Speaker 1: Pushing their slogan would literally bring the war home. And
Speaker 1: that was a metaphor at first, but it became a
Speaker 1: literal idea of like they're gonna go to war, we
Speaker 1: gotta go to war. I'm Khalil Jibrad Muhammad. I'm Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: We're two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a
Speaker 1: historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of
Speaker 1: my best friends are Some of my best friends are like,
Speaker 1: I'm not a blank, some of my best friends are blank.
Speaker 1: In this show, we're going to wrestle with the challenges
Speaker 1: and the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Speaker 1: And today we're talking with zade Air's Dorn about the
Speaker 1: lesser known history of radical movements in the sixties. There
Speaker 1: was so much to learn about the country we live
Speaker 1: in and the fights people have had to make it better. Man, Khalil,
Speaker 1: I am so excited about our conversation today. Yes, we
Speaker 1: have Zaide Dorn on the show, one of my friends,
Speaker 1: and he has this podcast Mother Country Radicals, like on
Speaker 1: Top ten lists, It won awards. It is this amazing
Speaker 1: podcast that in a lot of ways is about his parents.
Speaker 1: Bernadine Dorn and Bill Ayres. Yeah, listen, I think getting
Speaker 1: to talk to his aid right now is so important
Speaker 1: because as the Democrats can see, the House to the
Speaker 1: Republicans and the investigation of the coup attempt on January sixth,
Speaker 1: when a violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to
Speaker 1: subvert democracy. This is an inversion of the attempts by
Speaker 1: Bill and Bernadine Dorn back in the day to try
Speaker 1: to change America for the better. So well, what do
Speaker 1: you mean, what do you mean tell our listeners who
Speaker 1: are Bill and Bernadine? Yeah, well, they are original members
Speaker 1: of the Student for a Democratic Society, also known as SDS.
Speaker 1: So like we're talking nineteen sixties, Yeah, early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: part of a generation of young people who rejected the
Speaker 1: Cold War anti communism of their parents, started to look
Speaker 1: at the contradictions of American empire and inequality, the richest
Speaker 1: country on earth with huge pockets of poverty and most
Speaker 1: especially amongst black folks, and they wanted to change this country,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to do something that they call participatory democracy.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, as you well know, because Bill and
Speaker 1: Bernadine eventually break away from SDS. They totally broke away
Speaker 1: they became members of the Weather Underground and a much
Speaker 1: more radicalized group that resorted to violence to fight what
Speaker 1: they thought was violence in the country. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: like violence on violence, and it's a complicated thing. And
Speaker 1: in many ways, most of us our generation were educated
Speaker 1: to reject what they did, to think of this as
Speaker 1: a terrible change in direction from a country that was
Speaker 1: getting it right, but in some ways couldn't be further
Speaker 1: from the truth. Yeah, And I mean, this is what
Speaker 1: I love about Zaide's podcast and about our conversation today,
Speaker 1: is that this question of what must we do, what
Speaker 1: should we do in the face of injustice, in the
Speaker 1: face of grave injustice. So the Weatherman, the Weather Underground,
Speaker 1: Bernadine Dorn and Bill Aires, they were going to risk
Speaker 1: at all because they thought the country needed to be changed,
Speaker 1: and they were going to take radical action. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that came at a cost. I mean, Zaide's mother, Bernadine,
Speaker 1: becomes the most dangerous person in America. She is listed
Speaker 1: on the FBI's most wanted list by Jay Edgar Hoover,
Speaker 1: the then director of the FBI. Yeah, because they're doing
Speaker 1: bombings and they're taking these actions. Are that involved violence? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And let's just say, you know, as a trigger warning,
Speaker 1: we're not actually saying that they struck out to kill people.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's important just before we get started that
Speaker 1: the Weather Underground targeted buildings, they targeted property because it
Speaker 1: was important for them to make it clear that this
Speaker 1: country could not continue down the road that it was going.
Speaker 1: And Zaide, because of this, ends up in the first
Speaker 1: part of his life living underground. Yea, you know, I
Speaker 1: know them from Chicago, but they're living in New York
Speaker 1: and Harlem and they're hiding from the FBI early in
Speaker 1: his life, and he's going to talk to us about that.
Speaker 1: I got one other thing I want to say, Khalil,
Speaker 1: what's that While we're talking to Zaide, he's got a
Speaker 1: cat walking around and we hear it a couple of times.
Speaker 1: He just want to tell people, it's not a sound
Speaker 1: effect that we're putting in. Okay, all right, I think
Speaker 1: people appreciate that, especially all those cat lovers YEP or
Speaker 1: the cat haters. So let's let's let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk to him. Zaid. Hello, it's so great for
Speaker 1: you to join us on the podcast. Thanks Ben, Thanks Quil,
Speaker 1: happy to be here. Yeah, we're so excited to have
Speaker 1: you on the show's aide. So you're already one of
Speaker 1: my favorite people. You know, I know your parents, your dad,
Speaker 1: and I like a week or two ago we drove
Speaker 1: to a prison together where we both teach, and you know,
Speaker 1: the whole way, he's telling me stories and he's just
Speaker 1: so like positive and outgoing. And I was thinking about
Speaker 1: not too long ago, seeing your mom with your two daughters,
Speaker 1: her grandchildren in the local Michaels the craft store. You know,
Speaker 1: she's like tatted up your mom and like you know,
Speaker 1: with all these bracelets, and her granddaughters are like embarrassed
Speaker 1: of her, And I'm like that so interesting, just the
Speaker 1: neighborhood like radical with her, Like you know, it was
Speaker 1: just so normalized, not just radical, like one of America's
Speaker 1: most wanted. Yeah, yeah, she's an institution. Although I will
Speaker 1: tell you, like you say, embarrassed to her, and that's
Speaker 1: true sometimes, but it's also true that, like you know,
Speaker 1: they're bragging about her all the time. And actually when
Speaker 1: they listened to the podcast and heard about her radical past,
Speaker 1: they came home saying to me and my wife Rachel, like,
Speaker 1: how come you guys aren't as cool? As the grandparents,
Speaker 1: like I meant more embarrassed, like I'm in Michael's and
Speaker 1: why are you speaking so loudly? Well that they're definitely
Speaker 1: not they're embarrassed about so zaid, I know you and
Speaker 1: your family from Chicago, from Hyde Park and from the
Speaker 1: area on the South Side. But let's start this conversation
Speaker 1: maybe by talking about your childhood. You grew up underground
Speaker 1: under an assumed name, and so you have this very
Speaker 1: early life before coming to Chicago, where you're living in
Speaker 1: Harlem and you and your parents are on the run
Speaker 1: from the FBI. I mean, that's crazy. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that experience? What was it? Like? How much did
Speaker 1: you know? What did your parents tell you about about
Speaker 1: living underground? Yeah, my earliest memories are road trips and
Speaker 1: driving around and living in the Bay Area in California
Speaker 1: and sometimes in Harlem and New York and knowing that
Speaker 1: I had to call my parents Rose and Tony. You
Speaker 1: knew those weren't their names, Like I knew those weren't
Speaker 1: there their names? Yeah, And I knew that the FBI
Speaker 1: was chasing us, although I don't think I knew what
Speaker 1: the FBI was exactly. I mean, I knew something was
Speaker 1: chasing us. It didn't sound good. I knew we weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to get caught. I mean, the way my parents
Speaker 1: explained it to me was through kind of childhood metaphors,
Speaker 1: you know. They said were like Robin Hood, you know,
Speaker 1: to stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Speaker 1: Were like Luke Skywalker fighting against an evil empire, and
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to fight against racism. We're like
Speaker 1: John Brown, We're trying you know, I mean, those kind
Speaker 1: of people. But they would say, you know, the government
Speaker 1: is doing a lot of bad things and we're fighting
Speaker 1: against them. And you know, sometimes you have to resist
Speaker 1: the government when it's in the wrong, like these people did.
