evidence of it and i would not be here if it were true. .. oppression. you know, privileged kids get a fine education. there's no doubt about -- they always have, and they go on to have their life opportunities opened. kids who are poor, the children of formerly enslaved people tend

not to do as well and that's been true for as longs i have been a teacher. >> host: we have gotten several e-mails along this line. jesse of connecticut. still waiting for mr. ayers to thoroughly reject his past in bomb making and terrorism, did he realize and does he realize even now that innocent people could be hurt by such tactics and ken desk at the e-mails in that why does bill ayers thing that bombing the u.s. capitol and police stations is a good inside. >> guest: i have to take a minute to talk about this. the fact is, i was arrested in 1965 opposing the war. at that point something like 75 or 80% of americans supported the war. i work for the next three years to oppose the war from 1965 to

1968. those three years. i worked constantly as an organizer, an activist to try to stop that war. a lot of things happened in the three years from 1965 do 1968, and by 1968 a majority of americans opposed the war. what happened? well, are activists were the part of the story. more important was that black freedom movement came out in large numbers to oppose the war. martin luther king certainly from 1965 to 198. read his speeches. he call this u.s. government the greatest purveyor of war in the world. he risks his prestige to make the point that the war is wrong, morely, ethically, illegal and a travesty. he says in 1967, we need to get on the right side of the war

revolution. it's hard to believe bought of the mythologizing of king but he was a very powerful and important antiwar spokesperson, muhammad al limit why did he lose his title? because he would not go in the army and he made very harsh and strong statements about it. the student nonviolent coordinating committee that led the free tom rights they said no black man should go 10,000 miles away to fight for a freedom he doesn't get in mississippi. you're seeing this get replayed gem it vets came home and told the truth. and what they witnessed and expertensed and the disillusionment was a common feeling month people my age as they returned from vietnam. i had a brother in the service, classmates in the service, cousin. they were so disillusioned they joined the antiwar movement in

droves. so, john kerry denounced the war to the senate. threw his medal tennessee congress, said i don't want these, and then tried to live it down, and i think to his discredit when he ran for president. so you have this amazing developments of an antiwar movement, powered by vets, by the black movement, by young people, and comes 1968, lynn johnson son, for those who were young, the president, i don't we don't teach history -- at the end of march in 1968 he would not run for president and would work to end the war. we celebrated. we were june lent, and thousands of us gathered and had just a party all night long because we won. three years of war, a miserable washings illegal war, million

deaths but we won. and then five days later, king is dead, and then kennedy is dead, and then not only is the war not going to end, it's going escalate, and here's the problem. every week the war goes on there would be another 6,000 deaths. every week. so, what do you do? this is a crisis for democracy, a crisis for the antiwar movement in my own family, in my own family, people made a range of choices. we were all against the war. one of us ran away to canada to get out of the madness. one of us joined the democratic part, tried to build a peace wing. some people went to the commune, some people went to the factories, and i did what i did, and have never said and certainly in the fugitive days you will not find a statement that says what we did was brilliant or right or perfect, but frankly, the 6,000 people a week dying i still don't know what was right.

the only thing i'm certain of is people who did nothing were wrong, and people in the antiwar movement who think they did everything perfectly, we department end the war and it went on for ten years. 3 million people were needlessly slaughtered. >> host: we have a question here in our studio audience. >> my name is robert from riverwoods, illinois, and bill i want to thank you for being here with us. >> guest: thank you very much. >> earlier you were talking about you you view your students and how you teach them. and you mentioned to me an amazing phrase. sow said to see only, which is the amazing way to view people, students or whatever. you talked about each human is precious and about respect. and i wanted you to talk a little bit about your view of those thoughts, about our society, how we as a social

order view each other relative to these things and is this a declining situation? is it getting worse? >> guest: thank you very much, robert. i'm not qualified to say whether it's getting worse or better. i haven't lived long enough. i'm only 65. but i do think its one of the predicaments of the modern world precisely, is that the kind of object identifying ewan but. the inability to see that means we begin to take one another for granted. we begin to take human life for granted and in that sense we begin to objective identify one another and it worries me deeply and it's not a new problem. it's a human problem, an old problem. i think wore at a point in history where we can say, look, 1948 was a watershed area --

