Zedd Ayers Dorn: Growing up under the revolutionary group Weather Underground

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Zedd Ayers Dorn did not have a normal childhood.

“Even when I was a very young child, they were teaching me revolutionary lessons... They taught me how to identify policemen and FBI agents hidden in crowds... They taught me how to speak in coded language on the phone... To me, it seemed like a game.”

There were no Disney characters on his bedroom walls.

Instead, pictures of Che Guevara and Vietnamese freedom fighter Ho Chi Minh stared at him.

For years, he could not attend preschool. Family camping trips were not about roasting marshmallows; in at least one case, they involved exploring a federal prison in preparation for a planned escape.

When Zaid was born, his mother, Bernadine Dorn, was one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives.

She was a leader of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-Vietnam War group that sought to highlight disparities and racial injustice in the United States through a bombing campaign that targeted prominent government buildings, including the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department.

His father, Bill Ayers, was also one of the group's co-founders. As a result, the family lived under assumed identities, moved frequently, and always felt the risk of arrest.

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As for Zaid, this was simply the normal way of life.

"I knew the FBI was after us. They never lied to me about it," he said.

They were explaining it in ways they thought a child could understand. They likened us, you know, to Robin Hood. "We were outlaws, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and things like that."

His parents came from well-to-do white middle-class families. His mother was an outstanding student with the highest grades, and studied law at the University of Chicago. But after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to town and supported activist rent strikes in 1966, she became actively involved in the campaign and became convinced of the need for more radical change in the United States.

King's assassination - which was followed by the killing of Fred Hampton, one of the leaders of the "Black Panther" movement, by police bullets - pushed it further towards adopting the extremist approach.

“I think it pushed my mother and a number of others like her to extremes,” Zaid says. “She viewed Hampton as not just a friend, but a role model, and it was her government that killed him.”

As for his father, it was his opposition to the Vietnam War and forced conscription that initially prompted him to join the group.

“They had a slogan at the time that said: Bring the War Home. The idea was to take the violence of the Vietnam War and actually apply it to the streets of the United States...to wake people up and show what their country was doing abroad, and what it was doing to black groups and leaders here at home.”

Bombs in women's handbags

The idea that a group of middle-class students were able to blow up some of the most fortified government buildings in the country seems extraordinary today. But Zaid argues that they were able to exploit assumptions associated with being young, white, and educated.

Women disguised as secretaries would enter buildings to collect information and plant explosives in out of sight locations, often in women's bathrooms.

“One of the advantages they had was that they were white, university-educated, well-spoken people from relatively well-off classes, and they could move around in these spaces of power without attracting too much attention,” Zaid explains.

The privileges associated with the group's members belonging to the white race also contributed to the formation of its alliance with the Black Liberation Army, a splinter group from the Black Panther Party.

White activists took advantage of their access and lower visibility to support black activists, including acting as car drivers, prison breaks, and other illegal activities.

As Zaid grew older, the hidden reality of life began to increasingly affect his childhood. Without official documents, he could not attend school, and most of his friends were the children of his parents' fellow activists.

However, many aspects of his childhood were similar to those of other American children: road trips, family trips, and camping vacations. However, these activities also had a clear revolutionary character.

“We definitely didn't visit Disneyland or the U.S. Capitol or anything like that,” he said.

“My parents would take me to see the sites of the Revolutionary struggle... where their heroes were killed... where police killed Fred Hampton, where John Brown was executed, and where Nat Turner led a slave rebellion. So it was like a tour of America as a place they were fighting against.”

It was not until years later that he realized that one of the family camping trips was serving another purpose. The campsite was located less than a kilometer from a federal prison, where a member of the Black Panther movement was being held.

His parents had used the trip to study the prison in preparation for a possible escape attempt.

Zaid believes his parents genuinely tried to avoid causing physical harm to others.

The authorities were given advance warnings before explosions occurred, and explosive devices were set to explode when buildings were empty of people.

But he says that once a movement embraces violence, tragedies become difficult to avoid.

“Their choices were sometimes adventurous, dangerous, and even counterproductive. They did things that could have been horrific, horribly tragic.”

Before he was born, an accident while making a bomb killed his father's then-girlfriend and two other members of the group.

Even as a child, he was aware of the risks.

"I was definitely worried about that. I had friends whose fathers were murdered. I had friends whose fathers spent very long periods of time in prison."

Now as an adult, and a father himself, Zaid has spent years trying to understand the choices his parents made.

He compares their way of thinking to the mentality of people who volunteer for military service. He says they believed they were waging a war against their government, and were prepared to bear the personal consequences.

“I feel proud of them in many ways,” he said. “At a time when most people in the United States, and most white people in particular, were willing to turn a blind eye to the injustices they were seeing around them and not do anything about it, my parents were the type who insisted on doing something.”

However, Zaid finds it difficult to imagine a situation in which he himself would choose to go out to rob a bank, or smuggle someone out of prison, while his children are at home.

He added: "But I also believe that the ability to take such a stance is in itself an advantage. I believe that there are many around the world who have no choice but to put their families in danger, in order to fight oppression and confront injustice."

After the birth of his younger brother, his mother, Bernadine, finally decided to strike a deal with prosecutors and surrender herself to the authorities, to allow the family a measure of normalcy.

She initially managed to avoid prison due to illegal tactics and mistakes that marred the FBI investigation, but was imprisoned for nearly a year after refusing to testify against other members of the Weather Underground.

Zaid's father found himself responsible for caring for Zaid and his younger brother, in addition to a child, the son of another activist who was imprisoned.

At the time, when he was five years old, he felt angry and resentful and begged her to come home. She sent him letters from prison trying to explain her position, and he still reads those letters to this day.

After they left the underground, his mother became a law professor and spent four decades running a legal consultancy, helping people she felt had been failed by an unfair criminal justice system.

As for his father, he became a university professor and devoted himself to reforming public education.

Their methods changed, but their convictions did not.

“They would feel insulted if anyone described them as moderate or liberal,” Zaid says.