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♪♪

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-Hello and welcome to Book Lust.

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I'm Nancy Pearl.

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My guest today is
Zayd Ayers Dohrn,

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whose book, “Dangerous,
Dirty, Violent, and Young,

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A Fugitive Family in the
Revolutionary Underground,”

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recently came out, and I am
a huge fan of this book.

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I thought it was one of the
best books I'd read in 2026,

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so I was so pleased
when Zayd agreed to be

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on Book Lust with me.

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Welcome to the show, Zayd.

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-Thank you, Nancy.

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Thanks for having me.

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-As soon as I saw this book,
I really wanted to read it,

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partly because I was at the
University of Michigan with

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your father, Bill Ayers, and I
came from a very lefty family.

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So it was kind of reading
this book was sort of like

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reliving my late teens into
the, you know, onward.

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I wanted to know, well, first
of all, the title is so great.

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And it comes from a
Jefferson Airplane song.

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But how did you,
let's start there.

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How did you decide on the title?

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-Well, it's funny.

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The Jefferson Airplane,
first of all, played

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an interesting and funny role in
my parents' lives as fugitives

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and in the revolutionary
underground.

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For one thing, I discovered
while I was writing

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and researching the book that
Jefferson Airplane was one

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of the celebrity groups that
actually donated money to the

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underground. So they were
literally helping to fund the

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groups that I'm writing about.

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So I thought that was kind of
an interesting connection.

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But more importantly,
that lyric,

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which is taken from a song
called “We Can Be Together.”

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The full lyric is
something like,

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‘We are all outlaws in
the eyes of America.

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We are obscene, lawless,
dangerous, dirty,

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violent, and young.’

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And many members of
the counterculture,

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including my parents,
adopted that as kind

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of a personal slogan.

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The idea that we're all outlaws
in the eyes of America,

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whether you're a woman or Black
or an immigrant or queer,

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that that made you an
outlaw in the society

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they were fighting against.

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And so it was just
kind of an interesting

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self-referential
idea about who they

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were at that time.

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-When did you get the idea
to write a biography,

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both a memoir, your
own experiences,

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but also a biography of your
parents' lives during this time?

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-Yeah, well, it's funny.

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I've been a writer
professionally for

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about 15 or 18 years,
And I never touched

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my family story.

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And it was one of those things
where people who knew me as

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a writer would find out that
I had this crazy background,

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that I had been born
underground, that my

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mother was on the FBI's
10 Most Wanted list.

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And they would say, how can you
not have written that story?

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But the truth is, I think I
resisted it for a long time.

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I mean, I really, it felt too
messy and too complicated

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and too difficult to get into.

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But then a couple
things happened.

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I think during the pandemic was
really a turning point for me.

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My parents were getting older.

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My mother had just turned 80.

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And I mean, you remember
what that was like.

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Anybody with sort of elderly
relatives was feeling like,

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are we going to see each other
And so it really made me think I

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should ask the questions I have
about my parents' backgrounds

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while I still could.

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And of course, at the same

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time, we had Donald Trump
and George Floyd and

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Black Lives Matter, all
these things that seem to

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echo the things that my
parents had been fighting

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against all those years ago.

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So it just felt
like an interesting

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moment to explore that history.

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-What was the hardest part
for you of doing that?

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-I think, I mean, I guess like
anybody who has written a

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memoir about their family
or anybody who just has had

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to have those difficult
conversations with your family,

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you know, there's things that
go unspoken in a family.

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I mean, my family, I think
there's a lot of love in

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my family between kids and
parents, between siblings.

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But it's also, you know, we
came through some dark periods.

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And so it's always obviously
a little bit difficult to

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have to sit down and take a
deep breath and ask those hard

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questions, you know, about.

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And in my case, my
family history is

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literally a crime scene.

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It's an investigation
of illegal activities.

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So that interview process
definitely had some

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complicated facets.

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Yeah, I'd say that was
probably the most difficult.

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-Yeah, I could see that those
conversations would be fraught,

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which is a word I really,
that I think is a

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wonderful word, fraught.

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When you were doing the
interviewing of your family,

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and of course, you know,
you talk to your parents,

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But you talk, you were the
oldest of three brothers.

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And were their experiences
noticeably or notably

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different from yours?

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-It was one of the fun parts
for me of writing the book.

