A little insight into the real Bill Ayers
It’s understandable how both presidential campaigns are handling the phony issue of Sen. Barack Obama’s connection with Bill Ayers, a University of Illinois education professor who, 40 years ago, helped found the militant anti-war group, the Weathermen.
McCain is blanketing Wisconsin and much of the rest of the nation with a massive automated telephone campaign claiming Obama “has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans.”
The reason McCain is spending so much money on deceptive charges that have nothing to do with the real issues in the presidential race is that McCain is on the wrong side of the real issues in the presidential race.
Obama, on the other hand, can only point out he was 8 years old when the Weathermen engaged in radical anti-war activities. And that his association with Ayers amounted to sitting on two boards distributing funds to improve Chicago schools and to support worthwhile community projects.
What Obama is not free to say during the presidential campaign is what anyone who knows the work of Bill Ayers over the past 25 years knows to be true—that Bill Ayers is a good man doing good work and no one running for president should ever have to apologize for associating with him.
If Obama were to utter that truth, it would immediately appear in another negative McCain ad, “Obama praises terrorist bomber!”
Since it’s politically impossible for Obama to give Ayers the accolades he deserves right now, allow me. I know Bill Ayers a little bit. I don’t pal around with him or anything, as the know-nothing Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claims about Obama.
But I interviewed Ayers in the late ’90s when I was editor of Shepherd Express alternative weekly, after he published a book, “A Kind and Just Parent,” about the need for reform in the juvenile justice system.
Later, Ayers participated in a conference on criminal justice reform at UW-Milwaukee organized by my wife, Kit, who is executive director of the Benedict Center, an organization that advocates for fairness in the criminal justice system and effective community alternatives.
Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, an honors graduate from Whitefish Bay High School, know about criminal justice first hand. They lived in hiding for 11 years to avoid federal charges connected to the 1969 Days of Rage anti-war protest in Chicago.
As a Milwaukee Journal reporter, I covered the emergence of Ayers and Dohrn from the underground in 1981 when they turned themselves in to then States Attorney Richard Daley, the son of their ’60s nemesis.
All charges against the two ended with a legal whimper after Dohrn pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge and was fined $1,500.
How does all that square with McCain’s inflammatory charge that Ayers bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and killed Americans?
No such deaths were attributed to any bombs connected to Ayers. The so-called bombing of the Pentagon amounted to a small bomb placed in the drain of a restroom toilet. But in 1970, a townhouse in Greenwich Village where bombs were being assembled exploded. The Americans killed were three friends of Bill and Bernardine, idealists like themselves whose passion against the Vietnam War somehow began echoing the violence of the war makers.
That event, more than any other, helped shape the rest of Ayers’s life.
“My deepest regret,” Ayers told me in 1997, “is the townhouse explosion where three very, very dear people were killed. I feel culpable. I feel responsible. And I don’t know what to do about that responsibility except to live forward. To make a fairer, more just, more humane world as they would have.”
When McCain began demonizing Ayers, I checked to see what Ayers had written in our copy of his memoir, “Fugitive Days.” It says: “To Joel and Kit, With admiration for all you do for social justice, and with hope—wounded but alive—for a world at peace. Best wishes, Bill Ayers.”
The same to you, pal.
Joel McNally is a syndicated columnist. His e-mail address is jmcnally@wi.rr.com.
Oct 22, 2008 at 7:55 a.m.
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Joel makes a living because papers like the Gazette pay him. Why?
Oct 21, 2008 at 2:15 p.m.
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Joe the Plumber: How many media trucks camped out in front of his house, and intense scrutiny and public ridicule.
Bill Ayers: a public opinion piece written about how we've treated poor Mr. Ayers unfairly.
Give me a break!!
Oct 21, 2008 at 1 a.m.
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"The so-called bombing of the Pentagon amounted to a small bomb placed in the drain of a restroom toilet." Oh, that makes it OK then I guess?!!! McNally, Your an idiot!
Oct 20, 2008 at 11:44 p.m.
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i bet even jesus could forgive a 25 year old misdemeanor. its not like he's g gordon liddy for cryin out loud
Oct 20, 2008 at 9:17 p.m.
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shocking that mr. mcnulty has allowed this information to pass by and through his inate ability to use his thinking thinking skills and instead weakly passed into the realm of delusional acceptance. these obamafied people suffer from low self esteem or other such deficiencies and need to 'believe' that charisma will 'heal their souls'
Oct 20, 2008 at 9:07 p.m.
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OBAMA AND AYERS = SMOKE AND MIRRORS (PART 3)
I imagine you’ll say… so what! Even if Obama had a relationship as far back as his Columbia years, what does it matter? Well, I think it matters a lot for two reasons:
1) Obama has been less than forthcoming about his working relationship with Ayers, which begs the question: Why? Was Ayers one of Obama's mentors? If so, he would certainly do everything possible to cover his tracks.
2) Ayers is no "former radical". He continues to stand behind the communist (in his words: small "c") ideals of his youth, and, for example, has been to Venezuela four times to denounce “capitalist education” and support the rule of Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez: “La educacion es revolucion”! In other words, Ayers is still promoting the same Marxist-socialist ideas, except that brainwashing kids is now his preferred method.
By the way, his stepson, Chesa Boudin identified himself as a foreign-policy adviser intern to Venezuela's government in 2005 and had an office in the presidential palace! The last time Ayers spoke in Venezuela, Boudin translated his talk into Spanish. And who is Boudin? He’s the son of jailed Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin and grandson of Fidel Castro's personal attorney.
Maybe we should ask ourselves: why isn’t Obama afraid to speak directly to Chavez without preconditions? It’s because his friends have been speaking directly to Chavez for years. And remember in the last debate how Obama would not commit to a trade agreement with Columbia? Well, that wouldn’t be in Chavez’s interest at all!