Speaker 1: And so I knew all those stories growing up, and
Speaker 1: I knew that they were outlaws. I knew that we
Speaker 1: if they got caught, they'd go to jail. So that
Speaker 1: was a lot to absorb as a kid. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I mean, the weird thing is it
Speaker 1: never seemed strange to me, Like any kid you're growing up,
Speaker 1: it's all you've ever known. I just figured that's how
Speaker 1: things were. Most of my friends were also on the run.
Speaker 1: I had friends, you know, who were children of weathermen,
Speaker 1: children of Black panthers and DLA people, and they were
Speaker 1: they were all fugitives. I think this is really fascinating
Speaker 1: because I know all of us are socialized within the
Speaker 1: limitations of our own family. You know, I was a
Speaker 1: kid of an educator and a photographer, and I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time both in my mom's classroom while
Speaker 1: she was teaching and on the road while my father
Speaker 1: was covering sports or political events. But here you are
Speaker 1: being socialized within the context of this crazy radical movement.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, there are kids today who are overhearing
Speaker 1: their parents talk about the Trump era and having some
Speaker 1: sense of dread and fear and anxiety that has passed
Speaker 1: on to them. I mean, I'm trying to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: did you do any independent research on your own. Did
Speaker 1: you pull out the Encyclopedia Britannica, look up John Brown
Speaker 1: and say, let me just try to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Or did you feel, even in
Speaker 1: the conversations on the playground of Harlem like that you
Speaker 1: were the only kid having this experience and no other
Speaker 1: kid was like this except for you and your two brothers.
Speaker 1: I mean, the weirdest thing about it is that I
Speaker 1: wasn't the only kid I mean I was, of course,
Speaker 1: I was the only kid who was whose mom had
Speaker 1: been on the FBI's ten Most Wanted list, but who
Speaker 1: replaced Angela Davis, by the way, just for our listeners, right,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, But you know, in my school in
Speaker 1: New York at PS eighty four, I knew other kids
Speaker 1: whose parents were in prison. I knew other kids whose
Speaker 1: parents had broken the law. I knew other kids who
Speaker 1: visited their dad in jail. So yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was weird, but it wasn't that weird, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I was socialized into it. I mean I felt like
Speaker 1: I knew there was something unusual about my parents, but
Speaker 1: I admired them, still admire them. I mean I felt
Speaker 1: like they didn't lie to me. You know one thing
Speaker 1: when people ask me, like, how come you didn't bell
Speaker 1: against your parents? First of all, I did rebel against
Speaker 1: my parents the way every kid does. Right, But you
Speaker 1: became a playwright. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They became a writer
Speaker 1: and an artist instead of an activist. But no, I
Speaker 1: mean I just been like I didn't come home some
Speaker 1: nights in high school, and I did stuff they probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have approved of, but like making friends with the cops.
Speaker 1: I mean, not that kind of thing. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like this, I think when people say did you rebel,
Speaker 1: what they mean is like, were you like Michael Pete Keaton,
Speaker 1: like being a Reagan you know, like right wing? And
Speaker 1: I was not that at all. And I think the
Speaker 1: reason for that is I think family ties reference. So
Speaker 1: just for our audience, that was one of my favorite shows,
Speaker 1: by the way, because Khalil you were you were like
Speaker 1: Michael pee Keaton, you were totally had that vibe. I
Speaker 1: was the Malik pee Keaton. Yeah. Yeah, But I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't have that instinct. And I think the reason
Speaker 1: is I think a lot of kids rebel against their
Speaker 1: parents because they noticed the hypocrisy. You know, they see
Speaker 1: like their parents say one thing and then they do
Speaker 1: another thing. My parents, you know, they made mistakes, they
Speaker 1: have problems, but they are what they say they are.
