Weather Underground - Bill Ayers

[Hannah Bell]

I was a young person in the 60s-70s. I remember being fascinated by the faces on the Post Office "Wanted" posters...



Bill Ayers (first on the left) joined (Michigan) SDS in the 60s - ann arbor/detroit was then a center of student political activity.

Ayers' influence moved what had previously been a growing, influential organization in the direction of violence, & ultimately destroyed SDS & discredited the student movement.

"Before the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group (Weatherman), 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 pronounced over the year <1969>', disaffected former Weatherman member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001...In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary...'Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weatherman'."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

Bombmaking started under Ayers' tenure in the leadership, as did the self-defeating "Days of Rage" - both provided justification for increased police measures against the student movement as a whole.

He & Dohrn went underground in 1970 when he was 26, & emerged in 1980, when he was 36. Dohrn got probation & less than a year in jail, ayres apparently got no penalty at all.

M.Ed from Bank Street 1984, Ed.D. Columbia 1987, professor U of Ill. 1987, & involved in the upper circles of Chicago/Il education policy by 1990. Dohrn got a job in 1984 with "the prestigious Chicago law firm Sidley Austin," now associate prof at Northwestern University School of Law, 9th-ranked law school in the US.

Meanwhile, other SDS-ers - though not in leadership roles - served serious time, notably David Gilbert, still incarcerated after 26 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gilbert

So how do you do that, go from being a revolutionary bomber to influential Establishment positions in under 10 years - while others, some who did *less* than you, get long jail terms?

Pretty obviously, dad's connections had something to do with it:

"Thomas G. Ayers president (1964–1980), CEO and chairman (1973–1980) of Commonwealth Edison, chairman of the Board of Trustees of NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, the Erikson Institute, the BANK STREET College of Education in New York City, the Chicago Symphony, the Chicago Community Trust, the Chicago Urban League, the Community Renewal Society, the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry, Chicago United, the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, and Dearborn Park Corp., vice president of the CHICAGO BOARD OF EDUCATION.

Board of directors of Sears, G.D. Searle, Chicago Pacific Corp., Zenith Corp., Northwest Industries, General Dynamics Corp. of St. Louis, First National Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs, and the Tribune Co....His son William Ayers, once the leader of the radical Weather Underground, has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1987.

His (other) son John Ayers, once on the staff (1983–1986) of former U.S. Rep. Lane Evans (D-IL), is a national leader in CHARTER SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_G._Ayers


Something I've always wondered - was Ayres just a rich kid who got off easy - or was he a mole from the beginning? Pushing activists toward violence is the M.O. of undercover cops.

[MrSlayer]

1. An interesting premise.

That would be perfect ratfucking if true.

[RandomThoughts]

2. I think on topics like this.

We all know of provocateurs that try and make a peaceful protest look violent, and government distribution of LSD in 140 colleges, jump starting the drugs of the hippie movement. I did not like the musical Hair, it seemed the kids kept doing wrong against establishment, but somehow it was right because it was what establishment did, joining the wrong not fighting it.

This fits my argument of two tier justice, should a small time thief be allowed to steal because big ones can? Wouldn't this be joining wrong? But how can you explain the lack of justice without examples that remove class or social status from the application of justice in our society? How can Ayres because of connection of father be treated differently? By turning to violence he did more damage to his cause then he would have if he did nothing, was that the intent?

Why Ayres did violence, and why he was not held to account, or why he became 'respectable' are good questions.

This leads me to think on what I personally advocate, what side might it help, for example advocating prosecutions, am I ignoring the advice of 'speak that which is good'. Am I neglecting the better work to be done on Health care and worker rights? But Bush did so many other things besides torture, hundreds of thousands dead, many more in hardship. How could he not be held to account by a civilized society.

I know the turning to violence in the 60, along with the drugs, and even the feminist movement, also supported by government, took the direction away from the ideas of anti-war and peace and love. I think some of that was planned, and know other parts were influenced by government. What piece of the puzzle could my actions create? Is it the right picture?

Ayres path was not a good path, and the peace movement of today does so much better then his example. Bringing up Ayres brings up lots of things to think on. In that lesson is the thought to really think on what is the best path, not the agreed one, or the satisfying one, but the one that is best for the most people, that creates an environment for lasting better things, long term success, not just getting through one tough day after another.

Good post.

[Hannah Bell]

3. i've been thinking about these things partly because of present-day

developments, too...& chicago politics.

sometimes it seems the entire public history during my lifetime was a giant psy-ops experiment, or a large-scale version of 'the truman show'.

which makes me very sad, since it means people's lives were stolen from them.

