[ 208 ) Bill Ayers

I caught my breath as our metaphor began to shift. I realized that

the underground had begun two feet from my ow n fro nt door, that the
hidden world is a parallel universe somewhere side by side with the
open world. We learned to fashion survival alo ng different dim ensions:
timing and synchro nization, the thoughtful use oflight and sh~dow,
rhythm and pulse. We were seeking not libe rated te~ritory hu~ treer
vision, not a clash o f armies but a battle of imaginations. In Viet Nam 25.
there were th e mountai ns and the jungle and the forest- we discovered
that the secret path and the clandestine tunnel had their equivalents in
a good counterfeit identity and a safe house. I bega n to wonder how
we could resurrect the Amer ican underground railroad of a century
before- a protected space for uncompromising resistance, audacious
attack when necessary and, importantly, survival. C W set off on his ow n to a life of the imagi ned underground o utlaw-
We disappeared then not from the world, b ut i11to a world , a world a shadowy underworld figure surviving through petty crime but always
of invention and improvisation, a roma nce of space and distance and preparing for something big. The rest of us sca ttered to o ur base cit-
ti me, an outpost o n the ho rizon of our imaginatio ns. We' re not o n the ies-New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portla nd, San Francisco,
fringe of societ y, I told friends, because society has no fringe and no L.A.- to reo rganize and regroup. Each of us took an alias, some of us
one is ever really outside of it. The unde rground was without borders seve ral for diffe rent purposes, and over time o ur given names faded
or a point on the map, it's true, and it was as close to magic as I wou ld and became foreign to us, just as the ope n world was now far away. We
hid even from ourselves, and soon we heard about the exploi ts of this
ever come.
Jn a sense it was so easy to find- we simply walked out into the or that comrade o n th e othe r coast, but we could never connect the
world and we were underground. In another way it was a leap away news w ith anyone in particular.
fro m complicity and aga inst accommodation. We stepped off the hard Many took names from history's heroes: John for John Brown, Nat
surfaces of the everyday into a hidden room beneath the clatter of the for Nat Turner, Harriet for Harriet Tubman. Others, from th e world-
city, so mething to invent and then ex te nd and protect. O ur mug shots wide struggle: Molly McGui re, Troy (Troi), Heidi (Haydee), Ernest
were everywhere, eve ry post o ffice and police station, banks and bus sta- O'Shay (Che), Emma (Goldman). Others adop ted as names qualities
tions. The stakes became ourselves. O ur disguises were ourselves, too, they were seeking: Steel, Will, Love. We had among us a Ruby and a
concealed in the expectations of ot hers. Look for us in the whirlwi nd, Carmen, a Hatchet, a Flint, and a Dawn. There was, of co urse, the need
J thought , happier and still happier to be alive. to hide and deceive in order to survive, but t he game of naming and
rena ming also contain ed that old but sti ll sparkling desire to reimagine
and remake o urselves in to new me n and new women, to merge o ur
identities with the movement. Bernardine beca me Rose Bri dges, and f
became Joe Brown. I loved those ordinary names, and whenever things
got tough in the coming yea rs, whenever we were feeli ng overwhelmed
or defeated or terrified I kidded Rose, saying we should escape to Ha
[ 210) Bill Ayers 211] Fugitive La ys

Noi and open a quiet little restaurant called "Rose and Joe's American charac teristics of love: a sense of a fut ure togeth er, intense shared expe-
Cafe." riences, vulnerabi lity and agony a nd a fear of loss, a reluctance to name
Had we forgotten by now our real names? In a way, yes, but what's a it with a word. There was desire, too, but not fo r exclusive affection.
real name anyway? Whose name is real? Almost every Black friend or The emancipation of women and of the bod y was in the air, and while
comrade had by now shed what they called their slave names, and so we wanted affection, it would have to be chosen every day. I m oved to
we all adapted to a Jamal or a Lumumba, a Zayd, and many Mali ks. I'd California, and I never tho ught of her as Bernardine anymore-Bernar-
known Ismael Akbar and Afeni Shabazz; I'd known Ron St. Ron and d ine had become a creation on a poster. In our ow n bed late at night,
Juan Chicago. And even Bernadine's father had played the name game ba thed in candlelight, I whispered, I love you, Rose, a nd it was true, I
-when she was thirteen he'd had enough of being a Jew in America, was in love again. I'd fallen in love wit h Rose, and nothing else made
and he changed the family name from Ohrnstein to Dohrn, and his sense. That sweet madness has carried us alo ng a swift and dazzling
own nickname from Bernie to Barney. river over exh ilarating rapids and frighten ing d rops, through gurglin g
People ask me now, Did you have trouble remembering all those undertows and treacherous canyons, hand in hand for three decades
names? Did you miss "Bill"? If someone had called out Bill in a now. I ta ttooed a rose on m y right forearm then. Rose gave bi rth to
crowded room in those years, I wou ldn't have even looked up- I wasn't Zayd in 1977, to Malik in 1980, the year we su rrendered to th e FBI. By
Bill anymore. I shed it like an old ski n. And in those days I often met 1981 we were Be_rnardine and Bill again and we adopted Chesa, a nd then
people more nameless than ourselves. we were five, but that is another story enti rely, and I'm gett ing ahead of
Rose and I, old friends by now and longtime comrades, fell in love mysel[
slowly in that first year, the familiar angle of regard yielding to some-
thing new, shifting to reveal sweet dimensions and lovely edges never We traveled a lot, underground , som etimes together, sometimes not.
quite seen in this way before. It's true that when we'd first met years We buil t a little house in the back of our pickup t ruck, and when we
before at a conference with the funky name Radicals in the Professions, were together we liked to take t ime to camp ou t, to cook dinner ove r a
when she was still Bernardine and I was Bill, we had flirted and danced fire, to hike or swim on our way to our next rendezvous or meeting, the
deep into a hot and humid midwestern night in the pleasant haze of work ahead. When we were apart, we spoke on the phone every few
weed and wine. In the custom of the times we fell upon one another days. Once when I'd been away several weeks, I got a card from her wi th
like musky, unkempt alley cats-scratching and biting, fur fl ying, bowl- a photo of two big hippos wallowing lazil y in a lake. Times being what
ing down the city streets-and whatever the neighbors might have they are, she wrote, I can't imagine we'll grow old togeth er, like these
thought, no one threw a shoe or a bucket of cold water, and so we ram- two happy souls. Still , when we're together I feel as close to contented
bled on a ll night and became friends, stumbling happily to the meet- as I have ever been, fat and full and floaty, and I thank you for that.
ings next day, and then returned to our homes and to our partners. We inve nted all kind s of ways to obtain false identity papers, and got
But n ow we were falling in love, and everything was changing. busy building multiple sets of ID for each of us and for every co ntin -
We had been passionate and forceful together, and between us I had gency. We stole wallets a nd purses at first without much concern fo r
forgotten the differences of the sexes at first. We talked of all we had our victims, but it was a risky business that co uld reel out of control
shared, a nd the things we had been before we were friends. Memories without warning. We were trying to learn artfulness and stealth, and
of Diana were never far away. Our friendship had all the important stea ling purses was definitely from the old school. More important,
[ 212) Bill Ayers

these papers were unreliable and had a short shelflife. As soon as they
were reported missing, everything stopped working, and it cou Id prove There's more to it, ofcourse. Some forgetfulness is learned, some forget-
disastrous to buy a car, for example, or rent an apartment on a sour ID. ting forced, some studied. Forgetting n11d remembering become entwined,
Instant tracking. After the Baltimore fiasco, stealing ID was forbidden. dependent, locked in desperate embrace. A111erica'sfoundatio11al myths-
Instead we began to build ID sets around documents as flimsy as a from our be11eficent civilizing mission at the start through our pure
fishing license or a laminated card avai lable in a Times Square novelty •motives and selfless sacrifices during World War II and beyo11d- are
shop called "Official ID." We soon figured out that the deepest and authorized amnesia. Tlte U.S.A.-the United States ofAmnesia,fu/1 of
most foolproof!D had a government-issued Social Security card at its sham innocence and counte,Jeit virtue. Official history is choked witlt lies,
heart, and the best source of those were dead-baby birth certificates. I a suppression of memory, but so is the pretense that the wheel ofhistory is
spent impious days over the next several months tramping through nothing but the details ofa privnte life. Somewhere we might discover a
rural cemeteries in Iowa and Wisconsin, Illinois and North Dakota, life lived in history, grounded, distinct, pitchi11gforward.
searching for those sad little markers of people born between 1940 and When the U.S. or any other author ofconquest tires ofthe price pnid
1950 who had died between 1945 and 1955. The numbers were su rpris- to mai11tai11 the world order, they simply blow the whistle 011 themselves,
ing: two in one graveyard, a cluster of fourteen in another. Those poor wipe the slate clenn, and begin agai11 i11 so111e other form. They say, For-
souls had typically been issued birth certificates-available to us at any get nbout it, that's ancient history, even ifit hnppened yesterday, even if
county courthouse for a couple of bucks and a simple form with infor- the bodies nre st ill wnr111. Let's move on. They insist it's already old news
mation I could copy from the death announcement at the archive of declaring it sour grapes nnd poor sportsmanship iftheir victims aren't
the local paper- but they had never applied for a Social Securit y card. immediately struck with the same nfflicti11g anwesia. Great Britain is
Collecti ng those birth certificates became a small industry, and within appalled by the IRA, Spain by the Basque separatisls, Israel by the Pales-
a year we had over a hundred. tinian resistance. And the U.S.? The U.S. is always hurt and shocked that
For years I was a paper-made Joseph Brown, and then a n Anthony anyone co11/d even mildly dislike its charming presence in their lives. Let's
Lee, remarkably durable identities. My on-paper official residences: a forget the bad part. Can't we now just get along? A dominant historical
transient hotel in San Francisco and a wa rehouse in New York. There theme, as Borges remi11ds 11s, something that just keeps popping up and
were, tiny unknown risks in naming- the risk of being unaware of the popping up, is a perverse desire to forget the past. White people can never
lore or deeper meaning of a particular name, for example. One com- quite remember the scope and scale of the slavocracy and of rule by
rade named John was laughingly challenged by another John at a party: lynchi11g, while Black people ca11 never quite afford to forget.
You're the first John I've ever met, he said, who's asked directions to the
toilet using its Christian name. When I used the paper identity of an Ours was the condition of cha nge, of transport, of migration. We
Eric Gourdanian to buy a used car, I mumbled something confusing rushed along, uprooted, in o ur swirling m otion toward the new,
and abstract when the salesman fixed my eyes intently, asking, What pausing only long enough to renounce the old, the experience of but
part of Armenia is your fa mily from? a moment ago, a predicament considered quaint by tomorrow after-
I thought of the baby Joseph Brown, deceased, and wondered if Mr. noon at th e latest.
and Mrs. Brown would ever be proud of the pa rt their little boy played Our lives underground, in outward form at least, resembled the lives
in the struggle, or, more likely, furious at us for our blasphemous appro- of a genera tion- moving from place to place, extending childhood
priation of his name if they ever found out. indefinitely, enteri ng and ending relationships, experimenti ng with
[ 214] .Bill Ayers 1215) Fugitive Da ys

love and work and all manner of ways of being. Some of us would move the eternally poor student-a bed roll, a camp stove, a cast-iron frying
to rural com munes, and some would go to work in mills or mines or pan, and a mixed set of plastic dishes.
factories and join the industrial working class. Some of us would Jamie Hawk left behind his mother's admon ition to: Be careful, and
marry, have kids, divorce, and remarry, and some wou ld discover- to: Stay away from the schwarze, but he did remember to bring his
or decide now to announce-that we were gay. A few, like Daniel and warm coat and his asthma medicine and a bottle of tranquilizers. Jamie
Andy, left for good, and a few new recruits joined up, and so we were was high-strung. Rachel brought her acid tongue, her vitam in E and a
faced with the challenge-not unique-of inventing our lives a nd our prescription for penicillin, and Caitlin brought her prosthetic left leg.
projects out of whole cloth, without support and without any tradition My brother Rick brought a diary and his army dog tags. Rick had
whatsoever. We were groping in the dark, and l remember it coming on burned his draft card early in the wa r and then run away to Vancouver
me with a flash like revelation: Since everyone arou nd us is dislocated, where he organized a halfway house for American Gls deserting the
elusive, and reinvented, we blend righ t in. army and making their twisty ways toward Europe and peace. He mar-
Each of us brought along frag ments of our lives to the underground ried a woman there who had a baby girl, and after a couple of years they
world, no one arrived brand-new, and each of us left a world behind. returned to the U.S. where he joined the army, of all things, in order to
Renee brought a sweet smiling face and a huge heart filled with Cath- organize a union ofservicemen. Stationed at Fort Knox when the Town-
olic love, homosexual desi re, and a dogged attachment, it turned out, house was blow n to bits, he deserted and we hooked up in Chicago.
to the confessional. He shou ld n't have kept the dog tags, of course, but he did, and one
Harry hauled along decades of experience as a Commu nist orga- day, a couple years into it, while laying cement with friends, he pulled
nizer, including a stint in World War II flying American supplies over out the chain, the little rectangles, a nd dropped them into the harden-
the hump in Chin a, time in federal prison, and then a period under- ing mold. Designed to identify the dead from the mess of a battlefield,
ground during the Smith Act trials of the 1950s. He left behind a wife Rick was glad to be alive watching his name alone disappear into the
and a mortgage, but he brought a fully developed agenda, and a booklet cold gray lava, perhaps never to be seen again.
he'd written called The Object Ts to Win, which served as his gu ide to Rick brought a picture of his wife and baby, which he knew was a
daily living, his bl ueprint for contesting state power, and his Bible. He breach of security, but he wasn't a stickler for security and so he kept it
eventually brought a huge amount of cash, and an abiding suspicion and looked at it often and ached for them, so much so that you could
that he was the notorious sky-jacker D. B. Cooper, something he always feel something like a magnetic throb when you stood too close to him.
denied with a wink. Fiona brought her whole feminist library, David his unfinished
l brought my self-confidence with me, my hunger for expe rience, manuscript, and Sally her complicated wish to be both a woman and a
and my willingness to try everything at least once, along with Mom's little girl, a serious person worthy of true love and a sex object to be
insistent creed that everything somehow would turn out fine. Rose desired and pursued by every man.
brought an iron will and Apache tears, bu t she left behind her bulging Junior brought a gnawing fear and a little brother's eagerness to
address book with its 637 ent ries, making do now with runaway scraps please, and Rory an Irish temper and a prodigious thirst so that he was
of paper. perpetually angry or a little drunk, or angry and a little drunk at once.
Linda brought her rollicking Janis Joplin swagger and her Jimi Hen- Jenn brought knitting needles, yarn, and her mother, literally, who
drix albums. brought a teacher's patience, and a civil rights activist's courage. She
Carolyn brought her notebooks full of poems and the equipment of also brought maturity, steadiness, and a minute-by-minute integrity
216] Bill Ayers I 217) Pugi tive La ys

