Barack Obama and William Ayers

Although there was vague talk of Barack Obama "palling around" with former terrorist turned college professor William Ayers, President-Elect Obama did much more than just "pal around".

Barack Obama has known Bill Ayers for a long time, perhaps dating back as long ago as 1987. This post examines the length and extent of the relationship and includes supporting information through many links to independent news sources and more.

Senator Obama’s relationship with William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn is much longer and more involved than he has admitted to. Apparently he believes the American people would find these relationships troubling, as he has changed his explanation of the length and extent multiple times.

William Ayers was a founding member of the radical 1960s terrorist group, the Weatherman, which later changed it’s name to the Weather Underground, when women began to join in. The group was a “spin-off” of another radical group, Students for a Democratic Society. The Weatherman felt that the SDS’s tactic were not radical enough to produce the changes to society they were seeking. A Chicago Daily Observer article in April of this year, laid out Bill Ayers’ “resume” as a Weather Underground member.

Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was also a member of the Weather Underground, and considered the more actively violent of the couple. She was on the FBI’s ten most wanted list for a time, and remained “on the run”, until she and her husband turned themselves in in 1980. She was ultimately pardoned by President Bill Clinton just before he left office, along with 139 others. Obama’s relationship with Dohrn should be featured nearly as prominently and considered just as troubling as his relationship with Ayers. Dohrn’s prevented from obtaining a law license due to her criminal record, but has and does work for law firms. She regularly works against juvenile justice laws. Ayers cites her theories in the book Obama reviewed.

There is also a likely connection between Mr. and Mrs. Obamas and Mr. and Mrs. Ayers in another way: Wikipedia, not known for its “conservative” bent, cites the fact that Dohrn for the law firm of Sidley-Austin from 1984-1988. It is well-known that Barack Obama was a summer associate of this firm in 1989 where he met his wife, Michelle who was a full-time associate there. Michelle was a summer associate during the summer of 1987. In other words, Bernardine Dohrn and Michelle Obama were working at the same law firm, at the same time, for about a year and a half. Perhaps it is only coincidence, but as one examines the life and associations of the Obamas, one seems to find a myriad of them.

It is widely known that Mr. Ayers is unrepentant, it is also likely known that as recently as 2001, he stated that he wished he’d “done more”. In a 2002 interview, Ayers stated, among other things:

I’m as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist.

And:

“No here is surprised by what I think.”

After spending a number of years on the run, Ayers returned to Chicago and became a Professor of Education at the state’s university.

Obama supporters and others have suggested that the fact that Bill Ayers has long been a college professor, and has “gained a measure of respect” in the academic world must mean he is an acceptable member of society. But Ayers has never expressed remorse or changed his agenda. Whatever one might think of Ayers, he is not a stupid man. In true Alinksy fashion, Mr. Ayers decided to move his radical tactics into the world of academia. He has decided to follow the advice Alinsky gave violent ’60s radicals like himself: bring about revolution from within the system. Ayers teaches teachers. He has written many books on the subject of education and youth justice. No one who has read these materials or examined the positions he espouses, who values the traditions of our society, or the founding principles of our government would believe Mr. Ayers should be anywhere near the educational field.

Senior Fellow at the Ethics in Public Policy Center and National Review online contributor, Stanley Kurtz, has extensively investigated Barack Obama, particularly his connections to Bill Ayers. His investigation has included thorough, first hand examination of documents. He best states Bill Ayers educational and juvenile justice philosophies and clear evidence that Obama must be aware of them:

Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise. The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ “small schools” project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.”

Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publicly endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country.”

The fact that academia has accepted this man into its circles is not an endorsement of Ayers, it is an indictment of academia.

No one is precisely certain when Barack Obama and Bill Ayers met. As you have read and will continue to read, so many of the groups in Chicago that Obama has worked for, or with are inter-related. Recall that the Woods Fund was the first entity to fund the Developing Communities Project, which Obama worked for and directed from 1985-1988.

The initial story “floated” by the Obama campaign in February, was reported to Politico’s Ben Smith. Obama campaign manager, David Axelrod said:

Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school,” he said. “They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

Obviously, this statement simply doesn’t “pass the smell test”. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn children are adults. Barack and Michelle Obama’s children are still in elementary school. The campaign soon attempted to “correct” this error of Axelrod’s by explaining that the Obama children attend the same lab school at the University of Chicago that the Ayers children attended earlier.

