent strikes in 1966, he became actively involved in the campaign and became convinced of the need for more radical change in America.
The assassination of Luther King, followed by the fatal police shooting of Fred Hampton, a leader of the Black Panthers, propelled her further toward radical militancy.
"I think that made my mother and other people like her completely lose control," Zayd says.
"She considered [Hampton] not just a friend, but a role model, and her government killed him."
In his father's case, it was opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft that initially prompted him to join the group.
"Back then they had a motto: 'Let's bring the war home.' The idea was to recreate the violence of the Vietnam War on the streets of America... to wake people up and show them what they were doing overseas and what they were doing to black groups and leaders here at home," he explains.
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Bombs in bags
The idea that a group of middle-class students could successfully plant explosives in some of the best-protected government buildings in the country now seems extraordinary.
But, according to Zayd, they knew how to take advantage of the prejudices associated with being young, white and educated.
Women posing as secretaries entered buildings to gather information and plant explosives in secluded locations, often in women's bathrooms.
"One of the advantages they had was that they were white people, with university education, articulate and quite wealthy, who could move through those spaces of power without attracting much attention," explains Zayd.
The group's racial privilege also influenced its alliance with the Black Liberation Army, a splinter faction of the Black Panther Party.
White activists used their access and relative invisibility to support black activists, including acting as getaway drivers following prison breaks and other illegal actions.
image copyrightBettmann/Corbis photo via FBI
A different childhood
As Zayd grew up, the reality of underground life increasingly marked his childhood.
Without official documents, he couldn't attend school, and most of his friends were the children of other activists.
Much of his childhood was similar to that of other American children, with road trips, family outings, and camping vacations.
However, even these activities had a marked revolutionary character.
"We certainly never visited Disneyland or the United States Capitol or anything like that. My parents took me to see the places where the revolutionary struggle took place... where their heroes had been killed... where the police killed Fred Hampton, where John Brown was hanged, the place where Nat Turner led his slave rebellion. So it was, in essence, a tour of America as a place they were fighting against," he recalls.
Years later he realized that that family camping trip had had another purpose.
The camp was less than a mile from a federal prison where a member of the Black Panthers was being held. His parents had taken advantage of the trip to study the prison due to the possibility of an escape attempt.
Zayd believes his parents sincerely tried to avoid causing physical harm.
Warnings were given before the explosions and the devices were programmed to detonate when the buildings were empty.
But, according to him, once a movement embraces violence, tragedy becomes difficult to avoid.
"Their decisions were sometimes risky, dangerous and even counterproductive... They did things that could have been horrible, terribly tragic," he says.
Before his birth, a bomb-making accident killed his father's then-girlfriend and two other members of the group.
Even as a child, I understood the risks.
"I was certainly worried...I had friends whose parents were murdered. I had friends whose parents were in prison for a long time."
Pride and distance
As an adult, and now a father, Zayd has spent years dealing with the decisions his family made.
Compare his mentality to those who volunteer for military service. He claims that they believed they were waging war against their own government and were willing to take the personal consequences.
"I'm proud of them in many ways... At a time when most people in America, especially white people, were willing to let the injustice they saw go by without doing anything about it, my parents were the kind of people who insisted on doing something," he says.
However, Zayd has a hard time imagining a situation in which he himself would decide to go out to rob a bank or free someone from jail and his children would be left home alone.
"But I also think that in itself is a privilege. I think there are many people in the world who have no choice but to risk their families to fight oppression, to fight injustice," he thinks.
The exit
After the birth of her younger brother, Bernadine finally decided to take a plea deal and turn herself in to the authorities, so that the family could have as normal a life as possible.
She initially avoided jail due to illegal methods and errors in the FBI investigation, but after refusing to testify against other members of the Weather Underground, she was imprisoned for almost a year.
Zayd's father had to take care of not only him and his younger brother, but also the son of another imprisoned activist.
At the time, when he was 5 years old, he was upset and angry, and begged her to come home. She wrote him letters from prison trying to explain what happened; letters that he still reads.
"She said that being a mother was the most important thing in the world to her, and that being a revolutionary was also the most important thing in the world," says Zayd.
"She pointed out, for example, her heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., like Fred Hampton, like Malcolm X, people who fought for a cause, and all of those men had children," he adds.
image copyrightMichael Loccisano/Getty Images
Today, his parents are over 80 years old.
Zayd describes them as "amazing grandparents" but laughs at the suggestion that age has softened their political views.
After leaving the underground, her mother became a law professor and spent four decades running a legal clinic, helping people she believed had been victims of an unjust criminal justice system.
His father also became a teacher and dedicated himself to public education reform.
His methods had changed. Not their convictions: "They would be offended if someone called them moderates or liberals," Zayd says.
This article is based on an episode of the BBC World Service program Outlook, titled "America's Most Wanted: My Family on the Run."
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This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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