Speaker 1: And when I was a kid, you know, if I
Speaker 1: asked them questions about it, if I was like, why
Speaker 1: is the FBI chasing you? What did you do? The
Speaker 1: answers were real. You know. They didn't lie to me
Speaker 1: about those things, and they never hid from me the
Speaker 1: fact that they were wanted, and so I never felt
Speaker 1: like I was being deceived. I just felt like we
Speaker 1: were born into this situation and we had to make
Speaker 1: the best of it. Let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to talk more about
Speaker 1: Zaid's podcast, Mother Country Radicals. It's so damn good. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to some of my best friends. Are we're here
Speaker 1: with Zay dorn Zaide. I just want to tell you
Speaker 1: how fantastic your podcast is than Mother Country Radicals. It
Speaker 1: is great in so many different ways. One is just
Speaker 1: the storytelling that you have, like you are an amazing
Speaker 1: writer and storyteller. The archival tape that digs into the
Speaker 1: history of radical movements in the sixties and seventies, and
Speaker 1: then the interviews you have, your interview your parents of course,
Speaker 1: but everyone from Angela Davis to Black Panthers to the FBI,
Speaker 1: the FBI agents who hunted them, you got it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a sweeping history. And then it's also such an
Speaker 1: intimate story. Just before you go further, Ben, I just
Speaker 1: really appreciate how sensitive you are to the tensions, both
Speaker 1: not romanticizing the relationship between say sds and what becomes
Speaker 1: a Weatherman and the Black Panther Party and what becomes
Speaker 1: a Black Liberation Army. But you find really effective ways
Speaker 1: to show the nuances in those relationships and through storytelling
Speaker 1: to actually help people who don't really know this history
Speaker 1: very well to understand precisely why they would work together
Speaker 1: and what they had in common and what they shared
Speaker 1: in common, including the name of this podcast. You say
Speaker 1: that Mother Country Radicals is a term that Fred Hampton
Speaker 1: uses to describe Bernadine and Bill and so many others
Speaker 1: as people who come from within this country and want
Speaker 1: to change it. And it's fascinating. Here's a clip of
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton spelling out the solidarity and why he's choosing
Speaker 1: to call your parents that a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand the Black hath Party relationship with white Mother Country
Speaker 1: radical What we're saying is there are white people in
Speaker 1: the Mother Country that are of the same types of
Speaker 1: things that we are for. We said that we work
Speaker 1: with anybody from Polish, with anybody that has revolutions on
Speaker 1: their mind. I just think that's a really terrific intervention,
Speaker 1: even for professional historians who have often written about this
Speaker 1: as one or the other, as the New Left or
Speaker 1: the black militant phase of the Black freedom struggle. No,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that that's exactly the intervention we were hoping
Speaker 1: to make and the thing we thought was missing from
Speaker 1: the histories. Yeah. Yeah, maybe the best way for us
Speaker 1: to dive in is to talk about your mom, Bernadine Dorn.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us who she was growing up and
Speaker 1: how she became radicalized? Yeah, I mean it's it's a
Speaker 1: crazy story and frankly a story I didn't really fully
Speaker 1: understand myself before I started working on the show, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: And the first episode is about my mom's path from
Speaker 1: kind of smalltown Wisconsin, daughter of a Jewish immigrant. Her
Speaker 1: dad was was this deep believer in the American dream,
Speaker 1: sort of a small time salesman in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: staunch Republican, voted for Joe McCarthy, wanted his daughters to
Speaker 1: kind of have the American dream. So my mom was
Speaker 1: the first person in her family to go to college,
Speaker 1: ended up in Chicago at the University of Chicago, ended
Speaker 1: up in law school, and then you know, I think
Speaker 1: my father actually taught her. That's wild. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And by the way, just because I need to say
Speaker 1: this for listeners. Your mom goes to the UFC at
Speaker 1: a moment when it is because it is about to
Speaker 1: become like the headquarters of some of the most conservative
Speaker 1: thinking Milton Friedman, libertarianism, voucher school, choice, economics of free
Speaker 1: market capitalism, all of it is unfolding right at this moment.
Speaker 1: You know, the two most famous people in my mom's
Speaker 1: graduating law school of class where her and John Ashcroft,
Speaker 1: George Bush's attorney general, they just had their reunion and
Speaker 1: they were the two speakers. So that's how weird this
Speaker 1: class is. Yeah, well that's incredible. But anyway, she ends
Speaker 1: up at the University of Chicago and ends up volunteering
Speaker 1: for doctor Martin Luther King's wrench strike in Chicago. So
Speaker 1: she starts kind of just as a sort of a
Speaker 1: volunteer legal assistant trying to give advice to tenants who
Speaker 1: are trying to fight the slumlords in Chicago, and ends
Speaker 1: up marching with doctor King, ends up meeting Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: ultimately meeting Fred Hampton, and really kind of following those
Speaker 1: leaders of the movement into a more and more radical
Speaker 1: stance against the Vietnam War and racism. So it is
Speaker 1: this crazy arc between smalltown girl in Wisconsin ends up
Speaker 1: FBI's top ten most wanted list, And it's a story
Speaker 1: that could have only happened at that moment, just to
Speaker 1: dwell on this for a moment in Chicago. So it's
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, the civil rights movement, at least of
Speaker 1: the legislative phase of it, with the passage of the
Speaker 1: Accommodations Bill in sixty four and then Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: in sixty five. Some believed at that moment that, you know,
Speaker 1: the victory had been won. And yet king redirects the
Speaker 1: movement and takes it to this open housing campaign to
Speaker 1: essentially fight against entrenched segregation in Chicago, where the legacies
Speaker 1: of redlining and all of it are in rightful view.
Speaker 1: One of the most radical interventions, Doctor king Maid was saying,
Speaker 1: not only are we going to focus on the kind
Speaker 1: of economic freedom and the and the redlining and the
Speaker 1: real estate question, but we're gonna do it in Chicago.
Speaker 1: I mean, he explicitly says, We've come to Chicago to
Speaker 1: show that racism isn't just a Southern problem, It's an
Speaker 1: America's problem. Right, That's right. So yeah, she's with doctor
Speaker 1: king sees him get hit by rocks as their marching
Speaker 1: engage park. Basically, she's at an eviction. The sheriffs have
Speaker 1: taken some you know, family's belongings out of their house
Speaker 1: and piled them up on the walk, and all these
Speaker 1: people have gathered to watch this, and she's watching it
Speaker 1: as a kind of legal advisor who's trying to help
Speaker 1: people who are being evicted. But they all feel pretty
Speaker 1: helpless and they're standing around, and then this man next
Speaker 1: to her asks her to hold her his coat, and
Speaker 1: she looks over and it's Muhammad Ali, most famous person
Speaker 1: in the world at that point. Maybe wow. And she
Speaker 1: says to you, have you ever stood next to an
Speaker 1: NBA player like somebody lose presence? Yeah, she says she could.
Speaker 1: She could sense the size of the guy and just
Speaker 1: how imposing he was, but she didn't know who he
Speaker 1: was at first. And then she looked up and it's
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali standing right there. She's holding his you know,
Speaker 1: searsucker jacket. He walks forward, he picks up a table
Speaker 1: that the sheriffs have taken out of these these people's house.
Speaker 1: And from my mom, that was a moment of just
Speaker 1: realizing what direct action could look like when you when
Speaker 1: you were able to kind of lead people in that
Speaker 1: way with action not words, and how how much of
Speaker 1: a difference that could make. So she takes it more
Speaker 1: than a step further, you know, So she sees direct action,
Speaker 1: she sees protest, and she decides that's not enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you can describe how and why she
Speaker 1: turns to violence, to violent acts against this country as
Speaker 1: her form of protest. I wondered if your mom thought
Speaker 1: of it as violence in other words, I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things the podcast keeps coming back to and
Speaker 1: making clear is that American imperialism is by definition violence.
Speaker 1: So did she actually call it violent in their early
Speaker 1: days or did she see it that way? I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that they her idea, their idea. The
Speaker 1: weather men were thinking about violence a lot, and what
Speaker 1: they were thinking about is that all the violence was
Speaker 1: on the side of the state. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: how did she go from thinking, okay, that that kind
Speaker 1: of non violent you know, Martin Luther King, Muhammad al
Speaker 1: Lei direct action all the way too, we should fight
Speaker 1: back with bombs and guns. Well, the first thing that
Speaker 1: happened was Martin Luther King was murdered and for her.
