Social Etymologies

Of course Obama Lost . . .
I want to begin this post by saying that of course Obama lost the Pennsylvania primary. In the weeks between primaries, the Clinton campaign threw up Rev. Wright, threw up Bill Ayers, and forced Obama into defending ideas and associations that in reality were in no need of defense. The barrage of accusations made Hillary Clinton and her associations virtually invisible. Forgotten and negated was a recent history of association with Clinton's own life partner, Bill Clinton. In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton stood by as Bill Clinton dismantled welfare in the U.S.; waffled about the definition of "genocide" regarding Rwanda's war by machete and rape; passed NAFTA and thus, opened the door to CAFTA. Bill Clinton pushed through the federal Three Strikes You're Out law and thereby ensured, ironically for these campaign times, "thirteen percent of the black adult male population . . . lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws"(1).

About Bill Ayers and Obama . . .
I am honored to have Bill Ayers as my friend. Through him; his heart; his critical work with under-resourced schools; his advocacy of all youth, especially poor and working class kids; through his past efforts to wrestle with the tangled complexities of life in the U.S.; and through our meetings in Chicago over coffee in some corner cafe, I have learned about what it means to keep one's dreams in line with acts of integrity that are not self-centered, with acts that maintain a wide frame encompassing more than just one's self. Bill Ayers is not a "terrorist." The acts he committed in the '60s as an ally to poor/working class folks of color were extreme, yes. But were not the times extreme? The U.S. was in the midst of Vietnam; the country was post-Jim Crow and many whites were actively resisting that fact; African American leaders were being openly assassinated (e.g., Fred Hampton, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Jr.) or being taken as political prisoners; African American women were being forcibly sterilized; and there was, too, the FBI's COINTELPRO . . .

FBI's War on Black America (53:00)
By Denis Mueller & Deb Ellis

Bill Ayers is kind, he is generous, he is compassionate, and he is humbly forthright, which in his case is no contradiction. Bill is a a social intellectual. Every step he and his wife Bernardine take is an effort to connect their daily lives with acts that encourage and demand respect and equity for poor and working class people in the U.S. and worldwide. Bill and Bernardine try to compel everyone around them to live up to the supposed egalitarianism this country purports, but never provides.

At one time, I had made a decision to stay out of the discussion regarding Bill and Obama. I felt, Why should I defend someone I love who needs not to be defended, who demonstrates his regard for community and people, kids, teachers, and schools each time he opens his classroom door to teach? Why add to this ridiculous fray batted about by republicans and democrats alike? But this Thursday, after seeing the documentary, The Weather Underground, Bill will speak with my undergraduate "Intro to Social Justice" class and other invited guests. So, I'm providing my comments to counter the backhanded slap (of seeming support?) Doug Rossinow (in a recent Star Tribune article posted below) and others have recently given Bill regarding Obama. I want my students to know who Bill is and I want them to see the kind of mediated nonsense produced by the weapons this insane political campaign for the presidency erects in the name of a fallacious notion of truth. And, I don't do this because Bill needs my comments. His community work around education and his work outside of this country speaks for itself. I do this because I feel this is just what you do when folks call your friends out of name.

Last year, Bill spoke with my Intro to Social Justice class after viewing The Weather Underground. And, never, not once did a student question the violence (re)presented through the film--neither the violence of Weatherman nor the local and global violence of the state to which Weatherman was responding. After watching the film students asked questions like, How did you have the courage to stand up for what you believe? Or, Would you do it differently in response to the atrocities committed by the state today? In response to the latter question, Bill responded with an emphatic Yes, because today's times necessitate a different kind of response yet one that stills needs to be provided by youth. The students asked Bill questions about their world and how to be responsible for and to it. They asked him, what can I do that is just? What can I do that is non-violent? What can I do that will make a difference? The students asked these questions because they have not and do not negate the past and they know the present isn't working for them and it isn't working for others either. Never did a student call Bill a terrorist. Never did a student question his commitment to social justice. Instead, my students sought Bill out to discover how they can do and make the present better.

