When I was arrested opposing the war in Vietnam in 1965, as I said about 20 or 30% of people were opposed to the war. By 1968, more than half of Americans were opposed to the war.
BILL AYERS[Martin Luther King] King was a socialist and King was an activist who was really a radical by the end.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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If you read Martin Luther King speeches and sermons in the last two years of his life – you might want to – when I read these to my students, they think it’s Malcom X because it’s so radical.
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Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.
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It’s worth remembering that in 1965, something like 20% of Americans were against the war. Something like 70% were for the war. So, it wasn’t a popular or an easy thing to do.
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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.
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The day before every revolution that’s ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.
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One of the things that happened that I think is noteworthy, my parents were pretty tolerant people given their position in society.
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Students for a Democratic Society was founded in 1961.
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The way it happened was that we were advocating for a strike that we advocated that the faculty should strike in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle.
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There were no political ideas. It was an apolitical time. It was the ’50s and in the privilege of the suburbs.
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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.
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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.
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I was terrible student at Michigan, terrible. Because there was too much else to do. I was learning form too many other sources to go to class.
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When you go into a college of education you’ve got aspirations of making a difference in people’s lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education.
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All of us pursued our own passions and our own interests. One of my brothers was filmmaker. One of my brothers was a teacher. My sister was a librarian.
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If you listen to the debate, [Barack Obama] and [John] McCain said the same thing about gay rights.
BILL AYERS