Speaker 1: That was a big turning point, you know that his movement,
Speaker 1: you know, his non violent activism was met with this
Speaker 1: lethal violence from white vigilantes in America. So that was
Speaker 1: one thing that happened. And then the next thing that
Speaker 1: happened was the Vietnam War escalated, and all this marching
Speaker 1: and protesting and and kind of trying to stop it
Speaker 1: through voter registration drives and demonstrations didn't seem to be working,
Speaker 1: and thousands of people were being killed every day. So
Speaker 1: that was the second thing. And then the third thing
Speaker 1: is they became, you know, allies with the Black Panthers,
Speaker 1: and in particular with Fred Hampton, who my mom was
Speaker 1: quite friendly with, who's a chairman of the Illinois chapter
Speaker 1: of the Black Panther Room. And he's like nineteen or
Speaker 1: I think at that point he's I think he was twenty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, a young guy five years younger than
Speaker 1: my mom, charismatic as hell, yeah, and brilliant and a
Speaker 1: real analysis and kind of the FBI singled him out
Speaker 1: as a potential you know, black messiah who they were
Speaker 1: worried might be able to you know, unite the black
Speaker 1: freedom movement and kind of really threatened the American government
Speaker 1: and just but just just because it's important, because this
Speaker 1: is connected to your own, your own story, but that
Speaker 1: he was actually connecting his analysis of American capitalism and
Speaker 1: empire to the conditions of poor white people in Chicago
Speaker 1: along with brown people. So this wasn't just unifying the
Speaker 1: Black Freedom Strug, was also unifying across across racial differences
Speaker 1: for people who had a similar class analysis. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: He called it the Rainbow Coalition. It was the original
Speaker 1: before Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. It was Fred Hampton's Rainbow Coalition.
Speaker 1: And my mom was the president of SDS at the time,
Speaker 1: Students for Democratic Society, and STS was one of the
Speaker 1: members of the Rainbow Coalition. So she was literally representing
Speaker 1: the kind of white student wing of Fred Hampton's multiracial coalition.
Speaker 1: So she was following his example. And he was doing
Speaker 1: an incredible job of organizing all these disparate people into
Speaker 1: this this powerful movement in Chicago, and he was being
Speaker 1: targeted by the FBI and by police, you know, first
Speaker 1: with harassment and arrest and intimidation, and then ultimately he
Speaker 1: was murdered by the Chicago police. And I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of activists, white and black, it was that
Speaker 1: series of kind of watching black leaders be targeted and
Speaker 1: killed over and over again, King and Med Grevers and
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton and others, and you know, they started the
Speaker 1: white activists like my mom started to feel like we
Speaker 1: have to do more. We can't you be doing these
Speaker 1: peaceful marches and resting on our privilege, which is our
Speaker 1: privilege that the police are not going to come and
Speaker 1: kill us because there would be an uproar, but they're
Speaker 1: willing to kill black leaders, and so we have to
Speaker 1: do more to try to kind of pull the attention
Speaker 1: of law enforcement away from the panthers and make them
Speaker 1: focus on something else. So that was I think that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's more complicated than that, of course, but
Speaker 1: the Road to Violence was about watching state violence being
Speaker 1: acted over and over and over and thinking like, we
Speaker 1: can't just take this. We we have to give something back.
Speaker 1: And their slogan was literally bring the war home, and
Speaker 1: that was a metaphor at first, but it became a
Speaker 1: literal idea of like they're going to go to war.
Speaker 1: We got to go to war. In episode three, you
Speaker 1: mentioned and explicitly in nineteen sixty nine alone, police had
Speaker 1: killed twenty seven Black Panthers and had arrested seven hundred others.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I learned from the
Speaker 1: podcast is that part of the strategy of the Weathermen,
Speaker 1: working with either Black Panthers or the Black Liberation Army,
Speaker 1: was to take some of the heat off of them,
Speaker 1: to essentially absorb some of the state violence by creating
Speaker 1: enough chaos through targeted strategic bombing so that the state
Speaker 1: would focus on them at key moments as opposed to
Speaker 1: just focusing on black radicals. That's pretty incredible, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny you mentioned earlier the kind of
Speaker 1: the intervention we tried to do with kind of re
Speaker 1: establishing the history of the fact that this really was
Speaker 1: a movement about racism as much as anything else. I
Speaker 1: think traditionally when people have written about the Weathermen and
Speaker 1: about white activists in the sixties in general, they tend
Speaker 1: to focus on the anti war activism, which was certainly
Speaker 1: a part of it. But every time I went back
Speaker 1: to the records that you know, I have a there's
Speaker 1: archival audio of my dad giving a speech right before
Speaker 1: the Days of Rage demonstration, and he's literally saying, we
Speaker 1: have to take to the streets to draw the attention
Speaker 1: to the police away from the Black Panthers. That's the
Speaker 1: motivation this ball in Chicago. We will lead massive demonstrations
Speaker 1: against the war in support of the Black Panther Party
Speaker 1: and in solidarity with all political prisoners. And every time
Speaker 1: my parents issued to communicate later when they were bombing
Speaker 1: buildings and stuff, the communications are always about this is
Speaker 1: in solidarity with the Black prisoners and the Black Panther Party,
Speaker 1: and a lot of their just self conception was we
Speaker 1: have to be out there, we have to be making
Speaker 1: noise in order to make the government pay attention to
Speaker 1: us instead of just being able to target black leaders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so Zay you're bringing that up. One of
Speaker 1: the moments in the podcast that has stayed with me
Speaker 1: since hearing it was I think as your mother at
Speaker 1: an SDS convention in nineteen sixty nine, and I think
Speaker 1: that's when they talk they become the action faction, right,
Speaker 1: like they're like, we need to take more radical revolutionary action.
Speaker 1: But she's up on stage with Black Panthers, and in
Speaker 1: a way, there's this choice presented to her of fighting
Speaker 1: missogyny or fighting white supremacy and you know, I think
Speaker 1: about your mom in that moment, and she makes a
Speaker 1: choice of fighting white supremacy, but I don't even think
Speaker 1: she sees it in that choice. And you know that
Speaker 1: she made that choice, Maybe you could unpack that a
Speaker 1: little bit. I found it to be a fascinating moment,
Speaker 1: and I ended up focusing on it a lot because
Speaker 1: she was at that point the national secretary of the biggest,
Speaker 1: well mostly white student anti war group in the country,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to decide what was the way forward,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people within sts were kind
Speaker 1: of the They were like the Bernie Bros of the time.
Speaker 1: They were white kids who wanted to like focus on
Speaker 1: class more than race. They wanted to go in the
Speaker 1: factories and organize workers, and you know, they were Marxists,
Speaker 1: and they wanted a kind of a class analysis. And
Speaker 1: my mom and her allies in what they called the
Speaker 1: Action Faction or what became the Weatherman Group, were thinking,
Speaker 1: we have to follow the lead of black activists here
Speaker 1: in America and radical nationalist anti imperialist movements abroad, like
Speaker 1: the Vietcong, like the Tupamarrows. You know, they all had
Speaker 1: a similar kind of sense of fighting American hegemony. But
Speaker 1: my mom was about focusing on race and on imperialism.
