Left-wing radical terrorist – wife of William Ayers

Bernardine Rae Dohrn (Bernardine Dohrn) born January 12, 1942) is a former leader of the 1969-1980 radical leftist organization Weather Underground. Dohrn became one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a radical wing of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in the late 1960s. The ninth annual national SDS conference was held in Chicago in June 18-22, 1969, and the SDS collapsed in an RYM-led upheaval. In July 1969, Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton, all representing “Weatherman”, as Dohrn’s faction was now called, traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments.

Dohrn has been criticized for a comment she made about the recent Charles Manson led Tate-LaBianca murders in a speech during the December 1969 “War Council” meeting organized by the Weathermen and attended by about 400 people in Flint, Michigan: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in their bellies. Wild!” Dohrn also charged that her fellow left-wingers showed themselves to be scared “honkies” for not burning down Chicago when Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed, and urged her audience to arm themselves and be “a fighting force alongside the blacks.” At this point, two months after the Days of Rage, the new Weatherman organization had not used guns or bombs. Dohrn’s husband, Bill Ayers has written that Dohrn was being ironic when she made the statement:

I didn’t hear that exactly, but words that were close enough I guess. Her speech was focused on the murder just days earlier of our friend Fred Hampton, the Black Panther leader. She linked Fred’s murder to the murders of other Panthers around the country, to the assassinations of Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba, the CIA attempts on Fidel’s life, and then to the ongoing terror in Viet Nam. “This is the state of the world,” she cried. “This is what screams out for our attention and our response. And what do we find in our newspapers? A sick fascination with a story that has it all: a racist psycho, a killer cult, and a chorus line of Hollywood bodies. Dig it!

Later radical history

The Weathermen, as they were known colloquially, conducted a series of bombings against the US government throughout the early 1970s, bombing several federal buildings. Dohrn is a principal signatory on the group’s “Declaration of a State of War” (1970) that formally declared war on the U.S. Government, and completed the group’s transformation from political advocacy to violent action. Dohrn also co-wrote and published the subversive manifesto Prairie Fire (1974), and participated in the covertly-filmed Underground (1976).

After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, the accidental detonation of a bomb being made that killed three of the members, all members of Weatherman went underground and the group took on its last and most famous title, the Weather Underground. The Weathermen and Weather Underground were suspected in various bombings – police cars, the National Guard Association building, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Dohrn allegedly participated in many of the group’s revolutionary activities.

In late 1975, the Weather Underground put out an issue of a magazine, Osawatamie, which carried an article by Dohrn, “Our Class Struggle”, described as a speech given to the organization’s cadres on September 2 of that year. In the article, Dohrn clearly stated support for Communist ideology:

We are building a communist organization to be part of the forces which build a revolutionary communist party to lead the working class to seize power and build socialism. We must further the study of Marxism-Leninism within the WUO [Weather Underground Organization]. The struggle for Marxism-Leninism is the most significant development in our recent history. We discovered thru [sic] our own experiences what revolutionaries all over the world have found – that Marxism-Leninism is the science of revolution, the revolutionary ideology of the working class, our guide to the struggle.

According to a 1974 FBI study of the group, Dohrn’s article signaled a developing commitment to Marxism-Leninism that had not been clear in the groups previous statements, despite trips to Cuba by some members of the group before and after Weather Underground was formed, and contact with Vietnamese communists there.

While on the run from police, Dohrn married another Weatherman leader Bill Ayers, with whom she has two children. During the last years of their underground life, Dohrn and Ayers resided in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, where they used the aliases Christine Louise Douglas and Anthony J. Lee.

In the late 1970s, the Weatherman group split into two factions – the “May 19 Coalition” and the “Prairie Fire Collective” – with Dohrn and Ayers in the latter. The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding, with members facing the criminal charges against them, while the May 19 Coalition continued in hiding. A decisive factor in Dohrn’s coming out of hiding were her concerns about her children.

The couple turned themselves in to authorities in 1980. While some charges relating to their activities with the Weathermen were dropped due to governmental misconduct,  Dohrn pled guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, receiving probation. She later served less than a year of jail time, after refusing to testify against ex-Weatherman Susan Rosenberg in an armed robbery case. Shortly after turning themselves in, Dohrn and Ayers became legal guardians of the son of former members of the Weather Underground, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, after they were convicted of murder for their roles in a 1981 armored car robbery.

Note: During the armored car robbery the First black police officer on the force was killed.

Waverly L. Brown(1935-1981) was an Nyack, New York police officer who was killed in the line of duty during an infamous 1981 armed robbery of a Brinks Armored Car, along with fellow Nyack officer Edward O’Grady and Brinks security guard Peter Paige. The event garnered national headlines and led the arrest and imprisonment of several people involved, many of whom were members of the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army.

Prior to his law enforcement career, Brown served in the United States Air Force and participated in the Korean War. In 1966, he became the first African American member of Nyack’s police department. By 1981, he had served with the department for 15 years. Nicknamed “Chipper”, he was well liked by his fellow officers, and often cooked meals for them during his shift.

(Originally published October 20th, 2008)

William Ayers

A left-wing radical and terrorist

William Ayers was tapped by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to shape that city’s now nationally-renowned school reform program. Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established in 1941. This became controversial in the 2008 United States presidential election, as Barack Obama had served on the board until 2002, with overlapping times of service with Ayers.

Radical history

Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As head of an SDS regional group, the “Jesse James Gang”, Ayers made decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy.

