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Introducing: Mother Country Radicals · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. I'm Zayd Ayers-Dorn, and I am so excited
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to share with you the first episode of my new podcast,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Mother Country Radicals, a family history of the weather underground.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: This show is the true story of how my parents,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, transformed themselves from peace activists
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: into violent revolutionaries, how they teamed up with Black militant
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: groups to rob banks, fight racism, and help build a revolution.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy hearing my family's story. To find
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: more episodes of be sure to follow Mother Country Radicals
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: on Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, now
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: let's get into the episode.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Enjoy.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: In May 1970, Los Angeles radio station KPFK received an
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: anonymous phone call, leading them to a cassette tape hidden
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in a public phone booth. It begins like this.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Hello, this is Brandine Dorrance. I'm going to read a
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: declaration of a state of war. This is the first
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: communication from the weatherman underground.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Bernadine Dorn is my mother. She's recording this tape when
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: she's just 28 years old, surrounded by a few friends
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: in a safe house in San Francisco, a one-room apartment
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: they've rented using a fake ID. The place is crowded,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and most of the people in the room are even
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: younger than she is. student activists, and grad school dropouts
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: in their early to mid-20s. There's a device the size
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: of a lunchbox set up in the middle of a table,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: an old-school tape cassette player with a red record button.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: All over the world, people fighting American imperialism look to
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: America's youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: to join forces in the destruction of the empire. Kids
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: know the lines are drawn. Revolution is touching all of
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: our lives.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: They've written this statement together, over a bunch of sleepless
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: nights on a stolen typewriter. Revisions marked in pen and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: retyped over and over to get it right. It's a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: collaborative effort, a group project. But they all understand, as
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the leader of the organization, the public face, it would
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: be Bernadine delivering their message.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: Freaks are revolutionaries, and revolutionaries are freaks. If you want
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: to find us, this is where we are.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks, and townhouse where
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: kids are making love, smoking dope, and loading guns, fugitives
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: from American justice are free to go.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It's funny for me to listen to this tape now,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: 50 years later. It's not just how 1970 it is.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Tribe and commune, making love, smoking dope. It's also how
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: young she sounds. Her voice is a bit shaky. Despite
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the fact she later became famous, infamous, as a symbol
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: of revolutionary rage, my mother has always been a private person, reserved,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: kind of shy. So I can hear her forcing herself
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: to say these words, driving herself to do something that
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't come naturally to her, because she believes somebody has
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to do something. She has to do something.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: The parents of privileged kids have been saying for years
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: that the revolution was a game for us. Tens of
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: thousands have learned that protests and marches don't do it.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Revolutionary violence is the only way.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: My mom was actually one of those privileged kids herself.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: She'd recently graduated from the University of Chicago Law School,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: one of the most prestigious and conservative law schools in
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the country. John Ashcroft, George W. Bush's attorney general, was
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: one of her classmates. But she'd grown up in modest circumstances,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: lower middle class, the granddaughter of four immigrants, a straight-A student,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a cheerleader, a kid who tap-danced at the American Legion.
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: Within the next 14 days, we will attack a symbol
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: or institution of American injustice.
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: There are very few positive things to say about planting
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: an explosive in a government building, but as an attention-getting device,
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: it's hard to argue with the effectiveness of that bomb
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: that went off here at the State Department.
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: The bomb exploded early this morning.
• 4:26
  Speaker 7: Credit for the capital bombing was claimed in a letter
• 4:28
  Speaker 7: received by the Associated Press today, signed by the... The
• 4:33
  Speaker 7: weatherman promises more attacks on the establishment around the entire
• 4:37
  Speaker 7: country starting next week.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Bernadine's declaration of a state of war set off a
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: campaign of anti-government violence. It would turn her and her
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: friends into outlaws and symbols. Her trademark miniskirt and knee-high boots,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: straight brown hair and sunglasses would wind up on wanted posters, newscasts,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and underground newspapers across the country. And she would spend
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the next decade and more on the run from the FBI.
• 5:04
  Speaker 7: Angela Davis was replaced on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted
• 5:07
  Speaker 7: list this afternoon by Bernadine Rae Dorn, described as an
• 5:11
  Speaker 7: underground leader of the Weathermen. The FBI says she advocates bombings,
• 5:15
  Speaker 7: violent revolution, and terrorist attacks. J.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover, the head of the Bureau, called Bernadine the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: most dangerous woman in America. But those sound bites don't
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: really capture her, as a person or as a symbol.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: They don't capture what drives her and people like her,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: which is important because she was part of a moment,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: not unique in American history, but remarkably rare, when middle-class
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: white kids took up arms against their own country, a
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: country they realized that was killing Vietnamese people abroad and
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: black people here at home. These kids abandoned their promising futures,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: severed ties with family, Some, including my mom, would go
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to jail. Others were killed in the struggle. But they
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: were all convinced their privilege put them on the wrong
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: side of history. To get on the right side, they
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: were willing to blow up the world they were supposed
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to inherit. My name is Zaid Ayersdorn, and this is
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: a family history. because I was born underground. For the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: first years of my life, my parents and I were
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: on the run from the FBI. When people ask me
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: about my childhood today, I still find it kind of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: hard to explain. Some parts are simple. We used fake names.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Outside the house, my parents, Bernadine Dorn and Bill Ayers,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: went by Rose and Tony. I was just called Z.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: We paid for everything in cash, made calls from payphones,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: My parents didn't apply for jobs that required background checks
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: or social security numbers. But our day-to-day life wasn't that
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: out of the ordinary. We got up in the mornings,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: went to work or school. We lived in a one-room
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: apartment in a fifth-floor walk-up in Harlem. Literally one room,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: the kitchenette on one side and a curtained-off bath area
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: on the other. My mom worked as a waitress near
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Lincoln Center. My dad baked in the bread shop on
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: 125th Street. It felt, and I guess this is probably
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: true for most kids, no matter what their circumstances, but
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to me it all just felt normal. I knew from
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: my very first memories, when I was two or three
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: years old, that the FBI was chasing us. But I
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: didn't know exactly what FBI was, why they, or it,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: wanted to catch us, or what would happen if they did.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It felt more abstract, a childhood boogeyman, Something I knew
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: was bad the same way I knew, like any kid knows,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: that my family had to be good.