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You know, I'm quite close
to my brothers, but you

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never, there's very rarely
a time to sit down and say,

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let's go deep into our childhood
memories and let's really

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think together about what we can
remember and about how difficult

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those times were so I mean for
example my middle brother Malik

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you know I don't think
we'd ever talked about the

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time when my mother went
to prison and what that

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was like for us growing up and
it's it's interesting because

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I'm the oldest I have my
memories of you know I was

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like seven six or seven
when my mom was in jail

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Malik was three years younger,
he had a very different

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experience of that and a very
different experience of the

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aftermath of that.

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So yeah, I think that was an

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interesting aspect.

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And of course, my youngest

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brother, Chesa, is
adopted, and he had a

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very different experience
of that whole time.

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His parents went to prison

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for many decades, and we
adopted him when he was

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just a baby.

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So trying to kind
of think through

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together what it means
for us now was one of the

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most illuminating and kind of
rewarding parts of writing

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the book.

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-Were there things, when
I was reading the book,

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and I, like, I knew
what was coming because

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it was like reading a history.

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And so I saw what
what was coming.

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And there were times
in the book where I

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just wanted to say, you
know, don't do that.

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You know, don't, you know, stop.

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Just don't, don't go there.

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And did you, you know,
did you have that

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kind of feeling?

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-Of course.

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I mean, it's funny.

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It's, it's, I'm a
playwright mostly, and

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I teach dramatic writing, you
know, and we talk often about

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about what they call
dramatic irony, which is

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that feeling that you get
from the Greek tragedies

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or Shakespearean dramas.

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You know the outcome,
you know Romeo

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and Juliet are going to die,
you know Oedipus is going to

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discover this terrible thing,
and you have that feeling of

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why can't you stop?

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But of course, the inevitability

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of history, the
inevitability of the story

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carries it forward.

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So I thought a lot about that.

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I mean, both as a
writer, in terms of the

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craft of the book and
how I wanted it to

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feel like a page-turner,
like you had to keep going

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even if you didn't want to.

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And I also felt that
way myself as a kid,

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kind of reliving those
moments and thinking,

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oh, there's terrible
tragedies coming.

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I wish people could rethink
or could redo those moments.

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Yeah, certainly as a reader,
it was totally a page-turner.

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And yet at times, and for
me, I think every reader

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who's lived through the time
that you're writing about,

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the time of your parents being,
the family being underground,

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is going to have their own
sort of trigger point.

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But the part that I found
the most difficult to read

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was about the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago

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and the turn then
that everything took.

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And my husband and I were
planning to go there,

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but I was pregnant
and we didn't go.

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And I think that I
look back and think,

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well, it would have been
something to have been there,

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but maybe it was for the
best that we weren't there.

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So, you know, you know.

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So I think, was there a part,

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was there a particular
part of the, you know,

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the journey that your
parents were on,

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that you found the
most illuminating

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that would explain
them better to you

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or the period better to you?

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-Yeah, it's funny.

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I mean, I think of the
book on one level,

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if there's a big question
driving the book

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or driving the
investigation of the book,

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it's kind of what
makes us who we are

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and more specifically,
what radicalizes somebody?

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What turned my mother
from a relatively normal,

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middle-class,
white, suburban kid

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who was straight-A student,
first person in her family

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ever to go to college,
how did she become a

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radical, a terrorist, a
most-wanted fugitive,

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a kind of icon of the 1970s
and violent resistance and

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revolution and all these things?

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And I mean, I went into the
book, honestly, like I know

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my mother extremely well.

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And yet it was very hard to
reconcile the woman I knew

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with this idea of a kind of
a Republican parents, middle

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class upbringing and growing
up in that 1950s world.

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So for me, a big part of the
book was tracking how did

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that happen, especially for
her, but also for all her

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friends and fellow travelers.

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I guess for me, one of the
really illuminating things,

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partly because I was working
on it during the time of

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George Floyd and the kind of
racial reckoning over police

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violence and authoritarianism
and the government and stuff.

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I would say you can really track
my mother's radicalization

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very clearly along the lines of

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friends of hers and
leaders who she respected

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being killed during that
period so she started

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out you know as an idealistic
volunteer she was a law student

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she at the University of Chicago
she volunteered for Dr. King's

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rent strike in Chicago and
she was just like any other

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progressive kid wanting to make
a difference, wanting to use

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her legal skills to
make the world better.

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And then Dr. King was killed.

