mr. ayers to reject his past in bomb making and terrorism. did he realize and does he realize even now that innocent people who had nothing to do with his target organizations could be hurt by such tactics, 1k3 ken decker the e-mails in, why does bill ayers think that bombing the u.s. capitol and police stations was a good idea? .. americans opposed the war.

what happened? well, antiwar activists were part of the story. probably the least important except important to me because i was one. more important than that was the black freedom movement came out in large numbers to oppose the war. martin luther king certainly from 1965-'68, read his speeches. he calls the u.s. government the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. he calls for, he calls the war illegal. he risks all of his prestige and his allies to make the point that the war is wrong morally, ethically, that it's illegal, and that it's a travesty and a catastrophe for the world. he says in april 4, 1967, we need to get on the right side of the world revolution. i mean, it's hard to believe because of the mythologizing of king, but king was a very powerful and important antiwar spokesperson. muhammad ali, why did he lose his title? because he would not go into the army, and he made very harsh and

strong statements about it. the student nonviolent coordinating committee, the people who led the sit-ins and freedom rides. they said no black man should go 10,000 miles away to fight for so-called free come he -- freedom he doesn't enjoy in mississippi. and we are seeing this replayed again, vets came home and told the truth, and that's all they had to do is tell the truth about what they saw, what they witnessed, what they experienced, and the disillusionment of hugh, who called earlier, was a common feeling among people my age as they returned from vietnam. i had a brother in the service, i had classmates in the service, cousins in the service. they were so disillusioned that they joined the antiwar movement in droves. so john kerry, to take one famous example, john kerry denounced the war to the senate threw his medals at the congress, said i don't want these medals, and then tried to live it down, and i think to his

discredit, really, when he ran for president. so you have this amazing development of an antiwar movement powered by vets, powered by the black movement, powered by young people and comes 1968 lyndon johnson for those of you who are young, he was the president then. i know we don't teach history, it's one of the things we've forgotten, but lyndon johnson announced at the end of march in 1968 that he would not run for president, he would work to end the war. we celebrated. we were jubilant. thousands of us gathered in the center of campus and had just a party all night long because we'd won. three years of war, a miserable war, an illegal war, a million deaths, but we'd won. and then five days later king is dead and two months after that, kennedy is dead. and a few months after that, not only is the war not going to end, the war's going to escalate, and here's the problem. every week that the war goes on

there will be another 6,000 deaths. every week. so what do you do? this is a crisis for democracy, it's 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 party, tried to build a peace wing within it. some people went to the communes, some people went to the factories, and i did what i did and have never said and certainly in "fugitive days" you will not find, you know, 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.y the only thing i am certain of is people who did nothing were wrong. those in the anti-war movement who think they did everything perfect was dissolution all we did not end the war it went on 10 years, 3 million people

needlessly slaughtered. >> host: we have a question and our studio audience. >> my name is robert i am from river woods illinois. i want to thank you for being here. with earlier you were talking about how you view your students and you mentioned in amazing phrase that you said to see is the one and only which is an amazing way too few people. you talked about each human is precious and about respect for car want you to talk a little bit about your view of those thoughts one in our society as we, as a social order view each other relative to these things. is it a declining situation? is it getting worse? where are we? >> i am not qualified to say if it is getting worse or

better i am only 65. but i do think it is one of the predicaments of the modern world precisely because the objectification of one another the inability to see one another as precious or sacred. the inability to see that means we begin to take one another for granted and human life granted and we begin to objectify one another. it is not a new problem, a human problem, an old problem but i do think we're at a point* in history where we can say, look, 1948 was a watershed year, the year of the universal declaration of rights, coming out of the horror of world war ii, the horror of nuclear weapons, the horror of the holocaust. to say to one another we must

start and begin by saying each one is precious. each one is the only one. and fugitive days i talk about the fact that whenever i go to the phenom mall in washington and paygo whenever i am there it makes me weep because there are 60,000 young americans on that wall and the other part that makes me weep there are indochinese missing from the wall. why? doesn't each one of them have a mother or a father is and each one of them have somebody that care for them? why are they invisible to us? frankly i think this is something, it is a function of so many things certainly the speed of the modern world or the pressures or mass communication but it is also a deeply ancient and human problem.

how do we see beyond our tribal, national, gender affiliations and a c1 another as people as hopes and dreams and aspirations and skills and capacities and futures to be taken into account to live in a fully human world. >> host: bill ayers is the husband of bernadine dohrn who will join us on our last hour one blocks that they have written it is in this book called seeing it a battle song and we will talk with her about that when she gets here lisa you're on with bill ayers. >> caller: i am here from hawaii. i want to thank you come with thank you so much because everything you pinpointed such an amazing grace it is being

heard because my children and me with the economy and everything we were brought up to know the white law, but the difference is we are an economy with a mixed plate so we all got along. yet i am in hawaii, my family before me, even though we come down from the descendants, we were all getting along and it was some meaning be responsible with a latent a. if you want to be treated that way but take care of ourselves like we take care of our land because we need to eat but we all got along. somehow win the war came even though all these different races came and put the timeout to go to the war, they have all different races and speaking but one focus.

