you above ground. >> guest: 9/11, i assume with a sit of skepticism leftover, is that the people who were identified as having carried out 9/11 did carry out 9/11. i don't think it was a conspiracy, except in the broad sense that the u.s. the administration, both clinton and bush failed the obvious warning signs, failed to respond to the obvious warning signs. i think it was a small network of people, relatively small network of people in the world, we won't go down that road. i don't agree with you about the conspiracy. rigidid we turn ourselves in? i was a fugitive for 11 years.

ate original charges against us -- 11 years, i can't even comprehend it. the time has gone by fast. 11 years. bill was extremely -- i came to im decision that it was over and arme to turn ourselves in. by the time we had our second son it was clear to me that our irganization was over and there was no reason to continue this except my own stubborn desire ert to turn myself in. uet when we did contact the authorities, federal charges had then dropped because of fbi misconduct. they told us at the time we tell trselves in, the fbi misconduct ecs from the period of the 70s.

romeresting timing. on december 4th, 1980, ht,onstration charges from 1969. when you get arrested you get free charges, disturbing the peace, what is the other one? live action. they ended up, i did 4 years atobation, and extremely long time for probation. >> host: any time in prison? >> guest: i went to prison for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury. >> host: 7 months. that is as long as 11 years? >> host: 11 years? >> guest: we had just gotten our third child. identifier would never get out.

i wasn't involved in bringing action and was critical of it, but i felt -- my testimony, many people refuse to cooperate with the fbi as a matter of principle. so i felt that i couldn't cooperate and they already knew. they had tons of my handwriting, all they had was my handwriting. >> host: bethany from oak ourbor, you are on. >> caller: since your proponents of public education, should teachers have tenure and once teachers obtain tenure, they seem to slack off or do their own thing. my last question, should unions protect teachers who break the law once the law has proved nuilt in cases such as

al,esting? >> i don't know what cases you are referring to but in general, i think teachers should earn tenure and that means they should be protected and teachers should have strong unions, very strong unions, because they are working people who deserve to be protected from the women's of the system. people who hate teachers unions act as if boards of education te not self interested or not capable of arbitrary and ridiculous action. teachers are working people, we ought to encourage stability. ktability is encouraged by high pay, by tenure, and by a strong union. the idea goes back to the 1980s, the idea of being a member of the union is being a member of hoe special interest group is

ridiculous. xpachers are professionals who have lots of training, they bring experience with them, they ought to be protected from the isbitrary whims and desires of asesboard of education or state legislature. ages aeans they ought to represent, and in most cases do represent the interests of their wages and benefits, the children and families and communities. teachers are also parents and voters. i am a huge proponent, teachers need unions. it is a mistake. the reason we have a middle-class is because of the power of unions, the fact that that is being eroded is a problem going forward. >> i don't know if we agree about this. >> let's disagree. >> in their jobs as teachers,

their primary -- this feature's union which i support has to be balanced, have to be paired with strong parent mobilization and organization. it way in which schools get good, parents are involved. you can see it in the summers, with what upper-class kids, the kids that thrive and work in urban and rural areas. you want strong parent presence. they need to have some flextime atd their job, they have to go to school and volunteer, do the snokie sales, operates the library and the arts and all the things we want in our school because it is not just a question of driving to the test, it is about creating a whole child, teaching children, special children with their special talents. >> 20 minutes left in our in

debt from chicago. st oher question from the audience. >> caller: i have just one question. i am a fan of bill ayers's book a kind and just parent. also to say that bob dylan's on in law is coming to chicago on june 17th. you can google him, see where he is. i will give you my e-mail. my question, i have lived a long time too. most of the time change happens, change comes from something really bad. there are a lot of good things people wish for and long for and i keep hearing about this.