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And I think that sent her

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and a lot of other people
into this sense of, you

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know, he tried to do it
the right way and they

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wouldn't let him.

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And then she joined SDS.

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She became a leader of SDS.

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She made an alliance with

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Fred Hampton, who was then
and the leader of the

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Illinois Black Panthers, a
very young, charismatic,

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brilliant guy.

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And they were friends.

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She joined his rainbow
coalition of activist groups.

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And then he was murdered by the
Chicago police in cold blood.

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And I think just for her
and a lot of people,

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there were these moments
of just thinking,

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we're trying to do
this the right way.

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And then the
government comes along

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or the white
vigilantes come along

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and kill the people who are
trying to make things better.

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And I think that really sent
her on this road into a much

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more violent form of resistance.

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-Yeah.

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So I think that begs
the question of why

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do you think, because you, you
know, you're around college

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students and that whole
generation, why is nothing like

244
00:12:02,388 --> 00:12:03,989
SDS happening now?

245
00:12:03,989 --> 00:12:05,791
-It's a good question.

246
00:12:05,791 --> 00:12:07,793
I think about this a lot.

247
00:12:07,793 --> 00:12:11,230
And I mean, I would, I
guess my answer is twofold.

248
00:12:11,230 --> 00:12:13,365
One is I think there are
things that are happening

249
00:12:13,365 --> 00:12:15,101
that are a little
bit like SDS now.

250
00:12:15,101 --> 00:12:17,103
And they might be,
in retrospect,

251
00:12:17,103 --> 00:12:20,139
we might look back and
say, there were these big

252
00:12:20,139 --> 00:12:21,607
movements growing, you know, the

253
00:12:21,607 --> 00:12:24,076
environmental movement, the
Black Lives Matter movement,

254
00:12:24,076 --> 00:12:28,981
the Parkland kids and the
anti-gun violence movement.

255
00:12:28,981 --> 00:12:31,417
You know, even the kind
of democratic socialists

256
00:12:31,417 --> 00:12:33,819
who are now, you know,
electing officials

257
00:12:33,819 --> 00:12:34,820
all over the country.

258
00:12:34,820 --> 00:12:40,059
I think you see youth
activism in various ways.

259
00:12:40,059 --> 00:12:41,794
It's a little bit more
fragmented probably

260
00:12:41,794 --> 00:12:43,796
than it was then, just
like all of our media

261
00:12:43,796 --> 00:12:46,398
and culture and everything
else is fragmented.

262
00:12:46,398 --> 00:12:49,335
But I do think there's
a lot of activism and

263
00:12:49,335 --> 00:12:51,170
idealism among the young.

264
00:12:51,170 --> 00:12:54,073
I guess one of the
things that worries me,

265
00:12:54,073 --> 00:12:58,577
and it goes to your point about
the SDS convention in 1969,

266
00:12:58,577 --> 00:13:01,147
is one of the things
I was struck by

267
00:13:01,147 --> 00:13:03,616
doing the research for this
book is that my mother

268
00:13:03,616 --> 00:13:04,683
and her friends

269
00:13:05,718 --> 00:13:10,356
spent the entire 1960s
protesting peacefully for change

270
00:13:10,356 --> 00:13:14,293
and doing Democratic
voter registration drives

271
00:13:14,293 --> 00:13:16,228
and trying to elect
better candidates

272
00:13:16,228 --> 00:13:19,365
and sit-ins and
die-ins and be-ins

273
00:13:19,365 --> 00:13:21,033
and all the other things
that you read about

274
00:13:21,033 --> 00:13:23,302
in the 1960s civil
rights movement

275
00:13:23,302 --> 00:13:24,770
and anti-war movement.

276
00:13:24,770 --> 00:13:28,140
And it was really only after
nine or 10 years of doing that

277
00:13:28,140 --> 00:13:31,710
and seeing nothing change,
seeing things seem to get worse.

278
00:13:31,710 --> 00:13:34,613
Nixon reelected, the
Vietnam War escalating.

279
00:13:34,613 --> 00:13:37,850
And that was really what
turned her and many of her

280
00:13:37,850 --> 00:13:41,253
friends towards this like
despairing, nihilistic

281
00:13:41,253 --> 00:13:42,922
kind of we have to do more.

282
00:13:42,922 --> 00:13:47,393
We have to destroy this war
machine and this racism

283
00:13:47,393 --> 00:13:50,029
machine that we're opposing.

