Cynical Optimist

Bill Ayers in a known terrorist from the 60’s. He wasn’t just some random hippie that protested the war and got high. He blew stuff up. With bombs.

He’s unrepentent even as of 2001 when he told the New York Times, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.”

From Wikipedia:

Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As head of an SDS regional group, the “Jesse James Gang”, Ayers made decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy.

The groups Ayers headed in Detroit and Michigan became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weatherman. Between the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS.

“During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more extreme over the year [1969]“, former Weatherman member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001. Before this time, Ayers had become a roommate of and strong influence on Terry Robbins, who was two years younger and “came to idolize him”, Wilkerson wrote. From the summer of 1968 to summer 1969, the pair worked closely together, “appearing inseparable at most SDS conventions and meetings”, she wrote. The two competed over things small and large, “including the ability to come up with quick one-liners, quirky names, sexual conquests, street fighting ability, and eventually the ability to talk tough”, she wrote. As Ayers started glorifying violence more and more, Robbins was affected by it. “But while Ayers, according to what he writes, knew that his language, which increasingly glorified violence, was just show, Robbins was one of those who really believed all of it.” Robbins would later be killed while making a bomb.

In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected “Education Secretary”.

Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway. The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by Weatherman on October 6, 1970. Built yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast. He participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago that October, and in December was at the “War Council” meeting in Flint, Michigan.

The following year he “went underground” with several associates after the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers’ close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers girlfriend, Oughton, were killed when a nail bomb that was under construction exploded. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.

While underground, he and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations. By 1976 or 1977, with federal charges against both fugitives dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct (see COINTELPRO), Ayers was ready to turn himself in to authorities, but Dohrn remained reluctant until after she gave birth to two sons, one born in 1977, the other in 1980. “He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own”, she later said.

Ayers and Dohrn later became legal guardians to the son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin after the boy’s parents were arrested for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, it happens that Barack Obama has had a long term relationship with Ayers and his wife. The key to the story is Obama’s stated position that Ayers is just a “guy who lives in my neighborhood,” when, actually, the relationship is much deeper than that. Ayers and his wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, held a campaign event for Obama in 1995 at the Ayers home. This is supposedly where they first met, but the record, at this point, isn’t clear. At the time of this meeting Obama was already the chairman of a foundation, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers had formed. Obama served as chairman of the board for three years and continued as a member until the foundation was closed in 2001.

They also served together on the board of Woods Fund, another foundation. Obama was a director of the board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002. Ayers is still a member. This organization provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network in 2001, with a second grant of $35,000 in 2002. This organization was co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, an Arab who has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group. Khalidi also held at least one fundraiser for Obama. Source

Additionally, Ayers and Obama served on panels together at numerous speaking events throughout the years.

There are records which may reveal additional details of the relationship but they are being suppressed. As the Associated Press reported yesterday: source

WASHINGTON (AP) — The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama’s service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers.

The university’s Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material.

The university is “aggressively pursuing” an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is finalized, the collection will be made accessible to the public, the university said in a one-paragraph statement.

There was no indication when an agreement will be worked out. The university did not identify the donor who it said was concerned that the release not invade personal privacy.

The Obama campaign said the senator does not have control over these records or the ability to release them, adding that it has made many documents related to Obama’s life available to the public and that “we are pleased the university is pursuing an agreement that would make these records publicly available.”

On Monday, the National Review magazine posted an online article saying that the institution had initially declared that the records were open to inspection, but that the university subsequently reversed its position.

On Tuesday, the university said that there had been a misunderstanding about the status of the collection.

Ayers is an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who in his youth co-founded the Weatherman organization, later known as the Weather Underground Organization, which espoused violence as a necessity for political change.

In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was awarded nearly $50 million by a foundation to help reform Chicago schools.

Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Republicans have been highlighting his ties to Ayers through the group.

The Republican National Committee posted the National Review article on the RNC’s Web site.

In an interview, university spokesman Bill Burton said that the institution only recently was made aware that it did not have ownership, a requirement for making the collection public.

The owner notified the university about the absence of a signed ownership agreement last week.

“The donor’s only concerns regarding the collection are due to personnel information that could include names, confidential salary information and even Social Security numbers,” said the university spokesman.

Burton, who has no connection to the Obama campaign spokesman with the same name, said he was not authorized to identify the owner.

Obama was board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for three years starting in 1995 and he remained on the board until the project closed in 2001.

The $49.2 million was the largest private gift ever made to Chicago schools. The money went to 250 schools in one of the nation’s largest school districts.

During a primary debate in Philadelphia last October, Obama criticized rival Hillary Rodham Clinton over the release of presidential papers from the National Archives. Clinton said at the time that neither she nor husband Bill Clinton could do anything to speed the process of review at the Archives before papers from the Clinton era could become public.

Obama compared her record of public disclosure of records to that of the Bush administration, saying the country had “just gone through one of the most secretive administrations in our history.”

In March, edited versions of the former first lady’s appointment calendars were publicly released.

So, it’s apparent that Ayers is not just a “guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Obama’s attempts to minimize this relationship are disturbing and calls into question his truthfullness on the matter. The suppression of the records, even if only temporarily while they are cleansed, is equally disturbing.

Combine all that with Obama’s relationships with other radicals, such as his Paster Rev. Wright, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and who knows who else, and we are left with a lot of questions which need to be answered.

Questions which Barack Obama doesn’t want to answer.

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Tags: Politics //