for day-to-clay living that took your breath away. She and Harry were of pages. Lo and behold, in 1971, six of the Ten Most Wanted were political
a generation, and they couldn' t agree on a thing. activists, including Angela Davis and H. Rap Brown. The faces were no
Jeffrey brought his pacifism, frayed and worn as it was, torn in some longer fiendish, and several of the "tough est guys" in America turned
places but still remarkably intact. He knew he was a bad Quaker, but out to be you ng women, all wonderful-looking, but none as beautifu l
he'd decided to throw his fate onto life's great wheel, and to go to hell if as Rose.
need be to end this one nightmarish war. He brought his bird-watching Zeke brought his medical education and a belief that his surgical resi-
binoculars, his favorite dope pipe, his astonishing sense of direction, denC)' provided the best possible training for revolutiona ry action. In
his Buddha nature. What I mean is, Jeff trusted himself and carried a the midst of blood and pain, he said, you learn to stay calm and steady,
simple faith in the world-he could vibe his way through almost any- focused at once on the sma llest detail and on the great humanitarian
thing. Once when he was driving and we were stopped by a traffic cop, purpose.
l felt as if! were watching the scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan Aaron brought his man- in- the-street countenance, his ent ire collec-
Kenobi uses his superior intelligence to mesmerize the police: We are tion of Za p Com ix, and 150 pounds of tools-socket set, welding kit ,
not a problem, he said. You are not a problem , replied the cop. How did pipe wrenches, and more.
you get away with just a warning? I asked, and Jeff, with genuine inno- We all brought our di stin ctive ways of being, our litt le ticks and hab -
cence, said, I don't know, I just kind of gave in. He also deliberately its, and Rebecca brought the actual habit she'd worn as a Maryknoll
picked his nose the whole t ime, and, he pointed out, no one looks a nun and a crucifix sq ueezed into her hand by her dyi ng father.
nose- picker closely in the face. l brought my mother's admonition to pursue whatever I liked, but
I brought my hay fever with me underground, and Jeff ended my to try to rise to the top of m y field, and Rose brough t a sassy smartness,
suffering the Zen way. One August day when I was utterly miserable, pieces of ivory lace, her musk and mascara- we were fight ing the state,
sleep-deprived, sneezi ng and itching and dripping, eyes red and swol - it's true, but she would still find tim e to put on her e)'es.
len, and high on antihistamine, Jeff invited me for a long run dow n a And so, from just these fragments, and from the things we found
country road. Look at me, man, I whined. I can't breathe, I can't walk. and gathered along the way, we constructed our lives underground.
Maybe you should stop fighting it, he suggested. Breathe deeply, We each brought our longings and our desires, mostly intact, and we
sneeze heartily, a nd just give in. brought our homesickness, a memory of something whole, a sense of
We went for that long run, after all, and I did sneeze loudly and loss edged with fear and anger, rarely acknowledged but ever vis ible
often, and although I still have hay fever, I've never suffered from it from the side. We were exiles inside our own country, an d we experi -
since. enced a kind of exile's identity sh ift, a sense of being both here and not
Rose brought attention, her great face on'the "Ten Most Wanted" here, of belonging and of not belongi ng. We were outsiders now, living
list. The list was a huge public relations bonanza fo r the FB[, and J. unstable lives on the margi ns. Somet hi ng was ga ined- a he igh tened
Edgar Hoover promoted it heavily as a way to garner support for his sense of purpose, perhaps, the choice to throw ou rselves wholeheart-
crime stoppers by featuring the " toughest guys" in America. Hoover's edly into this world-but somethi ng was irrevocably lost as well. We
genius for PR included putting a long line of plug-uglies on the list, were evicted, and we felt that we could never go home.
bank robbers, burglars, run-of-the-mill killers, blasting their fiendish Nevertheless, many of us soon reconnected with families- brothers
faces across the land, then conveniently busting them within days, a and sisters, cousins and au nts and uncles, even parents who agreed to
couple of handso me agents leading each cur to justice on the front our sometimes straining security procedures in o rder to enjoy a picnic
[ 218 ] Bill Ayers 1219] Fugitive 1 a ys

in the park with a son or a daughter now not quite so lost. Comrades th rough it we instructed the FBI, and th rough them pol ice forces every-
returned from these family reunions with new underwear or shirts, where, on our reliability and our quirky authenticating signs. We were
and usually some money for food or a haircut. in communication.
Like other immigrants we were careful-no shoplifting, no food There was a practice now of public storytelling, and the subtex t was
stam p scams, no sneaking into the movies. A great sin among us was our own application of the metaphor of Viet Nam: you can't catch us.
breaking traffic laws, and I worked for months to slow down, having We opened to a world of words and they tumbled from us in a crazy
never obeyed a speed limit before in my life. Sometimes I ached to go flash flood of awakening zeal. We wrote open letters to the militant
eighty and my foot shook as I wrestled myself down to sixty-five for Catholic left- and they wrote back urging us to temper our act ions
the sake of the work, for the good of the group, but it felt like a real with a foundational compassion- and to the Black Liberation Army,
sacrifice. who urged us to blast away at colonializing racist power, no holds
We developed a doubleness. More than a secret identity or a double barred, and to take no prisoners. We argued with both, and we agreed
life, we saw the world through distinct lenses. Like high school kids with both.
who are painfully aware ofl iving simultaneously in two cultures, their We scribbled to old friends- roommates from an earl ier world,
own oppositional culture and a dominant, suffocating adult culture favorite teachers, brothers and sisters. I wrote to John Holt, an inspir-
that must be mastered with more skill than that of the best-trained eth- ing teacher and education writer, a deeply conservati ve man in some
nographer, or like Black Americans who must know everything about ways but a loving friend as well, and we linked up and corresponded for
the dominant culture while remaining in significant ways invisible to years. I communicated with my Aunt Sarah, a closeted leftie, and with
that culture, we had double vision. We saw the world as Americans; we Nathan Zuckerman, an old teacher who was now a fa iled writer but
saw America as revolutionaries. '0/e were split, and we could not be who slipped me money occasionally- our meeting place in back ofa
whole in the same way again. sleazy peep show off Times Square. Ruthie Stein, now a rising star in
Seeking an alternative to jail and the courtroom we'd abandoned the New York art scene, wrote every month and we met up several
our homeland, and with an immigrant's hope and an exile's fear we'd times every year. Most of us wrote to our parents-careful missives
cast out for a new and different place to live. We would measure our suc- meant to reassure, delivered discreetly and then quickly destroyed-
cess by our ability to survive in this alien new world, and we would and got letters full of relief and sometimes repri mand in return. We
build whatever provisional satisfaction we could on our actions, on knew now that we were ill-equipped gunslingers, so we became word-
our dialogue of the deed. s!i ngers instead.
We found soon enough that our deeds and our words provided a In that first yea r I moved several times, organized 22 hiding places I
voice to the old world we'd never imagined we would have, and they could use in an emergency, built 8 complete sets of ID, held 28 meet-
became a new world to inhabit. ings with old friends-none of whom called the cops, most of whom
We issued what we called a communique- a word borrowed from offered suppo rt-and I was recognized on the street twelve times that I
Latin American guerrillas-a "Declaration of War," signed by "Bernar- know of, and never turned in. Even though our numbers were small,
dine Dohrn" in May, filled with defiance and hyperbole. We threatened each of us had dozens of reasons to feel connected and secu re. I didn't
to bomb a major symbol of American injustice, and when, a little more feel isolated.
than two weeks later the promised bomb exploded in the New York
City Police Headquarters on Centre Street, the Weather myth was full y 011r mnntra 1111dergrou11d, our e11dorsement of willful forgetting, wns
launched. The communique was reprinted widely and, oddly enough, "11eed- to-k11ow." Wlwt net io11s nre being pla1111ed? There's 110 11eed-to-
[ 220] Bill Ay ers Pugitive La ys

know. Where are the other comrades? You have 110 need-to-know. When found ourselves, we were accompanied by the artifacts of the cul tu re
will we regroup? We'll tell you on a need-to-k11ow basis. It could become a we were creating. Take hair, for exa mple. In the first days underground
habit, this everyday disse111bli11g, as expected as the su11set. The protected you could find the Weathermen in a ny group by th e garish heads
veil of secrecy elevated our act ivities-111ystery lea11s toward the marvel- throbbing clearly fro m out of the murky crowd. We experimented with
ous. In the shadow choices were also protected from critique. Need-to- dy ing our hair, and for many the result was a bli nding platinum or a
k11ow was adjective a11d 1101111, a sinister little slogan gestu ri11g toward flaming orange, for others a shiny black patent leathe r. We took to call-
ig11ora11ce. Was it about survival? Always? That, too, was protected i11for- ing one anot her insulting nicknames: Carrot-top or Goldilocks or Shoe
111atio11; that, too would be rationed strictly according to the 11eed-to- Stain. We all sported ga udy, vulga r heads, and we were completely
know principle. conspicuous.
We soon moved alo ng to other altera tions-the men grew beards
Whenever the police a rrest a psycho-killer or a mass murderer-Son and long hair, way beyo nd shaggy, great manes curling to our waists.
of Sam, say, or Jeffrey Dahmer-a nd the sinister glare of celebrit y turns Some people called me Goat, short for Billy Goat, but also for the
its baleful eye to the block, the neighbors can be counted on for t wo unmistakable resemblance, I'm sure. The women mostly cut th eir hair
things: we wi ll line up eage rl y to put o u r faces right into th e gap in g short- little butchy do's o r flattops. Rose had an adorable brush cu t a
ca meras, and we w ill affect the cynical tone of tired disbelief as we mut- quarter of an inch all around with a slightl y lo nger, fetch ing flip at the
ter all the cliches of modern times-He seemed so normal, we'll say, front.
and it just goes to show. We da ngled strings of Apache tears from the rea rview mirrors of
And what abo ut the strange sounds, the howling and the thumping? every truck or van or car we owned as we cycled rapidly thro ugh vehi -
a reporter might ask. cles, avo iding lo ng-term contact wit h the state at any fixed or fol-
Oh well, the music they listen to these days, who knows anymore? lowable point. We favored certain colors in cars, in clothes-forest
We were certain our neighbors would all call us norma l in happy green for a time and then smoky blue. The women had turquoise ea r-
chorus, and just to be sure, we rehearsed them on the fine points. We rings and bracelets, the men denim vests with a rainbow patch sewn
had a dog, of course, and the newspaper delivered every morning. No som ewhere, and each of us carried lots of rolls of quarters for lo ng-
visito rs, and no sudden changes in routine. We left hom e each day a t distance pay phone calls and , secure in back pockets, a K-55, the cheap
eight, and the freq uent absences were explai ned by a sick mother in but perfect little knife from Germany wit h a black panthe r etched into
Seattle, a matter no one wanted to probe too deeply. It was a ll so per- its sides and flat enough to elude detection in a pat-down.
fectly scripted that a couple of t imes I a lmost wanted to get busted just We said Shoes, short for " brownshoes," code for the FBI: the Shoes
to see how the nei ghbors would perfo rm. were all over them after the Big Top; the Shoes took Rose's dad to iden-
The goa l was to fit in, to disappear, to become entirely obscure- tify a corpse-just to fuck w ith his head; those t wo guys lurking
Like fish in the sea, we said. We were on the run now, we were hidin g around Petrograd Restaurant? Shoes. A good code, like an obedient
out, and our cam ouflage wo uld be, well, eve rybody else. The best place child, doesn' t speak to strangers. We spoke in a language that was mea n-
to hid e a leaf, Jeff was fond of sayi ng, is in the fores t. Sea or fo rest, fish ingless babble to outsiders, we hoped, but concise, clea r co mmunica-
or leaf, we i ntendcd to pass unnoticed. tion inside th e fami ly.
Yet for all our efforts to be indistinct, we quickly created a quite di s- O ur language was one part necessity, a language of survival, and t wo
ti nct Weatherfeel and Weatherloo k. Wherever we went, wherever we parts youth-speak, an irrevera nt slanguage of sass with flavor. The
[ 222 ] Bill Ayers Fugitive La ys