Speaker 1: And so the moment you're talking about then, what the
Speaker 1: choice that was presented to hers. She was giving a
Speaker 1: speech at this big convention. There was already a lot
Speaker 1: of internal dissension and fighting within the group, and the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers showed up, and she had actually invited them
Speaker 1: to come and speak, yea, And they were giving a
Speaker 1: speech about race and about American power, and one of
Speaker 1: them said a couple of sexist things. He's you know,
Speaker 1: somebody asked him what the place of women in the
Speaker 1: movement was and he said prone as the position, you know,
Speaker 1: and people started booing and there was a whole uproar
Speaker 1: about it, and you know, my mom was presented with
Speaker 1: this moment of like, do I denounce the Panthers for
Speaker 1: as being sexist or do I kind of embrace the
Speaker 1: idea that like, when given a choice, white activists have
Speaker 1: to stand up for black people. And for her, that
Speaker 1: was she says in the podcast, that was an easy choice.
Speaker 1: That she considers herself a feminist, but she also thought
Speaker 1: the Panthers were important feminist allies and La Davis, you know,
Speaker 1: and sixty percent of the Panthers at the time were women,
Speaker 1: so in any case, she decides, no, the SDS has
Speaker 1: to follow the Panthers, and she basically makes a declaration
Speaker 1: from the stage and she says, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to be on the side of the vanguard of the revolution.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's with me, we're leaving white youth must two
Speaker 1: sides now. We must either fight on the side of
Speaker 1: the oppressed or be on the side of the oppressor.
Speaker 1: And she led half the half the group out of
Speaker 1: the convention hall and split SDS and half more than
Speaker 1: in half. I mean, she basically the group never recovered.
Speaker 1: SDS was broken as an institution. But that's where the
Speaker 1: kind of kernel of the weather Men came from. What
Speaker 1: a badass your mom is picking up on your mom's
Speaker 1: commitments here and essentially saying that the black Panthers are
Speaker 1: the vanguard of the revolution and we have to follow
Speaker 1: their lead. I mean, it seems to me that that break,
Speaker 1: that inflection point in this radical movement has actually never
Speaker 1: come back together again. I've been involved in a number
Speaker 1: of conversations with leftists over the years, you know, many
Speaker 1: of whom are white men, and there still remains this
Speaker 1: kind of class analysis that hasn't taken stock of history, right,
Speaker 1: That Marxism couldn't account for slavery, that the twentieth century
Speaker 1: labor movements in the United States failed repeatedly to recognize
Speaker 1: the shared interests of black workers and consistently chose whiteness
Speaker 1: over solidarity. And here we are, you know, in this
Speaker 1: moment of the sixties. And I guess I'm just really
Speaker 1: struck by how your mom made this issue of sticking
Speaker 1: with and standing up for black people. You know. I
Speaker 1: think at some point that podcast says it's the central
Speaker 1: dilemma of American history, and I just want to hear
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit more about that, because it's
Speaker 1: a recurring thread in the podcast itself. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it was complicated. I mean, part a lot of the
Speaker 1: show is about the complexities of trying to be whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, people talk about ally ship today, Right, every
Speaker 1: time I mentioned being allies both to the weathermen and
Speaker 1: to the panthers, they all said we weren't allies, we
Speaker 1: were comrades. And I would try to say, what does
Speaker 1: that mean, Like what's the difference? And they would say,
Speaker 1: you know, ally ship means you're just kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm on your side. Comradeship means you're literally standing shoulder
Speaker 1: to shoulder and fighting together. Your hands are getting dirty,
Speaker 1: You're not, You're not You're not from a fire. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so these were people. I mean, again, there were
Speaker 1: problems all throughout, and I don't mean to hold it
Speaker 1: up as some kind of like this was an idyllic,
Speaker 1: utopian society, but if you listen to the series, I
Speaker 1: think you do see a model of like people who
Speaker 1: were fighting together for the liberation of black people, but
Speaker 1: the oberation of all people. I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: weather Men were pretty convinced that white people couldn't be
Speaker 1: free until black people were also free, and that you know,
Speaker 1: they were therefore literally on the same side and literally
Speaker 1: fighting for the same thing. And so yeah, what I
Speaker 1: what I was impressed by with, you know, going back
Speaker 1: over that this history is that for over a decade,
Speaker 1: these people in the Panther Party, in the Black Liberation Army,
Speaker 1: and in the weather Men were literally on the run
Speaker 1: together and giving aid and comfort to each other and
Speaker 1: aiding and abetting each other well on the run. And
Speaker 1: that was that was real solidarity and a real attempt to,
Speaker 1: you know, not to say like there's some theoretical economic
Speaker 1: model that we should all be kind of focused on
Speaker 1: as the only way to have a revolution, but really saying, look,
Speaker 1: there's injustice right here. We all have to fight it together.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's something powerful about that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. And just something powerful about your parents commitments,
Speaker 1: your mom and dad. I mean, your name from one
Speaker 1: of the members of the Black Liberation Army who was
Speaker 1: very much committed to these shared radical movements, and who
Speaker 1: dies and for the sacrifice he made, your parents wanted
Speaker 1: his memory to live all And I think that's pretty incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you it's funny. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the most moving parts about it for me
Speaker 1: was I never really knew much about the man I'm
Speaker 1: named after, Zakour, you know, and so to get to
Speaker 1: talk to some of these guys like Jamal Joseph or
Speaker 1: seku Odinga, these Black Liberation Army guys who knew Zaid
Speaker 1: you know, of course I never met him, he was
Speaker 1: killed years before I was born, but hearing some of
Speaker 1: the anecdotes about him, you know that he was this
Speaker 1: super sharp dresser and a tailor, who made Dashiki's for
Speaker 1: the members of the party and everything. Something really fun
Speaker 1: about digging back into your own history, your own prehistory,
Speaker 1: and you know, finding out the real lives of the
Speaker 1: people whose names you carry. Yeah. So we are talking
Speaker 1: to Zaid Ayers Dorn named after Zaide Malik Sakour, and
Speaker 1: also talking about his radical parents, Bernadine Dorn and Bill
Speaker 1: Ayers and his amazing podcast Mother Country Radicals. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a break and after we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the future, about lessons that we
Speaker 1: can learn from this past. Welcome back to some of
Speaker 1: my best friends. Are we're here with Zai Dorn. Zaide
Speaker 1: you say in Mother Country Radicals that you make the
Speaker 1: podcast in part for your children, for your daughters and
Speaker 1: your kids and my kids are in school together. They
Speaker 1: know one another, they hang out their classmates, they're growing
Speaker 1: up together. And I'm thinking, like, so, what are the
Speaker 1: lessons right now in this country? You know, we feel
Speaker 1: like white supremacy is ascendant again? What should we be doing? Like,
Speaker 1: what is the lesson from the podcast from this past
Speaker 1: that you dig too in? How should we be fighting injustice?
