One hundred years from now, we’ll all be dead. It’s hard to believe. One hundred years from now, everyone we see every day will be gone.
BILL AYERSOne hundred years from now, we’ll all be dead. It’s hard to believe. One hundred years from now, everyone we see every day will be gone.
BILL AYERS[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 AYERSIt was one of the founders of SDS and that chief writer of the Port Huron Statement, which is still worth reading. It’s kind of the Bernie Sanders campaign document in a funny way.
BILL AYERSBeginning to dismantle the Pentagon would save $1 trillion a year – a small government proposal if ever there was one.
BILL AYERSGuilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.
BILL AYERSHating war in Vietnam in 1965 was minority position.
BILL AYERS“We all hated the war in Vietnam.” Well, it was easy to hate the war in Vietnam 40 years on.
BILL AYERSThe only people who have never had a problem with me speaking in their venues are independent bookstores and libraries. Universities and humanities councils have canceled me, but never an independent bookstore.
BILL AYERSWe just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can’t the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It’s a captured system.
BILL AYERSThere were no political ideas. It was an apolitical time. It was the ’50s and in the privilege of the suburbs.
BILL AYERSI don’t know that I ever bought into the “American dream.” I was a child of privilege. I grew up in the ’50s and it was a quiet time in America, at least on the surface and I grew up in a kind of feathery bed of privilege.
BILL AYERSWe should open our eyes, see what’s in front of us, and act.
BILL AYERSIf you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.
BILL AYERSOne question is: Who is the working class today, and how has it changed? Where are we in that? I don’t have a knee-jerk kind of 1930s thing about we must build the unions and that’s the way to the future.
BILL AYERSTwo thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war.
BILL AYERSHis [Martin Luther King] last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, is a direct reference to angles, barbarism or socialism.
BILL AYERS