• 8:03
  Speaker 8: Did you know that you had secrets that you couldn't
• 8:06
  Speaker 8: talk about? I don't know what you knew, but we
• 8:08
  Speaker 8: tried to make it fun for you.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: They explained the underground to me in terms a kid
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: could understand. We were fighting an unjust empire, like Luke
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Skywalker or Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: to the poor. I actually dressed up as Robin for
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: my first few Halloweens. So, like most people, I grew
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: up thinking my parents were heroes. But as I got older,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: of course, it got more complicated. You grow up, you
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: start to see some of your parents' flaws, their contradictions.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: You realize maybe you don't know everything you thought you knew,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that maybe they kept things from you. What's it like
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: having me do this kind of research into your past? I, you.
• 8:55
  Speaker 8: Know, it's wonderful that you're interested even, really. But it
• 9:04
  Speaker 8: scares me.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 9:06
  Speaker 8: Well, I think, you know, by you doing this project,
• 9:09
  Speaker 8: you've made me think, you know, are there secrets? What
• 9:15
  Speaker 8: to keep is a secret and what not to keep.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: My mom is the most idealistic person I know. And
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: both definitions of the word apply here. She's characterized by
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: idealism and unrealistically aiming for perfection. She sees everything through
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the lens of the struggle against injustice. And I mean everything.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: One example. I recently found a present she gave me
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid, when she was locked up
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center after 11 years on the run.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: It's a calendar she made me in her cell, out
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of construction paper and yarn, tracing boxes for the days,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: filling in notable dates, illustrating the months with line drawings
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and photos. It's a nice present, thoughtful and handmade, something
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I could put up over my bed to remind me
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of her while she was in jail. I found it comforting.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: But when I dug it up recently, I I noticed
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: something about the holidays she's marked. December 25th is empty.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: There's no Christmas or Christmas Eve. No Hanukkah, either. But
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: there is December 2nd, John Brown hanged. December 4th, Fred
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Hampton murdered. December 15th, Sitting Bull assassinated. And the other
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: months are like that, too. April doesn't have my birthday,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: the 26th. but it does have the assassination of Martin
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Luther King, the killing of little Bobby Hutton, the Colfax
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Massacre of 1873. All these anniversaries commemorating people who resisted,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: American revolutionary martyrs on the day they were executed, lynched, assassinated.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Keep in mind, I was five years old at the time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So that's who she is, who she's been for as
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: long as I can remember. She's an idealist, someone who
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: sees clearly, zealously, the difference between right and wrong, who
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: believes in sacrifice for the struggle, and expects everyone else,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: including her kids, to believe in it too. And I
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: don't think quite like her in those moral absolutes. It's
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: why I became a writer instead of an activist, because
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in the messiness of what drives people, not
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: just politically, but personally. Because I've seen the costs of
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the struggle up close. My brothers and I had to
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: live with the consequences of our parents' actions. And I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: grew up wondering, how could my mom and dad choose
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to have children if they were willing to take those risks?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: But I've also been thinking lately about what it meant
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to them to resist, to be willing to fight back
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: violently against a racist and unjust system. Because these past
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: few years have shown us, even if we weren't paying
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: attention before, that white supremacy is alive and well in
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: this country. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: That American authoritarianism is an actual possibility. In fact, a
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: historical reality. From slavery through Jim Crow to Selma, Charlottesville,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: all the way up to the insurrection at the Capitol.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I can see at least half a dozen protesters scaling.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It seems obvious we need some kind of resistance to that.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: But what kind? What does this moment call for? What
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: can we learn from looking at the history of the
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: revolutionary groups that overlapped and came together in the political undergrounds, plural,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: of the 1970s and early 80s?
• 13:03
  Speaker 9: There's no way to be committed to nonviolence in the
• 13:07
  Speaker 9: middle of the most violent society that history has ever created.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: For most of us, understanding our parents is a lifelong job.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: We never quite manage it. I've never quite managed it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: But I want my daughters to know where they came from,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: who they came from. Because the country they're growing up
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: in today isn't all that different. And all of us
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: are going to have to decide what to do about it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 9: I mean, we live here in America, so, you know,
• 13:34
  Speaker 9: we're born here in this country, too. And the notion
• 13:37
  Speaker 9: that we're outlaws has got to be put together with
• 13:39
  Speaker 9: the fact that America created us.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: This is chapter one. the most dangerous woman in America.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: My mom wasn't always a revolutionary. She grew up a
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: middle-class white girl in Whitefish Bay, a suburb of Milwaukee.
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: Her dad, Bernard Barney, was a second-generation Jewish immigrant.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: The credit manager for a chain of appliance stores. Barney
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: had changed his last name to Dorn, from Ornstein, to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: protect his daughters from anti-Semitism, try to fit in, seem
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: more American. I remember my grandpa's house filled with commemorative
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: coins from the Franklin Mint, America's bicentennial, Reagan's election, the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: launch of various space shuttles and satellites. He was a
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Republican his whole life, He voted for Joe McCarthy, considered
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: himself a patriot. And as Bernadine's sister, my Aunt Jennifer,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: puts it.
• 14:51
  Speaker 10: He also was a racist.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Barney had grown up poor, in a neighborhood where Jewish
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and Black folks seemed to be in constant competition.
• 15:00
  Speaker 10: And he certainly lived in fear of others, as if
• 15:04
  Speaker 10: he and his community were fighting against them for whatever
• 15:07
  Speaker 10: they could get in this society.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: But he believed in the American dream. He wanted his
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: two daughters to have a better life than he had.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: In fact, my mom was the first person in her
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: family to go to college. First at Miami of Ohio,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and then at the University of Chicago. But letting your
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: kids see more of the world than you did, move
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to the city, read books, and meet people from diverse backgrounds,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes means they come to see that world quite differently.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: My mom got swept up in a moment of historical change. I.
