Free Public Enemy by Bill Ayers Page A

sweet and smart and funny friend, was the person beneath that disfigured mask of pain in the photo.
    Poor, dear David, he looked so badly beaten down and diminished in shackles—nothing like the beautiful man I knew—that I choked back a sudden sob. I wanted to cry out loudly and openly, but not now, not with the kids there. When Bernardine arrived moments later, it was clear she’d seen the same thing, and as we hugged she whispered in a tight voice, “Later.” We sat on a bench and Malik nursed while Bernardine read a story to Zayd, and then we gathered ourselves and went home.
    As soon as we could sit up and pay attention later that night, the terrible details zoomed into razor-edged focus: a group of armed men had stormed a Brinks truck at the Nanuet Mall and made off with over a million and a half dollars, killing a guard named Peter Paige (who we later learned was himself an activist, involved in Northern Ireland’s liberation struggle against Great Britain), and severely injuring another, Joe Trombino, who managed to fire a single shot from his handgun before having his arm practically severed from his shoulder by the force of the gunfire he endured. As police converged on the mall and mobilized to cut off escape routes, the armed men drove to a nearby parking lot, where they quickly swapped vehicles and sped away. But someone across from the parking lot had called the police, saying she’d just seen “several armed Black men” piling into the back of a U-Haul truck, and moments later officers stopped the U-Haul at a road block on an entrance ramp to the New York State Thruway and all hell broke loose: as they leapt from the back of the truck the men blasted away with M-16 rifles, 12-gauge shotguns, and 9-mm handguns, killing two Nyack police officers, Edward O’Grady and Wesley Brown, and fleeing the scene. The driver of the truck and the front seat passenger were apprehended immediately: David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin were in custody, accused of murder. They were our friends and our comrades from SDS and the Weather Underground.
    There was more that night, and much more to come—carjackings and car crashes, conflicting accounts of what had happened and how, escapes and more shootings, raids and round-ups, indictments, grand juries, and trials—but our interest was arrested right there: Kathy and David detained and living under the menacing cloud of being charged with murder. It seemed at once awful and improbable, so ghastly and so out of character. And it seemed altogether too big, a bloated and distorted caricature.
    More than a dozen of our former comrades were still underground then—we’d returned to the open world less than a year before ourselves—but Bernardine had met their new-born son on the day of his birth just before we’d surfaced; we were certain then that they were about to take the same path, casting their baby’s life-reel toward a hopeful and more realistic future. That’s what Kathy had said, and they’d agreed that day to meet up soon on the other side.
    Where’s the kid? we asked in unison. Others would have to worry about the legal difficulties, the deeper meanings, the tragedy and its inevitable fallout. We set off to find Chesa.
    The culture of our young family was shot through from the start with politics and activism—Malik and Zayd were born into picket lines and demonstrations, our lively little apartment abuzz with friends and comrades, meetings and political discussions, organizing projects and action plans, along with the ordinary dialogue of everyday family life. Because we refused to have a TV, conversation was the charge and current in the room—our kids’ earliest words and phrases included “mama” and “dog” and “ball,” of course, but also “Peace Now” and “No Corn.” Even without a literal understanding of every detail or every cause, we tried to create a kind of loving, child-friendly, and joyful resistance in our daily lives, a sense that