What my students sensed in Bill and Bernardine through the film is their profound commitment to allied behavior; their promise to lay down their lives to make things right; to make things equal. There is a moment in the film when Bernardine discusses how she is going to stand side-by-side Blacks and others who haven't been allowed the same economic and social privileges as she. It is a moment in the film when my students literally said aloud, particularly the white ones, WHOA. And later, inevitably, they asked Bill something like How did you have the humility and the courage to admit who you were as a white person, what you came from, and what white folks needed to do to make whiteness, to make power see itself?

Bill Ayers believes in equity, voice, access, and justice--he always has. Sometimes our beliefs take us into acts of war. Unlike Bill, Bush II has allowed the extremity of his beliefs in American exceptionalism to produce multiple global wars. Our personal social "acts of war" should be more like Bill's and Bernardine's acts today: We should daily find ways to create small and large moments of justice that do no harm, that raise awareness, and that forthrightly shine the light on power and the ways in which it works in and through us.

Below is a video of the Obama-Clinton debate in Pennsylvania. The clip captures the point at which Stephanopoulos joined the bandwagon of democrats and republicans alike to produce fear and drive the campaign away from real issues like the war, the economy, education, health care, and our inadequate social relationship to each other in this country. Important to note is the fact that Stephanopoulos was Bill Clinton's campaign communications director in 1992 as well as President Clinton's press secretary. You will notice that Obama's friendship with Bill runs so deep that he calls him "a professor of English." Those who work with Bill or those who are actually his friends know that Bill is Distinguished Professor of Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at University of Illinois at Chicago. His work at UIC and as co-founder with Mike Klonsky of Small Schools Workshop focuses on urban school change and critical teaching practices.

The following articles by Lynn Sweet of the Sun Times and Doug Rossinow of Metropolitan State University are the ones to which I referred earlier in this post. Both provide, as mentioned before, an obviously backhanded wave of support to both Bill and Obama by discussing the true non-issue quality of their association. Neither are profound exemplars of journalism or objectivity, but they do serve as good examples of the kind of mediated, seemingly progressive discourse that is shaping this discussion. I encourage you all to read Bill's books, to read his blog, and to understand his work past and present better. In so doing, I'm sure you see what I see.

"Obama's Ayers Connection Never Bugged Anyone"
By LYNN SWEET
18 April 2008 - Chicago Sun Times

PHILADELPHIA --GOP mastermind Karl Rove, commenting on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show on Thursday, chastised Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for "hanging around" William Ayers. The Daily News, one of the papers in Philadelphia, referred to Ayers as a "1960s radical" in a story about the Wednesday Democratic debate.

The debate vaulted Ayers from being a side matter in the presidential campaign to center stage just before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. "The Clinton campaign has been agitating to try to get this in the bloodstream for some time," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Thursday. But it was ABC News' George Stephanopoulos who pressed Obama in the debate to explain why his association with Ayers would not be an issue if he were the Democratic presidential nominee.

Who is Ayers?

For Obama, perhaps a problem, because of Ayers' extremist past -- which has never bothered anyone in Chicago. That's why back in the day when Obama was starting his political career -- making a visit to the Ayers home while running for a state Senate seat, and then agreeing to being on panels with him and serve on a foundation board together -- it was no big deal, or any deal, to any local political reporters or to the editorial boards of the Sun-Times or Tribune.

Once Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, and wife Bernardine Dohrn, also in the group -- surfaced after years on the lam, they settled easily in to the village known as Hyde Park-Kenwood in Chicago, fitting into the highly political, supremely philosophical community anchored by the University of Chicago. For outsiders, it's Cambridge, Berkeley and Evanston --without a lot of chain stores. It's also the place the Obamas call home.

But Ayers, who became a scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago, was also eventually embraced by a pragmatic son of blue-collar Bridgeport desperately trying to upgrade Chicago's chronically troubled schools: Mayor Daley, whose father's legacy was tarnished because of anti-Vietnam War protesters getting clobbered in the 1968 convention and the "Days of Rage" the next year.

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf knew Ayers in the 1960s and re-met Ayers and Dohrn decades later. In the 1960s Wolf said he and Ayers were on opposite sides of the use of violence to effect social change. Then, Ayers thought it useful. Wolf came out of the school of nonviolence.

Wolf now is rabbi emeritus at KAM Isaiah Israel, coincidentally located across the street from the Obamas' Kenwood home. (The synagogue welcomes Obama's Secret Service agents inside to use the facilities.)