[Democracyinkind]

5. It's kind of hard to grasp, isn't it?

But when Colby said " Every major journalist is our mockingbird " he must have meant something.
We know that we produce more propaganda than even the Soviets did in their high times. Are we living in reality?

There's so many things that I have not settled my mind on yet concernig Americas post war history... Ayers and the WU would be one thing... For a long time I've believed that the WU took the violent path on their own, I got that impression from Barnadine Dorn's early statements. But whenever you hear other WU'ers speaking you kind of get the feeling that the decision to take the violent path wasn't exactly a maojority vote.. Who knows...

Sometimes it really does feel like we are dealing with " discernible reaility " instead of just reality. Nixon and Watergate come to mind. I never got that one. Sure, Nixon was a crook, no good having him as president, but the notion that he ordered Watergate - or that ex CIA ops would do SUCH A LOUSY JOB - just never sat right with me. And then there is.. so much more.. Grenada, Guyana, Bosnia, Serbia, Israel, BCII, Mena, Zappato, Watchtower ... I could go on and on.

As long as I keep reading your posts on DU at least I don't have to feel lonely with this creepy feeling.

[Hannah Bell]

7. I don't buy the official story on Watergate, either. Or on the Symbionese

Liberation Army or the Hearst kidnapping. Since I read up on the 'strategy of tension' & Aldo Moro assassination in Italy, same period.

But discerning who the real players/factions are - difficult.

[Democracyinkind]

8. Difficult if not impossible. Aldo Moro and GLADIO/stay behind

is a good starting point for locating the octopus, though.

With the SLA, I have come very far away from the official story. The way they "programmed" Patty Hearst was right out of the up-to-date CIA manuals, and there even is a pretty obvious agency connection there, I forgot the name, the guy that trained and informed "Cinque".

Vaccaville Prison, where "Cinque" was radicalized and turned violent, was the prison that contributed most of the inmate guinea-pigs for the MK-Ultra sub projects (I think No.s 58 to 74, not sure anymore)and its offshoots. SLA - can of worms. I can't wait for the empire to fall... There would be so much to research then...

great to read your posts. Have a nice day.

[RandomThoughts]

6. Just looking around, It feels that way sometimes.

But there are many precious beutiful moments in life many times we don't think about.

However

I understand why it seems like lives are stolen, Note that in Stargate Atlantas, the Wraith, the bad guys, actually did just that, they took years from the people they attacked.

And the Goul'd in Stargate, inhabited a host and took there lives.

Both of these are just stories, but they are written by people, expressing a metaphor for how people can lose parts of there lives.

I guess the question is, is what you are doing, who you want to be? Many people get sucked into avenues that lead them down paths you would never imagine them choosing. Are there ways or choices to be that person you want to be?

However I find comfort in knowing there is free will, knowing I do choose, even if my surroundings may try and make it seem otherwise. No matter what goes on around me, I still choose how I want to think and feel. (although there are things that can challenge that, and you have to check to see if that is what you want to feel or think, and check if the desires are what you want to drive you. Since desires can direct what you want to be.)

In V the heroin spoke of never giving up that last inch, the person she really was, her integrity and her beliefs, because in the end, that is all that is left. Maybe that's the soul, not sure, but there are many people that have commented on that.

And many lessons are taught about bouncing back. When we make mistakes we can always get back to what we want to be.

That's how I think about it.

[Hannah Bell]

9. "I still choose how I want to think and feel."

This is part of what makes me sad. Using you as example, you say you (we) can still choose.

Well, yes - but on the basis of manipulated information that can create a highly distorted vision of the world & the choices available & their ramifications.

Like, say you think you're working for the betterment of mankind but all the time you're really working for the antichrist or something.

[Democracyinkind]

10. Absolutely. That's what I wanted to write.

But I have grown accustomed to these things, majoring in Philosophy really helped me with that. Makes you realize that you face the same problem even if no one is disinforming you. I live in a world of probabilities, not certainties.

But disinfo is unfair, unsound, inhuman. I am so utterly fascinated with America and global politics that I can not stay out of it and every time I catch someone telling a lye or obfuscating something obviously true I could cry out. I have become such a dork, wasting all my time and money on books, never going out but reading all the time, and to think that some of those books were straight disinfo makes me sooooo angry. What makes me even angrier is this loss of security, this loss of authority of definition. " America is a democracy " has become a sentence that is only true on the surface for me, and having to uphold this dichotomy just to be able co communicate with people who have not chosen my path kind of troubles me. But it's hard to get to the point of what I want to say. I just babbled.

The loss of certainty, I can deal with.
The loss of all mechanisms that allow you to be certain about something troubles me.
That's pretty much the case with the post WW2 world. I haven't found the mechanism yet, and haven't found one I'd really trust in a broad sense. I would love to know.

