Credit, Zayd Ayers Dohrn
"From the time I was very little, my parents taught me revolutionary lessons."
"I was taught to recognize undercover police officers and FBI agents in a crowd... to speak in code over the phone... For me, it was almost like a game."
Zayd Ayers Dohrn did not have a typical American childhood.
On the walls of his room there were no Disney characters, but portraits of Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967), one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, and the Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969).
He spent years unable to attend primary school. When the family went camping, they didn't roast marshmallows. On at least one occasion, they went to explore a federal prison to plan an escape.
When Zayd was born, his mother, Bernadine Dohrn, was one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives.
She was the leader of the Weather Underground organization, which wanted to highlight inequality and racial injustice in the United States through a campaign of bombings against symbolic buildings of the American government, such as the Capitol, the Pentagon and the State Department.
His father, Bill Ayers, was also one of the group's founders. Therefore, the family lived under false identities, moved frequently and was constantly alert to the threat of being taken to prison.
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Credit, Bettmann Archive via Getty Images
Seizure years
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But for Zayd Dohrn, it was simply a normal life.
"I knew the FBI was after us," he says. "They never lied to me about it."
"They explained it to me in a way that, to them, a child could understand. They compared us to Robin Hood. We were outlaws and stole from the rich and gave to the poor, that kind of thing."
His parents came from white, middle-class families.
His mother was a brilliant law student at the University of Chicago in the United States. But after African-American social leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) arrived in the city, supporting rent strike activists, in 1966, she became actively involved in the campaign and became convinced of the need for more radical change in the United States.
The assassination of Luther King, followed by the fatal police shooting of one of the leaders of the Black Panthers, Fred Hampton (1948-1969), launched her further towards radical militancy.
“I believe this caused my mother and others like her to completely lose control,” Dohrn recalls. "She considered Hampton not just a friend but a role model, and her government killed him."
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In his father's case, opposition to mandatory military service and the Vietnam War (1955-1975, with US participation between 1965 and 1973) initially led him to join the group.
"Back then, they had a motto: 'Let's bring the war home,'" according to him.
"The idea was to recreate the violence of the Vietnam War on the streets of the United States... to wake people up and show what they were doing abroad and what they were doing for black groups and leaders at home."
Bombs in your pockets
The idea that a group of middle-class students could successfully plant explosives in some of the most protected government buildings in the country now seems extraordinary.
But, according to Dohrn, they knew how to take advantage of preconceived ideas about young, white and educated people.
Women posed as secretaries and entered buildings to collect information and place explosives in specific locations, often in women's bathrooms.
"One of the advantages is that they were white people, with university education, eloquent and with a lot of money, who were able to move through those spaces of power without attracting too much attention", he explains.
The group's racial privileges 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, even acting as guides in prison breaks and other illegal actions.
Credit, Bettmann/Corbis via FBI
A different childhood
As Zayd Dohrn grew up, the reality of clandestine life increasingly marked his childhood. Without official documents, he couldn't attend school and most of his friends were children of other activists.
Much of his childhood was similar to that of other American children, with car trips, family excursions and camping holidays. But even these activities had a clear revolutionary character.
“To begin with, we never visited Disneyland, or the United States Capitol, or anything like that,” he recalls.
"My parents took me to see the places where revolutionary struggles were taking place...where their heroes had been murdered...where the police killed Fred Hampton, where John Brown [abolitionist, 1800-1859] was hanged, the place where Nat Turner [enslaved rebel, 1800-1831] led his rebellion."
“In other words, basically, it was a tour of the United States as a place they were fighting against,” summarizes Dohrn.
Years later, he realized that family camping trip had another purpose. The camp was less than 1 km 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, faced with the possibility of an escape attempt.
Dohrn believes his parents were sincerely trying to avoid causing physical harm. They warned before the explosions and the devices were programmed to detonate when the buildings were empty.
But, according to him, when a movement adopts violence, it becomes difficult to prevent a tragedy from occurring.
“His decisions were sometimes risky, dangerous and even counterproductive,” recalls Dohrn. "They did things that could have been horrible, terribly tragic."
Before he was born, an accident during bomb making ended the life of the young girl who, at the time, was the girlfriend of her father and two other members of the group.
Even as a child, Dohrn understood the risks.
"It definitely worried me... I had friends whose parents were murdered. I had friends whose parents were in prison for a long time."
Pride and distance
As he reached adulthood and now as a father, Dohrn has spent years dealing with the decisions his parents made.
He compares his mentality to that of people who volunteer for military service. Dohrn says 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," he says.
"At a time when most people in America, especially white people, were willing to let injustice pass without doing anything about it, my parents were the kind of people who insisted on doing something."
Still, Dohrn can hardly imagine a situation in which he himself would decide to go out to rob a bank or break someone out of prison, leaving his children alone at home.
“But I also believe that this, in itself, is a privilege,” according to him. "I believe there are many people around the world who have no other option than to risk their families to fight against oppression, against injustice."
The exit
After the birth of her youngest son, Bernadine Dohrn finally decided to reach an agreement with the prosecutor and hand herself over to the authorities, so that the family could have as normal a life as possible.
She initially avoided arrest due to her use of illegal methods and mistakes in FBI investigations. But after refusing to testify against other members of the Weather Underground, she was imprisoned for almost a year.
Zayd Dohrn's father had to take care of alone not only him and his younger brother, but also the son of another activist, who was in prison.
At that time five years old, he was discontented and angry, asking his mother to come home. She wrote letters to him in prison, trying to explain what had happened. He reads these letters to this day.
"She said that being a mother was the most important thing in the world to her," says Dohrn, "and that being a revolutionary was also the most important thing in the world."
"She highlighted, for example, her heroes, like Martin Luther King Jr., like Fred Hampton, like Malcolm X [human rights activist, 1925-1965], people who fought for a cause. And all these men had children."
Credit, Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
Currently, his parents are in their 80s. Zayd Dohrn describes them as "amazing grandparents" but laughs at the idea that age might have softened their political ideas.
After leaving hiding, his mother became a law professor. She also dedicated four decades to running a law firm, helping people who she said had been victims of an unfair criminal justice system.
His father also became a teacher. He dedicated himself to reforming public education.
His methods have changed, but not his convictions.
"They would be offended if someone called them moderate or liberal," says the son.
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Listen here (in English) to the episode of the BBC World Service's Outlook radio program, which gave rise to this report.
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