284
00:13:50,029 --> 00:13:53,866
So anyway, I guess I would
just say I worry that here we

285
00:13:53,866 --> 00:13:57,803
are 10 years into the various
Trump administrations and

286
00:13:57,803 --> 00:14:01,540
10 years into a lot of
progressive resistance idealism.

287
00:14:01,540 --> 00:14:04,743
And I wonder what happens
after 10 years of young people

288
00:14:04,743 --> 00:14:07,813
doing everything they can
think of and feeling like

289
00:14:07,813 --> 00:14:08,881
it's not working.

290
00:14:10,082 --> 00:14:15,588
-Right, just getting this sense
of hopelessness about the way

291
00:14:15,588 --> 00:14:19,592
the climate and everything
that you talked about.

292
00:14:20,759 --> 00:14:26,131
I wonder, were there books...

293
00:14:26,131 --> 00:14:30,302
You talk to a lot of people
in the writing of this book,

294
00:14:31,303 --> 00:14:34,874
but were there people
besides your parents

295
00:14:34,874 --> 00:14:39,712
who you felt
exemplified that period

296
00:14:39,712 --> 00:14:43,415
that helped you
understand it better?

297
00:14:43,415 --> 00:14:45,951
-Do you mean like people
who lived in that period

298
00:14:45,951 --> 00:14:48,254
or people who wrote
about that period?

299
00:14:48,254 --> 00:14:50,856
-Both. Both.

300
00:14:50,856 --> 00:14:52,424
-Yeah, I mean, there
were a bunch.

301
00:14:52,424 --> 00:14:54,960
Of course, I read every
book I could get my hands

302
00:14:54,960 --> 00:14:57,863
on about the period,
both written firsthand

303
00:14:57,863 --> 00:15:01,500
accounts of the period,
of which there are many.

304
00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:03,636
My dad has written two
memoirs of his own, so of

305
00:15:03,636 --> 00:15:04,770
course I've read those.

306
00:15:06,071 --> 00:15:08,374
I guess of those books,
one of the ones that

307
00:15:08,374 --> 00:15:10,142
really blew my mind
and kind of was

308
00:15:10,142 --> 00:15:12,378
very helpful for me
was Assata Shakur's

309
00:15:12,378 --> 00:15:15,180
autobiography. I was
surprised both at

310
00:15:15,180 --> 00:15:17,883
what a good writer
she is and at what an

311
00:15:17,883 --> 00:15:20,920
incredible life she led
and how, and of course,

312
00:15:20,920 --> 00:15:24,056
one of the big surprises
in the book, in my book,

313
00:15:24,056 --> 00:15:26,091
for me and hopefully
for the reader,

314
00:15:26,091 --> 00:15:29,795
is the strange ways that
the Black underground

315
00:15:29,795 --> 00:15:32,698
and Assata Shakur specifically
were entangled in

316
00:15:32,698 --> 00:15:34,300
my family's history.

317
00:15:34,300 --> 00:15:38,570
Um, so I guess that I would say
Assata Shakur in autobiography

318
00:15:38,570 --> 00:15:40,873
is quite a, an interesting read.

319
00:15:40,873 --> 00:15:42,608
And then there are many books.

320
00:15:42,608 --> 00:15:44,843
Um, Sale wrote a book
called SDS, which

321
00:15:44,843 --> 00:15:48,113
is like a comprehensive
history of students who are

322
00:15:48,113 --> 00:15:49,949
democratic, uh, society.

323
00:15:49,949 --> 00:15:52,418
And I found that
book really useful.

324
00:15:52,418 --> 00:15:55,721
Um, there's been, you know, many
books written about the Weather

325
00:15:55,721 --> 00:15:58,123
Underground specifically,
or about the Black

326
00:15:58,123 --> 00:15:58,891
Panther Party.

327
00:15:58,891 --> 00:16:01,093
Jamal Joseph's
book, “Panther Baby,”

328
00:16:01,093 --> 00:16:02,628
was really useful for me.

329
00:16:03,896 --> 00:16:05,764
Yeah, but I mean,
I think for me,

330
00:16:05,764 --> 00:16:08,133
what they all lacked, I
guess, in some way was,

331
00:16:10,502 --> 00:16:14,006
well, I guess I would say
there were the insiders

332
00:16:14,006 --> 00:16:16,642
from that period who
wrote at the time

333
00:16:16,642 --> 00:16:19,244
about their own experience.