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of lessons. I mean I'll
Speaker 1: start with the slightly more depressing one, because you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things you do get a sense of
Speaker 1: I think listening to the podcast, certainly I got a
Speaker 1: sense making it is how intractable some of these problems are.
Speaker 1: How for all the fighting that these people did, how
Speaker 1: much we're still living in that world of racism and
Speaker 1: white supremacy. I mean, one of the most vivid things
Speaker 1: for me is I was making this show during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I was interviewing people over zoom and over and over again.
Speaker 1: I was having these conversations with people weathermen and black panthers,
Speaker 1: and I would ask them why they were radicalized, and
Speaker 1: over and over again, the answer was because of police
Speaker 1: killing a black person. You know. So it was my
Speaker 1: mom radicalized by the killing of Fred Hampton, Jamal Joseph
Speaker 1: radicalized first by the killing of Fred Hampton and then
Speaker 1: by the killing of this ten year old boy, Clifford
Speaker 1: Glover in Queens in nineteen seventy four, shot in the
Speaker 1: back by an undercover cup And so, you know, and
Speaker 1: I heard all these stories over and over and while
Speaker 1: I was doing these interviews, George Floyd was murdered by
Speaker 1: the police, and you know, we had the uprisings on
Speaker 1: the street, and you couldn't help but be struck by
Speaker 1: the cyclical nature of history and how disturbing and depressing
Speaker 1: it is that these people fought so hard against white supremacy,
Speaker 1: against police violence, and here we are in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, still dealing with the same problems. So one
Speaker 1: lesson was the fight is not over, you know, and
Speaker 1: that that can be a depressing lesson. The other lesson, though, was,
Speaker 1: you know, it is impressive to me that every generation
Speaker 1: throws up these people willing to fight back, willing to
Speaker 1: put themselves on the line, willing to put their shoulders
Speaker 1: to the wheel or whatever you want to say. Right,
Speaker 1: And we do have these movements now, you know, everything
Speaker 1: from Black Lives Matter to Sunrise to March for Our Lives,
Speaker 1: young people who are rediscovering a kind of an activist
Speaker 1: spirit and wanting to change the world in some way.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, every time we're in a
Speaker 1: place in this country where it feels like bleak and
Speaker 1: like you know, authoritarianism and law and order racism are ascendant,
Speaker 1: you also get people fighting back against that and saying
Speaker 1: like that's not the world we want to live in.
Speaker 1: We want a better world, and so I think that's
Speaker 1: the way progress works. You know, progress works through sort
Speaker 1: of radical revolutionary imagination, and then there are there is
Speaker 1: a reaction to that and a kind of a pushing back,
Speaker 1: and so progress is halting and it's two steps forward,
Speaker 1: one step back. But I think when you look at
Speaker 1: this history, you can't help but feel inspired by both
Speaker 1: the young people of that time, the members of the
Speaker 1: Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and the young people
Speaker 1: of today who are trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: a better way forward. So I want to I want
Speaker 1: to hold here and go back to even to that
Speaker 1: question I asked about the lessons from your parents and
Speaker 1: their activism because they resorted to violence, or not not
Speaker 1: even resorted, they took to the streets and they committed
Speaker 1: violent acts to oppose the violence of the state, as
Speaker 1: you said, and that lesson for today, for you could
Speaker 1: say for our kids, like what are you willing to
Speaker 1: sacrifice in the face of injustice? And you know, here
Speaker 1: we have racial apartheid in the country then and we
Speaker 1: have a lot of it now. And I think of
Speaker 1: also of your generation, like you you made this podcast,
Speaker 1: and you know you told this deep history and you
Speaker 1: explore like as you call them weather kids and panther cubs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the children of these radicals, like you guys, experienced that
Speaker 1: sacrifice that your parents chose fighting over family. So what's
Speaker 1: that lesson? I think, well, that's a big question. I
Speaker 1: mean I spend a lot of time in the podcast thinking,
Speaker 1: of course, I you know, I grew up on the run,
Speaker 1: and then with my mom in jail, we adopted my
Speaker 1: brother Chasa, whose parents did decades in prison. I also
Speaker 1: talk on the show to Kakuya Shakur, the daughter of
Speaker 1: Sada Shakur, who's still underground forty years later, fifty years later,
Speaker 1: living on the run in Cuba for her day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Asada was the kind of figurehead and kind of leader
Speaker 1: of the Black Liberation Army for a time and ended
Speaker 1: up fleeing to Cuba after breaking out of prison. And
Speaker 1: I talked to her daughter, Kakuya, who's it's been twenty
Speaker 1: some years since she saw her mom. Asada has never
Speaker 1: met her grandkids. So there are these real big sacrifices
Speaker 1: that these families made. The people themselves who committed the
Speaker 1: violent criminal acts, the radicals themselves, but also their children
Speaker 1: and their grandchildren. So the kind of fallout from those
Speaker 1: actions is real, and people really suffered. But you know,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite moments in the podcast is I
Speaker 1: sort of managed to secretly record a conversation between my
Speaker 1: dad Bill and my daughter, who was thirteen at the time,
Speaker 1: and as I was trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: end the podcast, I happened to be sitting at dinner
Speaker 1: with them, and they just got into an argument about
Speaker 1: John Brown were dinner, the radical abolitionist who who stormed
Speaker 1: Harper's ferry in eighteen fifty nine, exactly. And John Brown
Speaker 1: is a hero of my dad's as a symbol of
Speaker 1: a kind of a white person willing to risk everything.
Speaker 1: He's got a big ass tattoo of John Brown on
Speaker 1: his back, right. Yeah. And yet, and yet, my thirteen
Speaker 1: year old daughter had been studying John Brown in school,
Speaker 1: and she came back home saying, he sounds crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he took his sons into this suicidal raid and his
Speaker 1: sons were killed for this political idea. She's a very
Speaker 1: sophisticated kid for a thirteen year old. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to diminish his sacrifice, like that's amazing. And
Speaker 1: he made a difference, but like, come on, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not really a rational thing to give up your
Speaker 1: family and then yourself lamb to the slaughter hypo deal.
Speaker 1: So she's saying this, and my dad's arguing with her,
Speaker 1: and I, of course, as a good podcaster, should I
Speaker 1: slid my iPhone into the middle of the table and
Speaker 1: hit record. The point is when you say he was
Speaker 1: a fanatic, he was and extremist. That's true, and it's
Speaker 1: also true that the rational thing, which is just lets
Speaker 1: slavery be. I mean, what are you gonna do? That's
Speaker 1: crazy to me? It doesn't crazy. What do you mean?