the people of the united states. and our forefathers before us especially abraham lincoln i can see what you are doing and i pray and pray for you to give you the wisdom and the shield of that you can continue in your work. just want to tell you my question is, i know where you are doing and i pray for you. but the the thing is i know where you have got to two and it will be a big task. the big thing you tell them this is what it is. don't judge me because only god judges me. >> host: thank you very much what you make me think of as a couple of things the recognition of your own life and people and land i saw a documentary friday night and

undergraduate from university of chicago the documentary film festival just undergraduate kids there were all very short and so one that broke me up was a two-minute sequence with a young woman who was an iraqi bet she started talking about how beautiful iraq is and the beauty of the land and the beauty of the people and how every morning she would give up so she could see the spectacular sunrise in she would watch the sunset and have all of the troops stopped and watched because it is so beautiful than the contradiction of living in a war in that spot. she kept trying to say it was so beautiful and have a strong upper lip but she deteriorated before our eyes and broke into tears why are we doing this? what is this about? the rest of it is heard going to pieces. war, whenever you think about

standing way back here looking at the heroism and glory, there is nothing glorious about it and should do whatever we can to avoid it. also, very quickly you mentioned lincoln and our great leaders i think a lot about the election of a new president and administration is the fact that often, the interesting thing about this new president and a lot has been said about the first african-american president which is under believably fantastic i still wonder if it really happened. and the generational shift at the old people out of here, including me, but most important coming here is a community organizer, you cannot big of a president in american history that would be comfortable talking on the door of a public housing project on the south side and have a conversation.

he did that for years but during the campaign to would m.l. case support he said not any of us he would be in the streets building a movement for justice. that puts it on us because that says what should the obama administration thing to? but what should we do? if you want peace what did you do? and it reminds me lincoln never belong to the abolitionist party. fdr was not part of the labor movement and johnson was not part of the movement but they did extraordinary things because the something else existed in the room, it is us. here is a president that understands this. why don't we leave immediately and go get busy? [laughter]

>> host: bill ayers the co-author of this book "race course" against white supremacy" his most recent book. >> caller: hi. i am regarding martin luther king how can you go with a piece of paper and a pen when all of the money goes to the rich people? we are very highly educated and you were illegally evicted out of your place. i am getting evicted right now. i left my husband and the government took away all of my money and all of my medical. martin luther king. i have the police trying to shoot me then. i am doing everything possible we're good people the reason why the white supremacist are afraid because we do all the

work and they take all the money. you could not use those with a black man open-heart surgery and everything. calling for a full investigation where does the money go? we only have paper and pencil so i am asking in god's name, i go to the court over false accusation we are prisoners over our own bodies have a nice and wonderful life as i have never seen a man, you have controlled us like the indians you have controlled my way and i will die for my rights so therefore right now even though they took away my medical insurance that is how the what is but what am i supposed to do? >> guest: thank you for your call. i don't have rule out any real

advice. fight back and speak up and good luck. >> caller: i get every chance i can get to tell people about no child left behind even if they are in a special ed pond and then found an opposition because the special lead children do not make their annual yearly progress but compare their test scores to last year test scores and does not test thomas they have learned. i feel it is and intended bill year the intent is to fail public schools. >> guest: the no child left behind is the federal legislation that i think is up for reauthorization and even conservative critics have said

if we reauthorize it in the current form, it will be the death of public education and to mean that only a very tiny minority of kids will get a education for citizenship or full participation in our society. we are to rejected because of the single-minded obsession with standardized testing. i talked about the bane of democracy is powered by the fragile but precious ideal that each person is of the calculable value and if you look at the 1948 declaration of human rights, article xxvi that everybody has a right to education. no one should be excluded from that right. so in a place where we have expansions and expulsions gone crazy, look at that as a human rights. a full development as they're full self nazi a cognitive strain that is very narrow.

one way to look at that in terms of what dalian said is to ask yourself what standard do you want to hold in terms of education? whenever the most privileged and wisest parents want and get for their kids that is what we as a community want for all kids. that means the savage inequality where we fund some schools in illinois $40,000 per kid and some schools of $4,000 per kid, that should offend us as people who believe in democracy because what does that say to kids? our policy is to choose the right parents. if you choose the right parents everything is great if you choose the wrong parents that is not much we can do. that is offensive and part of the way to correct that is say what ever the most privileged and most wisest parents have that is what we want in the

chicago. i know what more than people in one that cut and i don't want them to get anything up i just want one high-school to be like the other. >> host: who is maxine greene? >> guest: my a teacher who and is now 92 years old and still has more than oliver marbles still the smartest person i note an extraordinary philosopher and writer. >> host: what is this book that you edited? eighty-one it is people who have learned from her in the but have been influenced by her and influenced by her reaching the shredding of her work i think she was 40 years old and when to get my doctorate i went back to school when i was 40 years old and she was my main professor