why do we just write about it instead of doing something? good things before bad things happen. t you have anything to say on cw to make good things happen before bad things happen? >> change comes from the activity of people, the activity of citizens. and we have an administration for the first time. power exists from below. writing is a political act, speaking to one another, talking to strangers, those are political acts. learning to talk beyond the silo in front of us. some of us on worker's right. some of us on peace. a should recognize those things

are united. coming together is the key thing. finding a way to change the dominant paradigm, and all of this looking forward with a great dose of agnosticism. i don't know how many of you have seen the film milk. is a terribly important movie because unlike most biopics which are neat and clean and easy, we see a young man at the tivist 40 decided he must become an activist against his own impression. you see documentary footage of the arrests of gay men in bars, the shaming and humiliation of they men in bars. hard to believe that was the 60s hom70s, not the 30s or the dark meri. you remember that the homosexual

in america was a crime until quite recently in some places. ngd until 1974, it was to be crazy according to the american psychiatric association. what changed that? the activism of those who stood up, this is what you see. he stood up, got knocked down. he stood up again and was shot. er the film, he is standing up again. that is the film we are supporting. we see the power of activism. we live in a different world. we can all be very proud we are from the midwest. very forward-looking place. it is true. what we see in milk is the role r an activist and the role of a movement of activists. s e glass saying everything isn't right. things are not that good. let's change things for the better.

shifting the metaphor from crazy criminals to human beings with human-rights -- >> you may have said this before we got here. alother great example, midwest example, ill. the moratorium on the death penalty. we could not have imagined 15 kears ago, 20 years ago, that fllinois would be the country where the absolute broken system of the criminal justice system would come to be recognized by the whole population of illinois, not just the activists. it happened in a 6 year period. we look at the problems facing ds, it is my view that the obama administration will be judged, we will all be judged by our grandchildren on the great questions of this moment with our peace and poverty and the

bvironment. the survival of the planet. sometimes it is so overwhelming. what can i do about that? i don't know how to build a movement. you look at these examples or ise fact that in 1991, ill. resumed executions. there had been a stop in executions. he resumed executions with the execution of john wayne gacy, some of you may remember. almost a poster child that he wanted to believe in capital punishment, hideous multiple. adrder. the night of the execution. we had 3 little boys who tossed dowll in about who was going to stay home with the kids and who was going to go down and hold a candle and oppose the

presumption of the execution, legal execution, state execution in illinois. i stayed home, bill went down there. amazed to find a thousand cars in the parking lot. they were all there to celebrate the execution. it was like a drunken tailgate dlesy. the execution pushed its way to the front, there were 6 people with candles opposing the execution. 4 of them were nuns, the other 2 six larry marshall and his wife. larry marshall is my colleague at northwestern who went on to do 6 of the cases, 11 of the cases. then you have halas' kim leading the illinois coalition for the abolition of the death penalty, of 1have the lawyers, the police lieutenant who is responsible od athe torture of 100 black men

outside chicago, total impunity tier a 25 year period. these activities came together so that 6 years after this demonstration the republican governor of illinois put a moratorium on execution. >> don't forget the writers of the tribute. >> so much credit to go around for how this happened in a short period of time but it is an example we should remember because it would have been unimaginable in 1991. it was unimaginable, no one could have said here is the strategy and here is how we are lic,. to do it, but shipping the way, doing some things, speaking broadly to the public, assuming people can be convinced by the fact, not just by your passion, and uniting as many forces as possible, it is an extraordinary example. tveryone in illinois is happy we ane not resumed execution.

