The Ayers Connection
"Obama's political career was launched in a 1995 meeting at Ayers' home."
Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, April 26, 2008
By now all non-comatose readers are aware that Senator Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright has been spewing crackpot racist theories from his pulpit, such as that AIDS was invented by the US government to kill "people of color."
But the senator's connection to William Ayers is much less known, even though more interesting. Krauthammer refers to Ayers in his column as an "unrepentant terrorist." But who is William Ayers, and is that a fair characterization of the man?
He was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in 1944, the son of wealthy and rising utility executive Thomas G Ayers, who in 1973 became the CEO of Commonwealth Edison (1). While attending the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, William (Bill) Ayers joined the Students for a Democratic Society (2) or SDS, a leftist student group which became increasingly radical as the war in Vietnam escalated.
SDS organized protests at university campuses across America in the 1960's. The opposition to the Vietnam War began at the most elite schools, such as Ann Arbor, Madison, Berkeley, and Harvard and spread to second-tier campuses . Many of the early organizers were veterans of the civil rights movement, and were committed to non-violence. The protests escalated from rallies to marches to obstruction of military recruiting to takeover of university buildings. SDS, together with other radical student groups, organized a stupendous demonstration at the Pentagon on October 21, 1967, that was immortalized in Norman Mailer's book Armies of the Night. As the war and draft-calls escalated, the demonstrations became more and more confrontational. Many protesters were beaten and gassed by police; soon all pretense of non-violence was abandoned and protesters began fighting back.
By time Bill Ayers graduated from the University of Michigan in June, 1968, he was a rising leader in SDS. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota had driven President Lyndon Johnson from the race for the 1968 Democratic nomination, but he had lost to Senator Robert F Kennedy in the California Democratic Primary on June 4. Shortly after claiming victory in the primary, Kennedy was assassinated. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who publicly supported President Johnson on the War (despite his private misgivings) was then certain to be nominated by the Party at its convention in Chicago the last week of August.
Antiwar protesters flooded Chicago the week before the Convention, and frequently clashed with city police force under Mayor Richard J Daley. When a large mob of them tried to march to the Convention site, they were beaten and gassed by police before an international TV audience. Humphrey, dogged by antiwar protesters at every public appearance during the Fall campaign, narrowly lost to Richard Nixon.
For the antiwar movement, working through the American political process to end the War had failed. When SDS convened in Chicago in June of 1969, Ayers and a number of his comrades had already chosen the course of revolutionary violence against the American government. SDS splintered into several factions, of which the most militant chose the moniker "Weatherman" after a Bob Dylan song.(3)
Unlike the majority of SDS members, who had turned to community organizing, the Weatherman faction decided to blow-up government buildings. They sought to avoid hurting anyone by timing their bombs to explode after midnight, when the buildings would be empty. But those who choose violence are often unable to control it; in 1970 three Weatherman members were killed when a bomb they were making went off in townhouse in Greenwich Village, New York City. Among the dead was Diana Oughton, a young woman from a privileged family, who was then Bill Ayers' girlfriend.
In the wake of the explosion, Ayers and some associates "went underground" to avoid the authorities. He married fellow fugitive Bernardine Dohrn (4) and became the father of two children. In 1981 all charges against Ayers were dropped by the federal government due to prosecutorial misconduct. He pursued graduate study in education at Columbia University, where he earned the degree of Ed. D . in 1987.
Ayers and Dohrn returned to Chicago, where he became a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1995 he was chosen by Mayor Richard M Daley (son of the mayor who had controlled the police in 1968) to lead the city's effort to reform the Chicago Public Schools. It was about this time that Professor Ayers met Barack Obama in the Hyde Park (U of Chicago) neighborhood and helped launched the young lawyer's political career.
If you did not live through the Vietnam era, it is hard to understand the passions that drove sons and daughters of upper-class families to bomb government buildings. Unlike the Hamas and Al Qaida bombers of today, they did not intend to kill people, but some did (5). Perhaps the Islamic bombers of our time have given the term "terrorist" a bad name.
"Would you even shake his (Ayers') hand?" Krauthammer asks. The current Mayor Daley would, although perhaps his father would have refused. Yitzchak Rabin shook the hand of a terrorist named Arafat whose bombs killed people on purpose. If I were introduced to (Distinguished) Professor William Ayers, I would shake his hand. So I cannot blame Barack Obama for grasping it in 1995.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Wikipedia.
(2) Formerly the Student League for Industrial Democracy, an offshoot of a leftist labor group. SLID became SDS at Port Huron, Michigan in 1962.
(3) "You don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing." The "wind" apparently refers to revolutionary fervor.
(4) She graduated from Whitefish Bay High School in 1959 and the University of Chicago in 1963 (my college class). Described as a "sex queen and street fighter" by Todd Gitlin in Coming Apart: An Informal History of the Sixties, she is now on the faculty of Northwestern University Law School.
(5) Another antiwar radical group entitled "The New Years Gang" blew up the Army Math Research Center at UW-Madison about 4 AM on August 24, 1970, killing a graduate student who was working there all night.
Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, April 26, 2008
By now all non-comatose readers are aware that Senator Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright has been spewing crackpot racist theories from his pulpit, such as that AIDS was invented by the US government to kill "people of color."
But the senator's connection to William Ayers is much less known, even though more interesting. Krauthammer refers to Ayers in his column as an "unrepentant terrorist." But who is William Ayers, and is that a fair characterization of the man?
He was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in 1944, the son of wealthy and rising utility executive Thomas G Ayers, who in 1973 became the CEO of Commonwealth Edison (1). While attending the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, William (Bill) Ayers joined the Students for a Democratic Society (2) or SDS, a leftist student group which became increasingly radical as the war in Vietnam escalated.
SDS organized protests at university campuses across America in the 1960's. The opposition to the Vietnam War began at the most elite schools, such as Ann Arbor, Madison, Berkeley, and Harvard and spread to second-tier campuses . Many of the early organizers were veterans of the civil rights movement, and were committed to non-violence. The protests escalated from rallies to marches to obstruction of military recruiting to takeover of university buildings. SDS, together with other radical student groups, organized a stupendous demonstration at the Pentagon on October 21, 1967, that was immortalized in Norman Mailer's book Armies of the Night. As the war and draft-calls escalated, the demonstrations became more and more confrontational. Many protesters were beaten and gassed by police; soon all pretense of non-violence was abandoned and protesters began fighting back.
By time Bill Ayers graduated from the University of Michigan in June, 1968, he was a rising leader in SDS. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota had driven President Lyndon Johnson from the race for the 1968 Democratic nomination, but he had lost to Senator Robert F Kennedy in the California Democratic Primary on June 4. Shortly after claiming victory in the primary, Kennedy was assassinated. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who publicly supported President Johnson on the War (despite his private misgivings) was then certain to be nominated by the Party at its convention in Chicago the last week of August.
Antiwar protesters flooded Chicago the week before the Convention, and frequently clashed with city police force under Mayor Richard J Daley. When a large mob of them tried to march to the Convention site, they were beaten and gassed by police before an international TV audience. Humphrey, dogged by antiwar protesters at every public appearance during the Fall campaign, narrowly lost to Richard Nixon.
For the antiwar movement, working through the American political process to end the War had failed. When SDS convened in Chicago in June of 1969, Ayers and a number of his comrades had already chosen the course of revolutionary violence against the American government. SDS splintered into several factions, of which the most militant chose the moniker "Weatherman" after a Bob Dylan song.(3)
Unlike the majority of SDS members, who had turned to community organizing, the Weatherman faction decided to blow-up government buildings. They sought to avoid hurting anyone by timing their bombs to explode after midnight, when the buildings would be empty. But those who choose violence are often unable to control it; in 1970 three Weatherman members were killed when a bomb they were making went off in townhouse in Greenwich Village, New York City. Among the dead was Diana Oughton, a young woman from a privileged family, who was then Bill Ayers' girlfriend.
In the wake of the explosion, Ayers and some associates "went underground" to avoid the authorities. He married fellow fugitive Bernardine Dohrn (4) and became the father of two children. In 1981 all charges against Ayers were dropped by the federal government due to prosecutorial misconduct. He pursued graduate study in education at Columbia University, where he earned the degree of Ed. D . in 1987.
Ayers and Dohrn returned to Chicago, where he became a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1995 he was chosen by Mayor Richard M Daley (son of the mayor who had controlled the police in 1968) to lead the city's effort to reform the Chicago Public Schools. It was about this time that Professor Ayers met Barack Obama in the Hyde Park (U of Chicago) neighborhood and helped launched the young lawyer's political career.
If you did not live through the Vietnam era, it is hard to understand the passions that drove sons and daughters of upper-class families to bomb government buildings. Unlike the Hamas and Al Qaida bombers of today, they did not intend to kill people, but some did (5). Perhaps the Islamic bombers of our time have given the term "terrorist" a bad name.
"Would you even shake his (Ayers') hand?" Krauthammer asks. The current Mayor Daley would, although perhaps his father would have refused. Yitzchak Rabin shook the hand of a terrorist named Arafat whose bombs killed people on purpose. If I were introduced to (Distinguished) Professor William Ayers, I would shake his hand. So I cannot blame Barack Obama for grasping it in 1995.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Wikipedia.
(2) Formerly the Student League for Industrial Democracy, an offshoot of a leftist labor group. SLID became SDS at Port Huron, Michigan in 1962.
(3) "You don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing." The "wind" apparently refers to revolutionary fervor.
(4) She graduated from Whitefish Bay High School in 1959 and the University of Chicago in 1963 (my college class). Described as a "sex queen and street fighter" by Todd Gitlin in Coming Apart: An Informal History of the Sixties, she is now on the faculty of Northwestern University Law School.
(5) Another antiwar radical group entitled "The New Years Gang" blew up the Army Math Research Center at UW-Madison about 4 AM on August 24, 1970, killing a graduate student who was working there all night.
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 3:02 PM
2 comments
