Who is William Ayers – Kathy Boudin and Diana Oughton?

There has been much talk of Barack Obama’s ties with terrorists and his relationship with William Ayers so I did a little research today to find out who he is.

Who is William Ayers?

William Charles “Bill” Ayers (born 26 December 1944) is an American elementary education theorist and former leading 1960s anti-war activist. He is known for being a domestic terrorist in the 1960s and 1970s as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the violent radical left organization the Weather Underground which was active during the 1960s and 1970s. He is now a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the honor of Distinguished Professor.

Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As head of an SDS regional group, the “Jesse James Gang”, Ayers made decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy. The group Ayers headed in Detroit, Michigan became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weatherman.

Between the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, 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. Ayers had previously become a roommate of Terry Robbins, a fellow militant, Wilkerson wrote. Robbins would later be killed while making a bomb.

In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary. Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to riot police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot confrontation between labor supporters and the police. The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway. The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970. Rebuilding it yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast. Ayers participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago in October 1969, and in December was at the “War Council” meeting in Flint, Michigan. Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant in the Weatherman group from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, thought that “Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weatherman”.

In 1970 he “went underground” with several associates after the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers’ close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers’ girlfriend, Diana Oughton, were killed when a nail bomb (an anti-personnel device) they were assembling exploded. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast.

Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and The Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days. Because of a water leak caused by the Pentagon bombing, aerial bombardments during the Vietnam War had to be halted for several days. Ayers writes:

Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy – weighing close to two pounds – it caused ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.

While underground, he and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations. By 1976 or 1977, with federal charges against both fugitives dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct. The couple turned themselves in to authorities in 1980. Ayers and Dohrn later became legal guardians to the son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin after the boy’s parents were convicted and sent to prison for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.

In 2001, Ayers published Fugitive Days: A Memoir, which he explained in part as an attempt to answer the questions of Kathy Boudin’s son, and his speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb makers. Some have questioned the truth, accuracy, and tone of the book. Brent Staples wrote for The New York Times Book Review that “Ayers reminds us often that he can’t tell everything without endangering people involved in the story. Historian Jesse Lemisch, himself a former member of SDS, contrasted Ayers’ recollections with those of other former members of Weatherman and has alleged serious factual errors. Ayers, in the foreword to his book, states that it was written as his personal memories and impressions over time, not a scholarly research project.

Barack Obama launched his political career at William Ayres house. He was invited to a meeting attended by several former members and friends of the terrorist groups that William Ayers ran. Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the Virginia Senate that night and collected campaign donations.

Barack has since proclaimed that he and Ayres were mere acquaintances and that he knew nothing of his involvement in several bombings of American targets including the pentagon. Clearly a lie, the media has virtually ignored this story and has left it up to the bloggers to find out the truth.
Update

Sarah Palins speech has forced the media to finally report on this story even though they have had this information for some time and sat on it. Here’s a clip from CNN….

Barack Obama has been asked about this guy at least three times and lied each time.
These idiots killed more of their own trying to build their bombs than they did their targets. Luckily they were a bunch of fools.

Just a reminder: in 2001, for an article in Chicago Magazine, Barack Obama’s friend William Ayers proudly allowed himself to be photographed stepping on a United States flag.

The article was appropriately titled: No Regrets, and I’ve saved a copy of it in case it suddenly disappears, as articles exposing Obama’s associates often do.

One of Ayers victims released a statement.

ARLINGTON, VA — Today, John M. Murtagh made the following statement on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers:

“When I was 9 years-old the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama’s friend William Ayers, firebombed my house. Barack Obama has dismissed concerns about his relationship with Ayers by noting that he was only a child when Ayers was planting bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. But Ayers has never apologized for his crimes, he has reveled in them, expressing regret only for the fact that he didn’t do more.

“While Barack Obama once downplayed his relationship with Ayers, today his campaign took that deceit one step further. Barack Obama now denies he was even aware of his friend’s violent past when, in 1995, Ayers hosted a party launching Obama’s political career. Given Ayers’ celebrity status among the left, it’s difficult to believe. The question remains: what did Obama know, and when did he know it? When did Obama learn the truth about his friend? Barack Obama helped Ayers promote his book in 1997, served on charitable boards with him through 2002, and regularly exchanged emails and phone calls with him through 2005. At what point did Barack Obama discover that his friend was an unrepentant terrorist? And if he is so repulsed by the acts of terror committed by William Ayers, why did the relationship continue? Any honest accounting by Barack Obama will necessarily cast further doubt on his judgment and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.

“Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets — but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.”

We’ve all heard that they served on the same committees and boards, and the media yawns at this. However, if only they would dig just a little they would find that things are deep even just below the surface.
In 1997, Obama gave Ayer’s book rave reviews!

____________________________________________________

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, which Barack Obama directed almost 2 million dollars to is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 (Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website). Here’s a screen grab from the website’s footer:

In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. This is a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address.

 

I had as great Uncle that lied to everyone he met every day of his life. He was a great story teller and I could listen to him tell his lies for hours all the while knowing that nothing that came out of his mouth was the truth. He was harmless. Barack wants to be our President.