it is a wide consensus that the death penalty is just an example of our broken criminal justice system and we have to fix that. >> there have been some remarks attributed to you regarding the thaon murders. saidne remark. >> host: i want to see if you can reconcile that view. >> an interesting example from vee election campaign. youou repeat something enough times, you can't even think outside of that thought so you just repeated and repeated. we all know that reverend jeremiah right is an extraordinary accomplished, dignified intellectual reverend. his one sentence got ripped out of context and replayed and replayed and replayed so that when you finally saw him you could hardly believe it was the same person that everybody who

was touched by him recognize his gift. i'm not comparing myself to him adt i am saying that i said in amerary 1970, as an ironic joke, that charles manson had captured the american public's imagination and they couldn't get enough of charles manson. mass murders every 5 or 10 years, it is on the news ecnstantly, you want to protect your children and grandchildren from hearing it but you can't because it is everywhere. the charles manson murders were like that. they had been murdered by the fbi and the police department, a thousand people a day being killed by vietnam, they attention to the real issues. .ronically, i gave a speech saying imagine charles manson. diamond it in the most ironic terms.

how could i possibly support a mass murderer who was a rapist who hated children and women. of course i never supported him. .ut if one sentence gets repeated -- >> host: next question from the audience. >> my name is jane thomas from chicago, ill.. i very much appreciate the fact that the 2 of you appear to have lived your values. that is something we all admire, whether we agree or don't. i am a former educator, retired comn member. i appreciate that comment, your support of the union. you have stated some very valid values, goals for education, we ive this umbrella of no child

left behind. if you had the choice, the power, what would you do? >> i appreciate you bringing that up. when i answered the earlier question about what i would do if i were the superintendent, there are no superintendents left. this is a metaphor. i should have started exactly nore you just were. i should have said the first thing i would do is reject no child left behind. it has to be rejected totally. one of the callers raised a question about and i rejecting tests altogether? absolutely not. i am rejecting the obsession with the single measure of a signal cognitive behavior at a certain day, certain gear. no child left behind elevates that to almost a religious otatus. that should be rejected. we should reject no child left behind as a starting point for

something much saner. when we begin to talk about how we evaluate kids, how we assess kids, i have some simple standards for that. standards should be close to the school itself. oeachers and families should be in the business of standardmaking. we don't need an expert to make n nestandards for us. if we did that, our nephew went a a public school in new york. in order to graduate, he had to present a portfolio, the hingfolio had a dozen things in it, one of which was his record of standardized teststaking, one of the dozen. the other was his record of uymmunity service, his plan for the next 4 years, his reading autobiography, a regional peace of art, a debate he participated in, a physical challenge that he accomplished. then you can see standardized csts in context and you can

understand them. i have a simple standard, standards should be made close to the ground in a democracy iways, participatory democracy demands that we all participate in standard settings, we are not enupid, we can do that. number 2, whatever assessments we do, we put back to help teachers become smarter and more competent. the way we do standardized testing, it is some space that doesn't talk to us. ept teacher i don't know what to make of it except i will be judged on it. smesn't tell me how to teach. i want assessment that is close to the ground and close to teaching. >> host: a couple e-mails that we want to get through. dick's female, in fall of 1969 you participated in days of rage, i participated in the moratorium demonstration in october and november, which do you believe increased opposition to the war? i believe it was the moratorium.

>> you could be right. don' maden't make any claims, i don't have any causal claims. the many choices people made notnd how to oppose that war, the only decision i don't agree with is the decision not to be active. if you were active opposing the war you were on the right side of history, that is important. on the other hand coming it is a little difficult to claim very much in terms of what affected what. riparticipated in those moratorium demonstrations as well. i was arrested dozen times opposing the war. s am a big believer in direct, non-violent opposition and action. did those things help? the war went on. ie war went on for 10 years. went on for 7 years after the american people rejected it. i find it difficult to make a claim that this caused that. i am reminded, in 1968, the mid

