The president of the University said that night, congratulations to you the students, you’ve won a great victory, now the war will end. And I’m certain that he believed it that night and I believed it and we went away happy. Four days later, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
That’s what [Abraham] Lincoln said. “The white man will always be above the black man. I don’t want them to run for office, or have political rights, or vote. I want them to go back to Africa.”
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.
Can we imagine a different world? I can. That’s a world where work is rational, it’s in the common good, and we’re actually producing real things rather than spinning our wheels in dreams of consumer heaven.
People camped out at his house, and wondering who’s coming to visit, who’s going to be the Secretary of State – that all struck me as inane and stupid.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
That’s where we all kind of were in the mid-1960s. Students for a Democratic Society grew from a small group of socialists at the university of Michigan into a national organization, and in many ways, its growth was driven by the Vietnam War.
[Lyndon ] Johnson was responding to a black freedom movement that was tearing the country open and he did what he had to do as a conservative politician.
The 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.
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.
I mean, what’s he doing now? He’s evolving. Evolving? Well, evolve for Christ’s sake! And this is a guy – the whole gay community, and the whole environmental community and all these other people said, he’s our guy.
![Bill Ayers Quote - That’s what [Abraham] Lincoln said. “The white man will always be above the black man. I don’t want them to run for office, or have political rights, or vote. I want them to go back to Africa.”](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/thats-what-abraham-lincoln-said-the-white-man-will-683x1024.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [Lyndon ] Johnson was responding to a black freedom movement that was tearing the country open and he did what he had to do as a conservative politician.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/lyndon-johnson-was-responding-to-a-black-freedom-m.jpg)
