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Bill Ayers

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File:BillAyersMugshot.jpg
Bill Ayers's mugshot after his 1968 arrest.

William C. ("Bill") Ayers (born 1944) is a former member of the Weather Underground who is now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Biography

Ayers was a 1960s-era political activist and Weather Underground member. He grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in a highly privileged family (his father, Thomas Ayers, was Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison) and attended Lake Forest Academy. According to Ayers' memoir Fugitive Days, he became radicalized at the University of Michigan. During his years there, he became involved in the New Left and the SDS.

Ayers went underground with several comrades including Brandy Diekman and Arion, after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded on March 6, 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing three members of the Weather Underground (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend at the time). He and his colleagues invented identities and traveled continuously. They avoided the police and FBI while bombing high-profile government buildings—including the United States Capitol (two bombs on March 1, 1970), The Pentagon (May 19, 1972), and the Harry S Truman Building which houses the United States Department of State (on January 29, 1975)—along with several banks, police department headquarters and precincts, state and federal courthouses, and state prison administrative offices.[1][2] Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children, Zayd and Malik, underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives.[3] They also adopted a son, Chesa Boudin, who is the biological son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin.

Ayers published his memoirs in 2001 with the book Fugitive Days. His interview with the New York Times to promote his book was published on September 11, 2001, and includes his reaction to Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen: "He was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,' he writes. 'The rigidity and the narcissism.'" In this interview, he also was quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."[3] The book has been criticized for numerous important factual inaccuracies, among other things.[4]

Ayers has also edited and written nearly a dozen books on education theory, policy and practice.

In the fall of 2006, Ayers was disinvited to a conference for progressive educators on the grounds that his position supporting political terrorism would tarnish the reputation and standing of the progressive education movement.[5]

obama ayers connection

He served on the board of the Woods Fund, a small radical foundation, with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn late of the Weather Underground, the radical cell that killed cops and tried to plant a bomb in the U.S. Capitol. They're married to each other now and after a decade on the run turned themselves in and served prison time. They're unrepentant. In an interview with the New York Times, Prof. Ayers boasted that he had no regrets about setting bombs to kill innocents: "I feel we didn't do enough."

When the senator and the unrepentant bomber served together on the Woods Fund board, the Fund awarded $6,000 to Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church "in recognition of Barack Obama's contributions of Woods Fund as a director." Later the Obama-Ayers board awarded a generous grant to the Arab-American Action Network. It's entirely possible that Barack Obama missed the board meetings when such awards were made. He says he missed Jeremiah Wright's incendiary sermons, too. The man has a gift for avoiding the wrong place at the right time.


See also

References

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080401/NATION01/603988821

  1. ^ Kushner, Harvey W. Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2002. ISBN 0761924086
  2. ^ "Byte Out of History: 1975 Terrorism Flashback: State Department Bombing." Federal Bureau of Investigation. U.S. Department of Justice. January 29, 2004.
  3. ^ a b Smith, Dinitia. "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen." New York Times. September 11, 2001.
  4. ^ Lemisch, Jesse. "Weather Underground Rises from the Ashes: They're Baack!" New Politics. Summer 2006.
  5. ^ Smith, Ben. "Obama Once Visited '60s Radicals." Politico. February 22, 2008.
  • The Revolution #63, Oct. 2006
  • Ayers, William. 2001. Fugitive Days: A Memoir. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-7124-2.
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