Bill Ayers and the Presidential Campaign

Bill Ayers remained silent during the Presidential Campaign on being used as a prop by the McCain/Palin ticket, but was recently interviewed on DemocracyNow, along with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn about his actions during the '60s. The interview is worth reading in its entirety, but the quote below stood out. Unless you lived through those turbulent times, it's difficult to imagine and doesn't lend itself to sound bytes. Having known one of the unarmed students killed at Kent State puts things in perspective. Wikipedia offers a brief recap. At the bottom is an article authored by Bill Ayers and an interview in Salon.

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And what’s interesting is that it was raised up in an attempt to replay the culture wars. You know, there was this wonderful moment on Stephen Colbert where the word for the night was “the ’60s." And he has a clip of Obama saying, “Can’t we just leave the ’60s behind?” And it comes back to Colbert, in full anger, saying, “No, Senator. We can’t leave it behind. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

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And frankly, I think the fact that this may be the last time that the ’60s is raised in that kind of cultural warrior-ish way is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I think it is time to move on, and there’s a new generation. And a lot of the nostalgia for the ’60s, both the hatred of it and the love of it, is misplaced. I think it’s time to look forward. On the other hand, I think that it’s a sad thing that we’ve never really had a truth and reconciliation process about the war in Vietnam, about the black freedom movement and what happened. And that means, among other things, that we haven’t learned the lessons of invasion and occupation. We haven’t learned the lessons of what happens when people get involved in direction action and struggle, and both the advances that can be made and also the limits of those struggles. We haven’t learned the lessons that might make for a more peaceful, more just future.

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In These Times

Salon

Of the Presidential Election:

It was a moment when the American people overwhelmingly rejected the politics of fear, the politics of war and militarization, paranoia and the acceptance of the shredding of our constitutional rights. It was a sense of "let's move beyond that."