• 15:40
  Speaker 8: saw that the civil rights movement and then the growing
• 15:43
  Speaker 8: anti-war movement were what was happening.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: It's 1964. Young Black protesters in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Committee have been leading sit-ins at lunch counters, freedom rides
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: across state lines, voter registration drives. In response, Southern racists
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: sic dogs on demonstrators. They aim fire hoses at Black
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: children in Alabama and set buses on fire. When three
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: young volunteers, Goodman, Schwerner, and Cheney, try to register voters
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: in Mississippi, they're murdered by the KKK. But still, all
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: over the country, idealistic young people, both Black and white,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: are signing up, willing to risk their lives to join
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the cause. Bernadine is just one of many.
• 16:30
  Speaker 8: I said to my boyfriend, Bob, I think I'm going
• 16:34
  Speaker 8: to go South this summer. I think I'm going to
• 16:36
  Speaker 8: apply to go South this summer. And he said, no,
• 16:38
  Speaker 8: you're not.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I hear her say this and I think, poor Bob,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: you do not want to have this fight with my mom.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Trying to argue that a white person, for any reason,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: should keep out of the struggle and stay safe, especially
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a man trying to tell her what she could and
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: couldn't do. I have never in my entire life seen
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: her back down from that kind of confrontation. But in
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that moment, as a 22-year-old.
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: College kid, we had a fight about it and.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I She agrees not to go south.
• 17:14
  Speaker 8: I mean, I didn't want to lose him. He was
• 17:19
  Speaker 8: a very powerful guy. He had taught me a lot.
• 17:24
  Speaker 11: I loved him. I liked him.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Why didn't he want you to go?
• 17:27
  Speaker 8: Freedom, I think. I think it was clear that he
• 17:33
  Speaker 8: thought that he would lose me. But I think the
• 17:37
  Speaker 8: other reason, the other cultural reason was that I, you know,
• 17:41
  Speaker 8: would be, I don't know what, fall in love with
• 17:47
  Speaker 8: somebody else, be free, have sex. So it was a
• 17:51
  Speaker 8: holding on kind of step on his part, which I
• 17:57
  Speaker 8: think he knew and I think I knew.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by this story. I'd never heard it before.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And it's not like her. not like the person I've
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: known my entire life, who's defined by her decisiveness, by
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: her certainty. I mean, I can imagine she was feeling
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of pressure. Going south must have been scary
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: for a 22-year-old from a sheltered background. The gender expectations,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the whole social order she was pushing up against. But still,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: to let herself be sidelined, abandon what she thought, what
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: she knew, was right. Something must have changed her, shifted
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the way she saw the world. She wasn't born a revolutionary.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: She became one. So, by 1966, Bernadine has enrolled in
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: law school, still at the University of Chicago. She's not
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: sure what she wants to do next. Not corporate law,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: for sure. Something that'll make a difference. And around the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: same time, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. arrives in the
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: city to take up the cause of northern housing segregation.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: This is just two years after his I Have a
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Dream speech and letter from a Birmingham jail. He's already
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize winner, the most important civil rights leader
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of his generation. Bernadine goes to hear him speak in
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: a church on the south side. Everyone's crowded shoulder to shoulder.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: It's hot. Sweaty. They're all waving paper fans. When Dr.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: King arrives.
• 19:42
  Speaker 8: Everybody goes crazy. And then he delivers, you know, even
• 19:46
  Speaker 8: if it's his third or fourth speech of the night,
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: he transcends whatever you've been hearing by so much, you know.
• 19:56
  Speaker 11: We have some challenging days ahead, some great and noble
• 20:03
  Speaker 11: opportunities to make this beautiful city that sits on the
• 20:08
  Speaker 11: banks of Lake Michigan the beautiful city of brotherhood that
• 20:13
  Speaker 11: it is called to be.
• 20:15
  Speaker 8: The cadence, the oratory, the buildup.
• 20:18
  Speaker 11: I'm saying sincerely that the white persons who believe in justice,
• 20:23
  Speaker 11: who believe in humanity, are going to stay with this movement.
• 20:28
  Speaker 11: I've said before they're going to stay with it because
• 20:32
  Speaker 11: it's just and right.
• 20:34
  Speaker 8: As well as the content about what's possible when you
• 20:37
  Speaker 8: work together.
• 20:39
  Speaker 11: King has already been stabbed, assaulted in.
• 20:42
  Speaker 8: Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: He comes north to show racism isn't just a southern problem.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: It's an American problem.
• 21:10
  Speaker 12: Well, this is a terrible thing. I've been in many
• 21:13
  Speaker 12: demonstrations all across the South. But I can say that
• 21:18
  Speaker 12: I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs
• 21:22
  Speaker 12: as hostile. and as hate-filled as I've seen in Chicago.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: You feel you're in.
• 21:27
  Speaker 13: A closed society, Dr.
• 21:28
  Speaker 8: King, here in Southwest Texas?
• 21:30
  Speaker 12: Oh, yes, it's definitely a closed society, and we're going
• 21:33
  Speaker 12: to make it an open society. And we feel that
• 21:36
  Speaker 12: we have to do it this way in order to bring.
• 21:39
  Speaker 11: The evil out into the open.
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: So that this community will be forced to deal with it.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: On August 5th, Dr. King leads a march through Marquette Park.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: a working-class area on the south side of Chicago. And
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Bernadine is there, marching with the crowd behind him. And
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: white people line the streets, on the porches of their bungalows,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: on all sides, in their yards, screaming at the protesters.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: In pictures and newsreels, they look exactly like the MAGA
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: mobs at the Capitol on January 6th. Confederate flags, angry faces.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: They're throwing bricks, bottles... a rock hits King and knocks
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: him down. He shakes it off.
