Review of Mother Country Radicals ... discussion to follow in comments
Welcome to the first official Bingeworthy dispatch
Six minutes into Chapter 1, just after we hear some truly astounding tape from 1970, when Bernardine Dohrn shares her declaration of war on the United States of America, the host introduces himself and the reason for this project:
My name is Zayd Ayres Dohrn, and this is a family history. Because I was born underground.
For the first years of my life, my parents and I were on the run from the FBI.
What a way to open a story.
Zayd is the son of two contemporary American revolutionary figures: Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayres.
If those names aren’t familiar, some of these likely will be: The SDS, otherwise known as Students for A Democratic Society, The Weathermen, The Weather Underground. Also, The Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, or the BLA, groups that Bernardine and Bill eventually became affiliated with.
Whether you’re a student of the history of American counter-culture, or you love a celebrity-family-history writ large, this is a long and decisive account of some of the most iconic figures in American history.
Mother Country Radicals is a memoir at the same time as it’s a history lesson.
But it also provides a schooling: on what America actually is; how it treated its radical sons and daughters; what role the government played; what the aims and the ambitions were of the group behind the sensational headlines; the acutely perceptible role privilege played; who died and how; and then what ultimately happened to the Radical Left, from the 1960s until it was more-or-less disbanded by the early 1980s.
This project could easily have descended into a narcissistic family history, but it manages to avoid that trap. It does this through balanced journalism, a trove of historical tape, a concise interview list…and it remains compelling because it’s told from Zayd’s personal perspective.
There are two perceptible questions that follow the entire series:
1 - Can bombs be a benign act of resistance…if they don’t aim to kill?
2- Where did all of that get them, and by extension, get us? And where to next?
The tone of the interviews conveys the kitchen table. It begins as an oral history, between a son and his mother.
But before the warm fuzzies settle in, remember that it’s also the same mother that spent years in jail after turning herself in from being on the FBI’s Most Wanted List…something that’s only been bestowed on just 11 women to date.
Despite the dark and difficult questions that Zayd asks, there’s a shorthand familiarity to it all, which gives it levity and bounce.
It’s a vibe that can only be achieved when you have a deep history with the subject and the people.
The interviews come and go without giant signposts or lengthy introductions. After the first couple of times you hear Bernardine and Bill, it’s up to you to remember who they are going forward.
As the series progresses, by the time the secondary voices are brought in for discussion, the friends and comrades, it’s as though the conversation happened around the dining room table on a Friday night.
The deft editing of this series does a few things: First, the pacing helps to pass the time quickly. Second, the sequencing of the story allows for a familiar story arc that feels like you’re naturally learning and unfolding the history as you go. I would call this the Ken Burns Documentary Effect, and it works. The sheer amount of historical tape used is not only impressive, but also lends it the gravitas of a work of history.
There’s a narrative tone that Zayd strikes as he moves from person to event, from premise to promise, that feels breezy, like you’re hearing it for the first time, and you’re there to bear witness to it. You can accept or deny his version of history….it’s not jammed down your throat. He makes sure to leave you with as many questions and he does statements.
But it also demands your full attention. There’s no spoon-feeding here. The interview subjects are mentioned once, and then to allow for the cadence of the wide gauge of facts to continue at pace, they are often not introduced again. The series assumes that you know some of the history already, or at the minimum, that you’ve been paying close attention to the story as it’s told to you here and can reference the facts on cue as they come in.
It’s better listen to with focus….more of a long drive or treadmill run -podcast listen, than a play in the background to entertain -podcast listen. You will quickly get lost.
Zayd dug deep into his Rolodex to reconnect with many of the figures involved back in the day. If the thought of doing that, of calling all your old community; your friends, relatives, comrades and adversaries from the last 40-odd years of your life, if that feels like an easy thing to do, I wonder about you.
There are moments in the series when you can hear the weight of this task meant in his voice. You hear anger, regret, guilt and confusion. One thing you do not hear is shame.
No doubt this all brought up a bunch of new-old / old-stuff for Zayd to sort through. And to do this while shedding a giant spotlight on his family’s radical past and consider what it all means, with balanced journalism, historically accurate facts and actual footage, in a place where family legend and lore intertwine with misinformation and propaganda, is quietly huge.
It’s all held together by a very perceptible thesis which is clear by the midpoint of the series:
Just how much has actually changed in America?
Whether you agree or you disagree with the ideology, the methods, or outcomes of the Weather Underground, or the BLA for that matter, what is true is that they actually fought, with literal weapons, to try to realize their better version of society.
Some of them gave their lives. Many of them spent years, or decades, in prison. They gave up their families and personal freedoms, all because they believed that strongly that their work could make America a better place.
