Important information on Ayres

[Big Blue Marble]

This entry gives important context to this story, context that is horribly lost in right-wing attacks. I just do not understand how Hillary who
I am sure knows these facts would contribute to this diatribe.


From Kos diary

I live near both Obama and Ayers. Ayers is now a member of the mainstream Chicago progressive circle. He serves on city charities, was an education aide to Mayor Daley, and is a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois – Chicago.

His wife, Bernadine Dohrn, is now the director of the Children’s Rights Clinic at Northwestern University Law School and has taught courses at the University of Chicago. She is an important children’s rights advocate in the Chicago area.

Hyde Park is a small community on the South Side of Chicago that is surrounded by many high crime areas (basically the most violent parts of Chicago). Hyde Park, referred to as the jewel of the South Side, is basically like living on an island. The Hyde Park area is only 14 blocks long and many people who live here send their children to the same school – the University of Chicago lab schools (though there are also some great public schools like Kenwood Academy!). The community has only one major supermarket, and most people who live here run across each other at some point because of how small the neighborhood is. However, the community is diverse – the neighborhood ranges from politicians like Barack Obama, Carol Moseley Braun, the late Harold Washington to academics like Cass Sunstein, Martha Nussbaum, Gary Becker, Richard Epstein, Richard Posner, and the late Saul Bellow. The community also has some ex-radicals like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who are now mainstream academic/progressive figures in Chicago.

If you live in this small neighborhood for 20 years, it is likely that you will run across Ayers or Dohrn. This is especially the case for Obama, as he was the State Senator for this community, was an important member of the Chicago Democratic Community, served on local charities, taught at the University of Chicago Law School (and spoke at conferences with people like Ayers – a professor at University of Illinois-Chicago and Dohrn – a professor at Northwestern Law School who also teaches at the University of Chicago). This "Hannity" story is ridiculous and it reflects how bad the media has become.

[Jane Austin]

1. And here is a good comment from that thread:

And here is a comment from that Kos thread:

*The Washington Post Fact Checker has a good run down on the whole thing:

But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?

Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and "passion for social justice."

by hungrycoyote on Wed Apr 16, 2008 at 08:21:08 PM PDT

[melody]

2. Very true -- and the Clintons with all their 60s connections ... very suspicious

Two can play at that game.

Just when I think Hillary has hit bottom she finds an even deeper pocket of bad.