334
00:16:19,244 --> 00:16:21,146
And of course, they're so
close to the experience

335
00:16:21,146 --> 00:16:25,417
that they rarely have
a global view of it.

336
00:16:25,417 --> 00:16:27,419
And then there are
the historians who

337
00:16:27,419 --> 00:16:29,788
came along afterwards,
some of whom did

338
00:16:29,788 --> 00:16:32,157
a fairly good job, but
none of them had the

339
00:16:32,157 --> 00:16:34,560
access or the insider
knowledge of that movement.

340
00:16:34,560 --> 00:16:37,997
So what I hoped I could bring
was both a kind of journalistic

341
00:16:37,997 --> 00:16:41,100
historian sensibility
to show a comprehensive

342
00:16:41,100 --> 00:16:44,203
history and also the
access to those people

343
00:16:44,203 --> 00:16:47,339
to like really get us
inside their heads.

344
00:16:47,339 --> 00:16:50,309
-Right. And I think
from this reader's,

345
00:16:50,309 --> 00:16:52,811
my viewpoint, you
actually, you did totally.

346
00:16:52,811 --> 00:16:54,346
I thought it was just great.

347
00:16:54,346 --> 00:16:57,349
There were two books that
I was thinking of when

348
00:16:57,349 --> 00:17:01,086
I was reading the book, and
one is a novel and the other

349
00:17:01,086 --> 00:17:07,359
is a memoir, but the memoir
is “How I Became Hettie Jones”

350
00:17:07,359 --> 00:17:14,767
by LeRoi Jones, ex-wife, which
which was just really, just

351
00:17:14,767 --> 00:17:21,974
a very, sometimes memoirs I
find get just so defensive

352
00:17:21,974 --> 00:17:27,112
or poor me or whatever,
especially somebody who's caught

353
00:17:27,112 --> 00:17:30,282
up in a movement like the
Black Panthers, like she was

354
00:17:30,282 --> 00:17:32,151
in the Black Panther movement.

355
00:17:32,151 --> 00:17:35,921
And the other one is a
novel by Marge Piercy

356
00:17:35,921 --> 00:17:37,956
called “Vida,” V-I-D-A.

357
00:17:37,956 --> 00:17:41,960
I don't know if you, I
really think that it's

358
00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:45,664
about a young woman,
not unlike your mother,

359
00:17:45,664 --> 00:17:49,201
who goes underground
and those experiences.

360
00:17:49,201 --> 00:17:54,373
And it was written, I believe
it was published in the ‘70s.

361
00:17:54,373 --> 00:17:55,107
-Oh, that's interesting.

362
00:17:55,107 --> 00:17:56,842
-I would recommend, yeah.

363
00:17:56,842 --> 00:17:58,677
-Yeah, that's interesting.

364
00:17:58,677 --> 00:18:01,013
Yeah, I mean, you know,
Dana Spiotta has a book

365
00:18:01,013 --> 00:18:04,049
called “Eat the Document,”
which is about a novel,

366
00:18:04,049 --> 00:18:06,518
but kind of about an
underground figure.

367
00:18:06,518 --> 00:18:08,253
Yeah, so there are many
interesting treatments.

368
00:18:08,253 --> 00:18:09,888
Of course, in media,
we have everything

369
00:18:09,888 --> 00:18:12,324
from “Running on Empty”
all the way through “One

370
00:18:12,324 --> 00:18:13,325
Battle After Another.”

371
00:18:13,325 --> 00:18:15,794
So it's been a source
of a lot of interesting

372
00:18:15,794 --> 00:18:16,695
cultural documents.

373
00:18:18,630 --> 00:18:20,265
-Were there things
that your parents

374
00:18:20,265 --> 00:18:22,868
just absolutely didn't
want to talk about?

375
00:18:22,868 --> 00:18:25,237
-In particular, my
mother, who was a very

376
00:18:25,237 --> 00:18:26,872
private, reserved person.

377
00:18:28,240 --> 00:18:30,676
I think if it hadn't been for
the fact that I'm her son

378
00:18:30,676 --> 00:18:34,079
and that she had a sense
that I had a right to tell

379
00:18:34,079 --> 00:18:35,814
my version of the story,

380
00:18:37,449 --> 00:18:41,787
I think for me that
was, you know,

381
00:18:41,787 --> 00:18:44,289
there were things she
felt uncomfortable about

382
00:18:44,289 --> 00:18:46,892
that she was willing
to talk about.

