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Debunking the 60s with Ayers and Dohrn

Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, activiists leaders in SDS in the ‘60’s, say a new movement must be built.

By Laura S. Washington

'One of the things that sits very heavy on the progressive impulses today is the myth that there was a golden age in resistance.'
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They are storied and iconic, America’s Numero Uno radical couple. In the ’60s, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were activists and leaders in Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. Dohrn, now 64, and Ayers, 61, played starring roles as Vietnam War dissenters. When their protests turned violent, they became fugitives from the law.

Forty years later, they are still in the game. I recently invited them to dinner at Yoshi’s Café in Chicago’s Boys Town. The national convention of Students for a Democratic Society was coming to Chi-Town. So what do these longtime Hyde Parkers think about those good old days, when radicals were radicals and the movement was muscular?

“The ‘good old days’ is a funny way to think about the left,” said Dohrn. 

Ayers picked it up. “One of the things that sits very heavy on the progressive impulses today, and young people in particular, is the myth that there was a golden age in resistance, that the ’60s was where it was really at.”

Today Dohrn is a scholar and director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. Ayers serves as a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They visit college campuses around the nation, where, Ayers says, “We spend a fair amount of time debunking the received wisdom of the ’60s.”

That “wisdom,” he explains, is that resisting the war “was easy to do and everybody did it.” It was a hard-fought slog.

Iraq brings its own lessons of protest. He points to a failure of leadership in the run-up to that war. “In March 2003, we participated in the largest antiwar movement in our lives, possibly in history. Now there was a leadership problem in a sense that the leadership said this is the demonstration that will prevent a war.

“It was a wrong thing to say,” Ayers argues, “because it didn’t help people who participated in that, particularly young people, to analyze the situation, to make sense of it, to make a contribution, and then to continue organizing. It said we’ll prevent a war. That war was not preventable.”

Forget the Democrats, they say. “The Democratic Party supported the war in Vietnam …” Dohrn began. Ayers cut in: “Led the war in Vietnam.”

“And they’ve been supporting, and leading this war,” Dohrn continued. “I don’t look to the Democratic Party. I don’t have hope for the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. And I think the only answer is for us to build an independent, radical movement, and, I mean, the big ‘us.’ “ 

To mount a movement, “let’s look at history,” said Dohrn between bites of her tuna nicoise salad. “Lyndon Johnson was not a civil rights leader; Lyndon Johnson was responding to a civil rights movement. FDR was not a labor leader; FDR was responding to a labor movement. We confuse these things when we think about them today.”

Indeed, that’s “a great mistake. Lyndon Johnson was the most effective politician of his generation, but it took a movement independent of Lyndon Johnson to get Lyndon Johnson to use that effectiveness for the good.”

Still, I asked, aren’t progressives putting high hopes in November? Even leading Republicans admit that the Dems are likely to recapture at least one house of Congress. 

So what? That’s not the point, Ayers says. Electoral politics is a tool to connect causes, like gay rights, disability rights, voting rights, human rights. “That’s how you use electoral politics. Not as an end in itself, but as an organizing mechanism. Our deepest belief, I think, is that we need to connect all these good projects and build the movement. …we should always be positioning ourselves, thinking, okay, if I’m involved in this next election, how am I positioned to help contribute to building a movement, raising consciousness, making the connections, and that’s a real tricky business.”

It wasn’t so tricky for Ned Lamont. On Aug. 8 Lamont blew out of nowhere to knock off the pro-war U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic senate primary. For my money, that vote is a strong predictor of the power war-weary voters will bring to the polls this fall. 

Despite their critiques, Ayers and Dohrn are eternal optimists. Over coffee, Dohrn reflected that their activist days can serve as a metaphor for a “candle” that illuminates the past—and the future.

“The issue holding us back today, to me, is the idea that what you do won’t make a difference. The elite powers tell us the world is too complicated. They spend a lot of energy fostering despair,” she argues. 

