A Family History of the Weather Underground
Zayd sits down with his mom, Bernardine Dohrn, along with Jamie and Karen Zelermyer of Wonder Media Network’s I Was Never There to look back at the process of making a show so deeply rooted in personal family history. Jamie and Zayd interview their mothers to learn how they felt reliving their radical pasts and what it was like to make a podcast with their children. And in a time that feels so similar politically to the turbulent decades Karen and Bernardine lived through - how do they find hope?
Zayd connects to other children of the underground. Out of the shards of the radical movements of the 1970s, a new generation fights to build a better future.
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Former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army carry out one last action together, with deadly consequences that reverberate across generations.
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The end of the Vietnam War means the end of the Weather Underground. Zayd’s parents and their radical comrades, still on the run from the FBI, plan a different kind of future.
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Mona Rocha, The Weatherwomen: Militant Feminists of the Weather Underground (2020)
The Weather Underground Organization and the Black Liberation Army go to war with the United States government.
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Sekou Odinga, Dhoruba Bin Wahad & Jamal Joseph, Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st Century Revolutions (2017)
The FBI targets the Weather Underground, and a split in the Black Panther Party gives rise to a new, more militant organization - the Black Liberation Army.
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The Weathermen go underground, and become famous - and infamous - as counter-culture outlaws.
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Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience (1964)
The Weathermen decide to bring the horrors of the Vietnam War back to America’s doorstep, planning an action that will change the future of the organization, and Zayd’s family, forever.
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Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman (2007)
Jamal Joseph is radicalized at 15, and joins the New York Black Panthers. And a deadly attack by Chicago Police puts both Panthers and Weathermen on a path towards violent revolution.
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Stanley Nelson, The Black Panther Party: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016)
Zayd’s father Bill Ayers joins the Weathermen, and he and his friends teach themselves to be revolutionaries, gearing up to build bombs and brawl with police on the streets of Chicago.
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Carlos Marighella, The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969)
In 1970, a former law student named Bernardine Dohrn declared war on the United States government. Decades later, her son Zayd Ayers Dohrn tells the story of how his mother was radicalized, and became the most wanted woman in America.
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