year in the world, the year of the declaration of human rights. a watershed year coming out of the horror of world war ii and the horror of nuclear weapons being dropped, and the holocaust, and coming to the point we can say we must start, we must begin by saying each one is precious, each one is the only one who will drive the earth. so in fugitive days i talk about the fact whenever i good to the vietnam wall in washington and whenever i'm in washington, it makes me weep because there's 60,000 young americans on that wall, and the other part that makes me weep is that there are three million indo chinese missing from the wall. why are they missing? doesn't each one of them have a mother and a father? isn't each one of them somebody who had somebody who cared for them? why are they invisible to us and frankly i think that this is something that we -- this is a

function of so many things. certainly the speed of the modern world, certainly the pressures we're all under. certainly mass communication. but it's also, i think, a deeply ancient and human problem. how do we see beyond our tribal and national and racial and gender affiliations and see one another as people with hopes and dreams and aspirations and skills and capacities and futures that have to be taken into account if we're going to live in a fully human world. >> host: bill ayers is the husband of bernadine dohrn, who will be joining us in our last hour here, and a book they edited and a lot of their writings are in this book, sing a battle song. the revolutionary poetry and write examination statements of the weather underground and we will talk with her about that. lisa in honolulu, thanks for holing. go ahead with your question.

>> hello, hello. i'm here from hawaii and i want to thank you, thank you, thank you, so much, bus you know, everything that you pinpoints is such an amazing grace that is being heard because my children and me with the economy and everything, the basic think is we were brought up to know the white law but the difference is we are economy with a mixed plate so we all got along, and yet i'm in hawaii, my family is before me, even though we come from the descendents were were all living and get can along and our word was take care of your -- be responsible with the land, with your family. if you want to be treated that way, then you treat it then, but it's basically take care of ourselves like we take care of our land because we need to eat,

so we all got long. when the war came, even though all these different races came and they put their time out to go to the war, the differences, they had all different races, all different speaking but one focus, is to turn around the fate of people, the people of the united states. and our forefeathers before us, especially abraham lincoln, i can see what you're doing and i pray and pray for you to give you the wisdom and the shield that you can continue in your works. and i just wanted to tell you my question is, are you needing the -- i know what you're doing and i praise you. but the thing is i know what you got to do and it's going to be a big task. the good thing is, this is what is, don't judge me because only god judge me. >> host: we have to leave it there. thank you very much. >> guest: well, thank you very

much. and what you make me think of i is a couple things. when when you talk about the recognition of your own life, your own people, your own land, i saw a documentary friday night, an undergreatwall of the university of chicago -- under graduate kids that made documentaries and the one that broke me up was a two-meant sequence with a young woman who was an iraqi vet and she talked about how beautiful iraq is and the beauty of the people and how every morning she got up to see the sunrise, and she liked the sunset and had all of her troops stop for a minute and then the contradiction of living in a war in that spot, and as she talked she kept trying to keep a brave face and say how beautiful it was and have a strong upper lip

and she deteriorated before our eyes. she broke into tears and said, why are we doing this? what was it about? and the rest of the thing is her going to pieces. so i think that we ought to recognize that war, whatever you think about the standing way back here and looking at the hero jim and the glory of it, there's nothing glorious about and it we should do everything we to be avoid it. the other thing you make me think quickly, is that you mentioned lincoln and our great leaders. the ones i think a lot about with the election of a new president and the new administration is the fact that often -- the interesting thing about this new president, and a lot said about the first african-american president, which is unbelievably fantastic, i still find i've surreal every morning and wake up and wonder did it really happen and a generational shift, get the old people out of here, including me, and let some young people, but most important, here's a

community organizer, here's a guy -- and you can't think of a president american history who would be comfortable knocking on the doctor of a public housing project on the south side and having a conversation. this person did that for years. more importantly, when he was asked who would martin martin lr king would support, he wouldn't support any of us. he would be building a move for justice and that put as press on us because it's one thing so say what should the obama administration to do. it's another thing to say what should you do? what what did you do for peace? and it reminds me that lincoln never belonged to an abolitionist party, and fdr was part of the labor movement and president johnson wasn't part of the black freedom movement but they did extraordinary things when extraordinary things were demanded because of something else and the something else exists in this room, in this

