"As a child, I was taught to spot undercover police officers in a crowd": what my childhood was like fleeing from the FBI

Image source, Zayd Ayers DohrnPhoto caption, Zayd with his parents and younger brother in the late 1970s. Author, OutlookAuthor's title, BBC World ServicePublication date 17 minutesReading time: 9 minEven when I was very young, they taught me revolutionary lessons... They taught me to recognize undercover police officers and FBI agents in a crowd... They taught me 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 stared down at him with disdain. For years he was unable to attend preschool. Family camping trips did not consist of roasting marshmallows but, at least on one occasion, of scouting a federal prison before planning an escape. When Zayd was born, his mother, Bernadine Dohrn, was one of the most wanted fugitives of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). She was a leader of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war organization that sought to expose inequality and racial injustice in the United States through a campaign of bombings against iconic 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 was constantly on alert for the threat of being arrested. Skip More reads and continue readingMore readsEnd of More readsImage source, Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesPhoto caption, The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Turbulent yearsFor Zayd, however, this was simply normal life."I knew the FBI was chasing us. They never lied to me about it. They explained it to me in a way they believed a child 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 comfortable white middle-class families. His mother was a brilliant law student at the University of Chicago. But after African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. came to the city and supported rent strikes by activists in 1966, she became actively involved in the campaign and became convinced of the need for more radical change in the United States. Luther King's assassination, followed by the fatal police shooting of Fred Hampton, a leader of the Black Panthers, pushed her even further toward radical militancy."I think that made my mother and other people like her completely lose control," says Zayd."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 military draft that initially drove him to join the group."They had a slogan back then: 'Bring the war home.' The idea was to recreate the violence of the Vietnam War on the streets of the United States... to wake people up and show them what they were doing abroad and what they were doing to Black groups and leaders here at home," he explains.Image source, Getty ImagesPhoto caption, Close-up portrait of Bernadine as a student activist among the crowd in 1968. Bombs in bagsThe idea that a group of middle-class students could successfully plant explosives in some of the country's most heavily protected government buildings 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 would enter buildings to gather information and place explosives in out-of-the-way spots, often in the women's restrooms."One of the advantages they had is that they were white people, college-educated, articulate and fairly well-off, who could move through those spaces of power without drawing much attention," explains Zayd. The group's racial privilege also played a role in its alliance with the Black Liberation Army, a dissident faction of the Black Panther Party. The white activists used their access and relative invisibility to support Black activists, even acting as getaway drivers after prison escapes and other illegal actions. Image source, Bettmann/Corbis photo via FBIPhoto caption, Three members of the Weather Underground died when a bomb they had made exploded in the basement of a house in Greenwich Village, New York, on March 6, 1970. A different childhoodAs Zayd grew up, the reality of underground life increasingly shaped his childhood. Without official documents, he could not 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 distinctly 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 was born... 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 the United States as a place they were fighting against," he recalls. Years later he realized that that family camping trip had had another purpose. The campsite was less than a kilometer from a federal prison where a member of the Black Panthers was being held. His parents had used the trip to study the prison in case of a possible escape attempt. Image source, Zayd Ayers DohrnPhoto caption, Zayd as a baby with his motherZayd believes his parents sincerely tried to avoid causing physical harm. Warnings were given before the explosions and the devices were timed to detonate when the buildings were empty. But, according to him, once a movement embraces violence, tragedy becomes hard 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, an accident during the making of bombs killed his father's then-girlfriend and two other members of the group. Even as a child, he understood the risks."It definitely worried me... I had friends whose parents were killed. I had friends whose parents were in prison for a long time." Image source, Getty ImagesPhoto caption, Construction workers and police surround a pile of debris at a police building after a bomb attack carried out by the Weather Underground group in 1970. No one was killed in the attack. Pride and distanceNow as an adult, and now as a father, Zayd has spent years grappling with the decisions his family made. He compares their mindset to that of people who volunteer for military service. He says they believed they were waging a war against their own government and were willing to accept the personal consequences."I feel proud of them in many ways... At a time when most people in the United States, especially white people, were willing to let the injustice they saw pass without doing anything about it, my parents were the kind of people who insisted on doing something," he says. Still, Zayd finds it hard to imagine a situation in which he himself would decide to go out and rob a bank or free someone from jail while his children stayed 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 reflects. Image source, Zayd Ayers DohrnPhoto caption, Zayd with his mother, his brother Malik and his adopted brother Chesa. The way outAfter the birth of his younger brother, Bernadine finally decided to reach an agreement with the prosecution and surrender to the authorities, so that the family could have as normal a life as possible. Initially, she avoided prison due to illegal methods and errors in the FBI's investigation, but after refusing to testify against other members of the Weather Underground, she was jailed for almost a year. Zayd's father had to take care not only of him and his younger brother, but also of the son of another imprisoned activist. At the time, aged 5, he was upset and angry, and begged her to come home. She wrote him letters from prison trying to explain what had happened; letters 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, for example, to her heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., like Fred Hampton, like Malcolm X, people who fought for a cause, and all those men had children," he adds. Image source, Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesPhoto caption, Bernadine, Zayd and Bill attended the 2022 premiere of Zayd's podcast, Mother Country Radicals, at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Today, his parents are in their 80s. Zayd describes them as "amazing grandparents," but laughs at the suggestion that age has softened their political views. After leaving the underground, his mother became a law professor and spent four decades running a legal clinic, helping people who, she argued, had been victims of an unjust criminal justice system. His father also became a professor and devoted himself to public education reform. Their methods had changed. Their convictions had not: "They would be offended if anyone called them moderates or liberals," says Zayd. This article is based on an episode of the BBC World Service program Outlook, titled in English "America's Most Wanted: My Family on the Run." Image source, Gado/Getty ImagesPhoto caption, This Weather Underground poster, with a rainbow and lightning bolt motif, advocates for the end of the Vietnam War, 1971. 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. More information about how we use AI.