And for what? For the police to continue to escalate and legitimize their war on the black community? So that an armed insurrection could foment and then actually happen on January 6th?
This is also a feminist retelling of history.
Like so many histories that have been written, the women involved in this story were largely not given a proper byline. While many of the men involved have already written memoirs, none of the women have yet done this.
When Bernardine connected with the SDS, the predecessor to the Weathermen, back in the 1960s, she was older and more mature than most of the people in the room. She had “a law degree and more organizing experience than most.“
This is precisely why she took a leadership role and became the voice of the organization. Media reports characterized her as the pretty face of the movement who wore a mini skirt, instead of one of the key organizers and lead spokesperson. It was a convenient omission of detail.
“Despite the fact that she later became famous, infamous, as a symbol of revolutionary rage, my mother has always been a private person, reserved, kinda shy.
So I can hear her forcing herself to say these words, driving herself to do something that doesn’t come naturally to her, becuase she believes that somebody has to do something.
She has to do something.
Until now, she hasn’t really poked that bear. But Mother Country Radicals changes this.
The story effectively passes the mic to Bernardine, and then towards the end of the series also to Kathy Boudin, another prominent woman in the organization (and in Zayd’s life) to pen another chapter of this story. Only this time, the story achieves gender parity. Sadly Kathy passed away before this podcast was published.
This story allows Bernardine to be more than just the tagline of once being one of The World’s Most Wanted Women, and really own that stage that she once stood on: Afterall, she wrote a muthafuggin declaration of war, and then recorded it to be sent out to the world.
But buckle up for this story. It dives deep.
It dredges up some very difficult and divided histories. It doesn’t shy away from defining what, exactly, radicalism is, or what it was at that time. It also gives history and context to the racial politics of then, and now.
Zayd interviews his parents and other close friends and he goes for it with questions like these:
Why did you do it?
Have you ever lied to me about something?
How could you think what you did was ok?
What I found this series less clear about was its conclusions around the areas of class and priviledge. The series opens with the assertion that:
They [Weathermen] were all convinced that their priveldge has put them on the wrong side of history.
And they were willing to blow up the world they knew to get on the right side of history.
And while the later chapters of the series makes it clear that this wasn’t going very well for them by the later part of the 1970s, when the movement began to lose ground. The politics changed, the war in Vietnam ended…the founding members wanted to start families and go live a different life.
That’s the thing with movements: They undulate and change.
The bitter pill to swallow (which is perhaps what weakens the conclusion) is that the benefit of time and space has now allowed us to see that many of the white folks involved in these actions have gone on to write books, obtain tenured positions at prestigious universities, and had families where sons and daughters grew up to be successful, contributing members of society. Meanwhile, institutional racism has ensured that most of the black folks involved have either been killed, or are still rotting in jail.
If they didn’t walk in with privilege, and they didn’t walk away with it either.
There were times when I was listening to this story when I actually gasped. There were times when I nodded my head along, ‘right on.’ And there were times when I glanced sidelong at it: asking aloud: Am I willing to see history in that way?
Mother Country Radicals is a history written at the PhD dissertation level. Zayd’s team underwent a rigorous fact-checking exercise…and to find out more about this, subscribe, because in the next newsletter, I will share my Q+A with Zayd, and he answers this question exactly.
Zayd admits that he’s not a revolutionary, per se, but that he grew up to be a writer instead because that was how he knew he could shake up the world. And that the importance of this story for him is to help his daughters understand the America that they have been born into, and fully see:
“That White Supremacy is alive and well in this country….that American authoritariansim is an possibility, in fact, a historical reality, from slavery, through Jim Crowe…all the way up to the Insurrection at the Capitol.
Maybe what Mother Country Radicals, a narrative memoir-and-documentary podcast, really has to offer the world is an accountancy exercise: A full and detailed audit of history, one that includes the stories of the women and the hearts of the revolutionaries, to subvert power in a new way, and strike a different balance for the future.
Next up: Zayd answers some Q+A about the series he created (available on Friday).
Let’s fire up these comments! Jump in below.
QUESTIONS TO PONDER:
Zayd is able to tell the story in a balanced way…tell me why you agree or disagree with this statement.
Can bombs be a benign act…if they aren’t intended to kill?
Was there a part of the story that was missing for you?
On balance, which genre would you put this into History, or Memoir?
Series Details:
Mother Country Radicals
Audacy Original, a Crooked Media show, produced by Dustlight Productions
10 Episodes
First published June 9, 2022
Publishing day: Thursday
Release structure: June 9: Eps 1, 2 & 3 … then weekly
Final episode, Ep 10 published July 28, 2022
Total Listening time: 7 hours, 15 minutes
To listen to Mother Country Radicals
Find it HERE on Apple
And HERE on Spotify