Speaker 1: I don't like it. It unsettles me to think about
Speaker 1: you or Bill caring about a political issue more than
Speaker 1: you care about me. I feel like it's like weird,
Speaker 1: think about a father who cares more about like sticking
Speaker 1: it to the match than his songs. It ended up
Speaker 1: being kind of the sort of culminating moment of the
Speaker 1: show because they really have this interesting argument about what
Speaker 1: is it worth to sacrifice? And not all of us
Speaker 1: are able or willing to make the kind of sacrifices
Speaker 1: that John Brown or Asadah Shapour made or your parents, yeah,
Speaker 1: or my parents. But I don't think any but any
Speaker 1: of us would say the right moral thing is just
Speaker 1: always to protect your own family and let the world burn.
Speaker 1: So you have to find the line where you're willing
Speaker 1: to sometimes put yourself and the things you love on
Speaker 1: the line to make things better. Well, you know, and
Speaker 1: listening to you answer that question, it hadn't occurred to
Speaker 1: me listening to this moment that you just described in
Speaker 1: the podcast itself. But here, all of a sudden, I'm like, look,
Speaker 1: you've you've described the fact that your mom and dad,
Speaker 1: Bill Ayres, did what they did because the monopoly of
Speaker 1: violence by the state had could created the conditions of
Speaker 1: suffering for all sorts of people, and most especially black
Speaker 1: people in the United States, and that that was the
Speaker 1: reason to do all of this. And yet as you
Speaker 1: talk about like how you describe this to your daughter
Speaker 1: and sacrifice in the trade offs between like self care
Speaker 1: and being able to do something that won't risk your
Speaker 1: life and your children are orfered and all this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, I'm also like, white Americans proudly boast of
Speaker 1: sacrificing their sons and daughters and military adventures all the time.
Speaker 1: So this sort of routine notion of sacrifice in the
Speaker 1: interests of the American state and the interest of patriotism
Speaker 1: is unquestioned in this country. I mean, you can't board
Speaker 1: a plane without giving it up to veterans for their sacrifices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every every sporting event, every yeah, yeah, I mean it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: And so maybe it's just really about the socialization we've
Speaker 1: all we've all come of age in. It's a notion
Speaker 1: that this other kind of sacrifice, this other kind of
Speaker 1: challenge to the state to change the state, is in
Speaker 1: fact the one that we shouldn't do, because that's you know,
Speaker 1: the costs are too great, and that's that's crazy. I
Speaker 1: completely agree, and I'll add one thing, Khalil to that,
Speaker 1: because I think you're exactly right that nobody really truly
Speaker 1: believes that we shouldn't sacrifice or even that we should
Speaker 1: never use violence. People believe that it is justified in
Speaker 1: certain circumstances outside. The other thing people ask me about
Speaker 1: all the time is they'll say, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: if I'm getting kind of hostile questions from a crowd
Speaker 1: or from a journalist, the question often is something like,
Speaker 1: you know, well, your parents did all this. They turned
Speaker 1: to violence and it didn't work. And it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's true, but like the people who did nothing,
Speaker 1: they didn't end racism either, you know, and the idea
Speaker 1: that that kind of this because an intractable problem problem,
Speaker 1: you know, the original sin of this country still persists.
Speaker 1: And people want to point at the activists and the
Speaker 1: radicals and the peace movement and the anti racists and say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not making enough progress. But those are the people
Speaker 1: fighting for change, and it's the people doing nothing and
Speaker 1: resisting that change who are actually standing in the way
Speaker 1: of progress. You know. So everybody has to take a
Speaker 1: long look, especially white people in America, take a long
Speaker 1: look at what they're doing, what they're willing to do,
Speaker 1: and what they're not doing, and take seriously the fact
Speaker 1: that it's easy to throw stones from the sidelines, you know, Zaid.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think your parents surprised you in
Speaker 1: this podcast, Like they live out loud, as you said,
Speaker 1: and they're sort of radically honest, you know what was
Speaker 1: a surprise, and sort of digging into their story, into
Speaker 1: their history, well, a couple of things really did surprise me. Actually.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true that they've always been honest, but
Speaker 1: they've also always hidden things from me. I don't blame
Speaker 1: them for it, because a lot of it was not
Speaker 1: naming names and not talking about things that might implicate
Speaker 1: other people, just being good to ask radicals like they
Speaker 1: don't they don't talk. Yeah, yeah, my dad says often
Speaker 1: in the podcast, I'll ask him a question and he says, well,
Speaker 1: you know that action I can't talk about. That thing
Speaker 1: I can't talk about. And it's often because it involves
Speaker 1: somebody else. You know, when it's just him, he's pretty
Speaker 1: willing to tell me things, but if it's an action
Speaker 1: that other people were involved in, he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. And especially the actions that were collaborative
Speaker 1: actions between the White Underground and the Black Underground. Nobody
Speaker 1: really wants to be the one to say what was
Speaker 1: happening because nobody wants to blow the whistle on the
Speaker 1: other side. And there are people still in prison to
Speaker 1: this day. But you know, one thing that really did
Speaker 1: surprise me, and I found it I really had to
Speaker 1: grapple with it was that, you know, my whole childhood,
Speaker 1: one of the things they told me, one of the
Speaker 1: kind of founding myths of my life, was that when
Speaker 1: they had me, everything changed and they and they became parents,
Speaker 1: and even though we were still underground, we were still
Speaker 1: on the run from the FBI, they decided, you know,
Speaker 1: we're no more violence and more things that could put
Speaker 1: our lives at risk, because we have a kid now,
Speaker 1: and you know, as a kid, you want to feel
Speaker 1: like you're the center of the world and like your
Speaker 1: parents would do anything for you. And so that was
Speaker 1: always just something I accepted. And one of the things
Speaker 1: as soon as I started digging into the timelines and
Speaker 1: putting things together and making spreadsheets and you know, writing
Speaker 1: down chronologies about like what was going on, when I
Speaker 1: realized that that wasn't entirely true, and I started asking
Speaker 1: my dad about what he was actually doing when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that really surprised me is that they kept up their
Speaker 1: kind of violent revolutionary actions even as parents. Not quite
Speaker 1: to the same extent, but there were a couple of
Speaker 1: very risky things that happened when I was a toddler,
Speaker 1: and you know, actions in solidarity with the Black Liberation Army.
Speaker 1: And how'd you make sense of that? Like, how did
Speaker 1: you feel? I mean, I we had a lot of
Speaker 1: conversations about it, and I had to kind of think
Speaker 1: about what to make of that, what it meant for
Speaker 1: my own self conception or my conception of my parents
Speaker 1: as people who prioritize their kids. Well, you know, but
Speaker 1: what I ultimately make of it is that, like you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, it surprises me, but it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it surprises me that these specific things happened.
