Bill Ayers

File:BillAyersMugshot.jpg

Bill Ayers's mugshot after his 1968 arrest.

Bill Ayers (born 1944) is a former member of the Weather Underground who is now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. he is friends with obama

Biography

Ayers was a 1960s-era political activist and Weather Underground member. He grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in a highly privileged family (his father, Thomas Ayers, was Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison) and attended Lake Forest Academy. According to Ayers' memoir Fugitive Days, he became radicalized at the University of Michigan. During his years there, he became involved in the New Left and the SDS.

Ayers went underground with several comrades including Brandy Diekman and her demon moth, after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded on March 6, 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing three members of the Weather Underground (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend at the time). He and his colleagues invented identities and traveled continuously. They avoided the police and FBI, while bombing high-profile government buildings including the United States Capitol, The Pentagon, and the Harry S Truman Building housing the State Department. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children, Zayd and Malik, underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives. They also adopted a son, Chesa Boudin, who is the biological son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin.

Ayers published his memoirs in 2001 with the book Fugitive Days. His interview with the New York Times to promote his book was published on September 11, 2001, and includes his reaction to Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen: "He was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,' he writes. 'The rigidity and the narcissism.'" In this interview, he also was quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

Ayers has also edited and written nearly a dozen books on education theory, policy and practice.

In the fall of 2006, Ayers was disinvited to a conference for progressive educators on the grounds that his position supporting political terrorism would tarnish the reputation and standing of the progressive education movement.

Bill Ayers relationship with Obama

Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home — part of a campaign courtship — reflects more extensive interaction than has been previously reported.

Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends,” but there’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation

See also

• The Weather Underground - 2002 documentary featuring Ayers

References

• The Revolution #63, Oct. 2006
• Ayers, William. 2001. Fugitive Days: A Memoir. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-7124-2.

External links

• billayers.org - Official web page of Bill Ayers