Ayers is "wonderful, compassionate, thoughtful, serious," Wolf said. I asked him to help reconcile the past and the present. "What we want is not to let bygones be bygones, but to transform ourselves into the kind of people we want to be and ought to be," Wolf said.

Obama made it seem at the debate he 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. And Ayers could reinforce Obama as an elitist: In 2002, Obama and Ayers were scheduled to be on a UIC panel with this lampoon-able title: "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis."

"Mayor Daley Defends Obama, Vouching for William Ayers"
By LYNN SWEET

PHILADELPHIA, PA.--Mayor Daley vouched for William Ayers on Thursday, praising the educator--and former radical-- for his work on Chicago public school reform programs and sending a strong message of reassurance to voters who may be worried about Ayers association with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), which is a non-stop topic lately on Fox News.

Daley press secretary Jackie Heard said Daley decided on his own Thursday morning to issue a statement, after seeing Ayers' name surface in the Wednesday Democratric debate, portrayed as an unrepentant former member of the Weather Underground. Daley's brother, Bill, the former Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton is an Obama backer; Daley's media consultant is David Axelrod, Obama's top strategist.

'I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. 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," Daley said.

STATEMENT OF MAYOR RICHARD M. DALEY REGARDING SENATOR BARACK OBAMA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH BILL AYERS:

There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics. And one more example is the way Senator Obama’s opponents are playing guilt-by-association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers.

I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally-renowned school reform program. 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. 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.

"Flash: '60s Activism Predated Obama"
By DOUG ROSSINOW
20 April 2008 - Star Tribune

Is it 2008 or 1992? When Bill Clinton ran for president, Republicans suggested he had betrayed his country when, as a student traveling in Europe in 1969, he protested against the Vietnam War in England and visited Moscow and Prague. Conservatives called Hillary Clinton a dangerous radical feminist forged in the furnace of the late 1960s.

Now, Barack Obama's association with one-time far-left militant Bill Ayers, his Chicago neighbor, is the target of attacks. But this time the attacks, while they have been nurtured in the right-wing media, have been voiced not by a Republican opponent, but by Obama's fellow Democrat, Hillary Clinton. Irony of ironies.

I wrote a book about the "new left" radical movement of the 1960s, a story in whose closing scenes Ayers' group the Weather Underground played a violent and destructive role. I've always tried to say as little as possible about the "Weatherpeople," since there were only a few hundred of them -- amid a radical movement that numbered in the six figures -- and since they've always gotten more attention than they deserved.

The Weatherpeople were clowns who played with fire. They hoped that if they looked tough enough, a revolutionary legion from the Third World might overwhelm America and greet them as comrades. Their specialties were property damage and profanity. The emptiness of their insurrectionary slogans eventually became a line of defense: They gave warnings of when their bombs would explode; the only people they killed in that era were three of their own number.

Ayers and other Weatherveterans may have become wholesome, productive citizens since returning to polite society. If they want to support a decent, supremely realistic man like Barack Obama, then good for them. Just as Obama says, he was a kid when Ayers was doing stupid things.

Hillary Clinton -- at long last, having no shame -- suggests that Ayers' comment that "we didn't do enough," in an interview published on 9/11, was an endorsement of Al-Qaida's attack on America. She certainly knows that Ayers' interview was done before 9/11. Whatever he meant, the timing of the interview's publication was simply unfortunate.

It's actually not so ironic that Clinton is attacking Obama for associating with Ayers. The charge that the Clintons were late-'60s radicals has always been false. The truth is that there were many different '60s. Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton were young careerists who wanted to do good as they did well and rose in the political system. It was easier for conservatives to link Bill Clinton's loose personal morals to the sexual liberation that many associate with the 1960s than to find evidence of left-wing radicalism in his past.

Obama shouldn't be drawn into another round of culture wars over the memory of the 1960s. Quite possibly, he can't be. He's a post-'60s political figure. The ghosts of the 1960s continue to hover, but they aren't his ghosts.

Doug Rossinow, associate professor of history at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, is the author of The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

(1) Human Rights Watch Report, "United States - Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs" 12.2 (May 2000).