Speaker 1: But when I really think about my parents, I always
Speaker 1: knew that if they were called upon by you know,
Speaker 1: comrades in the black underground to help with something, there
Speaker 1: were very few things that we're going to stand in
Speaker 1: the way of them trying to say yes to that,
Speaker 1: even having a kid at home. So even today, even today,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're pretty committed people, and it's complicated.
Speaker 1: It makes my relationship with them complicated, But I also
Speaker 1: feel like I admire and respect the fact that for them,
Speaker 1: that fight and that struggle and that solidarity is as
Speaker 1: important as anything else in their lives. Was it. I
Speaker 1: want to just finish this conversation by saying that everyone
Speaker 1: should listen to your podcast. Everyone should know this history.
Speaker 1: This is a history that even when I was in
Speaker 1: grad school, more than twenty years ago was treated as
Speaker 1: as a failure in social movement history by mainstream historians.
Speaker 1: It's a moment when social movements went off track, and
Speaker 1: as you well know, neo conservatism of the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: both in politics and even in scholarship, grew out of
Speaker 1: the reactionary understanding of this moment. So you're helping to
Speaker 1: write the historical record and bringing it in such a
Speaker 1: wonderful storytelling way that new generations of young people will
Speaker 1: have a chance to learn from this past and continue
Speaker 1: the struggle. So thank you so much Zai for joining
Speaker 1: us today. Than I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Zaide.
Speaker 1: It's really been amazing talking with you. Thanks Ben, great
Speaker 1: being here. Oh Man, that was such a good conversation.
Speaker 1: It was it was. Yeah. It has me thinking about
Speaker 1: this moment in the summer of twenty twenty when white
Speaker 1: activists in Portland were taking siege of a federal building
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump was sending undercover people in black vans
Speaker 1: and snatching people off the street, or even the Lafayatte
Speaker 1: Square moment when part of the park outside of the
Speaker 1: White House was on fire and then generals were standing
Speaker 1: with Tromp and a photo op. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the moment after George Floyd's murder and these protests across
Speaker 1: the country, and you're talking about the police response, the
Speaker 1: state response to kind of squash this. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 1: really talking about both. I mean, people were in the
Speaker 1: streets and in some cases there were buildings on fire,
Speaker 1: a whole police station burned up in Minneapolis. I mean,
Speaker 1: it looked exactly like what the grainy footage of the
Speaker 1: sixties was what I grew up seeing, what I read about.
Speaker 1: And the thing that's really fascinating, I mean, because that's
Speaker 1: something everyone listening to this show right now witnessed, is
Speaker 1: that so many people were asked the question, and I
Speaker 1: will say it happened for me too, which is like,
Speaker 1: is this a moment for change in America? Is this
Speaker 1: the moment of the racial reckoning? Is this the moment
Speaker 1: where we finally get this right? Journalists we're asking this question,
Speaker 1: people were writing about it. I was participating, you were
Speaker 1: in this moment. And the thing that I said, and
Speaker 1: I remember others saying as well, including elected officials, as
Speaker 1: long as people stay in the streets, we will see
Speaker 1: change in this country. Only one is demanded is what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Only one is demanded, and only when there
Speaker 1: is a civil disobedience at a scale when you can't
Speaker 1: have business as usual. Yeah. Yeah, and it turned out
Speaker 1: to be right. I mean, we have the benefit of
Speaker 1: hindsight in this moment to look back now two years
Speaker 1: later and all these questions about whether this was a
Speaker 1: quote unquote moment or movement have been answered. It was
Speaker 1: a fucking moment, right, I mean, because once people are
Speaker 1: off the streets, and once the demand is gone, the
Speaker 1: action has gone, the change has gone. The change is gone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's this line from a Flannery O'Connor store
Speaker 1: that I often think about. She would have been a
Speaker 1: good woman if there was somebody there to shoot her
Speaker 1: every day of her life. Oh shit, you know, without that,
Speaker 1: you ain't the good woman. But only in that moment.
Speaker 1: I mentioned this while we were talking with Zaide, But
Speaker 1: there's that moment when his mother, Bernadine Dorn, you know,
Speaker 1: chooses radicalism and she she forms the action faction. That
Speaker 1: phrase has just stuck with me. What you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: we need action factions, right, yeah, But then also all
Speaker 1: the things that that means, because what does it mean
Speaker 1: to ask people to stay on the streets indefinitely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what does that demand on people in terms
Speaker 1: of their lives, in terms of you know, society functioning,
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like we need the change, but
Speaker 1: also the demand on activists, I'm as on all of
Speaker 1: us on society, it is an incredible amount. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what we were digging into today. And you know,
Speaker 1: Zaid is so in a way unlike his parents, and
Speaker 1: he says this on the podcast that that he created,
Speaker 1: that they believe in moral absolutes and they think with
Speaker 1: a kind of moral clarity. And he's this playwright, this
Speaker 1: writer who explores the ambiguities, who explores the complexities and
Speaker 1: in a way that's not action faction, but it's a
Speaker 1: way why this podcast and exploring these ideas is so fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to show the context and the what's at stake here. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think one takeaway, at least for me, is that
Speaker 1: what the sixties presented as a choice in the way
Speaker 1: that Bernadine and Bill made it, which is to say,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you have to make a personal sacrifice,
Speaker 1: that's the only way things change. And yeah, we are
Speaker 1: at that moment again. And we don't know what's around
Speaker 1: the corner in twenty twenty three, but I think we
Speaker 1: do know that bodies in the street and sacrifices are
Speaker 1: a crucial ingredient to social movement change. And you know,
Speaker 1: let's hope that we can be part of encouraging people
Speaker 1: and inspiring people to do that work. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really well put. And I think I think this podcast
Speaker 1: that you know that we're doing, but also that zay
Speaker 1: did is exactly doing that. Yeah, yeah, all right, all
Speaker 1: right man, Well, Khalil, love you, Love you too, man.
Speaker 1: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me,
Speaker 1: Khalil Dubron Muhammed and my best friend Ben Austin. It's
Speaker 1: produced by John Assanti and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Jasmine Morris, our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia Lobelle. At Pushkin thanks to leitaal Mullad,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Heather Fain, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Khane,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by
Speaker 1: Fellow chicagoan the brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Pubman.
Speaker 1: You definitely want to check out his music at his
Speaker 1: website avery R. Young dot com. You can find Pushkin
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Speaker 1: give it a five star rating and a review, and
Speaker 1: please tell all of your best friends about it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love your Guys podcast. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's one of those honors to be on it. I've
Speaker 1: been listening and that's gonna be weird to be like
Speaker 1: the guests. You know. Yeah, we'll wait till you hear
Speaker 1: how we chop it up. It's gonna be even better.
Speaker 1: You're not actually gonna be yea, they just back and further,
Speaker 1: it's just an episode about Benea