try to draw activists back from what we saw as a possible role into terrorism. and to engage in symbolic actions, to resist the government primarily by words and by actions that would be underby everybody to be engaged in a educational and teach-in kind of way and to encourage mass activity and popular activity and local organizing. .. connected,

social movement for justice and peace. >> host: you say you were trying to pull back. were trying to itll back but it was after that that you planted the bombs in the capital and the pentagon. >> i didn't, the organization took credit for it. those were symbolic actions. they were designed to be in the middle of the night to be understood around the world, ndich they were instantly. they do need a communique to say what or why, and they heard no one. i am not going to defend them. in today's world is indefensible but they were not terrorist actions. >> host: what do you do today? what is your day job? >> guest: i teach at

northwestern law school, i had the benefit of teaching human rights and children's rights for almost 18 years. o direct the family justice anter which is an organization, clinical program so law students and social work students work with our lawyers, lawyers who represent kids every day, kids talked with crime, kids pushed out of school, 0 tolerance policies and immigrant kids seeking asylum. m host: what is your relationship to bill ayers? >> guest: he is my best friend, my partner, i adore him. he makes me laugh. >> host: is your husband? >> guest: it is fair to say we

are married. >> host: bill ayers and bernardine. feingold the power of the have never seemed more powerful or full of themselves. in chicago we have rick sent kelly calling for his lanitionary key parties. the greatest line of the year so far, something like the bush administration tried to privatize schools and privatize social security. having failed to do so, .pivatize the united states treasury itself using henry paulson's park program. it is a bleak time. i don't mean to be a downer. i was wondering if you could comment, the famous line about propaganda, the mark of successful propaganda is when you can convince people that their own destruction is nktertainment of the highest order. i am hitting on tom frank, when whercan turn a class conscious

proletariat, people can act against their best self-interest. i wonder if you can elaborate on those ideas. >> guest: you said very eloquently everything that i agree with. over the last 30 years since ronald reagan, we have had the greatest wealth transfer of any period of any country in human history. 3-quarters of the wealth have gone to the top 1% of the u.s. population. that is a remarkable for left and we were awake during it, not totally awake but we were alive. the level of poverty in the richest country in human history surprises our closest friends and allies. one out of five being born into poverty. none of this data is equal. some populations have suffered much more from this income

transfer. it is one out of three for african-american latino kids. that is an incredible obstacles. many people transcend being born into poverty but in the richest country in the world, how can we f lerate that? we have invested in the military, 57% of the u.s. budget is the military. in schools, health care, iansport that makes sense, all,ng the planet, that seems to be. the good news, from your call, re american people, the vast majority of american people hjected a continuation of that. my interests, even though it involves in voting for a candidate i couldn't imagine voting for just a few years ago, we need to throw the bums out from the bush administration. >> guest:

>> host: anything to add? >> it is the best of times and the worst of times to quote a famous novel. t is a very bleak time and all of the references you made an elaboration that bernardine gave is absolutely true bernardine's//is worth underlining. we saw the rejection of that, rejection of the politics of 9/11, the politics of fear and loathing and endless war. this is a time of endless apectations, and at the same time crises that are real, not s st financial but economic, not e st economic, the global

environmental crisis is catastrophic. it is upon us. the role of the united states and the world, continuing ingitary ism is upon us. theis an amazing moment to be alive. we need to find a way to negotiate through the bleakness and brightness of this important moment in history. ou host: there is a chapter you wrote called the modern slave pr ship, you walk through visiting chase's biological mother in prison. an expert pro, recognizable and treated affectionately by the most miserable of prison guards. don't bring anything into prison that is contraband, chewing gum, keys, magic markers, empty your pockets, take off shoes.

why do you have a chapter about visiting prisons in this book? >> guest: there's almost no example that is more clear-cut about why we still have a problem with racism and the structure of white supremacy in the united states than the present lag -- blog that we can no longer sustain. inr brothers and sisters incarcerated for non-violent crimes, no evidence whatsoever that this caging of young black latino men makes us safer. no evidence. all kinds of other ways to sanction lawbreaking and help diople recover from the worst thing they ever did. no other country does what we do. as every governor, republican or democrat, can testify, we can't sustain this. what it costs to lock people up,

what it costs to have them come tck out with no skills, no prospect for housing, no prospects for jobs, no prospects to vote, stripped of their opportunity to recover from whatever happened, it is just a failing system. governors are trying to close prisons and the small towns, the unions that threaten their jobs make us locked in to a system not unlike slavery where a lot of people had an interest in perpetuating it even though, if you step back, you would say whe can't be. we have to get rid of it. the fact that we have this odd family where we visited prisons, it is not that on. you have two million people in prisons and on any given day, you have ten million kids who