In the Japanese Manga "Escaflowne" there is a character named Dornkirk, "Isaak" - he spends his life trying to unriddle the mysteries of life and the universe. You see him on his deathbed, wrestling with death, murmuring " I want to know. Show me. I won't go before I know. " ... That's kind of how I feel. It has become the number one priority in my life, right after securing my everyday existence. That's why I hate disinfo. It cheats not just me, but the very focus my life has taken.

[RandomThoughts]

12. Did he enjoy his search for knowledge?

Was it a passion of his, and a love to seek that info? Or did he do it out of fear of something, or ego, or pride.

If he took pleasure in that search, and along the way maybe even helped others, maybe that was the meaning of his life...

Finding the better things, and enjoying the road, I think is very important.

Note, many focus on the bad things, and don't notice the good, that is a challenge also.

[Democracyinkind]

14. Funny thing: What you elude to is the plot of the Manga

Dornkirk wakes up after dying - on a whole new planet. There he is granted the means to aquire knowledge of all things - and he does, he even builds a machine that can predict the future and control people - to build a perfect society.

The thing is, the love of two young people destroys all his plans. He didn't pursue knowledge out of a love for things, just out of curiosity. And that's why he is denied his perfect world at the end, where he realizes that understanding the world and leading it is pointless if your not in it for the love.

Funny that you would anticipate that!

[RandomThoughts]

15. It sorta happens some times, many many stories are the same.

Maybe I should read that story. I like stories were love wins.

However controlling people is contradictory to love, and free will, since controlling people actually makes them no longer exist, then they can not share love, since they are only an extension of the controller.

That is why I think free will is so important.

[Hannah Bell]

16. I think you must be younger than I am, but those are the same kind of

thoughts I have - & especially for young people growing up now. Ordinary everyday human uncertainty & deception is bearable, but elevated to a science, as a ruling principle of the world, with absolute cynicism the only defense, is intolerable and nihilistic. There's no foundation for life in that kind of world, for anyone.

My imitation of Kafka on the theme:



The Camps

“I shall speak directly, because life is brief.”
(Andrei Sinyavsky, “Notes from the Labor Camps”)

The air here is thick with dreams -- of the past, and of the future; and in the present, this lends all aspects of existence a certain frenetic quality that is not so easy to describe. Have you ever stood on a moving sidewalk, and in your eagerness to reach your goal, begun to walk, slowly at first, then more quickly, perhaps to run, bumping and bruising others in your haste -- only to discover that you have not been moving toward your imagined destination at all, but somewhere else, or maybe nowhere but into darkness? That the signposts and the smiling guides had all betrayed you? It is something like that.

It’s not that I complain. We've all heard of the camps of other times. Here, the whip and the wires are rarely visible. At times it can even be peaceful, like a journey on a moving sidewalk can be, with pleasant music in the background and the diversions of the concourse to distract along the way...

No, I don't complain. It’s just that---recently I’ve become possessed by a terrible vision, one I cannot share with the others: that with each paper processed and each digit logged, we are building the walls of the camps higher and stronger--and for what or who, we do not know. Yet to refuse the detail is death. I cannot believe it will go well for us in any case.

I am writing this by hand, on paper smuggled from the detail, in fragments of time smuggled from my mundane life. For whom do I write, and why? Perhaps to you, to you outside the camps, now or in the future, to tell you how it was. If you exist anywhere but in my dreams.

[RandomThoughts]

11. Well if I work for love

And I just state my argument for why something should be in my view. I would never be following any person, especially the anti christ.

Now if I include facts in my arguments from other sources, I can be wrong and not know it, but I try and just stay in the arguments of how I want to be, based on what I consider the better things.

I work for a view of how I think the world should be. And I try to stay in the better ways, and better things. and I try to listen to others views.

I also know I could never work for such evil. I love God and God loves me, as he loves you. So although I will make mistakes in life, I will also not follow any man or women. I do sometimes agree with people, but it is agreeing from best decision I could make(and that's the best I can do), not from following.

If the methods you use to work for the betterment of mankind are honest and good, you will never be working for bad. If you do evil, thinking it will create good, most of the time it is just lots of 'means', never reaching that good ends. That is the trap of ends justifying the means.

[Hannah Bell]

17. "If the methods you use to work for the betterment of mankind are honest and good,

you will never be working for bad."


I've had a different experience, but I won't argue the point, since it's one of those things you can't know until you know.

[Democracyinkind]

18. I think I can grasp what you mean, even though I'm younger. ;-)

I get to this point where I don't want to do anything anymore, as I can find evil even my cell phone. Or especially in my cell phone. For god's sake, even in my books.