In an April Democratic Presidential Primary debate, ABC New’s George Stephanopolous asked Barack Obama about the relationship. He stated:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis”

In an October 9 interview with ABC New’s Charles Gibson, Obama answered a question about Ayers this way:

Why don’t we just clear it up right now. I’ll repeat again what I’ve said many times. This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois . . . And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that . . . I’ve ‘palled around with a terrorist’, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”

At the third and final Presidential debate on October 15, the subject of Ayers came up again. Senator Obama said:

So let’s get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago. Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan’s former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg. Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of The Chicago Tribune, a Republican- leaning newspaper. Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers.

None of the statements made by Senator Obama squares with the many facts to the contrary. An noted, there is no real way of knowing exactly when Barack Obama and Bill Ayers met and became friends or where working together. Several reporters were left with the impression by the Obama campaign that the relationship began in 1995 with the Chicago Annenburg Challenge. As you will read, this is simply false.

Evidence suggests that the relationship may have begun as early as 1987. Bill Ayers’ father, Thomas, led a coalition for school reform in Chicago that was coordinated by Bill Ayers. One member of the Coalition was the Developing Communities Project, which you will recall, was directed by Obama from 1985-1987.

While some elements of the relationship are not entirely clear, there are many aspects that are beyond doubt. For instance, in 1993, Sen. Obama and Bill Ayers both became members of the Woods Fund board of directors.

In 1995, Ayers chose Obama to be founding President of the Chicago Annenburg Challenge, which was funded through a grant Ayers worked to secure to implement education programs, and whose primary purpose to was to politicize and radicalize students. One program implemented was a model of a U.N. school; a school based on the tenets of the United Nations. By the group’s own report:

There were no statistically significant differences in student achievement between Annenberg schools and demographically similar non-Annenberg schools.”

In addition to failing to have any positive impact on student achievement, extensive evaluation of the CAC’s own documents show that money from this entity was also disbursed to ACORN and the Developing Communities Project.

Very recently, a review of tax returns for both of the boards on which Ayers and Obama sat together, the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenburg Challenge, reveal that large sums of money were distributed from them to a number of very controversial groups, including ACORN. Other recepients were Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church, the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, the Small Schools Network, and South Shore African Village Collaberative. Most people are familiar with Jeremiah Wright and Trinity (more further on). The Children and Family Justice Center which was founded and is directed by Bernardine Dohrn. The Small Schools Network was founded by Bill Ayers and Michael Klonsky. Ayers and Klonsky were both members of the Students for a Democratic Society. While Ayers went on to form the Weathermen group, Klonsky joined the Communist Party USA. The South Shore African Village Collaberative, reports, Stanley Kurtz, in his article “Wright 101″, is an Afrocentric group. This line of thinking, in a nutshell, is a separatist attitude for blacks.

In addition to work on both of the Woods Fund and the CAC together, there is yet another Ayers-Obama relationshiop: In 1997 Obama wrote a glowing review of Ayers book A Kind and Just Parent: Children of the Juvenile Court for the Chicago Tribune. Stanley Kurtz, read the book and made the following remarks:

Ayers’s title, he explained in the book, is meant to ‘bristle with irony’ as a commentary on an American ’society out of control.’ Ayers expressed the same sentiment more bluntly in an interview published in the New York Times shortly after 9/11, when he not only dismissed the notion of the United States as a ‘just and fair and decent place,’ but said the claim ‘makes me want to puke.’

The book also virtually defines the phrases ‘liberal guilt’ and ’soft on crime.’

The entire episode of Obama having reviewed an Ayers book is not significant only because it is yet another piece of evidence that Mr. Obama knew Ayers longer, and much better than he has been willing to admit, it provides insight into his own point of view on the subject of juvenile justice. Further, it spins off yet another connection to Ayers.

Michelle Obama, as Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Services Center at the University of Chicago, convened a panel regarding a piece of juvenile justice legislation that featured both Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. Obama was fighting the passage of the piece of legislation, which would have moved juveniles from juvenile court to adult court after two violent felonies.

Besides his work with William Ayers on the Woods Fund, and at the CAC, Obama also held his first political “coming out” at William Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s home.