• 22:29
  Speaker 12: Oh, I've been hit so many times, I'm immune to it.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But Bernadine is shaken up. She's not scared. She feels implicated.
• 22:39
  Speaker 8: It reminded me of what I'd seen in television when
• 22:41
  Speaker 8: I was a young girl of Little Rock, of, you know, hatred,
• 22:46
  Speaker 8: of vitriol. I was like thinking, wow, you know, people
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: are You know, women especially more than the men. The
• 22:54
  Speaker 8: men I would have expected to be hateful, but seeing
• 22:59
  Speaker 8: the women being hateful was shocking to me. It was
• 23:05
  Speaker 8: another reminder that, you know, white people can't be trusted.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: These white people in Marquette Park aren't rich. They're blue-collar
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: working people. like the people my mom grew up with.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And it strikes her as strange that they aren't able
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to see civil rights as a shared struggle.
• 23:27
  Speaker 8: I was seeing, you know, what white supremacy looks like
• 23:33
  Speaker 8: for people who are not getting anything out of it
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: except standing on somebody else's hand. I felt bewildered that
• 23:44
  Speaker 8: people were protecting you know, what they thought they had
• 23:49
  Speaker 8: and that they were sure that these other people who
• 23:53
  Speaker 8: were black and brown were going to destroy what they had.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: In fact, the white people she's talking about sound a
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: lot like her father, my grandpa Barney. I asked her
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: about this, whether she saw her own family in those faces.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Was marching with Dr. King a rebellion against her father,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: against his bigotry?
• 24:14
  Speaker 8: Okay, well, that's too psychological for me.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: And this has been true my whole life. Her resistance
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: to psychological explanations. She doesn't want to reduce a political
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and moral choice into something personal. In fact, she thinks
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: there's something unseemly and narcissistic in making the larger struggle
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: all about yourself. But I do think this is the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: moment she's first radicalized. Something about seeing the hate in
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: those faces. feeling her own connection to white supremacy, even
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: if only by association. She decides she's going to fight
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: whatever she sees in those crowds.
• 24:54
  Speaker 8: I said to myself, because I did feel like I
• 24:57
  Speaker 8: should have gone south, and I didn't. And so I
• 25:00
  Speaker 8: was like, this time I'm not going.
• 25:02
  Speaker 11: To miss it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: By this point, she's volunteering with Dr. King as part
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: of the Chicago rent strike. She's 24 years old, a
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: second-year law student, She's working with the activists trying to
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: stop slumlords from evicting their tenants.
• 25:16
  Speaker 8: I was wearing an armband that said legal. It was ridiculous.
• 25:21
  Speaker 8: I knew nothing. And I knew very little about landlord-tenant law.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: And one day, she's at the church that serves as
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the headquarters of the strike.
• 25:33
  Speaker 8: So now we're in July. Hot, hot, 102-degree day. Somebody shouted,
• 25:40
  Speaker 8: there's an eviction going on. two blocks away. We run
• 25:45
  Speaker 8: over two blocks, and there are the sheriffs carrying everybody's
• 25:51
  Speaker 8: belongings and throwing them into a pile on the street
• 25:54
  Speaker 8: of one of the apartments in this west side building.
• 26:00
  Speaker 8: And now the crowd is growing restive, but nobody's shouting,
• 26:04
  Speaker 8: nobody's saying anything, and they're dumping kitchen table, children's clothing, toys,
• 26:12
  Speaker 8: dresser drawers, everything is piling up in the streets. Suddenly
• 26:18
  Speaker 8: I feel next to me, have you ever stood next
• 26:22
  Speaker 8: to an NBA player? You just suddenly feel that there's
• 26:26
  Speaker 8: somebody unusually imposing next to you. You're like, hmm, you know,
• 26:34
  Speaker 8: I'm a tiny person here. And this man says to me,
• 26:38
  Speaker 8: would you hold my suit coat? And it's Muhammad Ali,
• 26:44
  Speaker 8: the most recognizable person with Dr. King in the world.
• 26:49
  Speaker 8: How did he get there? I have no idea. How
• 26:51
  Speaker 8: did he know to come? Who called him? He hands
• 26:54
  Speaker 8: me a blue, light blue seersucker summer coat, silk lined.
• 27:03
  Speaker 8: I'm holding it. He strides forward and he picks up
• 27:07
  Speaker 8: the kitchen table with both hands. These guys are coming
• 27:10
  Speaker 8: and going. And he turns around and walks into the
• 27:15
  Speaker 8: apartment building and up the stairs. And instantly, everybody of
• 27:21
  Speaker 8: the 100 or 200 of us who are now standing
• 27:24
  Speaker 8: there in a circle goes forward and picks up something
• 27:28
  Speaker 8: and follows him in the building and takes it up.
• 27:32
  Speaker 8: As far as I know, the sheriffs who had started
• 27:35
  Speaker 8: this never reappeared. I don't know if they melted into
• 27:39
  Speaker 8: the crowd or if they started carrying things back upstairs.
• 27:42
  Speaker 8: But that was it. It was, you know, a people
• 27:45
  Speaker 8: power moment. It was a moment of defiance. It was
• 27:49
  Speaker 8: a gesture by somebody who could carry it off with
• 27:53
  Speaker 8: such panache and so little fear. And it just gave everybody,
• 27:57
  Speaker 8: you know, a spark of what's possible. It was that
• 28:02
  Speaker 8: combination of seeing King night after night, speaking in churches,
• 28:07
  Speaker 8: being out there on the West Side, and then these
• 28:09
  Speaker 8: marches on the weekends. And Altogether, it was so powerful
• 28:15
  Speaker 8: and so brilliant. It changed my life.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: By 1968, Bernadine is 26, a full-time activist living in
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: New York City, crashing with friends and boyfriends, organizing against
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: segregation and the Vietnam War. She's trying to follow the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: example of the civil rights leaders who first inspired her.