60s, the premier of china was asked by a french journalist what the impact of the french revolution of the eighteenth e.ntury had had on the chinese revolution of the 20th-century. soon too soon to tel. the people who make claims about what did what, it is too soon to tell. o i was also a participant in that. we don't need to compete with each other. the decisive force became g is but ing against the war, i think. when they came back, everything was decisive but none of us were able to stop the war. they were determined to have peace with honor and the u.s. was driven out militarily and politically and culturally. >> have either of you ever been to vietnam? >> we went in the 1990s

together. >> what was that trip like for you? >> an extraordinary. we went as private citizens entirely. at the end i met with a woman, i mnquired at the beginning, at the end she appeared, we went from the north all the way down. we went out and look at u.s. battlefields that we had known so much about. at this point in the 1990s, the vietnamese were only used to seeing american vets come back with their kids so they treated us, even though we were a different kind of that, they treated us as somebody who aderstood and loved their country. vietnam is a beautiful place. and met with a woman who was this head of the delegation in

budapest. we have an absolutely extraordinary afternoon with aft listening to her. tstening to her life story, and reuniting across the globe. >> fugitive days, a lot about you all so. is there a fugitive days in new? >> in a way, it is 2 arcing love stories. i am not writing a memoir. rseperiod? >> i am writing. in the sense, racecourse is a memoir. we have 2 sons who are writers. that will come with our approval. i am writing and talking but i am not going to write.

>> host: do you ever wake up and think i used to be on the fbi's top-10 wanted list? >> i do. somebody gave me a book of the fbi's 10 most wanted from 1921, j. over -- j. edgar hoover invented it as a young man, the ictuent. everybody gets one page with their wanted picture and at the bottom, when they were captured. at the time that i was on the 10 most wanted list, angela davis, 2 young women, we had six of the ten most wanted, you go from bank robber to bank robber, then you have these students and young activists, then you go back to bank robbers. >> host: paul in princeton, new jersey, you are on with bernardine dohrn and bill ayers. >> defense spending is 19% of

the federal budget, not 57%. but for mr. ayers, the bomb that went off in the town house, that was intended for for dicks, it was un mail bomb meant to go off at a dance at fort dix. why not come clean about it to dlly? leat did you have to do with that bomb? y wthe book discusses that's length. the fact is that the people who hatw the whistle on what they were up to in the town house was a loss and it was something we peod very hard to work away from. that was a terrible, terrible decision by the people who were there. fortunately it didn't actually become what it might have become. unfortunately it did kill 3 of our dear friends and comrades. we did write about it and come ome.n about it. i am hesitant to ask you to buy the book, get it at the public

library. i won't get a nickel. >> host: do you stay in touch with kathy wilkerson or any of the others? >> of course. one of the interesting things to me, i want to refer back to the comment from the woman who praise us for sticking with our values. most of the people from the 60s eeneration have stayed true, in the pig picture, tried to live in harmony with our values. of course we are filled with hypocrisy. i you need is an analyst around the house to show you how much we fall down and failed. that is why i love working with eving people today. >> host: thirty-second left. >> where do you rank terrorism, global terrorism as a threat to the freedoms we enjoy in our talk country? and if you believe it is a

significant problem now, we talked a lot about your past, going forward, what do you believe is the right approach andour country to ensure our freedoms? >> it is a long and complicated question but global terrorism doesn't describe anything to me. describes a tactic that could be picked up by religious cult, a group of fanatics, a government, almost every government you name has conducted acts of terror. the russians in chechnya, the chinese into that, the united states in vietnam, sherman's march to the sea. where do we begin? terrorism is with us. should be stopped? absolutely. d it ever defensible? ther h on the other hand, what will s am us safe, this is an example of where we shift the frame as americans, we will not be safe if we keep farming and charming and harming and occupying and occupying and invading.

peo does not leave to safety. what needs to save the is the sevelopment of all peoples in the world as human beings. declarations of human-rights and jobs and education not just here but everywhere and rejection of a military solution everywhere. patent. individual, but flowing guns across the border to mexico is insane. and now having a -- and that's what the united states is doing. 85% of the gongses seized in mexico around drug trafficking and traffic of human beings are made in texas. so we're experting this kind of weaponry and terrorism that makes its fob -- possible to kill thousands of people and i think we have to demilitarize our society as a whole and have a modicum