Posted on 10/30/2008 9:28:46 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
DENVER -- More than 3,200 supporters -- including former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill -- have signed a petition protesting what they call the "demonization of Professor William Ayers."
Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama's ties to Ayers have been questioned during the presidential campaign by critics who call the professor a "domestic terrorist." Obama's Republican opponent, John McCain, conducted a robo-phone call campaign in Colorado and several other states, calling into question Obama's connection with Ayers.
The phone call campaign against Ayers began at the same time McCain told voters he wasn't concerned with "some washed up terrorist," during the last presidential debate.
The petition, circulated online, asserts that Ayers' violent actions as the co-founder of the Weather Underground were just "history." The petition calls Ayers a well-respected, nationally-known figure in the education world. It also said that critics who call Ayers an "unrepentant terrorist" and "lunatic leftist" are "part of a pattern of 'exposes' and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue."
Click here to read the petition.
Ward Churchill made national headlines when he called the victims of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns" and compared them to Nazis in an essay. He was eventually fired from his job in Boulder for research misconduct and work with the Martin Luther King Collegium of Scholars.
The petition is signed by a number of professors from the University of Colorado, Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado.
Bill Ayers holds the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedenverchannel.com ...
Awe, did we hurt the fiwings of duh powiddle weftisths?
In my world Ayers certainly wouldn’t be teaching anywhere.
Dry bones by now.
REVOLUTION THROUGH EDUCATION
Yesterday on the program we had a caller Jose. He brought up a lot of interesting points about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers ... and he believes that we have already begun a Marxist revolution in America – similar to that of Latin America. And he believes that this is happening through our government education system.
Now, it only took a 2-second Google search to find a speech that Bill Ayers made in Venezuela in 2006 at the World Education Forum. Before I give you some of the highlights, I want you to keep a few things in mind. According to Barack Obama, Bill Ayers is "just a professor of English in Chicago" and "a guy who lives down the street." Now if this man was "just" a professor, why is he being invited by Latin American dictators to speak at a World Education Forum? Bill Ayers is more than a professor; he is an icon for those hoping to revolutionize the American government education system.
I also want you to keep in mind that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama worked together on education reform in Chicago. We know the story ... Obama was the chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, serving with Bill Ayers. This $50 million fund awarded grants to groups that were trying to improve inner city education. And how did it do that ... not by giving money to the schools, but by giving money to other groups like the Small Schools Workshop. Ever heard of that? Well when Barack Obama was the chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for this workshop ... which was an organization led by Bill Ayers and Michael Klonsky -- former chairman of both Students for a Democratic Society and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). These are the people who Barack Obama thought would be best equipped to help the ailing inner city schools of Chicago.
There is so much more to this, folks. But it is completely beyond the understanding of government educated myrmidons who swoon at the sight of a "Change We Can Believe In Sign" ready for them to waive like a fool at some Obama rally. What I am driving at is that we know how much government education reform means to Barack Obama. And Bill Ayers was right by his side and a benefactor of Obama's support. We also know that when it comes to education in this country, as President, Barack Obama wants to make sure that your children are educated by the government. Vouchers? No way. Private schools? We'll see. This is a man who believes it is the government's job to educate your children ... and in his past the "educators" that Barack has turned to have been the likes of Bill Ayers.
Now what does Bill Ayers think about education and the United States? Let's return to that speech he made just 2 years ago at the World Education Forum in Venezuela.
I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I'd been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: "We can't have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now."I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice ...
Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism – turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life ...
Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome ...
Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.
When it comes to our government education system in this country, it might not even matter if Barack Obama is elected in this country. But under Barack Obama, I know that I can expect more federal government and less choice for parents.
Ayers dedicated his 1974 book, Prairie Fire, to the killer of Robert Kennedy.
Fox News just got a copy of Ayer’s 1974 book called “Prairie Fire,” a pro-Socialist screed...but here’s the interesting thing - among the names the book is dedicated to? Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy.
Bill Ayers, Obama’s friend...dedicated a book to Sirhan Sirhan. Unreal.
It’s time for all Marxists and Communists to join together and stand up against those evil Americans!
I wonder if Ethel Kennedy is going to withdraw her Obama endorsement when she hears that. What a slap in the face!
Bill Ayers...don’t look at him or listen to him, he is so creepy. Ugh.
Ward Churchill is the one that tought the Weathermen Undergound how to build bombs.
Maybe he's not washed up.
“The result you can see — most of the people who graduated in the 60’s, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can’t get rid of to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information.”
—Yuri Bezmenov, KGB Defector
(rage)
Very accurate quote.
The online petition is bullstalin.
http://www.supportbillayers.org/
It is NOT just professors who have signed this. And some may not even be real names.
But it meets the lying stalinist media’s daily talking points.
I LOATHE American Pradva, aka Buttociated Press.
"The current characterizations of Professor Ayers---“unrepentant terrorist,” “lunatic leftist”---are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history;" The current characterizations of Professor Ayers---“unrepentant terrorist,” “lunatic leftist”---are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; This was NOT a peace movement. They were Communists who had met with the North Vietnamese military and were giving them treasonous support by waging an insurgency in America.
As one of the 25 million dissenters that Ayers would have ‘eliminated’, I find the entire thing quite humorous.
Demonized him? No, I would say he demonized himself pretty thoroughly.
While these fools are at it, they might as well start a petition supporting Osama Bin Laden for his “passionate participation” in “political activity” 7 years ago.
If this is the consensus in academia, I say bulldoze the universities as soon as possible. This is a cancer in our midst.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.