are incarcerated, much larger number of people who are relatives of family and friends, f huge sector of the american population. yove a million people year are coming out of prison. oudon't know how many of your audience has been in a prison but if you haven't, you should be. we are never more than 10 miles off from a massive prison. that is both an example of lacial discrimination for the yme offense, the same background, the same record, blacks and whites are treated differently. f am in the justice system every day. te acan document every stage, it f like there are 2 systems of justice. that is why i wrote about it but this family has this odd history of kids thinking you grow up ndsiting prisons, trying to have a conversation in a visiting

room where everybody is crying and shouting and holding hands, there is nothing to do but put quarters in a machine. >> the washington times had this otitorial, bill ayers is back but it is about your recent book. if i could get you to respond a little bit. their new book published by third world press, is racecourse macynst white supremacy. the publisher's description summarizes the thesis that white supremacy has been the dominant political system since its earliest days and it is still very much with us. even though barack obama invoice todoval rating around 60%, racism is the dominant cultural factor in america today, it is hard not to drag the chains of that history in to the present. is goal seems to be to keep america's minorities angry,

which keeps america divided. >> we should be angry about the reality that bernardine the scribe, five million americans eave lost their citizenship, you can't vote. that is odd if you think about it, we will reject that notion, because you are convicted of a ouldny, you can't vote. the number of african-american men disenfranchised in florida would have made the difference andhe 2000 election. disenfranchisement is a serious problem and it is race related. if you look at capital punishment, the death machine, aoy davis and in georgia is lcing imminent death for a crime that it is doubtful that he committed. the rest of the world looks at us and says really. de this is civilization. this is a high form of

democracy, and the death penalty is race correlated. ted can actually take a map of lynchings all over the united states at the turn of the last century and overlay with deaths t way and they correlate pretty closely. we shouldn't fool ourselves or blind ourselves to the reality angryt we are looking at. this is not an attempt to make thaody angry except angry at injustice. similarly with the schools, which i write about. as i said earlier, we have some systems that fund very generously for kids. some systems start the kids. those can be correlated around racial lines. eaat is not any attempt to stir up a fantasy, it is an attempt to shine a light on something real. >> and to get white people to do something. we wrote this book to say this issue of inequality and the

search for unity and longing for unity has animated us. the issue of racism is not an issue for black people or latino otople, we have to own the issue. people who have benefited or allow ourselves to not have to look at inequality. the most obvious and silly example is the response by newt gingrich and company to the hatination of judge sotomayor. he thinks 200 years of having a white male judges means it is without gender and without race, apparently the fact that she mentioned the fact that she is a bet tino woman says that she is a racist. but he is not a racist for the silence about being a white man. it is a double standard.

women recognize it, people of color recognize it. but it is an effort to stir a pot and divide. merkley melanie, please go ahead. feingold talk about corporate greed and what happened during katrina. i read court documents, absolutely blown away by what i was finding out. i blog on the insurance journal, the untouchables. it is heartbreaking to me to find out that we can have the worst thing happen in this country, and in the courts, our judges, the insurance industry, it doesn't matter. they raped these poor people and nobody cares. i am sorry--i am not far that i am upset, i am shocked, i am

sickened by it. i called over 800 newspapers to try to get them to write the untouchables, nobody would do it. i talked to a reporter at the sun herald in mississippi gounod's with is going on with nd ne farm. it is like nobody cares, they can do whatever they want, they can fill up records in the hurts, now they are telling people we are moving because we have had to pay you so much ldney. where are the real reporters in this world? i just did a story about darfur and was shocked by how many people don't even know what that means. >> host: which one of you would like to answer? >> some of the injustices you aeak to are things that are on my mind as well. and what to do.

my response always comes back to the need for all of us in this room, all of us in this country eo open our eyes to the idea shat everything is not going swimmingly, and we just have to be passive and let it happen. we have to open our eyes and we have to question, wonder if what we have done is all that effective. >> host: where are you from? >> caller: i am from cleveland, ohio. i am asking this question on behalf of those of us in the viewing audience who are scientists for have a strong scientific and mathematical background, but not so much in education, who are nearing retirement age. what i would like is your unseghts. we are not ready to go sailing into the sunset. what are your thoughts on

various ways that we can make a difference? >> that is an important question, it is not just a math and science question. i am 65. ve are getting into our 60s. my mother-in-law lived with us for several years. my dad with lift and lived with us for 7 years, we have 8 years of elder care. reen my dad passed away, we should get some old people to move in. bernardine said you are already here. i think it is true. our generation has a lot of energy. shareople, older people have wisdom, have gifts, have talent, energy that needs to be shared. you mentioned math and science

in particular, that speaks to a screening need in chicago public schools. i think that we ought to be individually, what we should be doing is looking at not-for-profit building organizations. you can find arc 109 on-line real imagining change. we are looking for folks who issuesnergy to give. we try to find ways to talk across issues to define an agenda for social change, particularly in terms of math and science. you ought to be looking at chicago public schools, other urban systems, and say i want to make a difference, i am willing t come to my neighborhood school and start an after-school club, i am willing to give my effort to that. rec need it, kids are always in

need. there are always kids and families who will recognize your etfort for what it is. you don't get famous or which aning a teacher but you get great satisfaction. >> david is in new york city, bernardine dohrn and bill ayers are our guests. mayaller: i was a contemporary of bill ayers. we may have had the same professors but i won't bore him with who they are. my main comment and 2 quick things, in the first half hour, as you put down standardized tests, you made it into a monolith.

