CHICAGO, April 18, 2008
'60s Radical Bill Ayers Now Mainstream
Washington Post: Obama Was Asked About Former Weather Underground Member At Debate
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Bill Ayers is shown in a Chicago Police mug shot in August 1968. (AP)
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Obama Grilled At Debate
Barack Obama was in the hot seat, grilled over his preacher and patriotism at a televised debate that drew criticism for dividing an already fragmented Democratic party. Dean Reynolds reports.
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In the 1960s, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn saw themselves as urban guerrillas who just might be able to overthrow the U.S. government and force an end to the Vietnam War. They were members of the Weather Underground, a radical offshoot of the antiwar movement, who went into hiding for a decade after a bomb accidentally exploded, killing three members of the group.
Nearly 30 years after surrendering to police, Ayers and Dohrn, both in their 60s, are tenured university professors whose work on school reform and juvenile justice have won them bipartisan respect.
Ayers is an informal adviser to Mayor Richard M. Daley and has been awarded more than $50 million in charitable grants for his promotion of small schools as a solution to a crisis in education. Dohrn lectures widely on children's law and serves on a variety of boards and committees. Together, they have raised three boys in the intellectual haven of Hyde Park, where Sen. Barack Obama is a neighbor.
For months, their connection to the Democratic presidential candidate -- they hosted a gathering for him in 1995 when he first ran for the state Senate and later contributed $200 to his reelection campaign -- has been a source of growing anger among conservatives. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign picked up on the connection to suggest skeletons in Obama's closet. On Wednesday night in a televised debate with her rival, Clinton (N.Y.) mentioned it as "an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising."
In Chicago, however, Ayers is considered so mainstream that Daley issued a statement on Thursday praising him as a "distinguished professor of education" and a "valued member of the Chicago community."
"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago, but I remember that period well," said Daley, an Obama supporter whose father, Richard J. Daley, was a favorite target of the antiwar movement when he was mayor in the '60s. "It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep refighting 40-year-old battles."
Their pasts have hardly escaped Ayers and Dohrn. After Sept. 11, 2001, alumni at the universities where the two teach protested their presence and said the couple were unrepentant. Ayers is an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Dohrn is a law professor at Northwestern University.
Yet among politicians and activists in Chicago, what happened in the 1960s has long been overshadowed by what colleagues consider their mainstream liberal good works.
This is a community that has regularly elected former Black Panther Bobby Rush (D) to Congress and mostly sees Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as the onetime heart of an established African American church with thousands of members.
"It's kind of laughable for people who have worked with Bernadine and Bill in the most boring and mundane settings and recognize that they're absolutely upstanding establishment citizens today" said Lawrence C. Marshall, a Stanford University law professor. He recalled a juvenile justice project: "Judges who were lifelong ardent conservatives had no trouble recognizing that the work that Bernadine and Bill are now doing is completely divorced from anything in their background."
Ayers and Dohrn did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment. In an April 6 posting on his blog, Ayers described his reaction to his intermittent celebrity as conservative pundits hammered him for his Weather Underground past and his comment in a New York Times profile, published by coincidence on Sept. 11, 2001, that he did not regret his militant tactics.
"Day in and day out," he wrote, "I go about my business, I hang out with my kids and my grandchildren, take care of the elders, I go to work, I teach and I write, I organize and I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful movement for peace and social justice."
The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for roughly a dozen bombings. Targets included the Pentagon, the Capitol, police stations, banks and courthouses. Beyond the three conspirators killed in 1970 when a bomb exploded prematurely, no one was injured in a campaign defined by what one critic has called "immensely bad ideas and dreadful tactics."
Ayers was a son of privilege -- his father was the chairman of the utility Commonwealth Edison -- who decided in the late 1960s that violence was needed to transform the country. After he disappeared, he was charged with joining the bombing conspiracy and with crossing state lines to incite a riot. The charges were later dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Ayers and Dohrn turned themselves in shortly after their second son was born. They raised Chesa Boudin, the son of Weather Underground parents imprisoned for a 1981 Brink's robbery that left three dead. Boudin won a Rhodes Scholarship in 2002.