parker she was a very powerful person whose message was always more or less had to do with we should be seeing the world as if it could be otherwise and act on our imaginative capacity with a more peaceful and balanced world and she had a big impact of teaching on me. >> host: this is an e-mail being the your movement for alternative education would you make of president barack obama emphasis on charter schools? >> guest: i am not sure what the emphasis will be from the new administration but charter schools anything that takes away from the public space is a mistake. a lot of the people who were pushing for charters are great people. so make a distinction but on

the other hand, haven't we seen what they ideologies about privatizing everything where it takes us? do we really want to go to privatizing public education as a direction in the same way we privatize the health-care system has been privatized for ever and it is a catastrophe. why would we take that model? the ideologies that is taking control of us are the metaphor that has nominated -- dominated our education is like a product. education something you buy or sell in the marketplace like a box of bolts or in refrigerator. that is not true. otherwise it makes sense like kill the union and privatize all of the services but it is not true. we need to build a more robust public space and public system and a charters are not really

proven unless you are a part of that. >> host: what is your day job? >> guest: my day job? i have so many pacoima professor at the university of illinois in chicago and have been there 22 years. began when i was 43. i think of my work as an activist and it continues to be that even though i do a lot of writing and teaching and sponsoring dissertations and all of the rest of what a professor does by have thought of myself during my adult life as a political and social activist. >> host: what we're teaching last semester? >> guest: i am so exhausted i don't want to talk about it i just finished this week. any professor that winds about being a professor should be taken out and given a real job. my middle son is a middle

school math and science teacher and would ever he talks to his right your brother and lost to the brother and professor parents he says me quiet some of us have a real job. i except that teaching middle school science and math is a real job. last semester i top four courses i top one of new tariff research which i teach every spring, i taught a course which is required called improving learning environment, i taught a seminar in teaching for a cohort of people that were in a career change and i taught a course in writing a memoir 217 year-old's. let me tell you how much of a done? more than you have imagined. it is all here. >> host: we have about two hours left in our program with bill ayers we're live with

"the chicago tribune", printer's row literary fast and we're at the corner of south state street and congress and just about one blocks from where the festival is taking place this is where a lot of the author ebanks take place at the university center. the next call comes from james from oregon. >> caller: hello? this is what i have mostly heard about you what you said about the clinton administration and fox news, if you believe rightly labeled a terrorist of that is a true assumption or that you have committed a terrorist act? >> guest: no. >> host: day you care to expound on that answer?

>> guest: he wanted a yes or no answer. [laughter] >> host: in the 1960's were you considered a terrorist and looking back you consider yourself during those years, during the '60s and early '70s as an early terrorists? >> guest: i do not than and i do not know. we created a mythology on the war on terror which it was bizarre you may remember there is a fierce debate after 9/11 about how to understand what had just happened to us. no doubt it was a crime against humanity, a pure act of terror against a group of the ideologically driven religious fanatics and we have suffered something horrible not only the 3,000 died and the families but all of us. what was it? many people in the first six

months it is a crime against humanity and should be dealt with as a criminal justice problem but that dominant voices said it is a war on terror which stock shock me as odd because it is a war on tactic and where is that? it is everywhere and to fight it with invasions, how many countries? i am not sure but several. you end up with a dead end of thing. a war without an end, without a meeting against a tactic that can come from anywhere. you can take a stable definition of terrorism something like the violence or threats of violence against a population, assassinations, ki dnappings in order to influence the direction of policy than you would have to say the american war in vietnam was a pure act of terror it was terrorist war. we tried to resist that war by

breaking you could say there were despicable acts but if you say that you also have to add it was pretty despicable to be killing 6,000 people per week. in the book again i don't defend what we did i try as most literary memoirs to comment to understand how this guy got there how the son of privilege got into that spot and did the things he did but i don't defended but do try to understand it.

no. i was not a terrorist. we were not a terrorist we were never charged with terrorism or hurting people which is the fox news narrative or trying to hurt people because we did not. >> host: before we leave the topic of education of all of your books you have written or edited which would you recommend to people to read if they wanted to read one? >> guest: the most widely read is the one called to teach, the journey of a teacher at it is a red more by a wide audience as in fact, the third edition will be a graphic novel and abroad the new chapter one with me i have worked with akon -- cartoonist from a brilliant young man who moved in with us several months and be storyboard a book and i first thought would be decided to do this we would do an illustrated version of

to teach. that would be easy but i had to learn from this young man a graphic novel is not an illustrated book is entirely different. the reason is because it is in the intersection of art and words that the thing that comes to live so we wrote in an entirely new book in six months it will be out early 2010 and is called to teach, the journey and comics. i am very excited about it because i think it will reach a different audience and it will be of a different kind of impact i think "to teach" is important also teaching toward freedom which is my most important written book i don't know what is the subtitle of the book? moral commitment and epochal action in the classroom. that is an attemo