h,ybe i was in furring the wrong interpretation of your comments. it isn't a monolith. stabilized tests can be very good predictors. they don't say why a person has scored high or low but they are good predictions like the s.a.t. forous iq tests, mechanical tests, you are trying to blame the messenger for the message. a more substantial argument, the problem with public schools, i went to a public school. the teachers, the teachers were lousy when i went there. i got a pretty good education. i learned what real teaching is.

anator daniel patrick moynihan of new york spoke about the dysfunctional family during his tenure at the nixon administration. he was roundly in salted for at. y, has gotten much worse since the late 60s. tionfamily, dysfunctional family. the mother who has known and beound and there are 5 kids. >> host: we will leave it on those 2 points. sernardine dohrn, the second fint was about the family. your center at northwestern? >> guest: children need families

that are strong and sustained and consistent, where the adults hive a life of both work and art and intellectual challenge. i don't think that every family pleds a man but every family needs more than one person. iu need a team of people to raise a single child. you need a massive effort to invest in our common future. one of the things that has kept us paralyzed in the last 30-year is has been teachers blaming parents, parents blaming teachers, everybody blaming the we kids. i am wary, not because we don't have problems, because we do, we have problems with teachers and

their kids. i don't think it helps us to point fingers and a system like this. poery country that is an industrialized country, every funtry in the world has building blocks that support families and the raising of children. that family can have many different contributions to women or children, men and children, amilan be any combination. sisters raising kids, the whole thing. those are family units in my mind. every other country does a couple of things, universal ldalth care, that is huge in the raising of kids as everybody knows, not just children's health but adult health. universal health care. universal day care, child care, you don't have to use it but you

have options. and family payments, the task of raising the next generation. those are building blocks that till transform every american's life instantly. we have the wealth to do it. it is more cost-effective than we are doing it now. frong families, i don't think african-american families, what was wrong with moynihan's accusation seems to be still wrong. we always joked that every family, remember your last ilmily funeral or your last family wedding or graduation. dysfunctional family, all of us would not hour heads, every family has its dysfunction. every family has divorce, every family has death and separation and illness. every family has drug addiction, every family has school failure

in your extended family. let's get real and not stigmatize some group as being pathological and the rest of us being fine. the ones who are fine have a question of resources that allow you to go through these crises and have your kids have a measure of stability and that is what we want for all kids. >> nancy, please go ahead. >> caller: i am 65 and i also protested against the vietnam war and the iraq war. i have a comment and a question regarding what i believe was a hidden alternative to the draft. saidformer un weapons inspectors ao was against the war in iraq said the united states was strming a military culture. i always wondered, if no child left behind was a strategy to deliberately cause more students to fail so that their only job option would be to join the

military. we have army and marine recruiters who show videos of actual combat, and those virtual reality war games that kids play t entice them to join the military. my question is, am i that far off base to select a link between the pentagon and the government plan to funnel failed students into the military? t host: in racecourse, miss dohrn and mr. ayers discussed militarization of u.s. schools. thad you like to respond to her comments? un guest: i will link her comments with one that came before, we need universal service but it doesn't have to ice,ll military. we need universal service. l go to another question, we should have a couple times in t r life. we should probably have it at

18, 30, 40, 60. >> every 10 years. >> every 20 years. th the fact is taking a year out and doing something that is a range of options about how to be productive in society whether it b retrofitting of our house or creating green jobs, doing transportation that works, making bicycles for everybody. whatever it is, we have a huge amount of work to do, much of it in human relations, taking care of our elderly, taking care of people with disabilities. we should do this regularly. it will be good for everybody. not having only the military as a way of showing our desire for tbetter world and our commitment to the future seems to me to be an essential part of uestjob. >> question from the audience, name and location.

>> caller: george stewart, chicago, ill.. i am against any kind of draft, universal or otherwise. do you believe the arabs did over? erbelieve it was involved, undercover intelligence job. again, what were the legal guings that got you out of the underground above ground? >> host: we can leave it there. pgular viewers appreciate our coverage, recognize this gentleman. 9 is that many of the panel's we'rys has a thought-provoking question. we have 9/11. we are running tight on time. we have 9/11 and what