Dohrn pleaded guilty to a state charge and later served seven months for refusing to give a handwriting sample to federal authorities. She told a reporter that the FBI already had a sample, and that she considered grand juries "illegal and coercive."
Stanley Fish, a former university dean who worked with Ayers, recalled eclectic gatherings at their home. The guests "might be academics, they might be people working in the city in a variety of ways, they might be corporate management people," he said. "There was no sense of a party line or a particular ideology that was necessary to be invited."
When Obama was asked about Ayers during Wednesday's debate, he described him as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." He said he does not exchange ideas with him "on a regular basis."
The two men served for three years on the board of the Woods Fund, an anti-poverty group. The board, which Obama has since left, was small and collegial, said chair Laura Washington, who served with them. It met four times a year for a half-day, mostly to approve grants, she said. The atmosphere was "friendly but businesslike."
Washington praised Ayers as "an admired and respected member of Chicago's civic community" and "a very big proponent of self-determination in education: Community schools and for the community to have a role in improving education."
Under fire on Wednesday, Obama questioned the relevance of Ayers's past to his candidacy: "The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense."
When Clinton disputed that assertion, Obama noted that President Bill Clinton had commuted the prison terms of Weather Underground members Susan L. Rosenberg, arrested with 740 pounds of dynamite and weapons, and Linda Sue Evans, convicted of participating in eight bombings, including the one at the Capitol.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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See all 363 CommentsWould Obama pass or fail a security clearance?
What does everyone think
Ties with ISM, HAMAS, AYERS, REV WRIGHT, FARAKAHN, MILLION MAN MARCH, BLACK PANTHERS, AL WADA,Wheels of Justice Tour, Joseph Carr a.k.a. Joseph Smith, Hannah Mermelstein, Anna Baltzer and others.
SO I present the question again , Can OBAMA get security clearance. Would you Hire Him?
I get it, since this guy was tied to the empty suit the msm had to justify him. I see. So, now he teaches in a univeristy. Is that supposed to put our minds at ease???
It must be so nice to have the backing of soros and his billions and the total blind support of the media.
Obama is endorsed by Ted Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy is a catholic.
The pope is the head of the catholics.
The pope was a member of the nazi youth.
This is ironclad, conclusive proof, that Obama is directly associated to Hitler!!!!
DUH!
Obama 54, Clinton 35 false of course every other poll shows Obama losing ..
From the same news rag that reported falsely that guards had flushed the Muslim Koran down toilets at Guantanamo and erupted violence in Afghanistan until the were forced to retract the story as false, the same executive now is at the Sr. VP of the GE''s NBC MSNBC news Obama Netwrok. Mark Whitaker
That same executive and Harvard Grad is now GE%u2019s Sr VP of NBC and MSNBC news also referred to as the Obama channel.
What elements are really at work here?????
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Posted by Xlib at 05:02 PM : Apr 18, 2008
+ report abuse
Oh PLEASE!! Your a FASCIST!! Give us a break! Sieg Heil Grand Wizard!!
It must be so nice to have the backing of soros and his billions and the total blind support of the media.
