Bernardine Dohrn (left), Bill Ayers (right), Zayd Ayers Dohrn (center) with his brother in Harlem, after a long drive through the underground in 1980. (Courtesy of Peter Clapp)
All HALE the Conquering Heroes
Zayd Ayers Dohrn has quite a story to tell, and fortunately for readers, he is a stellar storyteller. A prize-winning playwright, Zayd may hold the title of the Daniel Hale Williams Professor and Director of the MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage at Northwestern University, but, as America commemorates the 250th anniversary of its Revolution, Zayd’s personal saga calls to mind the patriot Nathan Hale, that Continental Army soldier and undercover agent famed for saying: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Almost 200 years later, that same revolutionary spirit animated Zayd’s parents, who were combatants in another insurrectionist force taking up arms to overthrow the government – but instead of being “Continental,” it was an underground army of would-be urban guerrillas. By 1969, the Weathermen were struggling to “off the pigs” “by any means necessary,” deploying stridently militant opposition against the ruling class with what anarchists called “the propaganda of the deed,” blowing up targets symbolic of the powers-that-be, primarily to protest the Vietnam War and racism.
In his alternately rip-roaring and introspective nonfiction narrative, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young, A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground (W.W. Norton), about growing up radical with his mom and dad, Zayd writes: “by 1970, when she was only twenty-eight years old, Bernardine [Dohrn]… my mother became only the fourth woman in history on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.” The first female on that infamous “top ten list” was a kidnapper, while the second was a murderer; but as Zayd writes about Bernardine, “The CIA said she was ‘the most rabid female radical in the country.’ FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called her ‘the most dangerous woman in America.’” (Bernardine, who according to her most wanted poster was charged with “violation of Federal Antiriot Laws and conspiracy,” actually had much more in common with the third woman ever inducted onto the FBI’s top ten list: Angela Davis. But that’s another story.)
Zayd’s dad, Bill Ayers, was another Weather warrior who attained national notoriety. In 1975 Bill was depicted by none other than Henry Winkler (who played Fonzie in the popular 1970s sitcom Happy Days) in the made-for-TV movie Katherine, arguably the best fiction film ever made about the white New Left, written/directed by Jeremy Kagan (who went on to make the 1987 HBO movie Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8). In Katherine, Sissy Spacek portrayed a character largely based on Diana Oughton, one of the Weathermen who died March 6, 1970 in a Manhattan townhouse, when bombs being made there accidentally exploded. Bill had been one of Oughton’s lovers, and Bob Kline, the composite character Winkler played in Katherine, was based in part on him. 
The Only Solution is Revolution
Kagan’s surprisingly sympathetic movie convincingly dramatized how middle-class white youths who sought to peacefully change the system through legal means were increasingly radicalized by an intransigent system that waged war on Vietnam abroad and perpetrated racism domestically. Unable to end the war and racial injustice nonviolently and legally, Katherine’s increasingly enraged and engaged characters inexorably move towards armed struggle against the state. In his 427-page Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young, Zayd provides an eyewitness, detailed account of why the real-life Bill and Bernardine turned their backs on the white-skin, middle-to-upper-class privilege they were born into to co-found a clandestine, “vanguard” organization that declared war on the U.S. government.
After Oughton’s death, Bill and Bernardine became partners and eventually married. Zayd movingly relates what it was like growing up the son of a sort of ultraleft version of Bonnie and Clyde, on the lam from the FBI, living clandestinely and coming of age in, as his subtitle puts it, A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. Zayd spins an amazing yarn about the Weathermen trying to “bring the war home,” with the so-called “Days of Rage” street fighting against the Chicago Police Department; bombings at police stations, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Capitol Building (decades before the Jan. 6, 2021 riot there), etc.; bank robberies; armored car heists; prison breakouts, including of LSD guru Timothy Leary and Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur; and much more.
But this book, which often reads like a novel, proving the old cliché that “truth is stranger than fiction” can be true, is interwoven with Zayd’s insightful, poignant ruminations about the cost his parents’ and their comrades’ extremism exacted on their children who were born into and reared in the underground.
Even more importantly, in retrospect, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young raises major questions about the role the Weathermen played in the movement and the terrorist tactics they used. In 1968, Bernardine was elected one of the three national leaders of Students for a Democratic Society. But the following year, at SDS’s national convention, advocating a more hardline direct action approach, Bernardine led a walkout, splitting the organization, which, as Zayd notes, had “350 chapters nationwide,” with “100,000” members and was America’s “largest student activist group.”
Zayd also writes that the FBI closely monitored SDS, and one can’t help but wonder whether SDS’ so-called “action faction” unwittingly (and perhaps egged on by provocateurs?) played into the hands of the FBI’s COINTELPRO counterintelligence, counterinsurgency program that surveilled, infiltrated, and disrupted the New Left. Frustrated by the failure of peaceful civil disobedience, lawful demonstrations and other activities to end the Vietnam War and racism (after all, the apostle of nonviolence, Dr. King, had been assassinated), the Weathermen resorted to extralegal means of violent armed resistance.