Shoes signified that FBI agents were all dull, conformist bores, beneath push was o utside regulations.) Aga in a nd again we learned what you
co ntempt. And no t only were they unstylish and plain, th ey were plod- say and how you say it has mo re to do with survival than guns, dis-
ding and completely obvious. Want to fi nd the agents in any room? guises, or even ID.
Look at their sh oes. Dynamite became ice cream or pickles. So mu ch easier to say I'm tak-
Calling them the Federal Bureau of Investigation would have ing three pounds of ice cream to the Big Top than I'm putting a three-
bestowed too m uch dignit y and power, exactly the qualities we wa nted pound bomb in the Capi tol.
to explode, a nd the Bureau or the f13 1, was still way, way too respectful. The preface "Weather" had become as prominent a mong us as "Mc"
George Raft and Edward G. Robinson might have called them G- men, is in the wider world, and just as colonizing. We talked of Weathermen
and Al Capone, th e Feds, bu t the co ntempt, while bitter, was still and Weatherwomen, Weatherkids and Weathcrstories, Weather docu-
within bounds. Gumshoes was good, but brow nshocs-ycs, that's ments and Wcathersymps. The leadership was, of cou rse, the Weathe r
more like it. O ur tongues were laughing at them, an no uncing th at we Bureau, then the Weather Eye, then si mply the Eye. A longtime com -
were cleverer, smarter, a nd cooler in every way. We wanted to pierce rade was Weather Beaten , a leaflet was a Weather Balloon, and the
thei r mythological image as a clea n, efficient, well-fu nctioni ng Swiss anti-imperialist struggle was the Weather Going Tide. Recruits went
wa tch, to tar them as lazy bureaucrats wa llowing ineffectively in their through what amounted to an informal Weatherman Berlitz in o rder
outdated metaphor. 'Ne would outsmart them, fli p them the bird, and to become functionally bilingua l.
tell them, Go ahead, you fucking brownshoes, kiss my ass. W hen we began doing secret a nd illegal work we needed a word that
We were, of course, like everybody else, a bunch of sign ifying mon- cloaked our intentions, and so we spoke of the North Star, and then of
keys, more mon keyish than some, but of a I ype, hanging tentatively the Dash-I'm spending this mo rning o n the Dash , so meone might
suspended in our interpretive jungle, sending shared meanings spin- say, impl ying both a censor's beep, a word unspoken, as well as the mad
ning along the dense th icket of language. We invented wo rd s; we con- dash we anticipated to the underground railroad, following the North
structed culture. And we were, like others, fo rever explaining, defining, Star toward freedom. W hen we were actually o n the run we inoculated
correcting, implying, editing, translati ng in sometimes delighted, ourselves from fear and called our sta tus, our fugitiveness, t he Joke-
often desperate efforts to be understood. One person's gobbledygook Have you told your new boyfriend the Joke? Or: I don't think a nyone
is just another's graceful gift of gab. here knows the Joke. Our orga nization , publ icl y the Weather Under-
We Weathermen were a ll talkers-we already loved words, most of ground, became the Eggplant, from an obscu re rock lyric about "the
us read widely, and gro ups o f us were regular Scrabble players and Sun- eggplant that ate Chicago."
day crossword puzzle fans. The ga rble of Weatherese was mostly an We exp ropri ated an entire lexicon of Weather words from the
intellectual game- clever, distracting, fun. But learning how to evade music-"You don't need a weatherman to know which way t he wind
arrest had a serious purpose, a purpose that rode along on words, on blows," of course, from Bob Dylan, " Bad Moon," our code word for th e
talk tactics, mostly. When I blew a n engine o n the Golden Gate Bridge Haymarket statue, fro m Creedence C learwater Revival, a nd the "Place"
one day, the cop who pulled over found me not only respectful a nd fo r the New York Police Headquarters from "We Gotta Get Out of This
engaging but charming, I h oped, o pen a nd grateful fo r his presence. Place," by the Animals. " Rescue" from Fontella Bass's " Rescue Mc" was
1 was practici ng verbal jujitsu. Soon he offered to give me a p ush to the the name for a two-yea r effort, fi nally successful, to break a Black Liber-
nearest service station, and I asked fo r his name so that I might send a ation Army co mrade fro m jail. We drew on "Kick Out the Jams" by the
letter of gra titude to his commandin g officer. ( He refused- the helpful MC5 for names a nd codes, "Purple Haze" in t ribute to )imi Hendrix,
[ 224) Bill Ay ers

and "Volunteers" from th e Jefferson Airplane. The Pentagon was called

" Maggie's Farm," again from Dylan, because we were planni ng to put a
bomb in it and then, we said simpl y, " I ain' t gon na work on Maggie's
farm no more."
Homegrown, as American as Mom's cherry pie, the underground
was in other ways a foreign country-we spoke patois and did things
differently there. 26.

I remember nothing. For us memory was the ally o(011r p11rs11ers, a danger
to our s11rvival, to our lives and 011r insurrection. l repeated the practiced
phrase-I rem ember nothing. l reme111ber nothing. Forehead glistening,
red-rimmed eyes bulging, little twitches and trembles dancing erratically
across my face, thro11gh 111y temples, I imagine tl,e coming shock or blow
or b11rn. I don't rc111e111ber the safe house, the secret path, I don't reme111-
ber the names on the false IDs. I retain 1101/,ing. I really don't know. It's
gone.
Forgetting can be conf11sed wit/, re111e111bering- t/1e fictions we force
011rselves to carry replace the facts we are hiding fro 111 the world, facts b11r-
ied within fictions. Memory can become a way offorget/ ing the things I
don't remember hiding inside the things l do, 111y secrets, the 1111rlerbclly
of the facts.
A good cover stays close to the real stor;1, l,111 veers offj11st in ti111e.
I was raised in Chicago, for example, not Missoula or Biloxi, because
I have experiences with Lake Michigan , untapped reservoirs when it
comes tot he Cubs or the Bulls, but l know notl,ing ofcatfish or crayfish ,
copper or cattle. I can hold 111y own with Chicago lore-from Al Capone
to Big Bill Tho111pso11, Nelson Algren to Jane Addams. Now there's a key
detail to blur: 111y na111e is foe Brown, like a million other g11ys. I five
tl,ro11gh the disguise of Ill)' desire, the mask of 111y experience.
[ 226] .B ill Ay ers
Fugitive Da ys

When Diana was killed I wanted to die, too, but I was alive, and now J the war home as we had planned, but with measured force, w ith preci-
was relieved, and starting to like the idea that death would wait, would sion. We would draw an angry sword against wh ite supremacy, retaliate
wait a year, might wait for more. Death would wait. for racist attacks, and fight alongside our Black revolutiona ry com-
We should try to help those who had followed us to the lip of the rades, but from a new and li berated space. And with ca re.
precipice, Jeffrey said one day, to warn them, to help them stop a We were slowing down. It might n ot have been noticeable to those
moment and step back. We were learning to acknowledge fear again, outside, but to those ofus who'd been inside t hat hundred-mile-an-
to permit it as human and sensible, to welcome it back from exile. We hour gale, a six ty-m ile-an -hour wind was a breeze.
were learning to permit doubt again, too, even to value it. The FBI was Within months we had established a pattern of action-retaliatio n
hunting us frantically, noisily, and so our continued freedom was its for what we believed were attacks on the Black struggle and offensives
own triumph, we thought, something to cherish and protect. against the war machine. Our signature was a warn ing call to some
But our survival had to have meaning beyond the narrow and the sleepy guard inside the building or to the police nearby or to a jour-
particular. For me, and for most of us, we would only find meaning in nalist with calm and detailed instructions to clear a specific area, and
participating fully in all aspects oflife, and we would try to understand then letters of explanat io n-sometimes exhorting, so metimes threaten-
everything in order to make ourselves subjects in history and not pas- ing, sometimes still barely decipherable beyond the knowing- claim-
sive objects to be used and discarded. We would make history, act ing credit and publicly defending our actions as politics by other
within it in order to enlarge people and contribute to humanity. We mea ns, signed and delivered simultaneously to several major newspa-
would fight unearned suffering and undeserved pain, all the ways peo- pers in different cities across the co un try seconds after the blast. T he
ple oppress and exploit and dehumanize one another. We would affirm FBI and the big city police k new our signature, and separated what
every gesture toward social justice and liberty, everything that honored they came to know as the authentic Weather nuts from the va riously
each human being as irreplaceably worthwhile and the whole ofhuman- weird.
ity sacred.
Each letter had a logo hand-drawn across the page- our trademark
Our actions should speak for themselves, Rose said. They should be thick and colorful rainbow with a slash of angry lighting cu tting
immediately understood and timely, fire the imaginations of young through it. New morning, it signified , changing weather. Oddly, as
people, inspire the movement, and make anyone of goodwill secretly intense as it all looks and sounds, it was in our minds then cautious
smile-even if they denounce our tactics. and responsible, a huge de-escalation from the apocalyptic plans of
That our efforts would be stained by mistakes was, we now knew, just months earl ier.
inevitable. We could never see fully or far enough, we could never I wanted to be a Weatherman forever then, a revolutionary outlaw,
know all things in all ways. We were limited as is everyone, our theories and I loved th e symbol of peace and reconciliation balanced by the hot
flawed, as they all are. Still, I believed the greater crime would be to do bolt of justice. I eventually tattooed the ra inbow and lightning o n m y
nothing. Inaction was impossible for m e now. Stepping into history, we skin, discreetly ou t of sigh t.
would make e rrors; staying aloof from history would be its own choice
and all error. And so, believing with all my hea rt in the immense power We geared up for survival and fanned out across the country in search
of people to challenge fate and accomplish the unthinkable, holding on oflost com rades, autonomous fighters, militant you th who, stro ng-
to a profound sense of personal responsibility, I plunged ahead. We willed and lighthea rted, were, we kn ew, on the loose in the world. Our
would fight, of course, but in new, imaginative ways. We wou ld b ring hope was to build some unity of purpose, to prevent further disasters
[ 228 ] Bill A y er s [229) Fugitive I,a ys

like the Townhouse, to talk politics, argue strategy and tactics, and to rades in the Denver area, most of th em open radicals working and liv-
disarm the crazies. ing as they always had, but a few had slipped from sig ht. An escalating
We had claimed half a dozen bombings, each one hugely magnified string of bo mbings in the last months drew us here to search for what-
because of the symbolic nal ure of the target, the deliberate a nd judi- ever autonomous cells were moving in and out of Denver doorways, to
cious nature of the blow, and the synchronized public annou ncements try to connect up with th em, perhaps redirect or possibly disarm t hem.
suggesting the dreadful or exh ilarating news that a homegrown guer- It was a tricky business, lo be s ure, bu t to us it had become a kind of
rilla movement was afoot in America. A positive wave of violence and ca II ing.
despair blew up, but we had few illusions now about our own real capac- Next day I phoned Lizzie Egg at her job. Lizzie was the older sister of
ity, and we could see what was happening in the wider world. Bomb- a high school friend of mine. She was political but not flamboya nt, and
ings of ROTC buildings, Selective Service offices, and induction we'd been in touch off and o n for yea rs. She worked now as a legal secre-
centers had been escalating for at least two years, and targets of politi- tary, and she was likely off the main radar of the FBI.
cal violence now included co rporate giants most clearly identified with Hey, Lizzie Egg, I said when she answered. It's your beautiful baby
U.S. aggression and expansion: Bank of America, United Fruit, Chase brother, Robert. She connected righ t away- I sounded nothing li ke
Manhallan Bank, I BM, Standard O il, Anaconda , GM. From early 1969 Bob and he hated th e longer form of his name. But she knew me well
until the spring of 1970 there were over 40,000 threats or attempts and enough, knew my voice, and responded as if we'd rehea rsed it: Hey,
5,000 actual bombings against government and corporate targets in the hey, kid, I've bee n waiting for yo u. H ow's Mom?
U.S., an average of six bo mbings a day. All but two or three of this orgy I told her I was in town and asked how soon we could meet up. I can
of explosions were aimed at property not people; to me they were take an hour right now, she said, and I to ld her I'd meet he r at I lclen's
entirely restrained. Five thousand bombings, about six a day, and the Sunny Spo t, a coffee shop we'd checked out a couple of blocks away.
Weather Underground had claimed six, total. It makes you wonder. Jeffrey stood where he could see the enl ranee to Lizzie's building,
Still, we dreaded the possibility of two, three, many Townhouses, and watched as she came out th e door a few m inutes later, heading
and we hoped to use our celebrity in the lunatic left as well as the gath- north. She was a lone, no tail. At the corner, she tu rncd west and imme-
ering Wealhcrmyth in the larger world to persuade others to pull back. diately went down a w ide staircase to a lower-level street, st ill a lone.
We knew where to find a few o rganized groups-the Red Family and Jeffrey signaled me and then circled back to pick up the truck, while I
the Proud Eagle Tribe, fo r example, the Motherfuckers and the White wa tched Lizzie from below. At the bottom of the stairs she cont inucd
Panthers-and we held several secret s ummits where we had the tradi- west, toward the dark corn er where I stood. Helen's was a block away.
tional frank exchange of views and hammered out some kind of new I came out of hiding as Lizzie swept past and took he r arm, steered her
formal understanding. Only o nce, in a dingy basement hideout near into an aUey. Oh m y God , she said, smiling as I g rabbed her arm. Come
Houston, were guns drawn, but it was based on a misunderstanding- on, J said, and we wa lked briskly through to the next street where
the crazies thought Jeff had said, "We can turn you shits in in D.C." Jeffrey wait ed , motor purring.
when he had actually said, "We ca n turn you into fish in the sea"- l e n minutes later we were miles away at a truck stop, drinking coffee
and we laughed about it later as we passed a joint. and catching up- I'd mentioned Helen's on her phone, so that was not
Jeff and I drove into Denver one night, too late to call the one con- an option for us. We were prepared for a sustained stay and a se rious
tact we planned to look up, the place we would start o ur search, and search in Denver-in some places we had spent days or weeks hanging
took a room in a fleabag hotel downtown. There were a lot of old com- o ut near campuses or in youth ghellos until we found someone who
[ 230] Bill Ay ers Pugi tive La ys