audience, it's us, and i think here is a president who understands that. so why don't we all leave immediately and go get busy. i'm just kidding. >> host: bill ayers the coe coauthor of this book. you're on will bill ayers. >> caller: in 1987, how can you go on with a piece of paper and a pen. go to the people of oakland. we are hively educated and we were illegal he evicted out of your piece. your people around here. i'm being evicted right now. the government took all me money, took away my medical. to back to 1968 when i was five

and a half. the police tried to shoot me then. i'm trying everything possible. we are good people. the reason the white supremist is afraid because they made us a third party. we do the work and they take the money. open heart surgery and everything. so finally like a full investigation, where does the money go? so don't ruin our people. we don't have the -- so i'm asking, in god's name, june 19th. we are prisoners of our -- god bless and the lightness, and that's what it is. you guys are in control. you guys took my land and everything. we have no say-so. but i will die for any rights so therefore right now i have my

medical insurance. so tell me what i'm supposed to do. >> host: bill ayers. >> guest: i don't have any real as vice. fight back, speak up, and you are, and good luck. >> host: diane, las vegas, you're on will bill ayers. are you with us? >> caller: take every chance i get to tell people about no child left behind that require children to take tests at grade level even if they're in special ed and then the schools are not proficient because the special ed children do not make their annual yearly progress that compares their test scores to last years test scores and doesn't test how much they have learned, and i feel that it's an failure -- they intend to fail public schools.

>> guest: you know, the no child left behind is the federal legislation that i think is up for reauthorization, and even conservative critics have said that if we reauthorize it in the current form it's going to be the death of public education, it's going to mean that only a very tiny minority of kids are going to get an education for citizen shipp and education for full participation in our society. we taught reject it because of the single-mined obsession with standardsizees testing. one day i talk about the way in which a democracy is powered be this fragile but precious ideal that each person is of value, and if you go and look at the 1948 declaration of human rights, article 26 is about education, and it's -- everyone has a right to an education. no one should be excluded from

that right. so chicago where we have suspensions going crazy, people have a right to the full development of their full selves, not a kind of strain that is going on. so one other way of looking at it that is important and just in terms of what diane said is ask yourself what standards do we want to hold in terms of education. we can say that whatever the most privileged and the wisest parents want and get for their kids, that's what we as a community want for all kids, and that means that the kind of savage inequalities where we fund some schools in illinois to the tune of $40,000 per kid and -- per kid per year, and some schools at $4,000 per kid per year that should offend us as people who believe in democracy because that is that saying to kids? our policy is choose the right parents. if you choose the right parents, everything will be agreement if

you choose the wrong parents there's not much we can do. that's offensive in a democracy. so we should correct that. and part of the way we correct that is to say that whatever the most privileged and wisest parents have, that's what we want in chicago. so, i don't want more than what people have in win net could and i don't want people in win net could to give anything up they have. i want high schools the same. >> host: who is maxine greene. >> guest: she is my mentor at columbia university. she is now i want to say 92 years old, the smartest person i know and an extraordinary writer, thinker, and philosopher. >> host: what is this book youd -- you edited. >> guest: light and dark times. it's people who have learned from her. people who have been influenced by her, writing about the influence of her thinking on

their work, and maxine greene was i think 40 years old when i met her. i had again to get a doctorate when i was 40. right. i had gone back to school when i was 40 years old to get a doctorate, and she was my many professor, and she was a very powerful person whose message was always that more or less had to do with we should begin to see the world as if it could be otherwise and that we should act on our imaginative capacity to imagine a fairer, more just, more peaceful, more balanced world, and she had a big impact on my thinking of teaching we have this e-mail being your a veteran of alternative education what do you make about president obama 0s emphasis on charter schools. >> guest: i'm not sure what the emphasis will be from the new administration. charter schools -- anything that

takes away from the public space is a mistake. a lot of the people who are pushing for charters and who, who in charters are great, great people, so let's make a distinction. but on the other hand, haven't weapon we seen what the ideology about privatizing everything, where it takes news do we want to go to privatizing public education as a direct of -- in the same way we privatized the health care system, has been privatized forever and it's a catastrophe. why would we take that model as the model of the way to go the ideology that is taking control of us or me metaphor that's dominating our thinking about education is that schooling is a product, education is something you buy and sell in the marketplace, like a box of bottoms or other refrigerator. it's not true. it's a false metaphor. if you buy the metaphor, the

