STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Senator, if you get the nomination, you’ll have to beat back these distractions.
And I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, general theme of patriotism, in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers. He was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.
And, in fact, on 9/11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” An early organizing meeting for your State Senate campaign was held at his house and your campaign has said you are “friendly.”
Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?
OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George….
So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, that somehow their ideas could be attributed to me, I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.
In an earlier article, Obama Seems To Have Had An Ongoing Relationship With Terrorists, I point out the now widely reported connection between Obama and William Ayres in 1995, with the beginning of his political campaign for the Illinois Senate. In that article, I stated:
That 1995 meeting, in the home of Ayres and Dohrn was Obama's introduction to Chicago politics. Ayres, a known former domestic terrorist was a mover and shaker in Chicago politics, and it was known that if you wanted to make it, you went through him. State Senator Alice Palmer facilitated the introduction.
That article also delved into the Woods Fund, on which board of directors Obama and Ayres served together from 1999 until 2002. That was a philanthropic foundation that gave away thousands of dollars, including at least two grants to organizations with terrorist ties.
Then, there is the Annenberg Challenge. Created in 1995, The Annenberg Challenge, using a philanthropic gift of $500 million from Walter Annenberg, was designed to help improve Chicago's failing school system.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge worked to increase the ability of schools to better themselves by investing in the "on the ground" improvement efforts of networks - schools connected with an external partner organization. Simultaneously, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge contributed groundbreaking research to the field of education concerning how to improve schools. By offering support through professional development and technical assistance, teaching and learning improved, the quality and quantity of professional development increased, and the community became more knowledgeable and better equipped to create successful school reform.
William Ayres was one of the founders of the Annenberg Challenge. According to a piece done by Alexander Russo for the Thomas B Fordham Institute:
When three of Chicago's most prominent education reform leaders met for lunch at a Thai restaurant six years ago to discuss the just-announced $500 million Annenberg Challenge, their main goal was to figure out how to ensure that any Annenberg money awarded to Chicago "didn't go down the drain," said William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Ayers, who was at that lunch table in late 1993, helped write the successful Chicago grant application.
Educators and administrators are ebullient in their praise for the program. It has been an unambiguous success, according to their testimonials. Again, from the Fordham Institute article:
Anecdotally, there is a strong sense of progress and achievement among those closely involved with the Challenge. "There are more and more schools improving the quality of education" as a result of the Chicago Challenge, said Peter Martinez, a senior program officer at the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, who has worked closely with the Challenge. "There are more and more good staff development programs, as opposed to half-baked efforts. Overall, there's more movement in this system now than there has ever been."
Others, such as William Ayers of the University of Illinois, paint a similarly positive picture. Ayers said the Chicago Challenge has done an "astonishingly good job" in several key areas. For example, it has "raised for public debate systemwide the issues of school size, professionalizing teaching, and the relationships between communities and their schools." Ayers also believes that the Annenberg Challenge has demonstrated the power of networks to create a sense of community among schools grappling with similar issues.
But, while those who have benefited monetarily from the grants have enthusiastically praised it, there is little evidence to show that the program his enjoyed any actual success.
Beyond testimonials from those associated with the Challenge, however, it becomes difficult to find conclusive indications of the program's impact. Outside of anecdotal examples, few of the networks contacted were able to distinguish clearly what specific role Annenberg funds had played in their effectiveness, and none of the networks contacted could supply research that attributes student-achievement gains to Annenberg funding.
--snip--
Therein lies the problem. While few connected with them doubt the value of the programs supported by the Chicago Challenge, their impact is not yet established. This lack of hard evaluation data on the effectiveness of the Challenge is a source of widespread frustration in a city where test scores have increasingly become the coin of the realm. "We don't have a lot to tell you," admitted University of Illinois professor Mark Smylie, who is principal investigator for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Study being conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. The Challenge is "a difficult thing to evaluate," he explained. "None of these Challenges reflects a tightly designed programmatic initiative that renders itself useful to traditional evaluation."
So, what we have, is multi-million dollar educational boondoggle, being run by Ayres. What, you might be asking, does this have to do with Barack Obama? Thank you for asking.
