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Neither of you was armed; neither of you directly hurt anyone; neither of you played a role in planning the robbery; and neither of you intended for any of those three men to be killed. Yet I had to turn my back on you and listen to the steel gate slam shut behind me, even as Kathy was enjoying her first minutes of freedom. Starting with her plea, she has consistently, publicly expressed her remorse. Why has it always been easier for you to express your remorse to me than itis to do so publicly?

Maybe if I had been old enough to talk, I could have convinced both of you not to go. Maybe if I had understood what was going on at the time of your trial, I could have convinced you to let a lawyer defend you, despite your political objections to participating in the trial. Maybe, just maybe, once those three families know how sorry you are for their losses and the role you played in them, they will be able to forgive.

Of course, I don't really remember those early years, a time that irrevocably changed all of our lives. I don't remember becoming part of a new family. I don't remember when I realized my good fortune at having fallen, a bit messily at first, into the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn with the support of their two sons, my big brothers. The fact that all four of my parents-and all of you really are my parents-shared a long political history going back to your organizing against the war in Vietnam with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground made it much easier to build a relationship with you and my mom in prison.

On the other hand, the difficulties of growing up in such a logistically complicated, politically controversial, and spatially far-flung family are also part of my inheritance from you. Rather than focusing on this negative legacy-the tragedy, the failures, the mistakes, my childhood problems, or the burden of maintaining a relationship with you-I choose to focus on the positive side of what my parents' sacrifices, mistakes, and political activism have engendered. This legacy includes a wide range of principled life choices, a profound commitment to humanity and equality, and an emphasis on reflection and self-criticism. It includes as well the ability to laugh and love, to enjoy life's pleasures while fighting society's injustices. Perhaps most of all, it includes optimistic, open-minded engagement in local, national, and global politics. It is this legacy that has done the most to place me in a position to continue your struggle for a better world while avoiding the tragic mistakes you made.

While I was growing up, my family's dinner table conversations about a recent suspension of a classmate at school, urban renewal projects in our neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, or the role of the U.S. military in Central America made local and global politics intimate family affairs. Learning to view the world through a political lens was much broader than simple participation in electoral politics. I did not have to study civics to learn that there are responsibilities that come with political freedoms, that living in the heart of empire imposes particular obligations, that members of civil society have a duty to participate in inclusive, public debates as part of the fertile and dynamic democratic process.

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