William Ayers, who was a founder of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground, said that he still believed he was “on the side of justice” years after the group’s wave of attacks.
Between October 1969 and September 1973, the Weather Underground claimed credit for some twenty bombings across the country, including courthouses, correctional facilities, police stations, the Capitol, and the Pentagon. At this time Barack Obama, as he is quick to point out, was only 8-12 years old and therefore did not know about the home-grown terrorism of the Weather Underground and the true nature of William Ayers.
A Marxist offshoot of the neo-Socialist “Students for a Democratic Society”, the Weathermen took their name from Bob Dylan’s 1965 alienated-youth anthem “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with the line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Ayers claimed the Weathermen were driven by “hope and love,” not despair, and said he did not think the group’s violent acts, targeting federal officials and local law enforcement officers, were “a big deal”, although I would imagine that the targeted federal officials and local law enforcement officers would have another opinion entirely.
Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, served with Barack Obama on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago for three years and helped launch Obama’s political career in Illinois by hosting in his Hyde Park home an informal campaign event for the future state senator in 1995. At this time Barack Obama, as he is quick to hide from the media, was 34 years old, and was well-aware of who William Ayers was and what his history was. Obama knew that his “new best friend” William Ayers was responsible for the twenty bombings across the country and targeted federal officials and law enforcement officers, yet he allowed Ayers to lead his “coming out” party.
Obama has made it seem that hardly knew Ayers. Besides serving on the Woods Fund board, in 1997 he and Ayers were to be on a University of Chicago panel organized by Michelle Obama, then an associate dean. So what is Obama hiding from us voters?
William Ayers, Weather Underground, Barack, Obama, Ayers