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Posted by Xlib at 05:01 PM : Apr 18, 2008
+ report abuse
ROFLMAO You pathetic Fascist are SOOOO funny! Have you looked at YOUR own side of this situation... you know those thugs who were locked up during Watergate??? ROFLMAO I mean you freaks are so desperate for a Wedge issue you want to hold something someone did over FORTY YEARS ago against them... this in the face of who and what they are today to the city and the community.... Good luck swastika breath!! ROFLMAO Sieg Heil Bush!! ROFLMAO You know you really aren''t the sharpest tool in the old shed don''t you??? ROFLMAO
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Posted by Obama8years at 04:48 PM : Apr 18, 2008
+ report abuse
OF COURSE you pathetic Swastika toten moron!! GROW UP for God''s sake... it''s NOT going to work. YOU freaks are going to HAVE to run this election on YOUR record... to bad huh??? ROFLMAO
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Posted by pepperp1 at 05:13 PM : Apr 18, 2008
+ report abuse
LOL I can tell you what ISN''T at work here.. YOUR BRAIN!! ROFLMAO Sieg Heil Bush ROFLMAO Dumb as a box of rocks!! ROFLMAO
Obama is endorsed by Ted Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy is a catholic.
The pope is the head of the catholics.
The pope was a member of the nazi youth.
This is ironclad, conclusive proof, that Obama is directly associated to Hitler!!!!
DUH!
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Posted by hungry1968 at 05:04 PM : Apr 18, 2008
+ report abuse
ROFLMAO Makes as much sense doesn''t it??? ROFLMAO Sieg Heil Bush!
I don''t usually trust just one poll. I usually go to realclearpolitics.com - they have all of the major pollsters results listed there, they are completely unbiased, and if you look at the links on the left side of the page, you have MANY different head-to-head options to look at.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/
Posted by MCVet at 05:21 PM : Apr 18, 2008
Exactly - I don''t know where these clowns come up with their garbage.
Ayers supposedly teaches English at Chicago University.
Ayers, ENglish 101-Vocabulary Test 1
United States of America = Hate these bustwards, kill all of ''em, the rich SOB''s...
bomb = What you use to kill all these sorry SOB''s.
Protest = Kill all these SOB''s.
Anarchy = Kill the SOB''s.
Beligerism = I wish I''d have killed more of the SOB''s!
Obama...This guy was just somebody in my neighborhood!!!
Ya RIGHT!
Hillary supported the pardons of terrorists who killed police officers. Obama has a too-much ammo he could bring up about Hilly -everyone knows it. But this won''t happen because he has won this nomination already. Barack places the DFL''s interests above his own -unlike Hilly.
If only he was some kind of radical today, probably the most radical he gets is in currying special favors from the crooks who run his hedge fund investments. This is a BOOMER, folks, read that as hypocrite and suck-up.
These two women are not close friends or associates, no hosted campaign events on behalf of the Clintons. Nor co-hosted training events with these two women.
Blow it out your ear, Obama.
Ties with ISM, HAMAS, AYERS, REV WRIGHT, FARAKAHN, MILLION MAN MARCH, BLACK PANTHERS, AL WADA,Wheels of Justice Tour, Joseph Carr a.k.a. Joseph Smith, Hannah Mermelstein, Anna Baltzer and others.
Posted by Obama8years at 04:48 PM : Apr 18, 2008
-Obama8years, I like what you mention here. You are kind of condemning a huge buncha people, because they think differently from the huge hurd of NeoCons Republican sheeps, going their way into slaughterhouses readied by their Church and Elite leaders. Those sheeps are ready to jump down the cliff if ordered so.
-Bush was a delinquant and did stupid things until he was in his late forties, well not really, I''d say until yesterday... Just because he''s been declared bornagain and blessed by the church, doesn''t make him a saint... does it? Afterall google: liarpresident.com and see for yourself...
I''m not the one you need to fear. You need to fear what the presidency is going to look like if he gets in it!
Mr. Bush''s security clearance was bought and paid for by his father, as well as his presidency. He wasn''t put in office by the people, but by Poppa Bush''s bought and sold Supreme Court Justices.
Mr. Obama is being put in office by people who refused to reserach him and just naively take his words for everything!
This very same Republicans brand the Ayers as terrorists because of they opposed the infamous Vietnam war.
