'60s Radical Bill Ayers Now Mainstream

Washington Post: Obama Was Asked About Former Weather Underground Member At Debate

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Peter Slevin.

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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.

[dorlockt]

Hussein is getting destroyed because of Ayers. Can''t wait to see Hillary come out on top, so McCain can stamp her out.

[mudrose-2009]

Check out the jackshite screaming 40 years of Clinton rapping woman. Is there anyone on that side of the aisle that hasn''t done something to woman? What, Clintoid is the exception!

The party of murder, corruption, death and this bozo screams about Clintoid rapping woman. Hahahaha.

[mudrose-2009]

Gee isn''t it nice that a scumbag like this is allowed to teach the young his radical philosophy? Should we call this piece of ***** Professor? Of course, it''s what our universities are full of. This is the kind of ***** that Effendi Snob-oma hangs out with and then, of course, he was only eight when then scumbag was blowing up the Pentagon. Seems to warmed up to him nicely after that.

[taddles-2009]

"Search the cbs seach box "bad company"

Posted by obama8years at 10:02 PM : Apr 20, 2008"


Still trying to pawn of that Canadian free press piece of garbage. Don''t you have anything else?

Oh look, Obama''s up another point on Hillary in Penn.

[taddles-2009]

"is not an Entitlement Program.

Posted by truth-hurts at 10:57 PM : Apr 20, 2008"


LOL, you just have nothing better to do than to spew your racist garbage do you.

Scary how fast time goes by as you get old isn''t it.

[dante805]

Make money SHORT the NYT and WPO stocks - this yellow journalism is ruining the newspaper industry. And I''m laughing all the way to the bank. NYT and WPO are tanking just like their revenue, readers, and advertisers.

[dante805]

Can the Post write any more articles trying to help explain Obama pathetic excuses. More Yellow Journalism from the worst paper in VA DC and MD. Obama is a hypocrite of the Nth degree. He hates the Death Penalty -but loves abortion. He would rtaher have his daughters get an abortion than be "punished" with a baby. Face it - Obama is a Big City Liberal and can''t relate to middle America. His bowling says a lot. He can''t even meet and greet in a diner. You sheeple need to look at who your voting for. A hater - an elitist - a Liberal - a socialist plain and simple. Say NO to the Obamination.

[blackspirit3]

40 YEARS OF CLINTON RAPPING WOMEN

A 1969 charge by a Eileen Wellstone, said Clinton assaulted her after she met him at a pub near the Oxford University campus where the future President was a student.
In 1972, a 22-year-old woman told campus police at Yale University that she was sexually assaulted by Clinton, who was a law student at the college.
In 1974, a female student at the University of Arkansas complained that then-law professor Bill Clinton groped her and forced his hand inside her blouse
Broaddrick, a volunteer in Clinton''s attorney general campaign, said he raped her in 1978;
From 1978-1980, Arkansas State troopers assigned to protect the governor reported seven complaints from women who said Clinton forced, or attempted to force, himself on them sexually.
Elizabeth Ward, the Miss Arkansas who won the Miss America crown in 1982, told friends she was forced by Clinton to have *** with him shortly after she won her state crown.
Paula Corbin, an Arkansas state worker, filed a sexual harassment case against Clinton the then-governor exposed himself and demanded oral ***.
Sandra Allen James, President Clinton invited her to his hotel room during a political trip to the nation''s capital in 1991, pinned her against the wall and stuck his hand up her dress.
Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, reported that Clinton grabbed her, fondled her breast and pressed her hand against his genitals during an Oval Office meeting in November, 1993.

[chitown639]

The Presidency

is not an Entitlement Program.


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Posted by truth-hurts

Its pathetic that you are so resentful of minorities that you use every opportunity to take a swipe at them with your typical narrow-minded racist views...it must suck being you...lol

[cattlekate]

For those youngsters who would like to get a feel as to what it was like - please rent The Weather Underground.

Those days were painful and it is a hard documentary to watch if you were there, then, but the movie accurately catches the mood of the times.

[truth-hurts]

Obama followers should prepare themselves

for the worst. And remember, The Presidency

is not an Entitlement Program.

[obama8years]

OBAMA AND REV WRIGHT SUPPORT HAMAS..NOW WHAT WE DO?

%u201CI can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,%u201D said Obama. So then it is clear that Obama believes that Wright%u2019s ideas represent the black community and black experience in America when they represent only the radicalized fringe of black America that wants to aid America%u2019s enemies abroad. It is doubtful many black Americans who served proudly in the US military feel the same as Wright on this issue.
%u2028What is more, militant Islamists see a potential to sow internal problems and promote their fascist goals in the US by trying to divide the American black community against the US government. Whereas blacks have been exploited in the past, this is now seen as a way to achieve the goals of expanding the Muslim ummah inside the US from in the Middle East. That is why Libya gives money to Farrakhan and why the ISM and Sabeel work with Reverend Wright whose personal interpretations of Christianity are entrenched in Obama%u2019s mind as the True Word of Christianity. Wright actually visited Mohammar Ghaddafi in Libya with Farrakhan in the past.

[obama8years]

VOTE FOR OBAMA IS A VOTE FOR RADICALISM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= d5SEsKPLZ

canadafreepress.com/index.php/ article/2462

Search the cbs seach box "bad company"

[popstom1]

Hello BlKPrz

[rowdytexan2]

Newsmax/Zogby Poll: Clinton
Edge Continues to Expand in PA
UTICA, New York %u2013 The final weekend before tomorrow%u2019s important primary election in
Pennsylvania was good for New York%u2019s Hillary Clinton, as she made a definitive move toward
victory over rival Illinois%u2019 Barack Obama, a fresh Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll
shows.
She gained two points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, and she now leads
48% to 42%, the latest polling shows. Meanwhile, the undecideds dropped by two points. Her edge
was three points yesterday but had wobbled within a tight margin. Clinton%u2019s advantage is still
within the margin of error, but she is close to getting beyond it as Election Day looms.

[nancy971]

"A new Zogby tracking poll shows Sen. Hillary Clinton remains barely ahead of Sen. Barack Obama leading up to Tuesday%u2019s presidential primary in Pennsylvania.
Clinton%u2019s advantage is just three points, 46% to 43%, but within the survey%u2019s margin of error. She had a five point edge in yesterday%u2019s poll."

http://agonist.org/schecter/?p=9076

[nancy971]

"Among Pennsylvania students who will vote or have voted in a Democratic primary in any state, Sen. Barack Obama leads Sen. Hillary Clinton, 71% to 28%, and among those who intend to vote in the Pennsylvania primary, Obama leads by a nearly identical margin of 71% to 29%." http://agonist.org/schecter/?p=9031 (What does this mean? I believe it means that the country is evolving. The old guard is ending and the young people want a politician who is not of the same ilk of his parents or grandparents. Sen. Obama is the future of the Democratic Party and Sen. Obama may very well be our next Potus).

[rowdywicca]

Reckon he''s done now?

[kstar42]

Go home Hillary; drop out with your head up high. Unless of course you''''re ducking sniper fire again.



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Posted by RowdyTexas2 at 07:57 PM : Apr 20, 2008

sounds like Omar to me...did you get kicked off for spamming?

[rowdywicca]

Posted by RowdyWicca at 07:51 PM : Apr 20, 2008

NO he''''s sitting in his van at a flee market with his laptop smoking a joint laughing thinking he has us fooled.


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Posted by kstar42 at 07:52 PM : Apr 20, 2008

ROFL!