• 28:44
  Speaker 8: I was in a tiny little warren of offices at
• 28:49
  Speaker 8: 5 Beekman Street in New York. It was very crowded there.
• 28:52
  Speaker 8: And somebody shouted.
• 28:55
  Speaker 14: I have some very sad news for all of you.
• 28:58
  Speaker 15: And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and
• 29:03
  Speaker 15: was killed tonight in Memphis.
• 29:06
  Speaker 8: I don't remember what anybody else around me did, but
• 29:08
  Speaker 8: I jumped up, put my purse over my shoulder, and
• 29:15
  Speaker 8: took the elevator down or ran down the stairs and
• 29:19
  Speaker 8: jumped on a subway and got off at 42nd Street.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Men, women, and children poured into the streets. They appeared dazed.
• 29:26
  Speaker 11: Many were crying.
• 29:27
  Speaker 8: And I don't know why I did. I didn't know
• 29:30
  Speaker 8: that everybody else would do the same thing. But by
• 29:32
  Speaker 8: the time I got there, there were thousands and thousands
• 29:34
  Speaker 8: of people there at Times Square. I was there for hours.
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: And I don't remember going home after that. I don't
• 29:42
  Speaker 8: remember anything else about that day except being there and
• 29:46
  Speaker 8: having some solace in a crowd.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: King's death sets off uprisings across the country. In Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: and L.A. The political and moral crisis in America feels
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: like it's spiraling out of control. Black leaders are being assassinated.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: The Vietnam War is escalating.
• 30:10
  Speaker 6: Five Americans killed.
• 30:11
  Speaker 14: Ten Americans were killed.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: 100 Americans were killed.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: 205 killed. 221 South Vietnamese.
• 30:15
  Speaker 8: Estimated enemy killed, 3,414.
• 30:16
  Speaker 7: Civil rights activism, the peace movement, nothing seems to be working.
• 30:27
  Speaker 8: And the hope and excitement that I learned from working
• 30:31
  Speaker 8: with Dr. King and the organizers on the west side
• 30:33
  Speaker 8: of Chicago was now being destroyed.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: It's a dark time, maybe a bit like the worst
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: moments of the past few years, when each day seems
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: to bring some new injustice, when it feels like everything
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: around you is getting worse.
• 30:52
  Speaker 8: I'm feeling sick at heart. I'm feeling like the country
• 30:55
  Speaker 8: is taking a terrible turn.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Bernadine joins a new group, Students for a Democratic Society,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: or SDS. SDS had been part of the Mississippi Freedom
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Summer and led the first demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: They created a nationwide community organizing program, sending students into
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: low-income neighborhoods to fight for housing rights, education reform, and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: free school lunches. But the organization has its problems, too.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Meetings often turn into endless arguments. smart young white guys
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: arguing with other smart young white guys. Women are doing
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: a ton of the work, but getting very little of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the credit. If you saw the trial of the Chicago
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: 7 movie on Netflix, my mom was portrayed as a
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: pretty girl answering phones back at headquarters, a literal secretary,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: while Tom Hayden and Abby Hoffman led the fight out
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: on the streets. But in real life, Bernadine is as
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: smart and serious as any of the guys, a few
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: years older, with a law degree, and more organizing experience
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: than most. And more than any of them, she's eager
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to stop talking and fight back with militant protests, civil disobedience,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and direct action.
• 32:08
  Speaker 8: You just can't have these analytical ideas in your mind.
• 32:12
  Speaker 8: You know, then you're for sure going to have all-male
• 32:15
  Speaker 8: speakers and all-male leaders.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: You think male speakers are more likely to get into
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a kind of intellectualizing, passive stance?
• 32:21
  Speaker 11: Yes.
• 32:22
  Speaker 8: Ideological debates... ad nauseum, you know, very radical wordsmithing, but
• 32:31
  Speaker 8: not something people wanted to be part of.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Within a year, Bernadine is elected interorganizational secretary of SDS,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: not answering the phones, but actually running the organization, one
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: of three national officers, and one of the most prominent
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: female leaders of the new left.
• 32:49
  Speaker 13: There's no question that when she speaks, people listen.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Bill Dyson is assigned to run the FBI
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: wiretaps in Chicago at the time. Like most activist groups,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: SDS is under constant government surveillance.
• 33:03
  Speaker 13: She was a little different. She was a little bit unique.
• 33:06
  Speaker 13: For one thing, extremely intelligent. She was physically attractive. She
• 33:10
  Speaker 13: seemed to be able to wear anything and look good.
• 33:13
  Speaker 13: Would she win a beauty contest? Probably not. But she
• 33:16
  Speaker 13: was just physically attractive, and I think that that made her,
• 33:20
  Speaker 13: when she got on the stage, People would look up
• 33:22
  Speaker 13: and say, oh, boy, who's that?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And this kind of thing annoys my mom, obviously, that
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: her appearance is always such a focus for law enforcement,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the media, men like Dyson, and men inside the movement, too,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: who try to reduce her to her looks and miss
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the content of what she's actually trying to say. In 1968,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: SDS becomes the largest student protest organization in American history.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Official membership rises above 100,000, with 350 chapters nationwide.
• 33:57
  Speaker 8: The SDS meeting that was called the first week of school,
• 34:02
  Speaker 8: people couldn't get in the doors. They were coming out
• 34:04
  Speaker 8: the windows. They needed a room 20 times bigger.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Thousands more read its newspaper and join in demonstrations. When
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: SDS leads the protests at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago's mayor,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Richard J. Daley, unleashes his riot cops on unarmed demonstrators,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: tells his police.
• 34:25
  Speaker 7: To shoot to kill any arsonists or anyone with a
• 34:29
  Speaker 7: Molotov cocktail in their hand in Chicago.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: The police riot radicalizes SDS, turns it from a debate
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: club into an army of militants. And while some members
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: still want to focus on building a peaceful mass movement,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Bernadine is determined to channel their rage, to up the
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: level of protest and provocation.
