Posted on 02/24/2008 8:27:17 PM PST by Travis McGee
In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.
Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from a man in the Hyde Park left to one closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.
“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”
Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.
Obama’s connections to Ayers and Dorhn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their home — part of a campaign courtship — reflects more extensive interaction than has been previously reported.
Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends,” but there’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation.
But Obama’s relationship with Ayers is an especially vivid milepost on his rise, in record time, from a local official who unabashedly reflected a very liberal district to the leader of national movement based largely on the claim that he can transcend ideological divides.
In one sense, Obama’s journey toward the cultural and political center is not unusual among national politicians. But its velocity is.
Politicians of an earlier generation had their own relationships with figures now far to their left. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, interned at a radical San Francisco law firm while in law school.
On the other side of the political spectrum, many in the generation before hers shifted dramatically on civil rights. John McCain voted against creating a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and later called that a mistake.
The relationship with Ayers gives context to his recent past in Hyde Park politics. It’s milieu in which a former violent radical was a stalwart of the local scene, not especially controversial.
It’s also a scene whose liberal ideological features — while taken for granted by the Chicago press corps that knows Obama best — provides a jarring contrast with Obama’s current, anti-ideological stance. This contrast between past and present — not least the Ayers connection — is virtually certain to be a subject Republican operatives will warm to if Obama is the Democratic nominee.
The tension between the present and recent Chicago past is also evident in some of his positions on major national issues. Many national politicians, including Clinton, have moved toward the center over time. But Obama’s transitions are still quite fresh.
A questionnaire from his 1996 campaign indicated more blanket opposition to the death penalty, and support of abortion rights, than he currently espouses. He spoke in support of single-payer health care as recently as 2003.
Like many of the most extreme figures from the 1960s Ayers and Dohrn are ambiguous figures in American life.
They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.
Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.
But — unlike some other fringe figures of the era — they’re also flatly unrepentant about the bombings they committed in the name of ending the war, defending them on the grounds that they killed no one, except, accidentally, their own members.
Dohrn, however, was jailed for less than a year for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members’ robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed.
“I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001.
(More at the link)
Ok well - two sentences!
Was Hart a domestic terrorist? Were you looking for his stamp of approval so that the local machine would put you into office?
It is clear that Palmer brought Obama to the terrorist duo to show them that he was a fellow traveler and to get their approval for her chosen successor.
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Obama is not trying to end a war, he is trying to orchestrate a defeat.
This will make him look like a hero to the American hating left voters.
Just look at Kerry and his connections with Fonda and the Winter Soldier acts of treason.
The hate America lefties still love him and hate those Swiftboaters, who exposed his personal acts of treason during the Nam War.
To bad he wasn’t around in 1962 when the SDS released the Port Huron Statement, or 1968 when the cultural Marxists rioted in the streets of Chicago and on the floor of the Democratic Convention.
This only makes him more attractive to the libs.
And besides, we elected a left wing radical that spent 6 wks in the USSR at a time we were avowed enemies. Slick Willy
Didn’t seem to phase the electorate. Sadly
Thanks- still not sure I want to vote for a liberal but I probably will.
I don't see how people misread my post, but a number mistakenly believed I was making excuses for the Weathermen. To be absolutely clear, I think the Weathermen should be in jail if not executed for murder, I view 60's anti war liberalism as a totally illogical, immoral, anti-American movement which is echoed in today's insane liberal anti-war movement.
If I was not clear before I hope this is clear.
Like many of the most extreme figures from the 1960s Ayers and Dohrn are ambiguous figures in American life.Travis (post #12): When Obama was in high school in Hawaii his mentor was Frank Marshal Davis, a Communist who told Obama “not to forget his ‘people’ and not to ‘start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that s**t.”They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.
....
“I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001.
calcowgirl (post #46):More Frank Marshall Davis
ping!
Very...........interesting, cal!
gotcha.
A creature like obama running for the highest office in this country and duping millions of brain dead Americans.
bttt
Thanks, guys.
Does anybody have a copy of Obama’s books where he mentions the mysterious “Frank”?
I’d sure like to read the exact words, in context, to see if there are any other clues to their relationship. I found one book review that says Obama describes “Frank” as “a poet and incessant crank,” which doesn’t sound very mentor-like.
Also, given the difference in their ages, is it possible the relationship began as a friendship between Obama and one of Frank’s five children? I wonder whether any of those relationships continue today.
Not to mention, I wonder how “friendly” Frank was with promising young lads? Sometimes folks move to the greener pastures of the islands, for a more laid back approach to pederasty. I would not rule out a “special” bond between mentor Frank and bright star Barack.
Well said pph....well said
Agreed!
I’ve read a ton of stuff on the man, including many of his poems.
I read nothing that would lead down that road.
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