could guide us- but Lizzie knew everything: Quinn, an old SDS Mass action escalated to new highs: 100 major demonstrations a day,
friend, went under right after the New York explosion, she said. 536 schools shut down by student strikes. Half of the colleges and uni-
They've built a small armed group, and they're the ones who hit the versities were up in arms, and violent confrontations marked the
federal bui lding and all the draft boards. They called themselves the largest and most prestigious campuses, with brutal clashes between stu -
Red Hawk Tribe, and they considered themselves part of the Weath- dents and police and close to 2 ,000 protesters arrested in two weeks. A
ermen. Since they had no capacity to find us-as Abbie Hoffman said student in San Diego imitating the Buddhist monks of Viet Nam immo-
at the time, I'd like to send them some money, but I don't know their lated himself in protest of the war, and dozens chained themselves to
address-they were conducting themselves as they thought we would the doors of induction centers. A hundred thousand people then
want, an autonomous action group working independently, one piece poured into Washington, and 400 were arrested for blocking t raffic and
of a mosaic impossible to completely destroy, an entrenched, entirely trashing buildings. When white state troopers opened fire on unarmed
leaderless resistance. Lizzie was their main support and contact, Black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, killing two
although she had no idea where they lived. Quinn's scheduled to and wounding twelve, we felt that finally America was on the edge of
call me at a pay phone tomorrow before work, Lizzie said. And so we chaos, its violent core exposed for all the world to see. President Nixon,
were in. predictably, blamed the victims themselves: When dissent turns to vio-
Quinn fell into Jeffrey's arms late the next day at the meeting Lizzie lence, it invites tragedy, he said. How can the p resident get away with
had set up. His face was a picture of relief. We talked for hours- we had that? I thought. This is crazy.
time and we were learning patience. By next morning we were in close I watched the demonstrations on the TV news and I read the articles
agreement: the Red Hawk Tribe would stop the armed actions for at in the newspapers. I was miserable to miss the action. l knew how to
least a month and concentrate all their energy on building up a base of run in the streets, and I could hardly stand seeing others advance and
survival-clean up their ID and develop a few deeper sets, establish a retreat, attack and regroup, feeling sadly on the sidelines. I ached.
couple of new safe houses, find some new pay pho nes and meeti ng The sheer size of the upheaval was stunning-the multitude was
places. I showed Quinn how to create a trajectory leading to a meeting up in arms, a host of rebels, a legion of potential revolutionaries.
with aboveground comrades, people like Lizzie, that involved a sched- We would build our red army on hope, I thought, and not despair,
uled and preplanned route with switchbacks and breakaways observ- reconnect with a popular opposition, and conv ince the other armed
able from afar, and then entering a movable pickup zone in which only militants that attention to and responsibility for the mass resistance
the clandestine comrade could initiate an approach. had to be part of our work and their work. We would reconnect.
The backdrop of our discussions was an unprecedented explosion of
political violence and mass resistance everywhere, particularly on cam- We trained in the desert several times, but the trips took on the charac-
puses. When the U.S. widened the war into Cambodia, extending the ter of camp outs more clearly each time. Jeff was in charge. O n our first
agony and expanding the murderous American adventure, students trip Jeff and Rose and I camped at Joshua Tree, met up with a half-
seized university buildings, poured into the streets, and organized dozen others in the morning and found an isolated canyon to fire high-
strikes in massive numbers. At Kent State, National Guard troops, with- powered rifles and 9mm pistols at paper targets for a couple of hours.
out warning or provocation, fired on unarmed students killing four But our attention wandered to coyotes and sagebrush, and we marveled
(the nearest was 100 yards away), wounding nine others, and everyone at the subtle beauty of the place.
everywhere, we thought, saw the ugly face of repression unmasked. We put a huge bomb in the rusted shell of an abandoned car down a
[ 232 ] Bill Ay ers I233] Fugitive La ys

gully on our next trip, and then retreated two hills away to watch th~ located ourselves in history and found a way at last to have a Iittle nich e
thing blow sky high, and, dazzled, spent the next several days exploring at home.
the land, adm iring the Indian paintbrush and the blooming cactus Group writing is always a danger, the tendency to accommodate
and, one evening, coming upon a herd of wild burros, sturdy and be_au- everyone leads almost inevitably to the death of style and the collapse
tiful, galloping toward the setting su n. The desert-wide an~ peacetul of character. But we weren't writing for style or character, and we had
and mysterious-captivated us, and Rose and I returned aga111 and agreed upon strong lead writers for most sections -Jamie wrote the his-
agai n, for picnics, not practice. tory sectio n, Rose wrote 011 internationalism, Jeffrey on Viet Nam. The
We were taken with words, as I've said , and practically taken over book was readable.
by words on occasion. Our most ambitious project by ~ar engaged our The constant reading and reread ing, editing and revising did build
entire orga nization, pulling in the whole network offnends and sup- the desired unity, a nd often a seemingly small correction led to days of
porters including the most far-flung co ntacts, go ing through a thou- rethinking. Rose had written at one point: In spite of the Holocaust,
sand readers and a zillion drafts, and taking over two years to complete. Jews must understand the suffering of the Palestinian people. Jenn's
In the process we established a Clandestine School for Cadre \:ith re~u- mother, Abby Stern, insisted o n a fundamental correction: Because of
lar teachers and a formal curriculum, a complete pri nt shop hidden ll1 the Holocaust, she wrote, because of thei r historic suffering, Jews have a
a garden apartment named the Red Dragon Press, a newspaper called special responsibility to understand the predicament of the Palestinian
Osawato 111 ie-taken from John Brown's nickname in Kansas-and a people.
large, and we hoped sophisticated, secret national distribution net- Perhaps the most fundamental difference between "Weatherman"
work. The book we created was Prairie Fire, but when we began, we a nd Prnirie Fire was visual-"Weatherman" was tight and angry and
called the project "Manzanita:• named for a bush running wild on tough to embrace-it was meant to be read only by the most comm it-
the hills near our house. ted, preferably standing in a drafty ill-li t hall. Prairie Fire was all color
" Manzanita" was an att empt to sum up our thinking since the and space, pictures and, we hoped, engaging graphics. Prairie Fire
"Weatherman" paper and especially since the Townhouse. Through it included songs and poems and whimsical decorat ive touches. Its deep
we hoped to co nsolidate our political organization and to forg~ unity red cover-actually it came in two separate covers, one blank and with-
with progressive activists. I wrote an early draft in 1972, search mg for out any incriminating marks, the other blaring its name in black block
new directions while holding on to the threads that remained true- letters-made you want to hold it. Or so we hoped.
the importance of national liberal ion movements and the central place Prairie Fire was dropped off at hundreds of bookstores across the
of Viet Nam, the decisive nature of the Black struggle inside the U.S., nation on a si ngle night, and next day thousands of copies were passing
the sense of history as a drama of human beings thrusting forward, a hand to hand. An extended conversation was under way, and I was
product of people's activities. . . . elated.
In "Weatherman" we had been insistent in our ant1-Amencan1sm,
our opposition to a national story stained with conquest and slave?
and attempted genocide. In Prnirie Fire we discovered the steady resis-
tance that pursues the official story, Osceola and Cochise, Nat Turner
and Marcus Garvey, Emma Goldman and the Grimke sisters. We
 Pugitive La y s

all before-and the distance we've ach ieved has the effect, finally, of a
shrinking us. We become more absurd than the kids.
I hold on to that bliss, to the memory of those first commit ments
and the possibility of those primal affections, not because I'm blind but
because it's a necessa ry echo-whatever energy r might muster still fo r
something good always draws a mbie nt heat from that first fire. Know-
27. ing now that thoughts of Elysia n fields can lead to the garrotte and the
guillotine and the gulag, I still can't imagine a fully human world with-
out utopian dreams. W hy would anyo ne go o n?
We dwelled in possibility, and we built a simple structure of sem ia u-
to nomo us cel ls ca lled tribes, each respo nsible fo r its own survival and
support systems, each free to initiate acti vity, each encouraged to
Remembering is also a way offorget/ ing, a way offiltering. recruit members and build relationships with movement friends and
families. Tribes were pulled into this o r that activit y by a leadership
The fullness of that fugitive world lives within m e still with a kind of that exercised influence mainly through the power of argument and per-
fierceness like first love, urgent and absolute. I remember the primitive suasion- the leadership had no independent abilit y to enforce its will,
emotions and tingling anticipation underground, the dread, the devas- and its most dram at ic sa nction had been banishing CW. Still, as the
tation, finally, and the pain ofloss. Weathcr myth grew, and the st ring of successful actions extended, a cor-
I remember new sounds and smells and tastes, the surprising sweet responding internal myth evolved, accedi ng more and more a uthorit y.
sensatio n of being suddenly everywhere, alive. There was som ething The Weathe r Underground reared up as a pole o f possibility, an
new and invigorating underground, so different from a nything I'd extreme exa mple against which others would m easure commitment
ever known before, a kind o f triumph perhaps. There was a sense- and cou rage. We defied the state, we survived, a nd, like Muhammed
although this territory is claimed with such suffocating a uthority that I Ali, we imagined o urselves floating like a butterfly, sti ngi ng like a bee.
hesitate- of being born again. But, yes, it's true, I was born again, born We ran free in our parallel underground world, re-creating ourselves,
underground, awakened to new ways of seeing and hearing, and new and holding out an invitation to others: JO IN US!
openings of human possibility. The rupture was so sudden and so abso-
lute, the gap so unbridgeable, and my lo nging for a place so intense that The safe house of my imagination is filled with sunshine and fres h air,
this becam e life itself, all there was. The underground gave m e a whole and it opens to a meadow of red clover and wi ld flowers. In the morn -
new world , and I gave myself to it wholly a nd without reservat ion. ings the deer, q uiet but alert, graze along the tree line, and in th e eve-
We learn to hold back, to moderate, to temper o ur enthusiasm as we nings two fa miliar red hawks sail out of an indigo sky wheeling in great
grow. We become less childish, and we learn to sound less foolish and circles overhead. Stars throb and spin in their coronas whi le t he creek
less absurd. We gai n perspective, perhaps, but we risk beco ming sterile whispers steadily from its bed, and underneath it all we hea r the pulse
old cynics. We are unhooked from ignorant love, but we can also of the ea rth , bea ting th e rhythm oflife. We can sleep the whole night
unhook then fro m hope, from deep desire. The world can become a through.
place without color or texture, boring and predictable-we've seen it In reality o ur safe houses were a motley lot: "garden apartments" in
[ 2 36 ] Bill Ay ers {237 ] Fugitive :Ca ys

the 1cnderlo in or U ptow n, a scabby boardingho use near the water- ulars-Old Dan, the child of former slaves, a li felong communist
front , a coach ho use in the Mission District. Mostl y we found anony- who'd fought to o rgan ize the waterfront in the 1930s and who hung
mous apartments in modest neighborhoods off the main around the hall because there was nowhere else he wanted to go; Alice,
l ho rough fa res. forty yea rs old and always smiling, several teeth go ne, one of only a
Where we weren't, ever, was Berkeley o r Madison, the Lower East h andful of wo men in the hall, at iny gra ndmoth er of e ight, born in
Side or Hyde Park. By leavi ng o ur Vermonts and An n Arbors behind, Belize, where she had worked as a registered nurse, demoted to " hospi-
we plunged into working-class neighborhoods, less likely to bump into tal worker" in the U.S.; Murphy, an unreconstructed racist of the old
anyone from b efore, mo re likely to begin again. schoo l, small pink eyes, a perpetual blue scowl o n his doughy face and
O ut of sight was mostly a figurative state, mostly m etaphorical. We a large oafish chip o n his shoulder.
saw o ur la ndlo rds, o ur neighbo rs, the nearby shopkeepers, and they, of Murphy and I found a reaso n to chide each ot her, to tease or argue
course, saw us. We got jobs, mostly where large numbers of workers about something almost every day, but one day things spir;iled out of
!lowed by steadil y, mostly where Socia l Securit y cards were glanced at control. Murphy had been lo bbyi ng the business agent to move him
casuall y and w ithholding taxes were co nsidered inconvenient, mostly ahead on the board , whispering that cert ai n work should be reserved
where you co ntrolled yo ur ow n schedule. I worked out oftemµora ry for certain people and that women, and Alice in particular, could not
hiring halls and day-labor "slave markets," I built swimming pools for a be reliabl y sent to do a man-sized job. Later when Al ice and five ot her
while and slaughtered chickens, I was a baker and then a chef in an ups- workers were called for a large cleanup, Murphy exploded: O h, come
cale Fre nch cafe. And over time, on our jobs a nd in our neighborhoods, on, man, he groa ned. Alice, you don' t wa nt that stinking job, do you?
we made new friends. Here, sell it to me for five dollars a nd take m y slot on the board.
I remember Ned Killian vividly from a hiring hall I worked out Alice, still smiling, wa lked quickly and qui etly to the wi ndow to
of for a couple o f years. Ned g rew uµ o n a fa rm , dropped o ut of high claim her papers, but Murphy was on his feet now, blocking her path. I
school to join the navy, and marri ed a Haitian girl named Matilde w ith shouldn't have done it, I know that, but the scene became pa no ram ic in
who m he had five kids. He wore a dark stringy ponytail that poked out my eyes, sweeping and all - inclusive: th e fat white man obstructing the
of his smudged Jamaican beret. Now reti red, Ned was waiting for the path of t he small Black woman , and what did she wa nt? A simple, hon-
last of the kids to finish high school and sav ing money to add to his est job. I never gave it a tho ught, but !lew across the room and blind-
navy pension so that he and his wife co uld bu ild their little dream sided Murphy, se nding him sprawling across the floor, ba nging his
ho use in the Caribbean. head into a chair.
Ned and I met a t 5 A.M. several mornings a week, and ifwe didn' t Murphy was a big man - I'd have never knocked him down in a fair
have any work by nine, we'd ge t breakfast together at the greasy spoon fight- and now he was en raged and struggling to his feet, blood on his
next doo r and then go shoot some pool o r spend a couple of hours mo uth , in order to kick my ass. Just then Ned, whom I'd known fo r
reading in the library. Ned could fix anything-fu rniture, cars, toilets, about two days, stepped in front of Murphy saying, Break it up, break
refrigerators-and h e loved to read, pursuing eclectic and esoteric inter- it up. He was clutching a foot- lo ng oak bludgeon.
ests w ith a passio n: Chinese history, bee biology, Native American Break it up? Murphy whined. That bastard attacked me.
mythology. I li ked him a lot for all of this, but our friendship was Sure, sure, said Ned, I know, but now it's over. And it was.
cemented by two incidents from o ur first days together. Later Murphy and I were dispatched together to a job thirty miles
I'd been working at the hiring hall fo r months, and I knew all the reg- away, and in his car he passed me a joint which I innocently took to be a
[ 238 ) Bill Ay ers [239] Fugitive Da y s