• 34:48
  Speaker 10: SDS is not.
• 34:51
  Speaker 9: And the movement in this country is not something that
• 34:53
  Speaker 9: exists during the school year and it's going to start.
• 34:55
  Speaker 8: Up again in the fall. They have to worry about
• 34:57
  Speaker 8: whether we're going to be in the streets in the fall.
• 34:59
  Speaker 8: We're going to be on the streets and in every institution.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: In this country from now on.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: It all comes to a head at the 1969 SDS
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: convention in Chicago.
• 35:09
  Speaker 7: These are leaders of a nationwide youth organization that calls
• 35:12
  Speaker 7: itself SDS, Students for a Democratic Society.
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: I'm Mike Clonsky, National Secretary of SDS, and this is
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: Bernadine Dorn, Interorganizational Secretary.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Bernadine and a group of student activists are out on
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the street, outside the convention hall.
• 35:26
  Speaker 9: We've always been quite willing to talk about SDS.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I will talk about socialism anywhere, in the streets or
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: in the Senate, anywhere. Mike Clonsky, one of SDS's two
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: other leaders... is talking over her, but she doesn't seem
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: to mind. They're having a good time with the reporters,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: giving this crazy, impromptu press conference, playing to the crowd.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: That's my mom, laughing. In fact, the whole thing is
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: kind of funny. Inside the convention is a circus of
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: counterculture college students. It's like a Model UN meeting on acid.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: a cramped, sweaty auditorium, more than a thousand delegates. People
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: are making speeches, moving and seconding proposals. Others are smoking pot,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: getting in shoving matches on the convention floor. All of
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: it kind of ridiculously under Robert's rules of order. And
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: then on the third day, Bernadine is up on stage
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: about to give another speech when the Black Panthers walk
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: into the hall in sunglasses, leather jackets, bucket hats. What
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: are they doing there at a SDS meeting?
• 36:39
  Speaker 8: It would have been weird to have a national convention
• 36:43
  Speaker 8: in Chicago and to have the Panthers not be invited
• 36:47
  Speaker 8: to speak.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: In other words, she's invited them.
• 36:51
  Speaker 8: You know, it was a time where power was ascendant
• 36:55
  Speaker 8: and the line was, you know, you should be a supporter,
• 36:59
  Speaker 8: an ally, a revolutionary alongside of us. But You know,
• 37:04
  Speaker 8: your challenge was worse than ours, organize white people. And
• 37:10
  Speaker 8: so that's what we tried to do.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Not everyone in SDS agreed with this strategy. I'm not
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: going to unpack all the complicated factionalism going on inside
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the organization at the time. There's too many acronyms, too
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: many obscure political lines. But the central conflict breaks down
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: into one single existential difference. On one side, P.L., progressive labor,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: believes the revolution will come from the working class, that
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: students should become workers themselves, organize in factories and hotels,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: help build a broader class consciousness. On the other side
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: is Bernadine.
• 37:49
  Speaker 8: You can't talk about class in the United States without
• 37:52
  Speaker 8: talking about race.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: And her group, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, known in SDS
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: as the Action Faction.
• 38:00
  Speaker 8: You have to take action. You have to do something.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: They're trying to follow the example of Black and Brown
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: people fighting nationalist struggles overseas. To build a small but
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: militant resistance. Like the Viet Cong, the Cuban Revolution, the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Tupomaros in Uruguay. Or here at home, the vanguard of
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the revolution, the Black Panther Party.
• 38:22
  Speaker 8: They were a rising force. And they were well-known, deep,
• 38:29
  Speaker 8: had a radical platform.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: When the Panthers walk into the convention hall, SDS members
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: like Eric Mann and Jeff Jones can feel the energy shift.
• 38:39
  Speaker 16: And they went to the microphone and they said, we
• 38:41
  Speaker 16: will judge SDS by the company it keeps, and PL
• 38:44
  Speaker 16: is no good.
• 38:47
  Speaker 14: That was the dramatic moment. That's when everything changed.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Shaka Walls, the Panther deputy minister of information, tells the
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: convention the Black Panthers are the vanguard because they've shed
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: more blood than anyone. And, referring to P.L., these armchair
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Marxists haven't even shot rubber bands. Jeff Jones remembers this
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: as a turning point.
• 39:11
  Speaker 14: And so there were hundreds of us in the Coliseum.
• 39:16
  Speaker 14: And what happened at that moment was chaos, confusion. The
• 39:21
  Speaker 14: people affiliated with progressive labor began to boo the Panthers.
• 39:25
  Speaker 14: Our position was we follow the leadership of the black
• 39:28
  Speaker 14: liberation struggle. And so this was a very challenging moment.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Even more challenging because after Shaka Walls accuses white activists
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: of being useless, dead weight in the struggle, he starts
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: mansplaining the role of women in the revolution. We believe
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: in the freedom of love, he says, in pussy power.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Someone asks about the role of women in the movement,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and another Panther, Jewel Cook, says, you sisters have a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: strategic position in the revolution? Prone. Female activists start booing.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: The place is in an uproar. Mark Rudd, the third
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: SDS national officer, remembers it as a full-blown cultural revolution moment.
• 40:09
  Speaker 16: So immediately the Progressive Labor Party kids took out their
• 40:14
  Speaker 16: little red books and Held them up and started screaming,
• 40:18
  Speaker 16: you know, fight male chauvinism, fight male chauvinism.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: And so the rest of us held up.
• 40:23
  Speaker 16: Our little red books and screamed, fight racism.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Bernadine is on stage at the podium.
• 40:32
  Speaker 8: And it was complicated because things were said about women
• 40:36
  Speaker 8: that were not cool. But, you know, things were said
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: about the black struggle that was cool.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: She has to decide what to do.
