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Ayers clarifies his contact with Obama, current lifestyle
(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CHICAGO _ Bill Ayers, the Illinois professor and veteran of the most radical 1960s Vietnam war protests who has been thrust into an unsolicited supporting role in the presidential campaign of 2008, maintains that "day in and day out" he goes about his business, hangs out with his kids and grandchildren, "takes care of the elders, goes to work and teaches."
Recently, he overhead Sean Hannity tell Sen. John McCain that Ayers is "an unrepentant terrorist" who had written an article on Sept. 11, 2001 extolling bombings against the U.S.
McCain couldn't believe it, Ayers writes in his online diary _ "and neither could I."
Sunday on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos, McCain maintained that Ayers' relationship with Sen. Barack Obama _ or rather the relationship in the other direction, the two serving on a board in common, Obama accepting Ayers' help in a campaign _ is "questionable." Obama notes that the most notorious acts of the radical underground Weathermen of the 1960s occurred when he, the candidate, was eight years old.
Ayers says he has been the target of hate-mail.
He also says that he is often quoted as saying that he has "no regrets."
"This is not true," he writes at his Web site. "For anyone paying attention _ and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me. . . . Life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I'm sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Vietnam, and I say, `No, I don't regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.' Sometimes, I add, `I don't think I did enough.'"
"This is then elided: `He has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings . .'" he writes. "I encourage people to argue, to agree or disagree, to discuss and struggle, to engage in conversation."
The bombings of Sept. 11 were an act of terrorism, he writes _ much like the bombs detonated on the streets of Israel.
"Terrorism is never justifiable," Ayers writes, "not even in a just cause . . . I've never advocated terrorism. Never participated in it."
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has rallied to the defense of Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"He worked with me in shaping our now nationally renowned school reform program," Daley has said. "He is a nationally recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.
"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well," the mayor said. "It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40 year old battles."
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign, however, has had plenty to say about Ayers' connection to Obama.
Ayers hosted a neighborhood coffee for Obama's initial campaign for the state Senate in 1996 and gave Obama a $200 donation for his state Senate re-election campaign in 2001.
Clinton spokesmen Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer have insisted that Obama's political relationship with Ayers is more significant than the act of Clinton's husband, the former president, in commuting the sentences of two of Ayers' former Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans on terrorist-related weapons charges.
Obama had cited those pardons when the question of his own connection to Ayers was raised in the Philadelphia debate last week.
Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, went underground years ago, after some of his group's own members were killed by a bomb they set.
These days, the reflections of an aging professor are posted on the Internet, while political combatants in the newest campaign attempt to make the tumult of the 1960s a factor in the election of 2008. Ayers too still holds some of those dreams from the Sixties.
In his own musings on "episodic notoriety," Ayers writes in his online diary: "We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: A better world is both possible and necessary."
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(c) 2008, Chicago Tribune.
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Copyright ? 2008 Chicago Tribune
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