peace offering, but which was in fact a Mickey spiked wit h angel dust tell mo~t people the Joke because we didn't want a wide range of people
and it almost killed me, but that's another story. Years after that, when wandering around unreliably with a truth they couldn't handle, or
my first child was born and I was walking around dazed and starr y- f~cts that could blow up on us. Ned and Matilde presented an entirely
eyed and enthralled, I remember saying over and over, Everyone has different problem. We trusted them completely as friends, but we
a mother, even Murphy, but that's a nother story, too. didn't want to tell them the Joke because we thought it would be a bur-
Ned turned out to be one of those decent guys who tried to be good den and a nuisance. On the other hand, our deepening friendship
in his own life, but more than that saw it as his human duty to oppose demanded some accounting, in part because friends don't lie, and in
injustice and especially to fight racism every day in each and every way. part because we were potentially exposing their family to danger, and it
This had gotten him into trouble more than once, in the navy when he se~med ~rong to deny them access to the Joke and the right to choose
contrad icted his commanding officers in bars from Manila to San Juan, this relationship freely for th emselves.
when he challenged the prevailing sentiments back home with his
father and his brother. It had also earned him a private se nse of integ- What is a safe house anyway? A safe house is what you seek when your
rity that shone through in other areas, a complicated reputat ion on all home has turned into hell, when you conclude that your homeland has
sides, and special affection from so me quarters. Ned could quote from become a place of lies and deceptions, a giant justification of murder
The Autobiography of Mnlco/111 X and the poetry of Langston Hughes, and mayhem. You want to escape from the burning house to find a safe
and he and I spent hours talking politics and swapping stories. house.
The second incident took place a few clays later while the two of us A safe house could be any place rented anonymously, unlisted and
were shooti ng pool. I think I know you, Ned said and I froze. He looked unknown. An unsafe house m ight be rented by " Bernardine Do hrn,"
at me for a long time and then nodded to himself. I thought so, but say, and feature a big picture of her in the front window with the head-
what I meant, he said finally, is that I know your heart, I know you're a line: TEN MOST WANTED, and then a cheery WELCOME H ERE , all in capi-
good man, but you're running from something. You don't belong in tal letters. We saw just that front window by su rprise one day on a city
that hiring hall, and that hair color, well ... you're running from so me- street, and Jeff and I were so delighted we insisted o n cru isi ng past it
thing. Don't tell me anything you don't want to, he said, staring into three times while Rose cringed between us in the front seat.
me, but if it'd help to talk, well, here I a m. An_ unsafe house could be a place where the real tor asks too many
I'm really just a hippie, I said. ~uest1ons or demands too many references or just feels too uptight. Or
No you're not, Joe, he said in a seri ous tone. You' re not a hippie. It ~ould be a place where any other shady business is under way- drugs
How ca n you say that? I've got long hair, I smoke dope, I'm a hippie. bemg_dealt from next door, for instance, or hookers in the apartment
No, you're not. upstairs.
Why not? Our first safe house was a ho useboat at Gate 6, Slip 58, a grimy ten e-
You work here every day. A hippie doesn't work ever. ment swimming in a shallow cesspool but with a million-dollar view
Rose and I began to see Ned and Matilde a lot, to eat toget he r and of the city. For a time we lived in a perch above a goat shed on a com-
then go to the movies, or to organize a barbecue in the park or a trip mune, and later in the grou ndskeepers' quarters of a mansio n near Lau-
to the beach. Matilde cooked in a Haitian restaurant, and Rose would rel Canyon. We occupied a penthouse in Manhattan for a few m onths,
sometimes baby-sit the kids, or bring them to our house overnight. and a basement room in a monastery in Mundelein for the balance of
We brought the underground with us wherever we went. We didn't that year, a flimsy shack near Watts, and a stone house on the Olympic
[ 240] Bill Ay er s Pugitive L a ys

Pen insula. My favo rite place was a sunny room above a noisy Irish tav- Italian loafers and expensive wool suits, and by their expressions, no
ern patronized by off-duty cops -the landlo rd was forever apologizing under wear. One looked like my old frie nd from hi gh school w ith the
and leav ing us little rem orseful gifts of food or drink. Frankenstein head, the o ther had the face of Manny the Masher, a pro-
Wherever we were Rose put a piece oflace o n the wi ndow, her trea- fessional wrestler who'd experienced way too many head-locks. To be
sured little quilt o n the bed, a nd it was home. A safe house was a house safe, I tho ught, I'll stay long enough to ta ke a piss, and then go back
fro m which you remembered ot her houses, from which you imagined out. It was one m in ute to seven.
other homes. We were nomads, and we moved a lot; like snails, we Suddenly both phones rang simultaneously and I hea rd t he be nch
learn ed to carry our ho uses o n our backs. groa n as th e two trucks rose to answer. Yo Frankie, they said in uniso n.
Silence, and then the men's room door eased open and Manny asked,
I knew that there were parallel undergrounds and I'd eve n pa rticipated You Joe? It's fo r you, Joe.
in several- illegal aborti o n net works, for example, pat hways to Can- Thanks, I said, taking the phone, and while the guy with the square
ada o r Europe for deserters, characte rs a nd mino r o utlaws like Ron St. head rambled on to Frankie in some kind of coded message that
Ro n-but sea rchi ng for safe houses I discovered a thousand u nder- sounded a lot like a weather report- degrees and d irect ions, velocity,
grounds, a million, an entire culture of undergrou nds. And while each highs, and lows -Manny sat back down smiling and I made a p la n for
was different and in important ways distinct, they shared a co uple of another call at a different place. T he n I got ou t of there, q uick.
edges, which made them suddenl y, surprisingly v isible to me. O nce when we were looking for an apartment and a rental agent was
I had fo und a perfect pay phone for receiving calls -the telephone showing us through a big bu ilding, we stumbled accidentally upon a
was our enemy and I still feel an odd aversion to it, but this was an really unsafe house. The agent, young and eager, was opening doors
impo rtant discover y beca use pay phone-to-pay phone communica- manically in a gest ure of the hard sell as we fo llowed casually along,
tion, always paid for with rolls of quarters, was the main mea ns for the when sudden ly we fou nd oun,elves in a ti ny bedroo m convert ed into a
diaspora to be in contact. It was a ti me when Rose and I were on se pa- crowded electronic surveillance statio n-wi ndows shaded, two cam-
rate coasts, and fell into a pattern of regu lar use-she called me ever y eras pointed at a first- floor apart ment across the street, tape recorders
ot he r day at 7 P.M . The pho ne was downstairs, between the washrooms whirring. Oops, the agent said with an emba rrassed laugh. I forgo t
in a bustling Howard Jo hnson's at the intersectio n of t wo busy high- about that, but they'll be out by the end of the week.
ways twenty minutes fro m where I was stay ing. It was not a single After dark I rang th e buzzer for th e first-floor apartment across the
phone, but rather two sepa rate booths, so that if one was busy o r o ut street- it was ma rked " Jackson." Package for Jackson, I said and the
oforder there was an easy a nd instant backup. All of this made it a great door ope ned a crack. I don't know you, Mr. Jackson, I said quickly, and
phone for us, but there was o ne other thing whi ch I'd never fou nd I don't want any tro uble, but you're being wa tched from the second
before that made the phone ideal- the ha llway featured a bench cov- floor across the street. The door slammed shut and I ran, never know-
ered with neon o range and aqua Naugahyde, long enough fo r three ing if I'd just warned a Soviet s py, a drug smuggler or a kidnapper, a
people to sit com fo rtably. good guy or some real ly foul low-life. At the time I d idn't much ca re.
I'd been using the phone fo r a couple of weeks when I arrived to find We built alliances with several other fully realized underground
two to ugh guys the size of trucks, arms folded, fi lling the whole bench. groups for speci fic purposes or goa ls or actions-for exam ple, the
My heart dropped, but I nodded lightly a nd cruised right into the men's Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a dope and acid network, in order lo
room. Shoes, I thought. But, slow down. T hey were each wear ing sharp break Timothy Leary out of Cali fornia prison, and the lllack Liberation
[ 242] Bill Ayers Fugitive Da ys

Army for all k inds of insurgent mischief. But the most interesting alli- The bakery was a small neighborhood storefront-three shi fts of
ance to me was struck in the first months underground, and it was w ith young people humming from six in the morning until m idnight, crank-
a kind of eccentric shadowy group that would become fast and reliable ing out massive amounts of granola and oatmeal cookies, carrot cake
friends for decades to come. and eight-grain bread. Late on a hot summer night two ofus-Paula,
The group was without a name, counted hundreds of members in a young woman in medical school, and I-were left to clean the sh op
half a dozen cities, and was organized by a charismatic leader and psy- after closing, and we propped the front door open so we could breathe.
chologist who called himself Kaz. They were all former heroin addicts, I was mopping up when I heard the door slam shut; I wheeled
former beatniks, former hustlers and prostitutes, five, ten, twenty years around and saw a silver pistol the size of a baseball bat just inches fro m
older than us, living now in luxury and working downtown, but think- my head. The pistol was shaking and the youngster holding it looked as
ing of themselves primarily as deep, deep underground, a kind of fifth ifhe was going to cry. I don't want any trouble, he said, and his voice
column waiting patiently for the revolution. cracked. Back up. The gun was bigger than his head.
We've been expecting you, Kaz said, embracing me warmly when we I tried to speak and my jaw moved mechanically, but nothing came
first met, his eyes twinkling and his trim gray beard shining. We were out.
in a penthouse apartment on the Gold Coast, surrounded by Persian He co rralled Paula and m e into the bathroom, and just before he
rugs and Asian vases, overstuffed sofas and modern paintings. Kaz locked us in, I recovered enough to say, Take the money, take anyth ing
embraced our activities, too, and before long he was providing us you want.
with money and safe houses and more. We sat on the floor holding hands and trembling. The bathroom had
Whenever we met with other organ izations or with characters from a phone on the wall, but we didn't dare use it until we heard the front
the movement- and we met with hundreds-Rose and I would tell door slam again. Paula quietly called 911, and then the owners, and
our story in two -part harmony, a practiced duet that nonetheless when they arrived she burst into tears.
sounded fresh to me each time. We each went home, but neither of us could sleep that night, and
I might begin talking about the lessons learned from the Townhouse • next day the cops picked us up at the bakery and drove us, weary and
and the need for a broad unity of purpose against the war and racism still shaking, to the 20th Precinct to look at mug shots. Paula didn't
that would transcend tactics. I might talk through Rose's interruptions know t hat I was a fugitive myself; my nervousness looked to her like a
or I might yield, and she'd pick it up, talking about the need to build result of the shock of the night before.
strong bridges to all sectors, to women's groups and international We sat in a small room as a clerk brought us book after book of pic-
groups and the elders, and, of course, with a strategic focus on the tures to look through, each one th ick and heavy, each labeled BLACK
Black struggle here. MALE, 18-20, ASSAU LT, ROBBERY, WEAPONS. An hour into it, all
I'd wait and then take it up again, and together we would shape a I could think of was the tragedy of this anarchistic and nihilistic quasi-
rap, a story with understandable dimensions and a happy safeness to underground, the wasted cou rage and the senseless sacrifice.
it. We said the sam e words in the same ways, and over many months it Paula and I never saw our guy, and if we had, at that point I'd have
became soothing and familiar. just turned the page.

I worked in a health food bakery for a couple of years, and one night We got a snow-white Samoyed puppy named Lolita (for Loli ta Lebron)
on the late, late shift I encountered a parallel underground that almost that first year who disappeared one night, and soon we inherited an
killed m e. Afghan hound named Maddie, short for madrone, a tree we loved. Jeff
[ 244] Bill Ay ers 1245] Fugitive L a ys

later got a spirited Irish sette r who accompanied him e verywh ere, water to the next pier- I'd be crushed or drown ed in the o pe n space.
named Red Dog, or sometimes Under Dog, short for Wonder Dog. The best choice was a ditch that ran under the fence just beyond the
Now our safe houses all had to be dog-frie ndly places as well. locker room.
Owning a dog for most people was a co mmonplace-completely The horn blew and I hung back, head down , as the crowd funneled
unremarkable. r:or us, havin g a dog marked a dramatic new direction. forward. If I could just get beyond the spotters with their radi os, I'd be
Mo nths earlier it would have been unthinkable, a n irrespo nsible indul- only sixty seconds to the ditch. At that moment somebody hissed La
gence, derided and ridiculed. The time it takes yo u to walk that damn Migrn, and the runni ng and the chasing began, the sho ut ing and the
dog is time stolen from organizing, a comrade might have said, and cornering, the blackjacks and the ha ndcuffs- and it had nothing at all
another would have added, The food that thing eats co uld feed five Viet- to do with me.
namese for a week. But now, whe never Jeffrey showed up with Red Every Mexican was lined up as I c ruised untouched to my locker, and
Dog, so meone, o r several people together, would romp around with then ho me, free. I'd misread every sign. That day, like so many days, my
him in dizzy excitemen t. lt was strange, but the dogs, too, cha nged o ur white skin was my passport. My freedom was stained with shame.
lives.

