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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Interesting. Another side to Ayers, if someone cares
to look. Or maybe this is all there is now. That's interesting,
too.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Sue H. </FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>> NOVEMBER 7, 2008<BR>> <BR>> What a Long, Strange Trip It's
Been<BR>> Looking back on a surreal campaign season<BR>> <BR>> By BILL
AYERS<BR>> <BR>> <BR>> On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on
message. I became a<BR>> prop, a<BR>> cartoon character created to be
pummeled.<BR>> SHARE Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine<BR>> Whew! What was
all that mess? I'm still in a daze, sorting it all out,<BR>>
decompressing.<BR>> <BR>> Pass the Vitamin C.<BR>> <BR>> For the
past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with<BR>> my
kids<BR>> and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved
in as<BR>> the<BR>> kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing.
And every day, I<BR>> participate in the never-ending effort to build a
powerful and<BR>> irresistible<BR>> movement for peace and social
justice.<BR>> <BR>> In years past, I would now and then-often
unpredictably-appear in the<BR>> newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a
reference to Fugitive Days, my<BR>> 2001<BR>> memoir of the exhilarating
and difficult years of resistance against the<BR>> <BR>> American war in
Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames,<BR>> revolution<BR>>
was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted<BR>>
our<BR>> utopian dreams.<BR>> <BR>> These media episodes of fleeting
notoriety always led to some<BR>> extravagant and<BR>> fantastic
assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I<BR>> <BR>>
probably believe now.<BR>> <BR>> It was always a bit surreal. Then came
this political season.<BR>> <BR>> During the primary, the blogosphere was
full of chatter about my<BR>> relationship<BR>> with President-elect
Barack Obama. We had served together on the board<BR>> of the<BR>> Woods
Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago's Hyde<BR>> Park.
In<BR>> 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I
held<BR>> for him,<BR>> I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois
State Senate.<BR>> <BR>> Obama's political rivals and enemies thought they
saw an opportunity to<BR>> deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow
un-American, alien,<BR>> linked to<BR>> radical ideas, a closet terrorist
who sympathizes with extremism-and<BR>> they<BR>> pounced.<BR>>
<BR>> Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script,
which<BR>> included<BR>> guilt by association, demonization of people
Obama knew (or might have<BR>> known),<BR>> creepy questions about his
background and dark hints about hidden<BR>> secrets yet<BR>> to be
uncovered.<BR>> <BR>> On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently
in an attempt to<BR>> reassure<BR>> the "base," sat down for an interview
with Sean Hannity of Fox News.<BR>> McCain<BR>> was not yet aware of the
narrative Hannity had been spinning for months,<BR>> and so<BR>> Hannity
filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant "terrorist," he<BR>>
explained,<BR>> "On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged
about bombing<BR>> our<BR>> Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New
York City police<BR>> headquarters. ...<BR>> He said, 'I regret not doing
more.' "<BR>> <BR>> McCain couldn't believe it.<BR>> <BR>> Neither
could I.<BR>> <BR>> On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on
message. I became a<BR>> prop, a<BR>> cartoon character created to be
pummeled.<BR>> <BR>> When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the
attack went viral. At a<BR>> <BR>> now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama
was "pallin' around with<BR>> terrorists." (I pictured us sharing a milkshake
with two straws.)<BR>> <BR>> The crowd began chanting, "Kill him!" "Kill
him!" It was downhill from<BR>> there.<BR>> <BR>> My voicemail filled
up with hate messages. They were mostly from men,<BR>> all<BR>> venting
and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: "Watch out!"<BR>>
and<BR>> "You deserve to be shot." And some e-mails, like this one I got
from<BR>> satan@hell.com: "I'm coming to get you and when I do, I'll
water-board<BR>> you."<BR>> <BR>> The police lieutenant who came to
copy down those threats deadpanned<BR>> that he<BR>> hoped the guy who was
going to shoot me got there before the guy who was<BR>> going<BR>> to
water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then<BR>>
shot.<BR>> (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to
investigate<BR>> threats made<BR>> against me in 1987, after I was hired
as an assistant professor at the<BR>> University of Illinois at
Chicago.)<BR>> <BR>> The good news was that every time McCain or Palin
mentioned my name,<BR>> they lost<BR>> a point or two in the polls. The
cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now<BR>> poking<BR>> holes in the
rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.<BR>> <BR>> That '60s show<BR>>
<BR>> On Aug. 28, Stephen Colbert, the faux right-wing commentator from
Comedy<BR>> <BR>> Central who channels Bill O'Reilly on steroids,
observed:<BR>> <BR>> To this day, when our country holds a presidential
election, we judge<BR>> the<BR>> candidates through the lens of the 1960s.
... We all know Obama is cozy<BR>> with<BR>> William Ayers a '60s radical
who planted a bomb in the capital building<BR>> and<BR>> then later went
on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college<BR>> professor.<BR>>
... Let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents. The '60s<BR>>
are a<BR>> political gift that keeps on giving.<BR>> It was inevitable.
McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely<BR>> <BR>>
discredited vision of the '60s, which was the defining decade for him.<BR>>
He<BR>> built his political career on being a prisoner of war in
Vietnam.<BR>> <BR>> The '60s-as myth and symbol-is much abused: the
downfall of civilization<BR>> <BR>> in one account, a time of defeat and
humiliation in a second, and a<BR>> perfect<BR>> moment of righteous
opposition, peace and love in a third.<BR>> <BR>> The idea that the 2008
election may be the last time in American<BR>> political life<BR>> that
the '60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one<BR>>
hand,<BR>> let's get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the
lessons we<BR>> might<BR>> have learned from the black freedom movement
and from the resistance<BR>> against<BR>> the Vietnam War have never been
learned. To achieve this would require<BR>> that we<BR>> face history
fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.<BR>> <BR>> The
war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it<BR>>
conducted<BR>> as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S.
military<BR>> killed<BR>> millions of Vietnamese in air raids-like the one
conducted by McCain-and<BR>> <BR>> entire areas of the country were
designated free-fire zones, where<BR>> American<BR>> pilots
indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance-an immoral enterprise<BR>>
by<BR>> any measure.<BR>> <BR>> What is really important<BR>>
<BR>> McCain and Palin-or as our late friend Studs Terkel put it,
"Joe<BR>> McCarthy<BR>> in drag"-would like to bury the '60s. The '60s,
after all, was a time<BR>> of rejecting obedience and conformity in favor of
initiative and<BR>> courage. The<BR>> '60s pushed us to a deeper
appreciation of the humanity of every human<BR>> being.<BR>> And that is
the threat it poses to the right wing, hence the attacks and<BR>> all<BR>>
the guilt by association.<BR>> <BR>> McCain and Palin demanded to "know
the full extent" of the Obama-Ayers<BR>> "relationship" so that they can know
if Obama, as Palin put it, "is<BR>> telling the truth to the American people
or not."<BR>> <BR>> This is just plain stupid.<BR>> <BR>> Obama has
continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at<BR>> <BR>>
democracy's heart: the importance of talking to as many people as<BR>>
possible in<BR>> this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening
with the<BR>> possibility<BR>> of learning something new, and of speaking
with the possibility of<BR>> persuading<BR>> or influencing
others.<BR>> <BR>> The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by
association, they<BR>> also<BR>> assumed that one must apply a political
litmus test to begin a<BR>> conversation.<BR>> <BR>> On Oct. 4, Palin
described her supporters as those who "see America as<BR>> the<BR>>
greatest force for good in this world" and as a "beacon of light and<BR>>
hope<BR>> for others who seek freedom and democracy." But Obama, she said,
"Is not<BR>> a<BR>> man who sees America as you see it and how I see
America." In other<BR>> words,<BR>> there are "real" Americans - and then
there are the rest of us.<BR>> <BR>> In a robust and sophisticated
democracy, political leaders-and all of<BR>> us-ought to seek ways to talk
with many people who hold dissenting, or<BR>> even<BR>> radical, ideas.
Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to<BR>> question<BR>>
authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving our fellow<BR>>
human<BR>> beings today.<BR>> <BR>> Maybe we could welcome our current
situation-torn by another illegal<BR>> war, as<BR>> it was in the '60s-as
an opportunity to search for the new.<BR>> <BR>> Perhaps we might think of
ourselves not as passive consumers of politics<BR>> but as<BR>> fully
mobilized political actors. Perhaps we might think of our various<BR>>
efforts<BR>> now, as we did then, as more than a single campaign, but rather
as our<BR>> movement-in-the-making.<BR>> <BR>> We might find hope in
the growth of opposition to war and occupation<BR>> worldwide.<BR>> Or we
might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and<BR>>
prison<BR>> abolition, or the rising immigrant rights movement and the
stirrings of<BR>> working<BR>> people everywhere, or by gay and lesbian
and transgender people<BR>> courageously<BR>> pressing for full
recognition.<BR>> <BR>> Yet hope-my hope, our hope-resides in a simple
self-evident truth: the<BR>> future is unknown, and it is also entirely
unknowable.<BR>> <BR>> History is always in the making. It's up to us. It
is up to me and to<BR>> you.<BR>> Nothing is predetermined. That makes our
moment on this earth both<BR>> hopeful and<BR>> all the more urgent-we
must find ways to become real actors, to become<BR>> authentic subjects in
our own history.<BR>> <BR>> We may not be able to will a movement into
being, but neither can we sit<BR>> idly<BR>> for a movement to spring
full-grown, as from the head of Zeus.<BR>> <BR>> We have to agitate for
democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for<BR>> human<BR>> rights,
learn to build a new society through our self-transformations<BR>> and
our<BR>> limited everyday struggles.<BR>> <BR>> At the turn of the last
century, Eugene Debs, the great Socialist Party<BR>> leader<BR>> from
Terre Haute, Ind., told a group of workers in Chicago, "If I could<BR>>
lead<BR>> you into the Promised Land, I would not do it, because someone
else<BR>> would come<BR>> along and lead you out."<BR>> <BR>> In
this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more<BR>>
urgent<BR>> that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting
to be.<BR>> <BR>> (c) All Rights Reserved<BR>> Bill Ayers is a
Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior<BR>> University<BR>>
Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of<BR>>
Fugitive<BR>> Days (Beacon) and co-author, with Bernardine Dohrn, of Race
Course:<BR>> Against<BR>> White Supremacy (Third World Press).<BR>>
<BR>> <BR>> <BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>