The candle shows us that “it’s not true,” Dohrn says. “I don’t think it’s all the complicated issues of what kind of an economic society we really want and how are we going to deal with globalization and all of that.  Those are tremendously complex challenges but they’re solvable by human creativity and ingenuity and collective effort.”

Stay vigilant. The light will come.

Laura S. Washington, an In These Times senior editor, teaches journalism at DePaul University and is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

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  • Reader Comments

    Ayers and Dohrn weren’t activists, they were criminals.  Its unfortunate that they aren’t serving long prison sentences.

    Posted by chopper on Aug 18, 2006 at 11:54 PM

    Dohrn and Ayers make a great deal of sense and they do offer some vital hope in extremely dark times. They may have been fugitives from the law, but the law, back then, was in great part being dispensed by criminals. The war in Vietnam was criminal, we had a criminal running the country, for example.  We have the same situation today, only far more accute, because we simply haven’t really done our work on the Vietnam and Watergate disasters. As a society, I mean.

    So amen to those two, who put their finger on the sore spots: No opposition, a failed anti-war movement, and the elite powers treating everyone like dumbbells. I admire their optimism.  I don’t have it, not when I see kids running of to demonstrate against the G8 and globalization and then sitting around McD’s and BK discussing the ringtones on their mobile phones or the value of Gap cargo pants.

    Posted by Talleyrand on Aug 19, 2006 at 11:41 PM

    Thank God for decent people like Dohrn and Ayers. Unfortunately America is not blessed by many more people like them.  But unfortunately Fascism is on the rise still though --- it has meet with a bump on the road.  In some respects we on the left also have to be thankful to Bush and Chavez.  Bush is an easy person to attack because he is inept and repulsive and Chavez gives us hope that change in possible

    Posted by Spinoza750 on Aug 20, 2006 at 3:37 AM

    “Thank God for decent people like Dohrn and Ayers. Unfortunately America is not blessed by many more people like them.  But unfortunately Fascism is on the rise still though --- it has meet with a bump on the road.  In some respects we on the left also have to be thankful to Bush and Chavez.  Bush is an easy person to attack because he is inept and repulsive and Chavez gives us hope that change in possible”

    No, Dohrn and Ayers are criminals.  They were part of the Weather Underground, an organization responsible for a series of bombings in the early 70’s.  Ayers then girlfriend, Diana Oughton, along with two other Weathermen, were killed when a bomb they were working on to set off at a dance at Fort Dix (which would have killed privates and their dates, not high ranking officers) accidently blew up. 

    If one can justify their actions, one can end up justifying any violence at all carried out for political ends.  It is instructive to note that Ayers once made a statement praising the actions of Charles Manson and his followers in murdering Sharon Tate.

    Posted by chopper on Aug 21, 2006 at 2:02 AM

    I agree with Chopper about the disturbing love of violence once embraced by Bernadine Dohm.

    I just finished reading “Hippie”, a detailed description of the musical and social scene of the 60’s, by Barry Miles.  On page 312, he describes the formation of the Weather Underground.  “They held a National War Council in Flint, Michigan, where a huge cardboard machine gun hung from the ceiling and the speeches were about “organizing a city-wide anti-pig movement...”.  Participants romanticized Manson’s killing spree.  Speaking of the LaBianca murders, Bernadine Dohrn, who became the organization’s spokesperson, said, “Dig it.  First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room as them.  Then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach.  Wild!”

    Those victims were Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, a middle-aged couple who were not cops or FBI or otherwise obvious oppressors.  Leno was stabbed 12 times with a knife, and 14 times with a carving fork.  Rosemary was stabbed 41 times.  Then there were the heartless murders of Sharon Tate (8 months pregnant) and her friends.

    Has Bernadine Dohrn renounced that view of violence?  I certainly hope so---especially since she now directs a Child and Family Justice Center.  I think I will look elsewhere (like to the American Friends Service Committee) for my light and candle in the dark.

    Posted by TeachPeace on Aug 21, 2006 at 8:10 PM

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Appeared in the September 2006 Issue
Also by Laura S. Washington
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