Whatever happened to the revolution? Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s new memoir confronts his notorious Chicago parents

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"Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground," by Zayd Ayers Dohrn. (W. W. Norton & Company/TNS)

Handout/W. W. Norton & Company/TNS

Zayd Ayers Dohrn, a playwright and Northwestern professor, sits near the Haymarket Memorial in the West Loop on April 9, 2026. Dohrn, the son of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, the longtime Hyde Parkers and leaders of the militant activist group The Weather Underground, used to take him to the Haymarket Memorial to illustrate the history of activism. Dohrn is coming out with a memoir about his upbringing as a child on the run with his parents. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Zayd Ayers Dohrn, a playwright and Northwestern professor, stands near the Haymarket Memorial in the West Loop on April 9, 2026. Dohrn, the son of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, the longtime Hyde Parkers and leaders of the militant activist group The Weather Underground, used to take him to the Haymarket Memorial to illustrate the history of activism. Dohrn is coming out with a memoir about his upbringing as a child on the run with his parents. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Zayd Ayers Dohrn picked up my phone and read the email. He removed his sunglasses and leaned into the screen. I had a bunch more just like it, I told him, the general message all the same, that Zayd Ayers Dohrn is the son of domestic terrorists from Chicago, and why write a story about someone from a family like that? The emails came last fall, just after I wrote about Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and “Revolution(s),” the musical that he and Dohrn premiered at the Goodman Theatre. The focus of that story was Morello, but almost none of the emails mentioned Morello at all. They zeroed in on Dohrn and the history of his notorious family.