Working o n the waterfront I ran into dozens of shady operations-

ga mblin g rings, smuggl ing crews, screw y little gangs of thieves-but I
didn't even see the most prevale nt and the most obvious underground
netwo rk until o ne day in late summer when it exploded in my face.
lt was before four o'clock, shift change, and the work crew finishing
up crowded o nto the deck near th e gangplank. The game was lo get
nea r the top soo n enough to be o ne oflhe first off the ship, but not so
soo n that a shift foreman would send you back down- quarter to fo ur
was wa)' too early, five to four way too late. It was a tric ky calculatio n.
In any ca~e, we were assembling on the deck, smoking, joking, jos-
tling one anot her, and I was thinking about dinner with Rose and no
smoke o r sparks or welding arc fo r sixteen hours -freedom- when
the corner of one eye caught a plainclothes cruiser easing behind a stor-
age shed. I don't even know how I knew what it was, but I did, and my
ant enna shot up insta nt ly. I was on full alert.
I was sudde nly aware that the big shipyard was c rawling w ith cops-
at least two w ith rifl es on the roof of the locker room, four more linger-
ing by the ga te, a couple with radios standing just away from the gang-
plank, and unm arked ca rs at every angle. Two minutes to four. My
heart was racing; my mind closed in o n escape. I measured the distance
across the blacktop from ship to fence-no good- and through the
 1247] Fugitive Da ys

panned out, some because we were a useful lever, an implied threat if

peaceful reform failed, and some out of respect for the price paid.
Each year came on charged w ith possibility. When Timothy Leary's
band of merry men approached us in 1970 to break their guru ou t of a
California prison, their timing was perfect. Months earlie r we would
have found it laughable to work with these guys and impossible to jus-
28. tify a si ngle prison break-what about the hundreds of thousa nds left
behind? Until we could go through the front ga tes with a tank and a red
army prepared to liberate the lot, we'd be simply jerking off.
The Lea ry break- code- named Juju Eyeballs from the Beatles'
"Come Together"-featured elements we were stri ving for- art-
fulness, for example, subtlety, and indirection. It was practice for a sec-
We were going forward, bul on a modified path now, and at a different ond line of action we wanted to perfect-jai lbreaks were in our future.
pace. The change was subtle and might have appea red triv ial to an o ut- Juju Eyeballs was a matter of thinking mostly, planning, a ttention to
sider, but to us it was marked and obvious. Again we'd been in the detail, mobilization, and then a moment of determination and cour-
hundred - mile-a n-hour gale, and sixt y-m iles-a n hour was a relief. age. The Old Man himself took the biggest risk-he'd done hundreds
We were still susceptible to occasional gut-checks, to charges of not of push-u ps a day motivated by a single thought: on a night in Septem-
doing enough, in part because we knew that we weren't doing enough, ber when the prison camp was blanketed in th ick white fog he would
si nce doing enough was an unachievable goal. The war had to end now, scale a wall and work his way for one hundred feet hand over hand sus-
the racist system had to be destroyed this very minute, and every day pended from a wire. When he dropped in the trees beyond the fence he
we looked to tomorrow was in part a failure, and we knew it. In part would make his way to a railroad spur and then follow it north until he
our rheto ric was still way out in front of ou r capacity. But three of us found the sign we'd left him: a smiling six-i nch Buddha carved in
were dead, and soo n we would organize a prison break and a series wood. At that point he would plunge into the brush and find the road.
of high- profile bombings using dynamite-that most romantic of A second Buddha welcomed him to his hiding place- the nook of a
nineteen th-century radical tools- in government buildings, most dra- shady tree at the far end of a turnout. Every fifteen minut es a comrade
maticall y the Capitol in Washington, in response to the widening war, named Ernie pulled into that turno ut, flashed his lights, a nd then cir-
an action code-named the Big Top. cled back around. He would have done it all night if necessary, but o n
To our left were the anarchists and the terrorists, m any of them won- the second pass the Old Man bounded from his tree and leapt into the
derful people but with the ideology of a ten -yea r-old, convinced that back seat. The hard part was over.
we were accommodationist refo rmers and soft intellectuals playing at Ernie gave the Old Man a joint, an ID, plaid and polyester clothes
revolution, quiet now because we had lost three comrades and because and spray-on hair dye, and drove twenty miles north to a campground
the drama of the event overtook them and was so beyond them. To our where the O ld Man joined a family- two blond kids sleeping in the
right were the peace movement and the social de mocrats, also silent, back of a ca mpe r, Dad dri vi ng and Mom next to him in the cab, the
some because their dire predictions of doom and repression never Old Man stashed safely in the overhead. T he kids, incidentally, were
[ 248] Bill Ay ers Fugitive Da ys

the best secret keepers, instinctively getting the game. Ernie took the liked Yet Wah and, even better, Wing Fat's, a gloomy room wit h an
O ld Ma n's prison clothes to a rest stop thirty miles south and left them unmarked entryway a few steps up Eternal Happiness Alley, crowded
o n a counter near the sink, splattered some blood around for dramatic with locals and with the Fat Man himself hovering over the sizzling
effect, and wen t home. The Leave It to Beavers headed north, and woks like an Asian volcano, sendi ng waves of pungent smoke billowing
within days Timothy Leary was united with his family in Algeria. overhead and stinging your eyes.
We'd pla nned to meet at Wing Fat's at 6:30, but when I got the re at
We were negotiating an in-between: holding on to the special, edgy 6:15 Jeff and Rose were already squeezed into a back booth, looking fraz-
underground life we'd invented but a ngling toward a sustainable life zled, Rose's face light and red and worried. Arc you OK? she asked, and
with some conventional dimensions and ordinary boundaries. Our I thought, Oh, no. Those were her exact words after the Townhouse,
underground life could be undermined o r even destroyed - externally and they signified disaster. Whatever was next, it was nothing nice.
or internally- if we fell into too much habit, too much complacency. Kaz, who had developed a complicated and safe way to send us
But our sustainable life req uired just a bit more pattern, and we were money, had missed a drop, and we agreed, just this once and beca use
searching now for balance. It didn' t seem too much to ask- a world we were desperate, o n a shortcut. Kaz sent $200 through Western
with strong sides, the basics somehow intact: home, society, food, sex. Union to "Tom Stewart," a n IL) Jeff had built up. I now heard that when
I wanted little things to be secure, to give off a sense- an illusion, of Jeffrey went into the downtown office, red lights and warning bells
course-of permanence, or at least of normalcy. W hen our patterns started goi ng off in his head. There was an older looking hippie-
betrayed us, we were quickl y outsmarted and encircled, boundaries col- beads, headband, scru ffy beard - lurking near a phone booth inside.
lapsed, and we almost lost it al l. But we ra n and, almost miraculously, Could be nothing. The transaction went smoo thl y enough, but the
we escaped. We ya nked ourselves forcefully then into a mission of clerk kept glancing over his glasses at Jeff. Aga in, maybe just a nervous
repair. Here's how it began. clerk, acting the way he always did with everyone.
We ate mostly in neighborhood restaurants. In San Francisco, we Ou tside Jeff hesitated , then walked around the corner, jumped into
loved the St. Petersburg, which we'd code-named Petrograd, a run - the pickup truck, and Rose sta rted it up. The re was an old guy dressed
down place owned by a remarkably cheery o ld lady whose family had like a hippie watching you from a doorway, she said.
escaped the Bolsheviks and gone to China, only to flee the Mao ists en Shoes, Jeff said. The place was staked out.
route to Cuba, and then to run from Fidel, landing right here in the A car pulled out behind them- a beat -up Ford- and Rose knew he
U.S. where, we hoped, if the pattern held, she was merely awaiting was right. Shit. She took two quick turns and then went into a one-way
anot her revolution. She made a hearty borscht and the best chicken street, three lanes with heavy traffic and timed lights. Shit.
soup ever, wh ich featured fresh spinach and huge chunks of burned Before they could move a moment forward the Ford eased up on the
garlic floating everywhere. passenger side- Rose was holding steady in the center lane-and two
I liked the US Rest rant (sic), featuring mounds of pasta with pesto carbon -copy hippies like the ones Jeff had seen close up- triplets
or cream and a staff that spoke no English; the Denis de Lion, with a now-stared up al Rose. The passenger smiled and held up a peace
fresh basil salad that bit with the teeth of the lion; and the DM Z, the sign. Rose slammed lhe breaks, swerved left across two lanes and
first Vietnamese restaurant in town that advertised "We don't go north, plunged onto a side street as the Ford shot through the intersection
we don't go soul h ... We stay right here in the DMZ;' and whose chef trapped for another block at least.
drove a car with a pointed personalized license plate: UNCLE 1-10. I Where's Suzy Q? I asked, referring to the pickup.
[ 250 J Bill Ayers Fug itive L a ys

It turned out she was abandoned in an alley beneath the underpass The occupants of one compromised apartment couldn't believe that it
near downtown, and Jeff and Rose were, for the last hour, trying to fig- was really lost, and so Rose had to persuade them to stay away for a day
ure out what had happened and what to do next. while an aboveground cadre staked it out from a nearby laund romat.
We left Wing Fat's and two hours later met up at a sa fe house with The block was swanning with Shoes, and Carolyn cried thinking of the
two close aboveground com rades. We rehearsed the events in reverse books, letters, diaries left behind. None of us wa nted to give up the little
again, and then again, and agreed, finally, that Bert would walk up to ledges we were perched on.
Suzy Q first thing in the morning, open the door and get in, wait a min - We fell back and the enemy, his blood up, began a new and frenzied
ute, and then, if nothing happened, leave. Ernie wou ld watch the alley round of searchi ng. We retreated further and further, convinced that
and then guide Bert through a compl icated route to reconnect. retreat was wisdom, that retreat at this time was not defeat.
Next morning at 8:oo we got a call at a pay phone from Ernie-the Rose and Jeff and I abandoned the rocking houseboat and moved in
moment she opened the pickup door Bert was surrounded by a dozen with an artist, a childhood friend who heard and understood the risks
Shoes, guns drawn, a no-bullshit show of force. She was in custody. Sus- and said yes. We struggled to contain the losses, but finally gave up and
picion confirmed. fell back.
We worried about Bert, a lthough she told us later that it was st ri ctly Ernie made doubly carefu l co ntact with my brother Tim, a fi lm-
proforma. They were inefficient and lazy, she said, working from some maker and a generous soul who never hesitated. He took two days off
outdated script: Are yo u a member of any secret societies? Do you know work, loaded us into a VW bus, and drove us out of state where we
others who are? Are you in contact with any foreign agents? It all could begin again.
sounded so naive. She saw her job, she said, as miscuing whenever possi- T he encirclement taught us an important technical lesson- keep a
ble, steadil y disrupting the scene: Foreign agents? You mean like the firewall between every ID and every resource, and call it compartmen-
Rolling Stones? talization. It also underlined a theme already in the making: every day
Of course, Bert's fate bore no resemblance to the fates of poor people we could survive was itself a victory, and our energy should, then, be
caught up in the judicial system. Lawyers were quickly dispatched, directed to safety. Our existence underground, we thought now,
resources mobilized. opened a world of possibilities.
The bigger problem dawned on us slowly. The "Tom Stewart" ID
papers Ii nked to a transient hotel we'd used for two different sets of ID, What passes for memory is more often 111e111e11l0-n li11/e souvenir dan-
and the second ID had been used to rent an apartment and open an gling on a chain, some co111111emorative keepsake for ll1e nin111el, the gold
account with the electric company. One of our cars, registe red to paint finking off by /he Iime you get ii home.
another ID, had been ticketed outside that apartment rece ntly, and,
come to think of it, Jeff had been stopped in Suzy Q on a traffic safety This was the first of several times I lost everyth ing, every possession, all
check a week ago and the cops wrote down information from a clean the notebooks a nd papers and books and little personal treasures I had
ID he was ca rrying that linked to a bogus add ress, home to two more collected. My stores could never be replaced.
sets. And so it went. By 11:00 we realized that every vehicle was go ne, I'd had apartments broken into in previous years, always, I assumed,
every house unsafe, every ID tainted. We were back to nothing. by the police or the FBI. Papers would be riAed, much disruption and
The ci rcles of danger emerged clearly, and each was resisted by some- some items stolen, but this was more serious. The whole stock was
one. Jeff hated to part with Suzy Q, but there was no argument there. gone.
[ 252 J Bill A y ers Pugitive L a ys

