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I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

Bill Ayers

I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base – those people should be allowed to vote in the American election.
BILL AYERS

Country Law Military
Lyndon Johnson who was the president who was executing that war, announced in the spring of 1968 that he would not seek the presidency again. He would go to Paris and end the war in Vietnam. Well we were ecstatic.
BILL AYERS

Country President Spring War
I get up every morning and think…today I’m going to end capitalism.
BILL AYERS

Morning Thinking Today
Where’s the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows.
BILL AYERS

Parks Revolution Thinking
[Students for a Democratic Society] was on many campuses and it was a powerful organization. It was founded by Tom Hayden, who passed away very recently.
BILL AYERS

Organization Powerful Reading
In terms of my own behavior and activity, the funny thing about regrets and saying “I’m sorry,” is that there’s so much I would do differently and want to do differently moving forward.
BILL AYERS

Moving Regret Sorry
The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.
BILL AYERS

Goes Ideas Teaching
Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.
BILL AYERS

Frankly Ground Politician Propulsive
Everyone who knew [Barack] Obama from being in Hyde Park knew he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into; a decent, compassionate, lovely person; pragmatic, middle-of-the-road and ambitious.
BILL AYERS

Ambitious Guy Lovely
Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President – that was exhilarating.
BILL AYERS

Country Exhilarating Long
I was indicted on two federal conspiracies. My wife was on the Ten Most Wanted list. That’s what fascism was going to look like. That’s what it did look like.
BILL AYERS

Conspiracies Looks Two Wife
Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war.
BILL AYERS

Murdered People War
What were the politics of my family? They were mainstream moderate politics.
BILL AYERS

Family Mainstream Moderate
I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.
BILL AYERS

Rights Support War
This man is a war criminal.” My younger brother and I, he was freshman and I was a sophomore, got caught up in the debates that were swirling around the center of campus and the young Trotskyists had put out a fact sheet on Vietnam that was phenomenal.
BILL AYERS

Around Campus Criminal Freshman Mna Sophomore Swirling
I would say when I went to Michigan. It started. I got very very involved in civil rights in Ann Harbor right away. Picketing, something I never even knew existed.
BILL AYERS

Harbors Michigan Rights
The truth is that the antiwar movement was powered by the working class. The students were the ones that got the media and so forth, but it was the soldiers on the ground who really energized the antiwar movement in the late Sixties.
BILL AYERS

Class Media Soldier
You will be raising these kids in your mind your whole life. And they will change you. Your little contribution to it – twenty years from now, they’ll be marching off into other things and that’s still the legacy you leave.
BILL AYERS

Change Kids Mind Rising Years
Injustice anywhere is an assault on all of us. That means that we all can get busy.
BILL AYERS

Busy Injustice Mean
We should open our eyes, see what’s in front of us, and act.
BILL AYERS

Eye Fronts Should
The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases.
BILL AYERS

Dollar Military Spend Two Years
I think I am a radical. I have never deviated from that. By radical, I mean someone trying to go to the root of things.
BILL AYERS

Mean Roots Thinking
My father lived with me the last five years of his life and passed away of Alzheimer’s, and at that point he was saying to anyone who would listen,
BILL AYERS

Father Hate Listen War
I was arrested in 1965 for opposing the war in Vietnam. There were 39 of us arrested that day. But thousands opposed us. And the majority of the people in the country supported the war then.
BILL AYERS

Country People War
Education is the motor-force of revolution.
BILL AYERS

Force Motor Revolution
“I didn’t want her to miss tonight! I wanted to be able to tell her!” And to see all these people, a Hispanic cop dancing with an old white woman, wow! I mean, that’s the world I want to live in, and because it’s the world I want to live in, I had a hard time leaving.
BILL AYERS

Dancing Hispanic People Tonight Wanted Woman World
So I had the great advantage of being able to play up to the older kids and play down to the younger kids and I think that’s part of what propelled me to become a teacher at some point in my life. But it was a comfortable childhood. It was a privileged childhood.
BILL AYERS

Childhood Kids Some Point Younger

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

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I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

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