By the way, this is NOT a Republican issue. These issues were being raised somewhat meekly during the Democratic primaries by Hillary, but are more critical now that the election looms. The media wasn’t following up then, and is outright dismissive now.
Can we say TROJAN HORSE… BIG TIME!
Oct 20, 2008 at 9:06 p.m.
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OBAMA AND AYERS = SMOKE AND MIRRORS (PART 2)
But can we go back still further? You obviously don’t trust close to $100 million to someone you don’t know. Let’s go back another 14 years to 1981.
As a student at Columbia University, Barack Obama was in New York at the same time as, guess who? Bill Ayers, our favorite domestic terrorist (sorry, anti-war activist)! Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983, but stayed in New York another two years; while Ayers attended Bank Street College (located near Columbia), earning a M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education there in 1984. Did Obama and Ayers make first contact in New York? It’s difficult to say, since Obama is less than forthcoming about his studies and subsequent employment in New York. Ayers continued his studies at Columbia and completed his Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in 1987, but it is unlikely that he resided in New York while doing his doctoral research, since from 1984 to 1988 his wife and fellow-radical, Bernardine Dohrn, worked for the prestigious Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin (rich family connections are always helpful, even when you're a leftist radical - Tom Ayers, Bill's dad, was president of Commonwealth Edison till 1980 and chairman of Northwestern University Board of Trustees till 1986). My guess would be that the Ayers couple resided together in Chicago from 1984, ...which is where Obama arrived in June of 1985. He applied for a job with the Development Communities Project Chicago’s South side. Three years later (Fall 1988) Obama entered Harvard Law School. How he was admitted and with what funding we don’t know. In any case, he would return to Chicago for the summers and in that first year worked as a summer associate at, you guessed it, the law firm of Sidley & Austin. That's where he met his wife, Michelle, who had become an associate at the firm in 1987, a year before Bernardine Dohrn left, to eventually take an adjunct professorship (no faculty approval required!) at Northwestern Law School (remember Bill's dad!).
Now we don’t know for sure whether there were any actual contacts between Obama and Ayers before 1995, although it seems highly likely. We certainly know that his future wife and Ayers’ wife were employed by the same law firm in 1987. That was the year Ayers completed his Ed. D. at Columbia and was asked by Mayor Richard M. Daley to assist him in the Chicago School Reform Project (their fathers, mayor Richard J. Daley, Sr. and Thomas Ayers were good friends!). In 1991 Michelle left Sidley & Austin to work as Assistant to Mayor Daley. The Obamas were married in 1992. Three years later Obama was chairman of Ayers’ Chicago Annenberg Project and poised to launch his political career.
Oct 20, 2008 at 9:05 p.m.
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OBAMA AND AYERS = SMOKE AND MIRRORS (PART 1)
As someone with roots in Eastern Europe, I have a sixth sense for leftist conspiracy. And what I’m seeing here concerns me VERY DEEPLY.
Obama’s contacts with Ayers certainly go back further than he would like us to believe. Let’s go back 11 years, for starters. “The writer” Barack Obama is mentioned in Ayers’ 1997 book, “A Kind and Just Parent” (on p. 82) and Barack Obama wrote a brief endorsement of the book on the pages of the Chicago Tribune (Dec. 27, 1997), along with his photo. But before that Obama and Ayers appeared together on a panel about juvenile justice organized by Michelle Obama on November 20, 1997. So 1997, contact is undisputable.
But let’s go further back. Barack Obama served as founding president and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995-1999, and continued serving on the board till 2002. From 1995 to 2001 Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop received from the CAC $1,056,162. Obama was also serving on the board of two other foundations (the Woods Fund of Chicago from 1993 and the Joyce Foundation from 1994). All three foundation together contributed just under $2 million dollars to Ayers’ ($1,968,718).
Oh and by the way, the Obama’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop shared the same office address from 1995 to 1998: 115 S. Sangamon Street (3rd Floor), Chicago, Illinois 60607. I should, of course, mention that it was Ayers who actually co-authored the grant proposal for the $98 million (combined public and matching private funds) Chicago Annenberg Challenge and hand-picked Obama to serve as founding director. So 1995, again, is indisputable, up close and personal!
Oct 20, 2008 at 8:20 p.m.
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McNally is definitely mentally handicapped. How he makes a living writing is beyond my comprehension.
Oct 20, 2008 at 7:34 p.m.
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Hehe. The moronic left. Moronic but dangerous. A few years ago McNally and his wife got robbed in their garage when they got out of their car. McNally wrote that he was sure glad that he or his wife had no guns (they don't like them) or someone could have been hurt.
Oct 20, 2008 at 7 p.m.
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So they killed themselves making bombs to be put WHERE Joel????
Oct 20, 2008 at 6:51 p.m.
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The group killed 6 New York Policeman. But, it was just a small bomb. What an idiot McNally is.
Oct 20, 2008 at 6:25 p.m.
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"The so-called bombing of the Pentagon amounted to a small bomb placed in the drain of a restroom toilet" McNally wrote. He might feel differently if he or one of his loved ones were seated there all those years ago. Does McNally believe that the toilet's destruction was all Ayers' was trying to achieve? So Ayers had an epiphany when the wrong people died in one of his group's explosions? They paid with their lives. Are we to accept that as Ayers' vicarious atonement? I doubt that McNally would be so forgiving of Timothy McVeigh if all he had managed to do was blow up a toilet and kill Terry Nichols in spite of his intent. Somehow I think, McNally would be amused at their ineptitude and outraged at their intent. Strange that he has so little outrage for Ayers. I wonder if McNally has bombed any toilets in support of "peace"?
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