Online Educational Journals

some cut and paste for obama supporters?

Ayers has declined repeated requests for interviews. This week, he opened his front door a crack to tell an Associated Press reporter, "I'm not talking, thanks." Ayers' beige stone rowhouse on Chicago's South Side is just a few blocks from Obama's home. He lives there with his wife, former fellow radical Bernardine Dohrn. Now a law professor at Northwestern University, Dohrn was a fugitive for years with her husband until they surrendered in 1980 and charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct, which included FBI break-ins, wiretaps and opening of mail. Although Ayers has refashioned his life from street-level revolutionary to intellectual, he has not entirely renounced his past. When "Fugitive Days" was published, a photo accompanying a Chicago Magazine article showed him stepping on an American flag. He also told The New York Times, in an interview that appeared coincidentally on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for bombings in the early 1970s at the U.S. Capitol, a Pentagon restroom and New York City police headquarters. No one was injured. In 1970, a Greenwich Village townhouse that the group was using to build a bomb blew up, killing three members, including Ayers' girlfriend. The bomb, Ayers wrote in his memoir, was packed with screws and nails. Had it been detonated, he admitted, it would have done "some serious work beyond the blast, tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people, too." It belied the group's claims that its targets were buildings, not people. "We did go off track ... and that was wrong," Ayers told the AP when his book came out. "I'm not a terrorist," he said at the time. "We tried to sound a piercing alarm that was unruly, difficult and, sometimes, probably wrong. ... I describe what led some people in despair and anger to take some very extreme measures." Still, in Chicago, he is known more for his work in education, which has earned praise from Mayor Richard Daley, whose own father, the iron-fisted mayor of this city during the Vietnam era, famously sent police to do battle with anti-war demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. This spring, when Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign first raised Ayers' relationship with Obama, the younger Daley issued a statement defending him. "I also know Bill Ayers," Daley said. "He worked with me in shaping our now nationally renowned school reform program. He is a nationally recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community." Ayers has a doctorate in education from Columbia University in New York and has written or edited more than a dozen books, most about teaching. Ayers is on sabbatical this academic year but still spends time at his university office. In an opinion piece this week in The Wall Street Journal, Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute who is writing a book on Ayers and social justice teaching, challenged the notion that Ayers is a reformed revolutionary. Stern said he has read most of Ayers' work and concluded: "His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon." Scott Snyder, a UIC junior in chemical engineering who describes himself as a conservative, said he is uncomfortable with Ayers working at a public university. "The majority of taxpayers probably would not appreciate their money being spent to somebody with a history of disrespecting numerous public institutions within the United States," Snyder said. "He spent his life sticking it to the man, where now he is employed by the man." UIC education professor Bill Schubert, who has known Ayers since he sat on the university committee that hired him in 1987, said the Ayers he knows is a Chicago Cubs fan and a good cook who invites colleagues, students and others over to his home for dinner. But mostly Ayers is a good teacher, said Schubert, who recently wrote a letter about Ayers that he initially circulated among friends when questions about him began to mount. The piece, titled "The Bill Ayers I Know," has since made its way to the Web and extols Ayers' scholarly work and his commitment to teaching. "I feel like I'm telling factual information about him," Schubert said, "and I am saying that he's a good colleague and friend." Still, Ayers' past is a delicate matter. Schubert wanted to discuss only Ayers the educator, not Ayers the radical. Asked how he reconciled the two, Schubert paused for a long moment, then said: "That's a question that's too complicated to answer, I think, because it's dependent on different conceptions of what he did." Robert Becker, an associate professor of anatomy and cell biology at UIC, is, at 60, a member of Ayers' generation but doesn't share his politics. "He's unrepentant. He took a violent route i know that his supporters will scream and call people names they dont want to hear anything bad about him it seems but the truth is the truth and this guy is not as bad as some of the others

Public Comments

1. I can't seem to be able to get myself to care, for some reason.
2. Oops, Barry let it slip. Barry's been bad for a long, long time. It's all coming out now. Bad, Barry, bad! Barry, please take your Marxist/Leninist ideology somewhere besides the United States of America. Cuba needs a new leader. Now that even your supporters know the truth, we Americans will be voting for the only remaining candidate. Senator John McCain
3. SO THIS NOICE ABOUT OLD IDIOT MCCAIN AND STUPID PALIN WHO CANT KEEP HER PANTS ON SINCE 15?
4. Is there a question here? Thought not.
5. wow i didnt read that im trying to support help my parents pay bills i hope that makes you fell happy
6. Thank you for your time and work. Still voting for Obama because I know the facts about his policy and what the country needs in two thousand eight.
7. I'm not an Obama supporter, however I will say this Rodney Coronado who works for Peta and ALF does similar things. He even teaches how to build bombs to Peta types. He has no regrets and thinks he is doing animals a favor to blow up things, even if it harms people and some animals. He has been in jail, but often speaks at colleges, and has spoken at High Schools (many do). Do I think he should be allowed to speak? Probably that is his right. Universities or communities could disallow him from doing so within their schools. But I also do not think that I would ever elect a President of the United States who associated with him in a way that went beyond public places and only because they happened to be in the same place at the same time. Living rooms certainly do not count in that category.
8. I'm for McCain, but I think Obama should return to his homeland of Kenya, where he was born (still hasn't produced a legitimate birth certificate as of today), and be the second in charge to his cousin Odinga! I wish Odinga would get as much time as Ayers, but there's so many radical terrorists that Obama is friends with, that it couldn't be covered even if the leftist media wanted to. This is just SICK, and Obamabots are in for a rude awakening if they put this lunatic in charge of America! Republicans already know what's in store, and we can't seem to put our proof up here for people to go an see, before they get deleted, by someone protecting Obama, no doubt. Scary! Start preparing, America! At this point ... because Obama has come so close, that no matter who wins now ... Obama's "change" is coming, and we should all be very afraid! PREPARE NOW!