383
00:18:46,892 --> 00:18:50,696
And then there were things that
we had a rule when we started

384
00:18:50,696 --> 00:18:54,399
the process of the interview,
which is that they couldn't

385
00:18:54,399 --> 00:18:57,903
lie to me, but that if there
were things that touched on

386
00:18:57,903 --> 00:19:02,174
sensitive subjects, especially
sensitive legal subjects, that

387
00:19:02,174 --> 00:19:05,811
they could just say that's
something I don't want to talk

388
00:19:05,811 --> 00:19:07,579
about or I can't talk about.

389
00:19:07,579 --> 00:19:10,916
But I think, honestly, in
three years of interviewing

390
00:19:10,916 --> 00:19:14,019
them, I think they only
availed themselves of that

391
00:19:14,019 --> 00:19:15,921
privilege maybe once or twice.

392
00:19:15,921 --> 00:19:20,792
I think they they felt like

393
00:19:23,295 --> 00:19:26,398
usually the only
reason they would have

394
00:19:26,398 --> 00:19:28,200
made that decision I
think the once or twice

395
00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:29,434
that they decided
they couldn't talk

396
00:19:29,434 --> 00:19:30,669
about something it
was usually because

397
00:19:30,702 --> 00:19:33,038
they thought it might implicate
one of their former friends

398
00:19:33,038 --> 00:19:37,176
in a criminal situation
and so there's still

399
00:19:37,176 --> 00:19:40,012
a very strong code of
like we don't rat on our

400
00:19:40,012 --> 00:19:42,614
friends obviously
but other than that

401
00:19:42,614 --> 00:19:45,150
they were very
forthcoming with me.

402
00:19:45,150 --> 00:19:49,087
-Are there things now at this
point, are you done with the

403
00:19:49,087 --> 00:19:50,622
book? Do you know what I mean?

404
00:19:50,622 --> 00:19:53,225
Or do you, are there still
things that you think,

405
00:19:53,225 --> 00:19:55,861
“Oh darn, I should have,
you know, talked about

406
00:19:55,861 --> 00:19:56,562
that more?”

407
00:19:56,562 --> 00:19:58,964
-I mean, I feel pretty
good about, like,

408
00:19:58,964 --> 00:20:01,833
it has been a long process
and a lot of kind of

409
00:20:01,833 --> 00:20:03,202
thinking about it.

410
00:20:03,202 --> 00:20:04,236
And of course, as
I said, I mean,

411
00:20:04,236 --> 00:20:07,272
I spent 15 or 20 years as a
writer not writing about it,

412
00:20:07,272 --> 00:20:12,844
but that time accrues
into a lot of, you know,

413
00:20:12,844 --> 00:20:16,148
it's like, I think if I'd
written this book in my 20s,

414
00:20:16,148 --> 00:20:18,517
I might've missed a lot that
I wanted to talk about,

415
00:20:18,517 --> 00:20:21,286
but I feel like by waiting,
I was able to have a

416
00:20:21,286 --> 00:20:24,990
good idea beforehand of
the things I really wanted

417
00:20:24,990 --> 00:20:26,625
to make sure I could get to.

418
00:20:27,993 --> 00:20:34,199
- Plus in your 20s, you didn't
have the outside situation

419
00:20:34,199 --> 00:20:37,936
of the way the culture is now
and what's happening here now

420
00:20:39,137 --> 00:20:43,775
to set this against, I
mean against in the sense

421
00:20:43,775 --> 00:20:48,213
that that's the backdrop
and the book is talking

422
00:20:48,213 --> 00:20:52,551
about the way it was then
compared to making the

423
00:20:52,551 --> 00:20:57,256
reader think well what's
it like now and why is you

424
00:20:57,256 --> 00:21:02,261
know why are certain things
happening. Just one one

425
00:21:02,261 --> 00:21:06,231
more quick question
because our time's almost

426
00:21:06,231 --> 00:21:10,302
up the whole turn in the
the revolutionary movement

427
00:21:10,302 --> 00:21:13,572
in the United States toward
what I always think of

428
00:21:13,572 --> 00:21:17,609
as like the cultural revolution
and this attacks on the

429
00:21:17,609 --> 00:21:22,247
people in it, the leaders, you
know, looking at yourself,

430
00:21:22,247 --> 00:21:24,383
self-criticism, all of that.

