I agree with Wendy regarding the "pals around with terrorist" line. People who view Obama in a favorable light find the line tiresome, especially when you consider Obama's standard come back: Ayers blew up buildings when I was 8 years old. When I met him, he was a distinguished member of the community and an educator.
In my opinion, the focus needs to be not on what Ayers did as a domestic terrorist when Obama was a child, but rather on Ayers's philosophy of education reform and his views during the 90s, when Obama was chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).
Ayers has visited Venezuela on numerous occasions, at the invitation of his good friend, Luis Bonilla. Luis Bonilla is a member of Hugo Chavez's regime, responsible for "education reform". Bonilla is founder of Centro International Miranda
(CIM) , the goal of which is to train and educate "cadres who agree completely" with the Bolivarian Revolution.
In one videotaped
interview , Bonilla introduces Ayers as an "educator, social activist, and military revolutionary". The interview takes place in 2006, when Obama was in his 40s.
In the interview, Bonilla asks Ayers about the beginning of his teaching career, in the 60s. Ayers says, "I understood very early that teaching, education, is linked to social justice." Bonilla then asks Ayers what made him change his chalk and blackboard for the clandestine life of the armed struggle. Ayers replies, "You know, I've never changed my piece of chalk. I think the revolutionary struggle, I think that political organizing, always has a pedagogical connection." Bonilla asks then about the transition from the active armed struggle back to the inactive "talk-only" pedagogical struggle for social change, and Ayers replies, "You know, the transition process is still going on." He adds, "When we left the underground, we lost something valuable - we lost our treasure."
Ayers makes it exceedingly clear that bombs and chalk are both legitimate tools toward achieving the same aim. In a speech given in Venezuela in 2006 (the
text of which is on Ayers's webpage), he makes his views on the goal of education reform even more clear. Education is "never neutral. It always has a view, a position, a politics." Ayers says he is complete agreement with Bonilla that "education is the motor-force of revolution."
Given that Ayers believes in education reform as the motor-force in a revolution whose goal is to eliminate capitalism; and given that Ayers created the CAC as a means of bringing education reform to Chicago, and given that Ayers specifically links the revolutionary struggle, political organizing, and pedagogy; and given that Barack Obama (a pedagogue and political organizer) was chosen to be CAC's chairman and executive leader, this raises serious questions about Obama. (Serious questions for those of us who do not want America to become a socialist country. Obviously, those who prefer socialism over capitalism will not share our concerns.)
Oh, and since this has already been mentioned before, yes, I am aware that the philanthropic Annenberg Foundation was founded by a Republican. I am sure that the irony of obtaining money from a capitalist to fund his project was not lost on Ayers. That was, as they say, icing on the cake.
