HYDE PARK — Former leaders of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn will be at Experimental Station Monday night for a no-holds barred conversation on their past.
“We will happily go wherever the conversation takes us that evening, and with participation from all who gather together,” Ayers said.
Ayers and Dohrn were both members of the far-left radical group the Weather Underground, and were involved in the group’s 1970 declaration of war on the U.S. government.
“We will explore some interesting ground that lies beyond the fact that we all live storied lives: the stories we tell ourselves and the accounts that are imposed upon us by others, memory and meaning-making in the swirling vortex of history, strategies of narrative self-defense, the rule and the dangers of silence, power and the permission to narrate, stewardship of the narratives our lives become, and more,” Ayers said.
Journalist Jamie Kalven will lead the 7 p.m. conversation at Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave., with the two former radicals allegedly involved in inciting riots during the “Days of Rage” protests against the Vietnam War in 1969.
“We'll go wherever the conversation takes us, but our point of departure will be an exchange about the stories our lives become in the world — the narratives we construct with our actions, the narratives others impose on us, strategies of narrative self-defense (including silence), and questions of narrative stewardship and responsibility,” Kalven said.
“These issues, which are present for anyone who intervenes and acts in the world, are boldly dramatized by the lives of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.”
The event is free and open to the public.
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