Son of radicals, Zayd Ayers Dohrn details a childhood underground and on the run

Zayd Ayers Dohrn walks with his parents Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn outside the Federal Court Building in New York, May 17, 1982. David Handschuh/Associated Press hide caption toggle caption David Handschuh/Associated Press Zayd Ayers Dohrn spent much of his childhood underground and on the run. His mother, Bernardine Dohrn, was a leader of the '60s radical student group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which opposed the war in Vietnam and racism. Along with Dohrn's father, Bill Ayers , she helped found the Weather Underground , a group committed to armed resistance against the government. "From my very first memories, I knew that the FBI was chasing us," he says. "My parents tried to explain it in terms [like] we were like Robin Hood or we were like the Rebel Alliance in S tar Wars . So I knew in the way a kid knows that our lives were precarious." Dohrn describes his mother as a "liberal, progressive, activist" who became radicalized by the assassination of Black civil rights leaders and the escalation of the Vietnam War: "Once she helped found the Weather Underground, I would say the mission was to overthrow the United States government," he says. The Weather Underground planted bombs in empty police cars, the Pentagon and other places they considered symbols of the opposition, giving advance warning to people in those buildings to prevent casualties. For years, Bernardine Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. …