The tyranny of good intentions is a term that came to my mind when I read your previous post. Killing people with your love. that kind of stuff. The horror there in my view is that there is nothing more sobering than learning that your good intended actions have had bad effects. Something I had to learn but never really got over.

[Hannah Bell]

20. sorry, didn't mean that to sound condescending at all. i have some

young idealistic cousins just starting out in life i worry for, that's what brought the young thing to mind.


yes, the tyranny of good intentions, or having your idealism & goodwill used cynically for ulterior purposes - as in, e.g. the peace corps, or to fight "an aggressor" (who really isn't)...lots of ways.

[Democracyinkind]

21. Didn't understand it that way. Just wannad to show that I read your posts :-)

May I ask how old you are since almost every of your posts intrigue me? Sometimes I think my language makes me appear younger here because I never had formal education in english and sometimes it's a real struggle. This is the first place I really use my written english in an ad-hoc kind of way.

I didn't take it as a pun.

[Hannah Bell]

22. i'll be 60 soon. i guessed you were in your 20s to 30s because you

talked about university studies & manga. & because you were struggling with the kinds of issues people struggle with as young adults - finding something worth doing, trying to keep one's integrity, etc.

your english is fine, excellent in fact.

[Democracyinkind]

23. That was a good guess.

I kind of forgot that you may have read other stuff. I'm 26, a bit old for university, but you gotta take the chances ...

Anyway, it's nice having a concept of you that includes more than just your profile. The moment I have donated, I will try to get you on my buddy list. I find your contributions here pretty fascinating!

Have a nice day and read you soon :-)

[Hannah Bell]

25. no, i just read your posts in this thread. you're swiss?

my stereotype of swiss (i've only known one, though i've traveled in switzerland) is they're very practical.

[Democracyinkind]

27. I'm one of those suspect double citizens, yes :-)

[RandomThoughts]

19. I understand what you are saying also n/t

[Hannah Bell]

36. kicking this ...cause i don't have enough info...

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Good observations, but the "mole" hypothesis is improbable and unnecessary.

Most of WU I encountered were indeed children of the relatively, but not greatly, rich, and had the mindset that comes from being raised in an environment where instant wish fulfillment was just taken as a fact of life. Sure, some things might be denied them, but only because the "authorities" in the family withheld those things, not because the expectations were unrealistic. Good-hearted, compassionate, hard-working, but their life experience pushed them in the direction of a "strategy" based on the expectation that making enough noise would get results relatively quickly. (To be clear, none of the people I am thinking of ever said "I am WU" and no one ever asked that kind of affiliation question. We worked together regardless of labelings.)

I believe some agents were later identified, but Ayers' profile is not atypical for WU as a whole.

The Panthers were seen as a much greater threat, because they were building a broad base in the underclass, and they were heavily infiltrated as well as being assassinated in large numbers.

[RandomThoughts]

13. That's an interesting point.

The turning to violence, was due to impatience.

An interesting point indeed.

[ShareTheWoods]

24. The bigger question

Why is a spoiled rich kid who should have served time defended so vehemently?

Maybe it's a Charles Manson thing?

[Hannah Bell]

26. defended by who? not by me....i think he should have done a bit of time.

[Karenina]

28. The word on the street around 116th and B'way back in the day was that

He was a MOLE. As a teeny then, his CV through the years has only added credence to the old grapevine.

[Hannah Bell]

29. i was hoping someone who'd lived in the area would report. i know there

are a few folks here who were, thanks.

[Karenina]

30. Can I tell you a story?

Skip to 2:30 as the interviewer is a drunken, obnoxious ass..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1I3OXL1_8s

Jimmy Webb is an American treasure.

[Hannah Bell]

31. nice song, but...elvis & me?

are you saying you fibbed about ayres?

[Karenina]

33. Do you believe Jimmy fibbed about his encounter

as transported through his music and lyrics? :shrug:

[Hannah Bell]

35. no, i'm just confused about the relationship of the song to the weathermen.

[Karenina]

38. Sorry, HB

that was just my mental riff on the line "I was there." The song popped into my head upon reading your post and Jimmy is such an extraordinary storyteller. Just thought you'd enjoy it... :hi:

[old mark]

32. Everg group back then had FBI or similar people in it. EVERY ONE!

Many of those who kept urging violence, especially bombings, bank robberies, etc were feds.

Bill Ayers? Who knows - ask him.....

Kind of amazing, though, to read how it all turned out for him compared to the rest.


mark

[ljm2002]

34. Now that you mention it...

...that is a *very* interesting question.

K & R

[rug]

37. Rich punk.

Just compare the prosecutions and sentences of the WU to the Panthers, the Young Lords and the FALN.