• 40:44
  Speaker 8: Whenever white people have a choice, you can't make that
• 40:47
  Speaker 8: choice without thinking about how easy it is to not
• 40:53
  Speaker 8: stand up for black people at a given moment. I
• 40:57
  Speaker 8: never felt like I wasn't choosing women, but I felt
• 41:00
  Speaker 8: that the essential American dilemma is white people standing up,
• 41:08
  Speaker 8: not just once, but consistently over time against white apparatus
• 41:15
  Speaker 8: of Black slavery. Yeah, that one's easy for me, in fact,
• 41:20
  Speaker 8: and not that complicated.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: My mom's a feminist, but she's never seen women's equality
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: as separate from anti-racism. If anything, she sees the Panthers,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the majority of whom were women, as important feminist allies.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Or as Angela Davis puts.
• 41:38
  Speaker 17: It, she knew exactly how to make those connections long
• 41:41
  Speaker 17: before the term intersectionality had ever been introduced at a
• 41:47
  Speaker 17: time when we hadn't yet developed the vocabulary that allowed
• 41:51
  Speaker 17: us to talk about gender issues in an intersectional way.
• 41:57
  Speaker 17: I read some of her communiques and my reaction was always,
• 42:01
  Speaker 17: you know, right on.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: So Bernadine makes her choice.
• 42:06
  Speaker 14: And then there's a quick little huddle up at the
• 42:08
  Speaker 14: front of the room around the podium. And I I
• 42:12
  Speaker 14: was on the periphery of that. Bernadine was at the
• 42:14
  Speaker 14: center of it. And the discussion was going back and
• 42:17
  Speaker 14: forth and back and forth. And literally, Bernadine stopped the discussion.
• 42:21
  Speaker 14: And she said, there's no discussion.
• 42:23
  Speaker 9: White youth must choose sides now. We must either fight
• 42:27
  Speaker 9: on the side of the oppressed or be on the
• 42:29
  Speaker 9: side of the oppressor.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: She grabs the mic, says, we're siding with the Panthers.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: PL is out. If you're with us, follow me.
• 42:40
  Speaker 14: And the place went nuts. It was mainly yelling and
• 42:44
  Speaker 14: booing and applauding. And for a lot of us, it
• 42:47
  Speaker 14: was a challenge. That moment was an extremely challenging moment.
• 42:50
  Speaker 14: It was a decisive moment. What were we going to do?
• 42:52
  Speaker 14: Were we going to follow her lead?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Many did. Around a third of the delegates left the
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: convention with her. Bernadine's walkout split SDS in two. And
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: in fact, some people, like fellow SDS leader Mark Rudd,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: have come to see this as the moment the peace
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: movement went bad. The end of the good 60s and
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the beginning of something else.
• 43:17
  Speaker 16: We created a split in the anti-war movement around the
• 43:21
  Speaker 16: right to revolutionary violence.
• 43:24
  Speaker 8: It's bullshit!
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: But from Bernadine's point of view, the good 60s hadn't
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: stopped the war, hadn't stopped the assassination of black leaders.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: She thinks the only way forward is to respond to
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: the intensifying violence from the government, to follow the example
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: of the militant Black liberation struggle and fight back by
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: any means necessary. SDS is not the only radical organization
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: splitting apart at the time. The Panthers are also starting
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: to fracture over similar questions, whether to pursue a mass
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: movement or radical violence, expansion or escalation. We'll get to
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: that in future episodes. For now, what's left of SDS
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: after the walkout is a much smaller group. The Action Faction.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: The hardest of the hardcore. Just Bernadine and her most
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: radical comrades. They call themselves Weathermen, after a line from
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan's subterranean homesick blues. You don't need a weatherman
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: to know which way the wind blows. It's a way
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: of saying the revolution is coming, like it or not.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: We could tell you, weathermen could tell you, but we
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: don't even need to, because you can see it with
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: your own eyes. And we're not going to wait for
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: it either. We're going to make it happen. A few
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: weeks after the weathermen walk out, Bernadine leads a delegation
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: of activists to Havana to see a real revolution up close.
• 45:05
  Speaker 15: It was not so long ago that Cuba, the pearl
• 45:07
  Speaker 15: of the Antilles, was a different kind of country. Then
• 45:12
  Speaker 15: Castro came, and the sounds of joy were submerged by
• 45:16
  Speaker 15: the sound of shooting.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: She's going to meet up with representatives from the Cuban
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: government and the National Liberation Front in Vietnam.
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: About 400 young Americans from various parts of the country
• 45:27
  Speaker 6: were assembling in Boston today to take buses into Canada
• 45:30
  Speaker 6: and there to board a Cuban cattle boat for a
• 45:33
  Speaker 6: trip to Cuba None of them would say anything about this.
• 45:37
  Speaker 6: They maintained they were going to Canada skiing, but none
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: had any ski equipment, and it was confirmed they were
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: going to Cuba.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Vietnamese soldiers have traveled to this meeting all the way
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: from the war's front lines, up the Ho Chi Minh
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Trail to catch a flight to Havana via Beijing and Moscow,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: to meet with these young American activists and try to
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: expand the international coalition against the war. But what the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Cubans and Vietnamese most want, it turns out, is for
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: these American kids to convince their parents, many of them
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: members of the country's ruling elite, to oppose the war.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: To use their money and influence to put pressure on
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: the U.S. government to get out of Vietnam.
• 46:18
  Speaker 8: And we were like, ugh, do we really have to?
• 46:21
  Speaker 8: We're not gonna. That'll take forever.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: The weathermen are young and impatient. They've come to rub
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: elbows with real, live Third World revolutionaries. to learn how
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: to make radical change right now. They spend weeks in
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a hotel in Havana, attending lectures and watching documentaries, drinking
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: rum by the hotel pool at night, trying to learn
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: from their new friends. In an interview when she was underground,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Bernadine talks about her trip to Havana.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: This experience in particular.
