From the archive
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young: The Pull of Radicalism
In Zayd Ayers Dohrn's book, he recounts his childhood as the son of two prominent members of the Weather Underground. Allen M. Hornblum considers what draws young activists toward revolutionary violence—and contrasts that path with those who pursued social change nobly and peacefully.
Here I was on a train, absorbed in a fascinating account of growing up on the run as the son of two notorious American radicals, on my way to a memorial service for another political activist, George Gould. Unlike the author's parents, Gould, the dedicated Community Legal Services (CLS) lawyer whose life was being celebrated in Philadelphia, was not a dangerous radical. He had eschewed violence as a way to achieve his political goals. Instead, Gould had chosen to work within the democratic system and never considered bombing his way through it.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn's Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young, which was released in May, is a sensitive and sobering account of the unusual, fugitive childhood experienced by a young boy whose infamous Weatherman parents—Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn—were sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and law enforcement agencies across the country. Dohrn, now forty-nine years old and a successful playwright and podcaster, recounts his time “underground,” learning about what a strange and dangerous world his militant parents had created for him. He opens his compelling memoir by describing not how he was taught to grip a tennis racket or throw a baseball but, instead, how to
recognize plainclothes police officers and undercover agents in a crowd, to make calls from a payphone and speak in code, to walk in a complicated mix of turns and switchbacks to lose a tail, and watching from a rooftop or a fire escape to make sure our aboveground friends weren’t being trailed…
“In our circle,” Dohrn readily admits, “pretty much everyone we knew was a fugitive.” The lives of a good many of these fellow “soldiers” would end violently or in long prison terms.
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