In defense of Bill Ayers

Since McCain and Sarah Palin still are talking about Bill Ayers, let me reprise this entry I originally wrote in July:

Some Republicans are trying to present Barack Obama as having “connections to terrorists.”  The real life reference of this fantasy is that Obama for a while served on the board of the same Chicago charity as Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground.

The Weather Underground were university kids who in the 1970s decided to declare war on the American government.  They blew up bombs in the Pentagon, in police offices and military installations.  They never killed anyone, except two of their own members.  Their bombs were pedagogical.  They wanted to “bring the war home,” and show Americans what kinds of crimes that were committed in their name.  “To live a regular, American, middle-class life, while your country is murdering millions of people,” says Ayers in a documentary I show students every semester, “is itself a kind of violence.”

I don’t like bombs.  Nasty people — the IRA, Muslim extremists, nail bombers — were constantly trying to blow us up when we lived in London and I didn’t like it one bit.  Still it always surprises me why people are so ready to accept government sponsored bombings without any questions.  Although I reject the methods, I fully sympathize with the moral outrage which guided Ayers in 1970.  I also think his crimes were, and are, lesser than the crimes of the American government.  Bush has more blood on his hands.

It’s interesting what happened to the Weather Underground.  Half of them are still in prison; the other half are university professors — demonstrating that prisons and universities are the two places where societies keep their misfits.  As for Bill Ayers, he is today a professor of Education at the University of illinois (and actually a very respected, and respectable, member of the community).

In defense of Bill Ayers

Since McCain and Sarah Palin still are talking about Bill Ayers, let me reprise this entry I originally wrote in July:

Some Republicans are trying to present Barack Obama as having “connections to terrorists.”  The real life reference of this fantasy is that Obama for a while served on the board of the same Chicago charity as Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground.

The Weather Underground were university kids who in the 1970s decided to declare war on the American government.  They blew up bombs in the Pentagon, in police offices and military installations.  They never killed anyone, except two of their own members.  Their bombs were pedagogical.  They wanted to “bring the war home,” and show Americans what kinds of crimes that were committed in their name.  “To live a regular, American, middle-class life, while your country is murdering millions of people,” says Ayers in a documentary I show students every semester, “is itself a kind of violence.”

I don’t like bombs.  Nasty people — the IRA, Muslim extremists, nail bombers — were constantly trying to blow us up when we lived in London and I didn’t like it one bit.  Still it always surprises me why people are so ready to accept government sponsored bombings without any questions.  Although I reject the methods, I fully sympathize with the moral outrage which guided Ayers in 1970.  I also think his crimes were, and are, lesser than the crimes of the American government.  Bush has more blood on his hands.

It’s interesting what happened to the Weather Underground.  Half of them are still in prison; the other half are university professors — demonstrating that prisons and universities are the two places where societies keep their misfits.  As for Bill Ayers, he is today a professor of Education at the University of illinois (and actually a very respected, and respectable, member of the community).