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Tweedy, trim and looking more like a suburban housewife than a former leader of the radical Weather Underground, Bernardine Dohrn, 38, came in from the cold. With William Ayers, 35, her live-in companion for most of the past eleven years, at her side, she pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated battery and mob action arising from the 1969 "Days of Rage" demonstrations in Chicago. The two have weathered an underground life ever since, most recently with their two children in a walk-up apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where Dohrn worked as a shop manager and bookkeeper and part-time waitress. "I regret not at all our efforts to side with the forces of national liberation," said Dohrn. So why did she surrender to the tender mercies of the System? "The climate has changed," said Michael Kennedy, Dohrn's New York lawyer. "Mayor Daley is no longer mayor." No, but in charge of prosecuting Dohrn's case is Cook County State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor whose heavyhandedness helped spark the Chicago demonstrations.
— By E. Graydon Carter