I want to bring up Bill Ayers while the 4th is still fresh on our minds. Not that Ayers makes me feel like singing "Yankee Doodle", yet the flourishing career of Bill Ayers reminds me of all the freedom we do have in this country. Ask Bill Ayers, he has been one of the largest beneficiaries of our society's freedoms.
I do have memories from my college days of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). Packed away at school in Tennessee, many states still had the feeling of being foreign and far away. Most information was gathered from Time and Newsweek if you lived in a dorm and both gave you weekly updates on student events across the country. So it was in this way I first learned of Ayers who was attending the University of Michigan and who became active in the SDS. Prior to Michigan, Ayers had first fought on the streets of Chicago during the "Days of Rage" in 1969. He and his comrades from the Weather Underground destroyed display windows of businesses along what is known as the "Magnificent Mile" in Chicago, Il. Ayers did not suffer repercussions for these antics mostly because his father, Tom Ayers, was a well respected CEO at Commonwealth Edison, and even Bill gives his Dad credit for standing by him during his fugitive days.
How ironic that "The Establishment" (as represented by Tom Ayers), that Bill hated, protected him as well . Tom was well known, and he would see that Bill was "looked out for". Remember, it was also the time of Big Boss Richard M. Daly, and the threats of killing his own parents fell on deaf ears (bad boy). After a few years passed, and Bill was in hiding from having planted bombs , it was increasingly clear that the SDS was fading and that the Weather Underground would never take over the government in a flaming revolt. So as Bill was ready to turn himself in, it was discovered there were too many prosecuting errors in his case to ever bring the case to trial. So Ayers was never convicted, and he and his girlfriend, Bernadine Dohrn, rejoined the family in Chicago where he lives a very affluent and prestigious American life as a distinguished Professor Of English at the University Of Illinois at Chicago.
So is the background of the man who introduced Barack Obama to liberal Chicago Politics. Bill Ayers continues to rage against America in his teaching and on his blog (billayers.org). It is interesting and telling of his radical nature. Read his latest post of the speech by Frederick Douglas written in 1852. Bill wants to remind you of American injustice the week of this 4th. I suppose he still considers his work unfinished:
From billayers.org
"The Fourth of July is Yours, Not mine"
Frederick Douglas, 1852.
"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour." ....TR
~