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are today very respected couple and civic leaders involved in noble community services. But for Hillary Clinton to echo the views of the conservative Republicans with regard to the Ayers only smacks of her hypocrisy and opportunism. Hypocrisy because she is silent about husband''s pardon of two "terrorists" of the Ayers'' Whether Underground movement! Did Bill pardoned them to become popular among the anti-war baby boomers? Now Hillary joins the chorus of the Republicans only because it serves her cause to run down her opponent Obama.
Maybe the Clintons should quit the Democratic Party and join the G.O.P. It certainly would be a comfort zone for them. After all, didn''t she herself campaigned for Barry Goldwater, the doyen of rightwinng conservatism?
University Professor ? Who cares - so was that jerk that said the 3000 in the towers deserved it.
Just another social drop out that is trying to clear his name.
Too bad it wasn''t four that were killed by the bomb accident 30 years ago.
Human garbage.
Only the results count. It''s all part of the manipulation of American society by those who benefit by this behavior. Usually it''s the rich, the famous and those who control our economy to a large extent.
and their children. Vote Democratic this Fall, and celebrate 1/20/09 when America returns to Liberty and Justice for All.
And he can''t deny it.
Obama 54%
Clinton 35%
The GOP have to be pissing their pants to see Barack survive actually GAIN points from his rival every time the competition tries to take him down with a hokey ''scary'' story. That doesn''t bode well that the general election hasn''t even started and ''clean campaign'' McCain has already escalated the fear-mongering up to trying to link Obama to Hamas. GOP really have nothing else in the positive column to work with, do you?
- warmongering, and touchy about it
- budget they can''t balance, scrimping on veteran care
- let them eat cake job creation program
- $$$ social programs . . . for Iraq!
- free trade so free France is getting our multi-million $ defense contracts
- etc
Clinton''s got 14 supers since April 1, and Obama''s gotten 13.
Still a very tight race.
Posted by RowdyTexan2
My heart kind of goes out to her, because it must be frustrating as all heck to know that if she could just get rid of the new guy on the scene (Barack), she could totally kick but in the general. I''m still hoping she gets VP which''ll still give her access to running things, and keep a future run a real option - would seem the most fair with this race being so close . . .
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Posted by jerryz7936 at 08:02 PM : Apr 18, 2008
Actually President Clinton pardoned two women who had served many many years of sentences excessive for the crimes, by petition. These women were not their close associates, friends, or campaign supporters.
Unlike Mr. Obama, who is close friends and associates with the Ayers and Dohrn who are the people who actually carried out those crimes. Mr. Ayers held campaign fund raisers in his home for Mr. Obama.
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Posted by SamTheTVCat at 08:22 PM : Apr 18, 2008
Oh, I think I''d rather see her in the top spot directing things, instead of doing the work while Obama gets credit for it.
One things for sure, he can''t do it without her.
Posted by RowdyTexan2
I think that kind of arrogance, break from reality, and inability to put the party ahead of herself with compromise is what costed her the nomination. jmo though
I get it, since this guy was tied to the empty suit the msm had to justify him. I see. So, now he teaches in a univeristy. Is that supposed to put our minds at ease???
It must be so nice to have the backing of soros and his billions and the total blind support of the media.
Posted by Xlib at 05:01 PM : Apr 18, 2008
I suppose it would be nice if the President of the United States did not give you a pardon first, right Scooter. Anyway, all charges against Ayers were dropped.
Let''''s review;
- Self-proclaimed racial uniter / healer
- Attended racially divisive church 20 years.
Embraces Wright as mentor
- Kept changing story, when attempt to
work both sides of table blew up on him
Prosecution rests...
Yeah, and judge and jury laugh him out of the courtroom
Posted by JISantiago at 06:38 PM : Apr 18, 2008
You and Obama can''t have it both ways!!! Either those pardons of former Weather Underground activists is OK and therefore Obama''s connections with Ayers and Dohrn are OK------OR------Obama''s connections are NOT OK and the pardons are NOT OK.
Which is it ??? Either they''re both guilty or neither is guilty.
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