Mother Country Radicals

Family Lore is a weekly narrative podcast that celebrates and investigates ancestral mystique. Each episode begins with a guest sharing a fascinating family legend, followed by a historical deep-dive to uncover the truth and meaning behind the tale. Available now: https://link.pscrb.fm/f0281/FLFD

Zayd sits down with his mom, Bernardine Dohrn, along with Jamie and Karen Zelermyer of Wonder Media Network’s I Was Never There to look back at the process of making a show so deeply rooted in personal family history. Jamie and Zayd interview their mothers to learn how they felt reliving their radical pasts and what it was like to make a podcast with their children. And in a time that feels so similar politically to the turbulent decades Karen and Bernardine lived through - how do they find hope?

Zayd connects to other children of the underground. Out of the shards of the radical movements of the 1970s, a new generation fights to build a better future.For more of the story, check out:  Chesa Boudin, Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out (2005) Patrisse Cullors & asha bandel, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018)

Former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army carry out one last action together, with deadly consequences that reverberate across generations. For more of the story, check out:  Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (1987) Dhoruba bin Wahad, Assata Shakur & Mumia Abu-Jamal, Still Black, Still Strong (1993) Dan Berger, Outlaws of America: the Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (2005)

The end of the Vietnam War means the end of the Weather Underground. Zayd’s parents and their radical comrades, still on the run from the FBI, plan a different kind of future. For more of the story, check out: Emile de Antonio, Underground (1976)Mona Rocha, The Weatherwomen: Militant Feminists of the Weather Underground (2020)

The Weather Underground Organization and the Black Liberation Army go to war with the United States government.For more of the story, check out: The BLA, Black Liberation Army Papers (1963-1998)Sekou Odinga, Dhoruba Bin Wahad & Jamal Joseph, Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st Century Revolutions (2017)

The FBI targets the Weather Underground, and a split in the Black Panther Party gives rise to a new, more militant organization - the Black Liberation Army. For more of the story, check out:  The Weather Underground, Prairie Fire: The Politics Of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism (1974) Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Declassified FBI Files on the Weather Underground Organization (2010)

The Weathermen go underground, and become famous - and infamous - as counter-culture outlaws.For more of the story, check out: Thai Jones, A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground (2004)Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience (1964)

The Weathermen decide to bring the horrors of the Vietnam War back to America’s doorstep, planning an action that will change the future of the organization, and Zayd’s family, forever.For more of the story, check out: Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist (2001)Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman (2007)

In 1970, a former law student named Bernardine Dohrn declared war on the United States government. Decades later, her son Zayd Ayers Dohrn tells the story of how his mother was radicalized, and became the most wanted woman in America. For more of the story, check out:  Students for a Democratic Society, The Port Huron Statement (1962) Revolutionary Youth Movement, "The Weatherman Paper" (1969)

Zayd’s father Bill Ayers joins the Weathermen, and he and his friends teach themselves to be revolutionaries, gearing up to build bombs and brawl with police on the streets of Chicago.For more of the story, check out: Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers (1966)Carlos Marighella, The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969)

Jamal Joseph is radicalized at 15, and joins the New York Black Panthers. And a deadly attack by Chicago Police puts both Panthers and Weathermen on a path towards violent revolution. For more of the story, check out: Jamal Joseph, Panther Baby: A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention (2012)Stanley Nelson, The Black Panther Party: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016)

Zayd Dohrn was born underground - his parents were founders of the Weather Underground organization, and on the run from the FBI. Now Zayd takes us back to the 1970s, when his parents and their young friends brawled with riot cops on the streets of Chicago, bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and teamed up with Black militant groups to rob banks, fight racism - and help build a revolution.