things make sense, kill the union and privatize all the services. but it's not true. what we need is to build a more robust public space, a more robust become system, and charters are not really proven in the last few years to be part of that. >> host: what is your day job? >> guest: my day job. gosh. i have so many. my day job is i'm a professor at the university of illinois in chicago and i have been there for 22 years so i gap professorring was 43. but i think of my work really as the work of an activist, and it continues to be that even though i'm situated at uic and i do a lot of of writing and teaching and sponsor are dissertations but i have thought of myself as a political and social activist. >> host: what were you teaching last semester? what what course?

>> guest: i just finished this week so i don't want to talk bit immigrant. i'm kidding. my prefer who whines about a professor ought to be taken out and given a real job in fact my son dish have three sons but my middle son, malik, is a middle school math and science teacher and whenever the talks to his two professor parents and his writer brother and his law student brother he says, would you people please be quiet, some of us have a real job, and i accept that. it's a real job teaching middle school math and signs. last semester i taught four courses. i taught a course in narrative research which i teach every spring. i taught a required course in the masters program called improving learning environments. i taught a seminar in teaching for a cohort of people who were career-changers and i taught a course in writing memoir to 17-year-olds.

>> host: wow. >> guest: 17-year-old writing a memoir. let me tell you. how much have they cnn done? more than you imagine because it's all here. >> host: we have two hours left in the program with bill ayers here, we are live at the chicago tribune's printers literaryfest, and we're at the corner of south state street and congress, bat block from where the festival is taking place. this where is the author events take place in the university center. we're going to take a couple more calls. next call is from james in medford, oregon. >> caller: i wanted to know with a yes or no question if possible, since -- what i have mostly heard about you from what you said to the clinton administration and fox news, if you believe that you are widely label a terrorist if that is a

true assumption or you're committed to terrorist acts, that is my question. >> guest: no. >> host: do you care to expound on that answer? >> guest: he wanted a yes or no answer. i mean, i can. i mean -- >> host: in the 1960s were you considered a terrorist and do you, looking back, consider yourself during those years, during the '60s anderlily '70s as a terrorist? >> guest: , and i didn't consider myself that then and not now. if you take deaf mission of terror -- one of the problems since 9/11 we createed this mythology of the war on terror which is bizarre. in was a fierce debate after 9/11 about how to understand what had just happened to us and there was no doubt it was a crime against humanity, that it was a pure act of terror by a group of ideology driven -- so

what was it? many people in first since months said it's a crime against humanity. it should be dealt with as a crim justice problem. but the noisy voices said no, it's a war on terror, which always struck me as a little odd because it's a war on a tactic, and where is terror? everywhere. anywhere. how do you fight it? with everything. with invasions. how many countries will we invade? i'm not sure but several. you end up in this dead end thing. war without end, war without meaning, against a tactic. if you take a stable definition of terrorism, something like the violence or the threats of violence against a population, a fascination's kidnappings, in order to influence the direction

of policy, then you would have to say the american war in vietnam was a pure act of terror. in my view it was a terrorist war. we tried to resist that war by breaking the law, as i said i bro the law in 1965. i continued to break the law consistently for the next several year. i was arrested many times. i destroyed draft files. i committed stream -- extreme acts of violence but they weren't directed at randomly hurting people to influence policy. so i wasn't a terrorist. when we went underground we crossed line of propriety and common sense. you can say they were despicable acts but if you say that you ought to also add it was pretty despicable to be killing 6,000 people a week. so i don't defend what we did. i try as most literary memoirs

do, try to understand how this guy got there, how this son of privilege got into that spot and did the things he did but i don't defend it and i don't -- but i do try to understand it. so, no, i was not a terrorist. we were not terrorists. we were never charged with terrorism. we were never charged with hurting people, which is kind of again the fox news narrative. or were trying to hurt people because we didn't. >> host: before we leave the topic of education, of all your education books you have written or edited, which would you recommend to people to read if they wanted to read one? >> guest: the one that is most widely read is called, to teach, the journey of a teacher, and it's the one that is read by a more general audience. so much so that the third edition is going to be a graphic novel and i brought chapter one with me. i worked with a 26-year-old cartoonist, n