431
00:21:24,383 --> 00:21:26,051
Do you think that
was inevitable?

432
00:21:26,051 --> 00:21:29,254
Do you think that's inevitable
in every revolutionary movement?

433
00:21:29,254 --> 00:21:31,390
I know that's a
really big question.

434
00:21:31,423 --> 00:21:32,591
-No, I've thought about it a lot.

435
00:21:32,591 --> 00:21:36,328
I mean, I do think for sure
this sense of, well, I'll start

436
00:21:36,328 --> 00:21:39,831
by saying that my parents
became very emblematic of a

437
00:21:39,831 --> 00:21:43,802
certain kind of factionalism
in the progressive movement.

438
00:21:43,802 --> 00:21:47,239
Of course, my mother splitting
SDS to form Weathermen was

439
00:21:47,239 --> 00:21:50,542
one of the signal moments of
that kind of breaking apart

440
00:21:50,542 --> 00:21:52,411
of these mass movement groups.

441
00:21:52,411 --> 00:21:55,647
But I mean, I guess when you
look more broadly, you see,

442
00:21:55,647 --> 00:21:59,051
hey, even at the time, all of
those groups were splitting

443
00:21:59,051 --> 00:21:59,985
into factions.

444
00:21:59,985 --> 00:22:02,220
So the Black Panther
Party, which was

445
00:22:02,220 --> 00:22:05,557
one of the biggest and most
important mass movements in

446
00:22:05,557 --> 00:22:08,727
the country, also split in
half in East Coast and West

447
00:22:08,727 --> 00:22:12,531
Coast. And there was feuds and
attacks and factional disputes.

448
00:22:12,531 --> 00:22:15,834
And then, of course, I think as
you're implying, Nancy, if you

449
00:22:15,834 --> 00:22:19,037
look at history, progressive
and revolutionary movements

450
00:22:19,037 --> 00:22:22,240
have a tendency to fracture in
these ways, all the way back to

451
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:25,577
the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
and probably long before that.

452
00:22:27,279 --> 00:22:28,447
So do I think it's inevitable?

453
00:22:28,447 --> 00:22:31,116
I think it's an Achilles
heel of the left

454
00:22:31,116 --> 00:22:34,786
and is always a danger for
radical progressive movements.

455
00:22:34,786 --> 00:22:38,056
And I think it's something you
see today in radical movements.

456
00:22:38,056 --> 00:22:41,560
You see the kind of purity
tests and cancel culture

457
00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:42,594
or whatever you want to call it,

458
00:22:43,962 --> 00:22:47,366
that there is a sense of when
people are ideologically

459
00:22:47,366 --> 00:22:51,203
committed to something,
they can be very intolerant

460
00:22:51,203 --> 00:22:55,674
of dissent and they lose sight
of the fact that they need

461
00:22:55,674 --> 00:22:58,610
allies and they need
a broad coalition.

462
00:22:58,610 --> 00:22:59,778
So do I think it's inevitable?

463
00:22:59,778 --> 00:23:02,781
I think it crops up regularly
enough that we can say

464
00:23:02,781 --> 00:23:04,416
it's a part of human nature.

465
00:23:04,416 --> 00:23:06,685
But I also think it's a part
of human nature that we can

466
00:23:06,685 --> 00:23:08,620
try to resist and we
can try to do better.

467
00:23:08,620 --> 00:23:12,324
And the movements that have
done better, everything from

468
00:23:12,324 --> 00:23:15,694
Cuba to Algeria to South
Africa, have managed to keep

469
00:23:15,694 --> 00:23:19,464
their factional disputes to a
minimum and build a movement

470
00:23:19,464 --> 00:23:21,133
that actually can endure.

471
00:23:21,133 --> 00:23:25,303
-Well, Zayd, thank you so much
for spending this time talking

472
00:23:25,303 --> 00:23:29,775
about your really terrific book,
“Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and

473
00:23:29,775 --> 00:23:34,012
Young, A Fugitive Family in
the Revolutionary Underground.”

474
00:23:34,012 --> 00:23:34,346
Thank you.

475
00:23:34,346 --> 00:23:34,846
-Thank you, Nancy.

476
00:23:34,846 --> 00:23:35,747
It's been a great conversation.

477
00:23:35,747 --> 00:23:45,724
♪♪

478
00:23:56,568 --> 00:23:59,538
♪♪