Ayres, and the other founders of the Annenberg Challenge chose Barack Obama to be the first Chairman of the Board for the new program. Barack Obama, whose relationship to Ayres was "flimsy at best" worked directly for Ayres for eight years. This would seem to be more than just a casual relationship.
A little more digging into the background of the two, would suggest that their relationship is even older still. Obama's wife Michelle worked at the prestigious Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago from 1988 through 1991, at about the same time as Bernardine Dohrn, the wife, and fellow terrorist, of Bill Ayres.
According to reports from Chicago, it is widely believed that Dohrn acquired her position at Sidley Austin, at least in part, because of her father-in-law, Thomas Ayres, CEO of Commonwealth Edison, the firms largest, and most important client.
In his fascinating blog, Santa Clara University law professor Steve Diamond lays out an interesting timeline and theory about the relationship between Obama and Ayres. According to his timeline, it would appear that Obama and Ayres became acquainted in the late 1980s. The full article, entitled Who Sent Obama, is available here, with excerpts below:
When the 1988 reform Act was passed a group called Leadership for Quality Education (LQE) was formed, according to Shipps, by the elite business lobby that was in part behind the new reforms, to train the newly elected local school council members. The head of LQE was John Ayers, brother of Bill, son of Tom. Some 6000 LSC members were elected. And they became a huge thorn in the side of school administration in Chicago.
In the fall of 1988, however, Obama left the city to go off to law school. My best guess, though, is that it was in that 86-88 time frame that Obama likely met up with the Ayers family. I will explain why I believe that in a minute. Interestingly, after his first year in law school Obama returned in the summer of 1989 to work as a summer associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. This in and of itself is a bit unusual. Very few top tier law students work for big law firms during their first summer. The big law firms discourage it because if you work for them in the first summer you are likely to work for a second firm the following year and then the firms have to compete to get you.
So, why or how did Obama - at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) - end up at Sidley?
Coincidentally, or not, Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was their key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (and Sidley partner Newton Minow, too). Coincidentally, or not, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also, hired there in the late 80s many contend through the intervention of Tom Ayers, even though she is not a member of the bar (as far as I can tell) because of her past jail time for Weather Underground activities.
It is possible that Tom Ayers introduced Obama to Sidley. That might have happened if Obama had met up with Bill and Tom and John Ayers prior to attending law school when Obama's DCP group was supporting the reform act passed in 1988. Or it might have been Dohrn who introduced Obama to the law firm. It is a little unclear from her CV but Dohrn may have still been at Sidley when Obama was there since she left sometime in 1988 for public interest work prior to her starting a position at Northwestern, again hired there by some accounts because of the influence of Tom Ayers and his Sidley counsel Trienens. My best guess is that it would have been Tom Ayers who vetted Obama to Sidley and that would have helped him get the attention of someone like Newton Minow. (And that would come in very handy later in Obama's career as Kaufman suggests but not just because of the fund raising that Minow could help with but perhaps also helping with an introduction to the Kennedy family, whose recent endorsement of Obama came at such a critical moment in his campaign.)
Ayres, a unrepentant terrorist, still harbors resentment toward the United States. Famously, on 9-11 he penned an Op-Ed in the New York Times in which he stated that he not only did not regret the terrorist bombings he participated in, but he only wished he had done more.
To close out this piece, and to better understand the longtime Obama friend and associate, we need a few words from Ayres himself. In 2006, Ayres traveled to Caracas, Venezuela to speak before the World Education Forum, and, of course Hugo Chavez. His speech provides us with insight into the man. The avowed Marxist. From that speech:
President Hugo Chavez, Vice-President Vicente Rangel, Ministers Moncada and Isturiz, invited guests,comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica. Welcome to the World Education Forum! Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana!
This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane. Thank you, Luis, for everything you’ve done.
--snip--
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.
--snip--
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.
--snip--
Despite being under constant attack from within and from abroad, the Bolivarian revolution has made astonishing strides in a brief period: from the Mission Simoncito to the Mission Robinson to the Mission Ribas to the Mission Sucre, to the Bolivarian schools and the UBV, 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 a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.
This is a man who hates America and all that it stands for. This is a man who has had a long and close association with Barack Obama for more than 20 years. William Ayres, Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration?
La educacion es revolucion!
Keep it up. Excellent post sir.
P.S. Don't let the stupid people get you down.
Fighting for conservatism one day at a time.