'My mother was on the FBI most wanted list'

By the age of three, Zayd Ayers Dohrn had learned to recognise plainclothes police officers and undercover agents in a crowd. Amongst the tell-tale signs were shoes that tended to be well-shined, even if the clothes were scruffy, and seemingly innocuous cars with a souped-up antenna on the roof.

“I always knew that my parents were outlaws,” Dohrn tells me. “That was just a part of our understood background reality. They explained it to me by saying, ‘We’re like the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars,’ because they were trying to find a way to explain to a child that the world was against us.”

Dohrn grew up underground. His parents, Bernardine and Bill, were founding members of the Weather Underground, the American radical, left-wing group that frequently bombed police stations, banks and government buildings in the 70s. For many years, Dohrn’s mother was on the FBI’s most-wanted list, her mugshot turned into a poster that adorned many college dormitory walls. The family was constantly changing locations, names and jobs, while his parents still participated in revolutionary action.

“I think my birth was an incredibly lucky accident, that my parents survived long enough to have me, that they survived in the underground with me as a child,” Dohrn explains. “And I think my parents feel fortunate. When I asked my dad, he says very openly, ‘We slipped through in a sort of miraculous way.’”