• 46:52
  Speaker 9: Made me a full-time revolutionary and really changed my own
• 46:57
  Speaker 9: idea of of myself and what the revolution was going
• 47:01
  Speaker 9: to be.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: As SDS's leader, she's already on the government's radar. But
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the Cuba meeting takes it to a whole other level.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: By the time she gets back, she's the focus of
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: an entire FBI investigation. The Bureau's report from the time
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: is both horrified and hilarious, citing an article called Cuba,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: School for U.S. Radicals. Bernadine Dorn, miniskirted weatherwoman... and 30
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: fellow activists met with Vietnamese communists in Havana in July 1969.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Beyond any doubt, Cuba has shaped, supplied technical training to,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: given political indoctrination for, and, perhaps most important of all,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: served as inspiration for the American radical movement in its
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: avowed aim to bring down the American system that it
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: so fiercely despises. The FBI got a lot of things
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: about my parents wrong, but they got a few things right.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Nine months after returning from Cuba, my mom would officially
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: declare war on the U.S. government.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Hello, this is Bernadine Dorn. I'm going to read a
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: declaration of a state of war.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Bernadine thought a revolution was coming, another chance to be
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: on the right side of history.
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: Cleaver and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: And this time, she wasn't going to miss it.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Never again will they fight alone.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: This season on Mother Country Radicals, I'm going to take
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: you into the underground to meet the other young revolutionaries,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: my mom's friends and fellow travelers, who join her as
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: fugitives and urban guerrillas in the 1970s and early 80s.
• 48:53
  Speaker 7: Called each other comrades, and we called each other brothers
• 48:56
  Speaker 7: and sisters.
• 48:57
  Speaker 8: That was a powerful idea, that there were these white.
• 49:00
  Speaker 17: People who really wanted to support the Black Liberation Movement.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Bernadine and her friends would soon brawl with police on
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: the streets of Chicago. They'd bomb government buildings, rob banks,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: break comrades out of jail, and stay on the run
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: for more than a decade.
• 49:17
  Speaker 15: A bomb exploded early this morning in the Pentagon.
• 49:20
  Speaker 13: Maybe they had the ability to assassinate the president. Maybe
• 49:22
  Speaker 13: they could blow up Congress and kill congressmen, important congressmen.
• 49:25
  Speaker 7: She made her break this afternoon from the prison in Clinton,
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: New Jersey, and lawmen once called her the soul of
• 49:30
  Speaker 7: the Black Liberation Army.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: I knew about all that. But it turns out there's
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a lot more I didn't know. parts of the story
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: that are still secret, even from me.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: I know some things that I can't tell you.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: I don't think I want to go there.
• 49:46
  Speaker 8: Oh, no, I'm not going to talk about that. Sorry.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Uncovering these secrets is sometimes uncomfortable.
• 49:52
  Speaker 8: So much experimentation with sex, sex with women, sex with men,
• 49:55
  Speaker 8: sex in orgies.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's shocking.
• 49:58
  Speaker 10: When the head of the FBI in New York City retired,
• 50:02
  Speaker 10: they gave him one pair of my underwear in a
• 50:06
  Speaker 10: glass case as a trophy.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: People are starting to bang on the door and start screaming.
• 50:11
  Speaker 10: Don't tell your wife. Get in a car. We think
• 50:13
  Speaker 10: we have your daughter's body here.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: But these secrets reveal things I'd never fully understood. Not
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: just about the past, but about today. They were the
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: occupying army. They were the ones that were murdering black men, women,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: and children. And about where I came from.
• 50:28
  Speaker 8: I was determined to not have being a mother stop
• 50:32
  Speaker 8: me from also being a revolutionary.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Did you ever.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: take part in actions after I was born while you
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: were still underground?
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: I was involved in a few things, and one of
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: them was, in fact, a jailbreak.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Next time, my father's story. Billy Ayers of the Weather People.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Talk about Bill Ayers. Radical Bill Ayers. As the Weathermen
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: gear up for a violent street protest, the days of rage,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: they cross new lines, determined to transform themselves from peace
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: activists into hardcore revolutionaries.
• 51:05
  Speaker 10: There was corruption, racism inside of me, and I had
• 51:12
  Speaker 10: an obligation to rid myself of those. Well, you get
• 51:15
  Speaker 10: whipped more, and the more you get whipped, the more
• 51:17
  Speaker 10: you feel like you're becoming purified.
• 51:20
  Speaker 7: They armed themselves with sticks and chains and rocks and
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: rampaged through the near north side of the city.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: I can remember actually moments walking down the street and
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: thinking we're all going to be dead next year. and thinking,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: do I want to go through with it? And thinking, yes,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Mother Country Radicals is an original podcast from Odyssey and
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media. It's produced by Dust Light Productions. I'm Zayd Erzdorn,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: your host, writer, and executive producer. From Crooked Media, executive
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: producers are Jon Favreau, Sarah Geismar, Lyra Smith, and Alison Falzetta.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: with special thanks to Katie Long. From Dust Light, executive
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: producer is Misha Youssef. Arwin Nix is our executive editor.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Ariana Garib Lee is our senior producer. Stephanie Cohn is
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the producer. Ty Jones is our historical consultant. All three
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: also helped with writing on the series. This episode was
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: sound designed by Arwin Nix, with help from Ariana Garib
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Lee and Misha Youssef. Valentino Rivera is the senior engineer.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Andy Clausen is the composer. For Odyssey, Tim Clark is
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: head of audio content, Lindsay Grant is head of platform marketing,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: and Brian Swarth leads podcast marketing. Special thanks to Melissa Providence,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Lizzie Roberti-Denahan, Andy Slater, and Danny Kutrick. Thanks to our
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: development and operations coordinator at Dustlight, Rachel Garcia, apprentice Shamari Kirkwood,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: and Mark Wilkening, and the team at Chicago Recording Company.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Mother Country Radicals is an Odyssey original podcast. Thanks for
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: listening to this episode of Mother Country Radicals. There are
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: a few more episodes out already, so if you want
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: to hear more of the story, find Mother Country Radicals
• 53:15
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• 53:18
  Speaker 1: miss an episode.