The experience, hard and difficult though it was, had a positive and or intentionally, could not have known that they were now in liberated
liberating effect. I was never crushed by losing stuff, and over time I territory- they looked to all the world like just a couple of folks in the
became indifferent to material things. Standing naked I lea rned that I throng swarming up a crowded city street in rush hour. But from the
could do without. start they had been in what we called the set, and halfway across Adam s
There are always hardships in life, and life underground had its Street, click, they entered the underground. This part of the passage
share- our employment was marginal and making a living was tough, was called the tunnel, and from here on, every move was monitored
and, living ou tside the law, we had no rights and no protections whatso- by Jeff and me safely out of sight.
ever. When our apartment was burglarized-twice in one year-and Just south of Madison they headed down a flight of stairs leading to
the wave of paranoia passed, who could we call? The red army? the Grant Pa rk Garage, cut into the second aisle, and then quickly
But there are benefits to displacement as wel l. We were free of strait- wa lked north two blocks, never looking back. This was the trap,
jackets, there were no expectations to conform to, no lines to fo llow to because any tail would become insta ntly visible. They surfaced then
make a ca reer. The upheaval of life broadened my perspective, cast me at Michigan and Washington, headed west to Wabash, into Marshall
among people I never would have known in the narrower course of life. Field's, and a quick diagonal through the store to the exit at State and
I could be all things- a slum-dweller, a migrant worker, a day laborer, Randolph. The breakaway. North on State to Lake Street, undergrou nd
an itinerant traveler. I was an internationalist in my heart-nowhere a again, a second breakaway, west to C lark, up and north to the river
stranger but everywhere an outsider. I saw everythi ng and felt the great where a steel staircase led down to Wacker Place. Along Wacker was the
pulsing unit y of all humanit y. pickup, and it was Jeff's and my responsibi lity to make co ntact. I sig-
naled Jeff, he nodded, and they were in. If the picku p had been missed,
Emile de Anton io, the radical documentary filmmaker famous for his they were finished for the day, and that trajectory would be scra pped.
Point of Order and Painters Painting, sent word through friends that They were not to reenter the tunnel, but to head to a prearranged pay
he'd like to meet with us to discuss the possibility of a project that phone that would start ringing in exactly six hours.
wou ld bring the Weather Underground to life in the media. I love your
courage, he'd written us, and your commitment. I'm here to help. It's odd thinking back to that hyper-aware, meticu lously worked-out
We were flattered. And intrigued. But a film would be tricky, and a method of contact, because everyone we met, everyone from the open
meeting difficult. world, went through just such a passage. Journalists, lawyers, promi-
Contact with the open world was where the hidden world came into nent donors, occasionally parents. It didn't matter, everyone walked a
sharpest focus, a nd we bu ilt elaborate little mechanisms for con nec- trajectory. The first words spoken after a handshake or an embrace
tion. Here's how Jeffrey and I met D the first time. were also part of the pattern: Who am I? Who are you? Where are we
Our contact person- a n aboveground movement ally- received a going? What's our tale? We called this "the conspiratorial minute;' get-
preplanned route, a trajectory, that he and D would walk before con- ting our story straight in the event of a traffic stop, an accident, an
tact would be made. un fo reseen encounter with the law. More ta lk tactics.
I watched from half a block away as they stepped off the sidewalk at We hi d inside the circles of an ordinary life, masqueraded as a smiley
Yan Buren Street heading north on Michigan Avenue, and within face, and our safe houses were so normal they sq ueaked.
blocks they were already going under. It was 8:15 A.M. Nothing had Anyone who paid close enough attention, however, anyone who
changed o n the outside and so anyone observing them but me, casually thought deeply about our meaning- making and our motivation , might
[ 254 ] Bill Ayers 1255] Fugitive Da ys

have picked out the tiny cultural artifacts that boomed from the walls when our check came I paid and then impulsively ordered a bottle of
like the tellta le heart. There were no bombs or guns anyvvhcre, but cabernct sauvignon sent to our friends' table.
inside every safe house the atmosphere of revolution was on red -hot Perhaps it was our primitive circumstances or our vulnerability and
display. then laking hold of ourselves, perhaps it was the ancient gesture, for-
The bookshelf was an immediate giveaway-every Weatherman mal and honorable, b ut I felt then, for the first time in my life, grown-
read Malcolm X, the poetry of Ho Chi Minh, Amilcar Cabral, and Mari up. Yes, I was an adult suddenly, with all the knowledge all people have
Sandoz's marvelous biography of Crazy Horse. Harry Haywood was on ever had, and I felt full y the days of my years, the years of my life.] am
our reading list, and so was Amiri Baraka, C. L. R. James, and James alive right here, I thought, and Rose is here, too, in this place, at this
and Grace Lee Boggs. And somewhere, usually the bedroom, was a precise and perfect time. We arc in the going world, life exactly as it
modest, framed black-a nd-white photo of Che. should be.
Our refr igerators stocked Vietnamese fermented fish sauce called
,woe 11111,n, which we loved, even though the smell would make us gag,
to be used on rice or stir-fry, and we kept a li ving sourdough starter for
bread or pancakes given to Rick by a Native American comrade in Can-
ada, passed from hand to hand, and reputed to be over a hundred years
old. Every Weatherman considered forks uncivilized and ate with chop-
sticks, and most of us kept a large container of D r. Bronner's Magic
Soap, a cruelty-free liquid made in Escondido from hemp and eucalyp-
tus that claimed eighteen different uses from shaving to shampoo, from
mouthwash to dishes, and had a label so jammed with Dr. Bronner's
small print "All-One! " crackpot religious philosophy that next to it
"You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows"
looked like a children's book.

1 remember one evening in particular, the details as alive today as ifit

were yesterday-no, more vital than that, for yesterday is already a blur
while this has the fine lines and tingly feeling of forever.
Rose and I met up for dinner at a simple place we liked called Yet
Wah. This was the original site- before the great success and the explo-
sion of Yet Wahs into every district- an unadorned room with twelve
tables and a genius in the kitchen. We had just ordered fried dumplings
and tofu with string beans when two old friends from the movement,
from the open world, walked in unexpectedly. A moment of fro ze n
indecision, then a discreet nod, and they took a table on the far side of
the room. We went on with our co nversation and with our meal, and
 Fugitive L a ys

and my breath catches, I tremble a bit. I used to say, Those who tell,
don't know, and those who know, don't tell. It was a clever way to keep
the bastards guessing. But I do know this, and I'm going to tell. In my
way.
Why did you bomb the Pentagon?
My dad wants to know. He was once offered a cabinet position and
29. was once considered for Secretary of the Army. He knows that I
bombed a lot of things-Those were crazy times, he says, better forgot-
ten-and he knows, too, that Diana, whom he liked, is dead-She was
older, he says now, and she led you astray. He's stuck in other patterns
as well-You need a haircut, he says automat ically, and, You'd better
cover that tattoo in front of Mother- and now he wants to know why
Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. I bombed the Pentagon.
The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally I didn't reall y think that three pounds of dynamite would knock it
goi ng to get what was coming to them. down o r even do much damage-although it turns o ut that we b lew up
I say 'T' even though I didn't act ually bomb the Pentagon- we a bathroom and, quite by accident, water plunged below and knocked
bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen o rganized it and cla imed it- out their computers for a time, disrupting the air war and sending me
but I've had difficulty writi ng this, and I thought if I just said it into deepening shades of delight. I didn't think that our entire arsenal,
boldly-"! bombed the Pentagon" -that might liberate me to go on. 125 pou nds of dynamite, would actua lly count for much in a contest
There's a necessa ry incompleteness in this account, a n incoherence with the U.S. military, but I was never good at math, and I did think
wh ich is in part an artifact of those times a nd that situation. Some that every bomb we set off invoked the possibility of more bombs, that
details cannot be told. Some friends and comrades have been in prison the message-sometimes loud and clea r-was that if yo u bastards con-
fo r decades; others, including Bernardine, spent months and months tinue to wage war, we'll go into places you don't want us to go, places
locked up for refusing to talk or give handwriting samples to federal like the Pentagon, and we'll retaliate, a nd soon-who knows?-you
grand juries. Consequences are real for people, and that's part of this might completely lose control.
story, too. But the government was dead wrong, and we were right. In It was a story we told ourselves, and a story we spun out into the
our con flict we don't talk; we don't tell. We never confess. world. Armed anecdotes. Explosive narrat ions.
When act ivists were paraded before grand juries, asked to name The Pentagon was ground zero for wa r and conq uest, organizi ng
names, to humiliate themselves, and to participate in destroying the headquarters of a gang of murdering thieves, a colossal stain on the
movement, most refused and went to jail rather than say a word. Out- planet, a hated sy mbol everywhere around the wo rld. Do you know
side they told the press, I didn't do it, but I dug it. I recall John Brown's what the word for Pentagon is in Chinese or Korean, Arabic or Haitian
strategy over a century ago-he shot all the members of the grand jury Creole? Pentagon.
investigating his activities in Kansas-but we weren't there, and so we We went back and for th, not only between us but with in each one of
built a strategy of noncooperation: Don't talk. us. I called up all the courage I could summon in order to take the next
Even all these years later I look at it- a bomb inside the Pentagon- risk- to bomb the Pentagon, say-and then I ran my commitment
[ 258 J Bill Ayers Pugi ti ve La ys

through the severest tests. And then I thought, enough. There must be quent, but we were not done with bombs. We reserved big attacks for
another way. And then the ferment stirred and the demand to do more, big targets and big moments. We knew they would come.
to go further, again issued forth . Back and forth. Without end. President Nixon ordered the systematic bombing of Ha Noi and the
I thought about the justification for each action. Sometimes I mining of the port of Hai Phong in an operation code- named Line-
answered technically: we wo rked hard and did our best to take care, backer, a nod towa rd the president's preferred foo tball metaphor- lt's
to focus, to do no harm to persons and no more damage than we'd just a ga me, folks, and we're playing defense. Over 200 8 -52 sorties
planned. The psycho logical answer, I think, was that we we re young dropped 14,000 tons of bombs on the capitol of Vie t Na m . So we
with an edge of certaint y and arrogance that I would be hard -pressed decided to answer that terror bombin g with a tiny surprise, this o ne
to re-create or even fully understand again. The moral justification inside the Pentagon itself, the tive-sided behemoth serving as nerve cen-
requires remembering the context o ft he times. I could barely justify ter of American milita ry might, the most ha ted symbol throughout the
eating my own breakfast because it seemed a kind of inaction , o r a kind world, we thought, of Ameri ca's bloody global missio n. Some of us
of moving alon g blindly as if no rmal life included unending slaughter. wa nted to fl atten the place ou tright, sick of our restraint until now.
I went for days o n end with nothing to eat, no money of m y own, no We pulled together a special group that scouted the Pentago n irregu-
change in my pocket, thinking o nl y of how to stop the war, how to larly for mont hs. When a new escalat io n in Viet Na m beca me immi-
make the price for continuing the war great, how to reach out to the vic- nent, Anna a nd Aa ro n and Zeke got a storage locker outside D. C.,
tims of the war and stand alongside them and experience som ething of moved some ex plosives in, a nd then fo und a cheap apartment nearby
what they were experiencin g. I wanted intimate knowledge of their situ- and re nted it by the week. Their reconnaissance led them deep into th e
ation, of their suffering. bowels of the Leviathan, and they soon knew every ha ll a nd stairway,
l'd marched o n the Pentagon more than once, scaled its walls, co n- every cul-de-sac and office and bathroom. Everything was elaborately
fronted armed troops there, and even peed on its side. lfl could have, mapped, and th eir apartment began to look li ke an alternative war
I'd have duct-taped it shut, or put it in a trash compactor, but the clos- room, the dark mirror- image of the Pentagon itself.
est I could come was a tiny bomb in a toilet drain. Anna, her fingertips pain ted with clear nail polish to obscure the
We'd already bombed the Capitol, and we'd cased the White House. identi fying marks of her na ked hand, and heavily disguised in suit a nd
The Pentagon was leg two of the trifecta. blouse and briefcase, dark wig and thick glasses, began entering the Pen-
tagon every morning with hundreds of other worke rs. She wa lked the
Mi llions of people had died in the war by now as the United States halls, ate breakfast in the cafeteria, and left by 11:00. She was never
rained millions to ns of explosives on Indochina. Where was there room challenged.
for all those bombs? I imagi ned I could taste the ash in my mouth, I can do it, she said finally, pulling out her sketches and ma ps.
smell the acrid smoke from something still smoldering in my chest. Here-she pointed to a n isolated hallway in the basement of the Air
Ho Chi Mi nh had said long ago, "Neither bombs no r shells can cow our Force sectio n- I've been here four times, never seen anot her person,
people and no honeyed wo rds ca n deceive them. We Vietnam ese are and there's a women's room halfway down, right here. She made an X
resolved to fight till not a single U.S. aggressor remains o n our beloved o n the map. There's a drain on the floo r, narrow but b ig enough, I
land." He was right. think, she said. O ne mo re visit was planned in o rder to un screw the
We were mostly into armed propaganda then, propaganda of the cover and take the dimensions of the space.
deed, guerilla theater, invisible resistance. Our bo mbings were less fre- Anna was in the next day at 9:00, and was in the women's room and
60] Bill Ayers I 261 ] Fugitive L a ys