But this divided the antiwar and civil rights movements, which advocated nonviolent methods of protest. Street fighting, bombings, and the like also could be used to discredit the mass movement to end the war in Vietnam, which was, of course, dedicated to giving peace a chance. Explosions at places such as police headquarters – even if authorities were notified in advance to evacuate the premises – also unintentionally gave “law and order” politicians and authorities the opportunity to crack down on all forms of dissent.
A prominent veteran of the Columbia University protest and co-founder of the Weathermen, Mark Rudd, rued the role he played in the SDS split. Rudd is quoted in Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young as calling his participation in the walkout “‘the single greatest mistake in my life. … I chose to scuttle America’s largest radical organization … for a fantasy of revolutionary urban guerrilla warfare.’”
History will judge whether these faction fights and the Weather Underground’s extremism played a truly revolutionary or a counterrevolutionary role by dividing the growing peace movement. How effective were the Weathermen in advancing their stated causes? Zayd writes about how his parents and a handful of other zealots became increasingly isolated and extreme, with harrowing accounts of shootouts and the like, going up against the wall of “motherfuckers” who were far better armed and trained and greatly outnumbered them.
The Song Remains the Same?
The name of the extremist “vanguard” organization Bernardine co-founded in 1969 was derived from Bob Dylan’s lyrics in “Subterranean Homesick Blues”: “You don’t need a weatherman, To know which way the wind blows.” And the Weather Underground fancied themselves to be the song’s “vandals [who] took the handles” so “The pump don’t work.”
Likewise, the title of Zayd’s gripping chronicle comes from another song, Jefferson Airplane’s “We Can Be Together,” which a period rock critic called “a virtual ‘state of the union’ address for the counterculture of the late ’60s.” According to the author, his book’s name “comes from a Jefferson Airplane lyric. Jefferson Airplane was one of the musical groups that actually gave money to the underground. They were counterculture rock stars and they donated money to keep the underground alive. It’s a tribute to them and to that connection. That particular lyric goes:
“We are all outlaws in the eyes of America
[In order to survive, we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide and deal]
We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent
And young.”
Zayd added: “It was a way of saying then that anybody who didn’t fit into the consensus of American mainstream culture – whether you were a woman or queer or Black – you were an outlaw, didn’t belong in some way, that you were underground. That lyric became a touchstone for my parents and their friends, they used to say: ‘We are all outlaws in the eyes of America.’ That lyric said something about who they were then and who they were trying to be.”
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young recounts what happened to Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers once they emerged from about a decade of living underground. Years after fading into obscurity as mostly forgotten aging heroes/villains (take your pick) of the New Left, the onetime outlaws were thrust back into the limelight by both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential race. As Zayd writes, when Alaska’s governor accused the Democratic contender of being “a person who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with [domestic] terrorists who targeted their own country,” those “pals” Palin was referring to were Bill and Bernardine, because of “the fact that Obama had held one of his early fundraisers in our Chicago living room, and he and my dad had served on the board of a nonprofit together.” Zayd quotes David Axelrod, the chief strategist to Barack Obama’s campaign, as telling him: “They wanted to turn him into a scary, radical Black man. And so Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, famous names from the radical past, were resurfaced for that purpose.”
This is just one of the many tales in an exciting book jam-packed with anecdotes that makes Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young a fascinating, great read. Indeed, this insider account is a must-read for aficionados of New Left history, with lots of text about the Panther 21, the Black Liberation Army and political prisoner Assata Shakur, who eventually escaped from prison to live in exile in Cuba. Other legendary figures of the Left also turn up in this harrowing saga, including the great attorney Leonard Boudin, who represented Paul Robeson, Daniel Ellsberg and Dr. Spock, as well as Leonard’s daughter Kathy Boudin, who survived the townhouse explosion that killed Oughton but went on to be imprisoned for her role in the BLA’s bloody Brink’s armored car robbery in 1981. While she served hard time for about 23 years, Bill and Bernardine adopted their toddler, Chesa Boudin, who went on to be elected San Francisco’s District Attorney, but was recalled in 2022.
As we live in another era of political violence, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young provides insight and context for the efficacy and justification – or lack of – for extremist direct action and propaganda of the deed. It is also a thoughtful meditation on how the choices of ideologically motivated parents impact their children who did not choose to be born into and raised in a life of struggle. Like the Revolution, the generation gap is permanent.
One can almost imagine Zayd arguing with his mother and father, who try to shut him down, as he replies: “But you always taught me to disobey authority!” To which Bill and Bernardine respond: “Yes, but we meant Nixon – not us!”
For more info about Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young, A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324089315.
For info about the fourth book co-authored by Ed Rampell and Luis Reyes about filmmaking in Hawaii see: https://mutualpublishing.com/product/on-location-in-hawaii/.