Isn’t it pretty important that one of Obama’s best friends is a unrepentant domestic terrorist, socialist that hates America. What did bill Ayres see in a young Obama that inspired him to take him under his wing and groom him to be President?

Barack Obama lies again and “We the Bloggers” find the truth. The media still ignores.

Who is Kathy Boudin?
In the 1960s and 1970s, Boudin became heavily involved with the Weather Underground, which described themselves as a “fifth column” of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. The Weathermen used bombs to vandalize the Pentagon, the US Capitol, the New York Police Benevolent Association, the New York Board of Corrections, as well as the offices of multinational companies. Boudin, along with Cathy Wilkerson, was a survivor of the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, the premature detonation of a nail bomb that had been intended for a soldiers’ dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Boudin was 27 at the time. Both women were awaiting trial, out on bond for their alleged actions in Days of Rage in Chicago several months earlier. Wilkerson had been released on a $20,000 bond and Boudin was out on a $40,000 bond.

A declassified FBI report on foreign contacts of the Weather Underground Organization produced by the FBI’s Chicago Field Office reported that, “On February 10, 1976, a source in a position to possess such information advised that Leonard Boudin … had indicated to a friend that Kathie was presently in Cuba.” Kathy Boudin’s father had connections directly to Fidel Castro: Leonard Boudin was Castro’s lawyer.

Boudin was granted parole on August 20, 2003 in her third parole hearing, and released from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on September 17, 2003. She accepted a job in the H.I.V./AIDS Clinic at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, meeting the work provisions of parole that required active job prospects

Who is Diana Oughton?
In 1966, Diana Oughton left Philadelphia for Ann Arbor, Michigan to enroll in the University of Michigan Graduate School of Education, seeking her Master’s degree in teaching. Oughton dedicated herself to the school and teaching and designed a fund-raising button that read, CHILDREN ARE ONLY NEWER PEOPLE. It was at CCS that Diana Oughton met Bill Ayers. The two fell in love and soon began living together. In 1968, when the school ran into severe problems and lost its funding, Oughton and Ayers sought to become active elsewhere in the community.

In 1969, Oughton and Ayers joined the Weathermen. At this time, protests became more violent and radical than they had been in SDS. Part of this move towards greater violence was seen during the “Days of Rage” in Chicago, taking place on October 8-11 of 1969. One purpose of the “Days of Rage” was to create an image of strength and determination that would win converts to revolutionary violence. Diana Oughton was one of the people arrested in October of 1969 in Chicago; her bail was set at $5,000, which her father came up from Dwight to pay. After she was released, Mr. Oughton dropped his daughter off at a church where she was meeting up with other Weathermen; shortly afterwards, police raided the church and arrested 43 members of the group. Oughton managed to escape by jumping out of a window.

After the “Days of Rage”, the group became increasingly more violent.

On Monday, March 2, 1970, in Keene, New Hampshire, a Weatherman purchased two 50-pound cases of dynamite from the New England Explosives Corporation. Sometime that week, the dynamite was moved from Keene to Greenwich Village, New York where it was taken to the house at 18 West Eleventh Street. Diana Oughton left Detroit and joined the group at the house. On Friday of the same week, Oughton and Terry Robbins were in the basement assembling a bomb when it detonated. Cathy Wilkerson, who was in the townhouse at the time, describes her experience during the explosion, “the idea that Terry and Diana were both in the subbasement overwhelmed everything else. As I forced my attention there and to them, my lungs expanded instantaneously to draw in air and dust so I could call out.”

Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin, another Weatherman in the townhouse at the time, were the only two to escape. When they ran out into the street, someone asked if there was anyone else in the house. Thinking that Ted Gold, the other Weatherman in the townhouse, had gone to the store, Wilkerson replied that no, there was no one left inside. She knew that Terry and Diana were gone.

Four days after the explosion, detectives found some of Oughton’s remains near a workbench in the rubble-filled basement of the devastated townhouse. At the end of another week, a detective discovered the tip of the little finger from the right hand. A print taken by a police department expert was matched later that day with a set of Oughton’s prints in the Washington files of the F.B.I. The prints they had on file were from Oughton’s arrest in Chicago on October 9, 1969 during the Days of Rage.

William Ayers today….

Ayers’s political views are as radical now as they were in the 1970s. “Viva President Chavez!” he exclaimed in a speech in Venezuela in 2006, in which he also declared, “education is the motor-force of revolution.”

From his prestigious and safe university position, Ayers has been teaching teachers and students in rebellion against American capitalism and what he calls “imperialism” and “oppression. ” The code words for the Ayers curriculum are “social justice,” a “transformative” vision, “critical pedagogy,” “liberation, ” “capitalist injustices,” “critical race theory,” “queer theory,” and of course multiculturalism and feminism.

That language is typical in the readings that Ayers assigns in his university courses. He admits he is a “communist street fighter” who has been influenced by Karl Marx, as well as Che, Ho and Malcolm X.

Ayers speaks openly of his desire to use America’s public school classrooms to train a generation of revolutionaries who will overturn the U.S. social and economic regime. He teaches that America is oppressive and unjust, socialism is the solution, and wealth and resources should be redistributed.

written by Ken Maddox for OneAngryMan.com

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