The Real Bill Ayers

[Bruce551]

The Real Bill Ayers

By WILLIAM AYERS

6 Dec 08, NY Times

Chicago

IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here?s why.

Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama?s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: ?What do we really know about this man??

Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an ?unrepentant domestic terrorist.? Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.

I was cast in the ?unrepentant terrorist? role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the ?Two Minutes Hate? scene from George Orwell?s ?1984,? when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.

With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.

Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn?t me, not even close. Here are the facts:

I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices ? the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious ? as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be ? and still is being ? debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I?ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.

I have regrets, of course ? including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.

The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.

We ? the broad ?we? ? wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.

The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other?s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we?ve been unable to rise above it.

President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn?t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.

Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let?s hope they never will again. And let?s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.

William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of ?Fugitive Days? and a co-author of the forthcoming ?Race Course.?

"And let?s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue."

I'd say the above is particularly good advise for Thailand.

:arrow:

[GM]

I never had any issues with most of the garbage the right pulled out of their ass... I did, and still do, have an issue with his relationship with Jerry Wright... the racist, ignorant minister he not just "associated" with but closely followed and admired for 20+ years only to distance himself when it was politically advantageous!

[zeusbheld]

i found it strange that Charles Keating didn't stick to John McCain, but that doesn't matter now either.

as for Obama kicking Wright to the curb it happened too slowly to be pure political expedience. it didn't happen until Wright started enjoying his newfound celebrity and started preening for the media and justifying his remarks and causing considerable collateral damage to the Obama primary campaign.

not endorsing anything Wright said, but in its context it wasn't any more bigoted than the swill emanating from any other religious wingnut.

[sunsnow]

I like the documentary movie, Weather Underground. Also check out Bill ayers and his wifes interview recently from Democracynow.org Anyhow, I don't really have anything to comment to this topic. Just wanted to tip on the interview on Democracy Now!

[eagle]

I like the documentary movie, Weather Underground. Also check out Bill ayers and his wifes interview recently from Democracynow.org Anyhow, I don't really have anything to comment to this topic. Just wanted to tip on the interview on Democracy Now!

I saw the interview on Democracy now. He seemed more lucid then Palin I must say. I don't agree with his bombing days but do agree with his sentiments on the Vietnam war. Killing your young men for your war profiteering is much worse then anything he actually did IMO.

[zeusbheld]

not endorsing anything Wright said, but in its context it wasn't any more bigoted than the swill emanating from any other religious wingnut.

Can't argue with that!

yeah not only do fundie wingnuts speak for themselves, they consistently demonstrate why they should have never been allowed to do so in the first place.

[speculation]

my suspicion on the rev Wright thing is similar to my suspicions of Dubya's "born again" status--bullshit smoke and mirrors to pander to the base. Remember, even as late as the early democratic primaries, a lot of blacks were suspicious of him--he didn't really share American black culture and the legacy of slavery. early in his career an Angry Black Preacher may have been necessary to give him credibility with black folks. anecdotal evidence suggests there are a lot of black folks in Chi town. i get the impression that he was genuinely friends with the guy, and genuinely disappointed when Wright wallowed in the spotlight at risk of torpedoing his campaign. that said, i suspect his first visit to the church was motivated by political aspirations.

[/speculation]