the stall by 9:10. She locked the door, hung up her jacket, and pulled explode in the air force section of the Pentagon, he said calmly. l'm call-
plastic gloves, a screwdriver, and tape measure from her briefcase. The ing from the Weather Underground, and believe me this is no prank.
grated cover was gunky but easy to pop off once the screws were out, Clear the area! Get everyone o ut! You have twenty-five minutes. Viet
and there was a comfortable 4-inch diameter that ran down for over a Nam will win!
foot. Anna replaced the drain cover, wiped the area down and was back He moved two blocks away and call ed the local police sta tion,
at the apartment by 10:00. repeating the message, and then moved once m ore to ca ll the Post,
A delicate and complicated series of phone calls built a consensus directing the night operator to the statement in the phone booth
from all quarters to go forward. Aaron was a specialist, and Zeke explaining it all. Comrades in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San
assisted as he customized a sa usage 12 inches long and 3 inches around, Francisco si multaneously d irected local newspaper operators to copies
with a tiny timing device at one end and a suspension arm fashioned of the political statem ent taped neatly in nearby phone booths. And
from fishing line and hook at the other. Aaron packed the thing into a then Aaron, too, was off.
briefcase beneath official-looking papers and personal effects. Zeke Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy-
walked Anna to the train, hugged her, and went off to a bookstore for weighing close to two pounds-it ca used "tens of thousands of dollars"
the two hours before they wou ld meet up in a trajectory far from the of damage. The operation cost just under $500, and no one was killed
target, and far from home. or even hurt. In that sa me time the Pentagon spent tens of millions of
When Anna appeared in the trajectory, making her way slowly down dollars and dropped tens of thousands of pounds of explosives on Viet
the street, Zeke's heart leapt, but he calmed himself, waited, and Nam, killing or wounding thousands of human beings, causing hun -
watched. Switchback, turn, switchback, breakaway. Certain that she dreds of millions of dollars of damage. Because nothing justified their
was safe, he practically jumped into her arms. They were back on their actions in our calculus, nothing could cont rad ict the merit of ours.
block by nightfall. The president said our action was the work of cowardly terrorists.
All that long day Aaron worked to close down the Washington opera- The morning after the Pentagon acti on, Rose and I ta lked to Aaron,
tion, emptying the storage area, cleaning out the apartment and pay ing pay phone to pay phone, gathered up the newspapers, and headed ha p-
the remaining bills. Aaron was stock y and muscled, close- mouthed but pily to our apartment for breakfast. Just after 10:00 the doorbell rang-
even-tempered, deeply confident without a hint of arrogance. He was it was our landlord com ing to fix a leak in the bathtub. We lived then in
also the backbone of the group-entirely com mitted and trustworthy, an apartment above Sylvan's Night Cafe, and Syl, in his mid-fifties,
hardworking and dependable. Aaron had been an emergency room tended bar late into the night, owned two or three other apartment
nurse and a lumberjack, a guy we all believed could easily survive in the buildings, and was rarely seen in sunlight. He struck us as a small, strug-
Australian Outback or the Siberian wilderness for weeks with nothing gling capitalist, squeezed from all sides with a narrow, e mbattled out-
but a pocket knife, or the streets of G reenwich Village with only a cou- look on life. But he was friendly enough to us, he'd said he would come
ple of dollars in his pocket. Aaron was smart but never showy, steady by this week, and here he was.
and able to improvise when necessary- the model middle cadre. This won't take long, Joe, he said to me.
At 11:00 Aaron pulled on plastic gloves and taped a statement about Fine, Syl. Take yo ur time.
the impending attack beneath a tray in a phone booth across from the Syl went into the bathroom with his tools, clicked on his transistor
Waslii11gto11 Post offices. He then moved across town, and at 11:30 called radio, and set to work. We could hear the radio humming beneath the
the Pentagon emergency number. In twenty-five minutes a bomb will sounds of pipe wrenches, nuts and washers, and just as Syl was finish -
( 262 ] Bill Ay ers [263] Fugitive Da ys

ing up, the news ca me on. The lead stor y was the bombing of the Penta- close, it's true- whenever there a re guns and bombs, the line narrows
gon, and Rose gave me a look. between politics and terror, between rebellion and ga ngsterism. We
Syl emerged chuckling and wiping his hands. You hear about the Pen- were part of a movement, and then of a tendency toward armed st rug-
tagon getting blasted, Joe? he asked. gle. We crossed the line and came back. Everyone wasn' t so lucky. I
Yeah, I said, fighting to sound cas ual. hoped we'd learned some things.
You gotta hand it to those guys. The bastards in Washington-'scuse To me the distinction was huge. Terrorists terrorize, they ki II inno-
me, Rose-don't listen to the people, and those guys might just open cent civilians, while we orga nized and agitated. Terrorists destroy ran-
up their car-waves! domly, while our actions bore, we hoped, the precise stam p of a cu t
You're kidding, I said. It's illegal, what they're doing, and violent. diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate. No,
Fuck that, said Syl. 'Scusc m e, Rose. They're about as violent as a bee we're not terrorists.
sting. Sure it's illegal, some property gets destroyed, big deal- same The lynchings in the South for more than a century were the work
thing in the Basque coun try, no? Same thing at the Boston Tea Party, of terrorists. A tiny 111 i norit y of hard-core terrorists-some prominent
and that was also great. officials in t he light of day- actually donned the white robes, lit th e
Who knew Syl was Basque? fires, set the bombs, and threw the heavy ropes over the bra nches. But
But, Syl, l said, enjoying this sudden reversal, if those bombers arc so many more white people were called upon to wit ness and celebrate the
great, why do they hide them selves? They should have the courage of events, to identify with the actions, a nd to see their favored fates lin ked
their convictions and just come forward to admit it and take the to those deadly deeds. The message to Black people wast hat at any
conseq uences. moment and for any reason whatsoever yo ur Ii fe or the lives of you r
No, Joe, no, Syl responded. Impossible. That's an invitation to their loved ones could be randomly snuffed out. The intention was social
own fun era ls. Those guys gotta hide out. They're not hurting nobody control through random intimidation and unpred ictablc violence.
but the bastards-'scuse me, Rose. The wrongdoings in Viet Nam had all th e markings of modern-day
I ca n't agree, Syl, I said, and Rose now gave me a stern, disapproving terrorists. The air war, the artillery, the naval barrages, th e bombing
look. campaigns targeting whole populati ons, entire regions. Crops were
Whe n Syl left and we heard the downstairs doo r close we grabbed destroyed, bridges downed, roads ruined. T here was often a ritu al feel-
each other, laughing and rolling around and around, shrieking. Syl was ing to the destruction as w itnesses were flown in for optimal view ing.
only one person, of course, and probably in a weird, sleep-deprived The slaughter was the work of a small ha rd core, bu t all America ns were
mood that day, but still, to us he became an instant symbol and a called upon to identify, to celebrate, to link up. The suffering was often
barometer-the forecast was sunny. We took the day off to rejo ice and entirely random. The intent was control through intimidati on.
congratulate ourselves and laugh som e more. From then on whatever In a war without fixed positions, the calculus of success was always
we did, the winking question we asked one another was, What would murky. Body counts became the slippery shorthand fo r the wa r's prog-
Sylvan think? ress, and it was not unco mmon for the U.S. to report twent y enemy
dead and one weapon recovered in one patro l, o r ten enemy dead, no
The papers were full of stories desc ribing the Pentagon bombing as an weapons recovered, no Ame rican casualties in another.
action of the " terrorist \.\ieathcr Undergro und." But we're not terrorists, The U.S. created an elaborate envi ronment for terro r in Viet Nam,
I thought, no matter how many times they repeat the charge. We came and te rrorism became the way of the war eve ry day. W hen a military
[ 264 J Bill Ayers 1265] Fugitive Da ys

jury made up of combat veterans convicted Lieutenant Wi lliam L. motioned people out of their homes and herded them into large
Calley Jr. of three counts of premeditated murder and one count of groups. Dwellings were torched, swept with machine-gun fire, or
assault with intent to commit murder for his role in the My Lai massa- dest royed with grenades. Some civilians were shot. Families huddled
cre, a small light was turned on ,rnd shined on the murky underbelly of together shrieking and crying. Gunfire could be hea rd from a ll parts of
American terrorism. But the moment passed, and the light was put out. the village, and it created a kind of frenzied chain reaction. T he terror
"Rusty" Calley was the commander of Charlie Company's first pla- grew. Groups of m en, women, and chi ldren were pushed down into
toon, assigned to Quang Ngai Province, an area the U.S. militar y desig- bunkers and grenades thrown in after them. Women were raped, sod-
nated "Pinkvi lle." The soldiers called it " Indian Country," meaning it omized, and mutilated, stabbed or shot in their vaginas. People were
was hostile territor y, contro lled by the National Liberation Front, a clubbed, bayoneted, and beheaded. Some Gls carved "C Company"
place without "friendlies." Between 1965 and 1967 te ns of thousa nds of into the chests of the dead. One GI reported finding a twent y-year-old
tons of bombs and napalm were poured into northeastern Quang Ngai woman with a four-year-old child in the midst oft he chaos and forcing
Province. Artillery was randomly fired into the area, a nd pla nes with her to perform oral sex on him as he held a gun to the child's head.
excess bombs often just haphaza rdly unloaded here. The U.S. military Calley came upon a young soldier guarding a group of elderly peo-
destroyed 70 percent of the dwellings and relocated some 150,000 civil- ple, women, and children, and said, "You know what to do with them."
ians. Calley told a reporter that, "Everyo ne there was VC. The old men, When he returned a short time later he was visibly irritated: " How
the women, the children-the babies were all VC or would be VC in come they' re not dead?" he asked. " I wa nt them dead." At that Calley
about three yea rs. And inside ofVC women, I guess there were a thou- started shooting. " He burned four or five magazines," according to the
sa nd little VC now." The justification for terror was established. soldier, who added, "r helped shoot 'em."
U.S. search-and-destroy missions in Quang Ngai were frightening, Heads were shot off, arms and legs, p ieces offlesh and bone explod-
difficult, and deadly. American soldiers were killed by snipers, mines, ing in all directions, people screa ming and moaning. The young soldier
booby traps, but som ehow could not engage the enemy in a straight-up dropped his gun and wandered off, but later saw Calley at another ditch
fight. Soldiers began beating civilians in frustra tion, torturing and mur- blasting away into a tangle of people. At the end of that ditch a priest
dering prisoners, raping villagers. Units created "Zippo sq uads" to with folded hands and bowed head rocked back and forth pleading, No
torch hamlets after a combat sweep. A culture of terror bu ilt up and Viet, no Viet, and Calley smashed him in the mouth with the butt of his
took control. Eventually everyone tolerated aspects of terror, witnessed rifle. As he fell back Calley shot him point-blank in the face and half of
it, and shared in its mission, even those who didn't act ively participate. his head blew away.
In earl y 1968 U.S. planes dropped leaflets into the area telling civil- Someone shouted that a child was running back toward the village.
ians to leave or the Americans would consider them VC. Now, the mili- Calley ran and grabbed the child, flung her into the deep end of the
tary told itself, everyone was the enemy, and their job was to engage ditch and shot once into her chest.
and destroy the enemy. As they prepared for battle, officers reminded Company C received no enemy fire and no resistance at My Lai.
the sold iers of comrades lost to booby traps and snipers-now they There was one American injury- a GI shot himself in the foot in the
could get the revenge so rich ly deserved. frenzy. Three weapons were reportedly recovered, and 128 VC were
The first platoon entered My Lai ea rly o n March 16 in several small reported killed. The attack was described as "well planned, well exe-
groups, shooting at anything that moved, killing buffalo, pigs, d ucks, cuted, and successful," in the official report of the action, and General
dogs. As th e American soldiers swept through the village they William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces, sent a telegram to
266] Bill Ayers
Fugitive La ys

the unit praising them for inflicting " heav y blows" on the enemy. In
the matter, and in its extrem e and unva rnished horro r, it exempli fied
fact 347 Vietnamese were killed.
the whole affair, exactly as the slaughter of Nat ive Americans at
Calley's comment on the affair was to the point: "As for me killing
Wounded Knee in South Dakota on ly eighty years ea rlier embodied
those men in My Lai, it didn' t haunt me-I could n't kill for the plea- the U.S. militar y m issio n then .
su re ofit. We weren't in My Lai to kill human beings, really. We were T hat, to me, was terrorism.
there to kill ideology. That is carried by-I don't know. Pawns. Blobs.
Pieces offlesh. And I wasn't in My Lai to destroy intell igent men. I was
When the U.S. signed the Paris Peace Agreement, it at long last admit -
the re to destroy an intangible idea, communism .... Those people are
ted military defeat. A first. The U.S. said it wou ld fu lly withdraw from
monsters, and they have no qualms, no hang- ups, no holding-backs to
Indochina, end all aid to the puppet governm ent in the south a nd pay
the extremes they'll go to. J mean butcherings; that is what commu-
reparations for the destruction caused by its aggression. We thought
nism does, and we were there in My Lai to destroy it. Personally, I
there was ce rtainly more pain and suffering to come-imperialism
didn't kill any Vietnamese that day. I mean personally. I represented
never reall y means its wit hd rawals, we said-and that we would be
the United States of America. My country."
called upon aga in. But we were also overjoyed , and spen t several days
O n September 5, 1969, William Calley was charged with the murder
celeb rating, laughing and crying in ga thering after gathering.
of 109 "Oriental human beings." Twenty-four others were also charged
Who can ever forget the despera te images of Am erica ns li ned up like
with offenses from assault to murder to derel iction of duty. A decision
ants a top their own e mbassy in downtown Saigon, climbing aboard
to ho ld separate trials-one mass trial would surely suggest Nurem-
helicopters that ferried them in great feverish circles to safety on wa r-
berg and a deliberate policy of terror or genocide-meant evide nce and
ships far out in the South Chin a Sea as the enemy closed in? Or the fren-
attention was severely limited. Vice Preside nt Agnew noted that " the
zied throngs of Vietnamese who had cooperated w ith the America ns
Communists have committed many atrocities and th e . .. difference
an d been promised safe passage, wa iting hopefully in the embassy com-
between us is that in the Comm unist case they were carried o ut with
pound, eyes skyward, for rescuers who never returned?
the direction and consent of their leaders," and President Nixon
Rose and I curled up on the couch together a nd watched the scene
insisted that My Lai is "an isolated incident."
o n our little black and white TV. Neither of us said a word. There was
Calley's trial lasted 77 days and involved over o ne hundred wi tnesses.
nothin g to say. We could hardly remember a world without war, and it
Convicted of three cou nts of murde r and o ne co unt of assault with
was m uch too la te to shout and cheer. The killing would end. We we re
intent to murder, he was sentenced to li fe at ha rd labor.
right. And I still didn't know what had happened at the Townhouse. We
The next day President Nixon o rdered Calley released from the stock-
watched and we watched, and when I finally looked at her, she was cov-
ade and returned to his apartment. On August 20, 1971, Ca lley's sen- ered in tears.
tence was reduced to twenty years by the Com mander of the Third
Army. On Apri l 15, 1974, the Secretary of the Army com muted Calley's
co nfinement to ten years. On November 9, 1974, Ca lley was paroled by
the Secretar y of the Army.
Was My Lai and its aftermath typical? It was not the kind of event
that happened every day, not the kind of thing m ost guys participated
in regularly, or ever. But in many ways it was to me th e absolute heart of
Fugitive Days
a memoir

Bill Ayers
Beacon Press

Boston