http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2098460/posts
We write to voice our support for our colleague, Bill Ayers, who was the target yesterday of Jonah Goldberg’s mean-spirited muckraking journalism.
Goldberg asks why Bill Ayers is allowed to have a job as a college professor, despite his leftist views and political activities from some forty years ago? The answer is simple.
Professor Ayers has degrees from University of Michigan and Columbia University’s Teachers College.
Over the past twenty plus years he has earned the reputation of a cutting edge scholar of education, and made major contributions to our understanding of schools and the institutions impacting children.
Ayers has authored, co-authored or edited 14 books and dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters, some of them award-winning. His books have received praise from the likes of Jonathan Kozol, Studs Turkel and Scott Turow.
He has been invited to lecture around the country and internationally on pedagogy, curriculum, the politics of education, and the small schools strategy for educational excellence. He has served on numerous university and community-based committees.
During the McCarthy era of the 1950s one could be fired simply for the hint of left of center views or association with people who held those views. Perhaps Mr. Goldberg is nostalgic for an earlier time. We are not.
Sincerely,
Barbara Ransby, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, UIC
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Barbara Ransby is a historian, writer, and longtime political activist. Ransby has published dozens of articles and essays in popular and scholarly venues. She is most notably the author of an award-winning biography of civil rights activist Ella Baker, entitled Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, (University of North Carolina, 2003). Barbara is currently working on two major research projects: a study of African American feminist organizations in the 1970s, and a political biography of Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson. She serves on the editorial board of the London-based journal, Race and Class, and a number of non-profit civic and media organizations.
Professor Ransby received a BA in History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD in History from the University of Michigan.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/wsweb/people/core/ransby_barbara/ransby_barbara.htm
Obama’s “community organizing” in NYC was after his stint at BIC where he embellished his duties. He worked for a Nader organization with training provided by that organization earning less than $10,000/year(teaching University students to recycle) and this was mentioned on the long thread. Forgive my moment of CRS (can’t remember s***) today but bvw would probably remember the intials of the group. I’ve been googling various items for the past three days and becoming frustrated with the number of articles which are disappearing! I still want to know why Madelyn Dunham had a 30 minute tightly controlled interview with David Mendell in 2004 and hasn’t agreed to any interviews since then! IMO severe osteoporosis and cataracts don’t stop someone from talking unless the handlers became upset when she said she was a Reublican!
Obama File 34 Black Radicals for Obama
In March of 1997, some 70 activists from more than twenty cities across the country came together in Chicago to begin planning for a Black Radical Congress. Those who gathered reflected a broad spectrum of the radical tradition. Participants came as individuals but represented connections to groups ranging from New Afrikan People's Organization, Black Workers for Justice, The Labor Party, The Communist Party, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, African American Agenda 2000, The Chicago Ida B. Wells Forum and the Committees of Correspondence.This group agreed to host a Black Radical Congress and constituted itself as the continuations committee...Three subsequent national meetings of the continuations committee were held in Washington, D. C., in May of 1997, in Atlanta in September, 1997, and most recently in New York City in January of 1998. A "Call for the Congress" was drafted and issued with the names of over 100 conveners.
Some of those who endorsed the call and have participated in the process include: Abdul Alkalimat, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Manning Marable, Leith Mullings, Barbara Ransby, Barbara Smith, Cornel West, Salim Muwakkil, Charlene Mitchell, Angela Y. Davis, Amiri and Amina Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Sam Anderson, Evelynn Hammonds, Julianne Malveaux, Jarvis Tyner, General Baker, Ahmed Obafemi, Cathy Cohen, Robin D. G. Kelley, and many others...
LOL