Quote Originally Posted by JakeMartinez
What I'm getting at here is that the man hasn't committed a remotely terrorist act for 30 years, for fuck's sake. Don't you people believe in reconciliation? Fresh starts? Anything? Not only that, but the only connections between the two are campaign parties Ayers hosted in support of Obama. It's not like they were scheming world domination and terrorist attacks in the back of some dingy Chicago strip club.
The man should be in jail. The only reason he is not in jail with his buddies is because he got off on a legal technicality. I'm sorry, but Charles Manson hasn't killed anyone in over 30 years (to my knowledge). Does he deserve a second chance?

I hate the argument that it's ok because he hasn't done it in 30 years. If the man were in jail no one would be saying that. The audacity of what he did would be amplified for the simple fact that he would be in jail. It's gives false perception that "it's ok" that he was a terrorist over 30 years ago.

Guess what, it's really not OK. And the fact that Obama is friends with him is not the root of the problem. It's that what kind of message does it send across when he says he's tough on terrorism but then he's friends with a former terrorist.

Here are full quotes from the pbs website which has the interview in it's entirety


In the film, Mark Rudd talks about his qualms and his very divided feelings about what he did. You don??t make any equivalent statement, and I wondered why not? How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?
"Bill Ayers: I??ve thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it??s impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful?? I don??t think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable.

Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war? This was what was going on in our names. So we tried to resist it, tried to fight it. Built a huge mass movement, built a huge organization, and still the war went on and escalated. And every day we didn??t stop the war, two thousand people would be killed. I don??t think what we did was extreme?. We didn??t cross lines that were completely unacceptable. I don??t think so. We destroyed property in a fairly restrained level, given what we were up against. "

Independent Lens . THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND . Exclusive Interview | PBS

I posted that because it's an actual quote from him and not a tidbit like in the times piece, but here's the times piece:

No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen - New York Times

In addition other radical groups at the time wanted nothing to do with the Weather Underground. The Black Panthers for instance, whom the weatherunderground thought they were friends with have been quoted as saying that they were immature and a dangerous group.

There's an entire news reel clip of this on the documentary "Weather Underground". I suggest anyone who wants to know more about Ayers and the organization he was a part of to go out and watch it. You can view it streaming on Netflix.

Anyway point being this. Ayers was a terrorist, nothing will ever change this fact nor the fact that he should be in jail along with Bernadine Dorn. His other partners in crime are. If he were then no one would be protecting him as they are today. The impact of what he did would ring across America simply because he would be behind bars, but because he's not people feel that he deserves a second chance. What about all of his comrades that are in jail. Do they deserve a second chance?