Fri, 05 Dec 2008
To: NewYorkTimes

Re: Ayers Op Ed

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06ayers.html


Bill Ayers claims he was just another part of the anti-war movement and his Weathermen never killed anyone. Phooey. I am a former member of the Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student movement in US history and a radical yet today. The terrorist Weatherman sect destroyed SDS when, in 1969, they sought to replace a movement of people organizing for equality and peace with Ayers’ authoritarian mis-leadership and bombs. Before the biggest outpouring of student activism in the last century, the Weathermen demolished the SDS mailing list, leaving the movement with no center. They killed themselves and SDS. Weatherman was the “action-faction,”celebrating irrationalism, drugs, and exploitative sex, pandering to the peasant nationalism of the day. They opposed the radical, “going to the root,” of social problems. They held most people in the world in contempt. Then, Ayers was a liberal with explosives and hubris. Today, Ayer is a foundation-funded liberal: see Mayor Richard Dailey’s endorsement. There is no "new" Bill Ayers, as he claims. He opposed a mass based class conscious movement for equality and freedom then, and opposes it now.  Those of us who fought the Weathermen in SDS, and who did not abandon the grassroots struggle for worldwide justice, know him for what he is. That Ayers clearly backed the liberal Obama, who promises wider wars, and bailouts to the rich, is no surprise.

Dr Rich Gibson
Emeritus Professor
San Diego State University