The groups Ayers headed in Detroit and Michigan became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weatherman. Between the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS.

“During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more extreme over the year [1969]”, former Weatherman member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001. Before this time, Ayers had become a roomate of and strong influence on Terry Robbins, who was two years younger and “came to idolize him”, Wilkerson wrote. From the summer of 1968 to summer 1969, the pair worked closely together, “appearing inseparable at most SDS conventions and meetings”, she wrote. The two competed over things small and large, “including the ability to come up with quick one-liners, quirky names, sexual conquests, street fighting ability, and eventually the ability to talk tough”, she wrote. As Ayers started glorifying violence more and more, Robbins was affected by it. “But while Ayers, according to what he writes, knew that his language, which increasingly glorified violence, was just show, Robbins was one of those who really believed all of it.” Robbins would later be killed in a famous Weatherman explosion

In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected “Education Secretary”.

Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway. The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by Weatherman on October 6, 1970. Built yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast. He participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago that October, and in December was at the “War Council” meeting in Flint, Michigan.

The following year he “went underground” with several associates after the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which caused the death of Weatherman member Ted Gold as well as Ayers’ close friend, Terry Robbins, and Ayers girlfriend, Oughton, were killed while a nail bomb was under construction. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.

While underground, he and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations. By 1976 or 1977, with federal charges against both fugitives dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, Ayers was ready to turn himself in to authorities, but Dohrn remained reluctant until after she gave birth to two sons, one born in 1977, the other in 1980. “He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own”, she later said.

Ayers and Dohrn later became legal guardians to the son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin after the boy’s parents were arrested for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.

(Originally published October 20th, 2008)

Louis Farrakhan

This man received the lifetime achievement award from Obama’s church.

Praise for Barack Obama

Louis Farrakhan said the war in Iraq, the nation’s faltering economy and the increased number of natural disasters were signs of “a nation in peril.” He said those problems provide the broader context for Obama’s rise.

In response to Farrakhan’s remarks, the Obama campaign promptly released a response distancing himself from the Muslim minister:

“Senator Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan’s past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister’s support,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.  Obama himself rejected Farrakhan’s support in an NBC debate.

Farrakhan subsequently denied his comments constituted an endorsement saying, he would not tell any one of his followers how to cast their vote, but that they should vote “their own self-interest.”

Other controversial quotes by Farrakhan

“The same year they set up the IRS, they set up the FBI. And the same year they set up the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith… It could be a coincidence… [I want] to see black intellectuals free… I want to see them not controlled by members of the Jewish community.”

“Dewey, Kant and Hegel, and the rabbis that wrote the Talmud, make blacks inferior.”

Farrakhan has referred to Jews, Palestinian Arabs, Koreans, and Vietnamese collectively as “bloodsuckers” and maintains that “Murder and lying comes easy for white people.”

“Cokely spoke the truth” and [Jews protested] “because the truth hurts. I know this man Cokely. I know if he said it, he got the stuff to back it up.” – Chicago Sun Times, May 10, 1988, concerning statements by Chicago Black activist and former municipal official Steve Cokely asserting that Jews engaged in an international conspiracy to take over the world, and that Jewish doctors deliberately injected black children with the AIDS virus..”

Louis Farrakhan, identifies Barack Obama as “The Messiah.”

“You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change. And that is why Barack has captured the youth . And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear. And the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

Here is the video:

(Originally published October 20th, 2008)

Tony Rezko

Ties to Barack Obama

In 1990, after Obama was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, Rezmar Corp. offered him a job, which Obama turned down. Obama did end up taking a job with law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, which primarily worked civil rights cases, but also represented Rezmar and helped the company get more than $43 million in government funding and whose former senior partner, Allison S. Davis, later went into business with Rezko and, in 2003, was appointed to Illinois State Board of Investment by Governor Blagojevich at Rezko’s request. On July 31, 1995 the first ever political contributions to Obama were $300 from a lawyer, a $5,000 loan from a car dealer, and $2,000 from two food companies owned by Rezko. Starting in 2003, Rezko was one of the people on Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign finance committee, which raised more than $14 million. Rezko threw an early fundraiser for Obama, and that fundraiser was instrumental in providing Obama with seed money for his U.S. Senate race.

Also, in 2005 Obama purchased a new home in the Kenwood District of Chicago for $1.65 million ($300,000 below the original price) on the same day that Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, purchased the adjoining empty lot from the same sellers for the full asking price. Obama acknowledged bringing his interest in the property to Rezko’s attention, but denied any coordination of offers.

After it had been reported in 2006 that Rezko was under federal investigation for influence-peddling, Obama purchased a 10 foot wide strip of Ms. Rezko’s property for $104,500, $60,000 above the assessed value. According to Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Mark Brown, “Rezko definitely did Obama a favor by selling him the 10-foot strip of land, making his own parcel less attractive for development.” Obama acknowledges that the exchange may have created the appearance of impropriety, and stated “I consider this a mistake on my part and I regret it.”

On December 28, 2006, Ms. Rezko sold the property to a company owned by her husband’s former business attorney. That sale of $575,000, combined with the earlier $104,500 sale to the Obamas, amounted to a net profit of $54,500 over her original purchase, less $14,000 for a fence along the property line and other expenses. In October 2007, the new owners put the still vacant land up for sale again, this time for $1.5 million.

In June 2007, the Sun-Times published a story about letters Obama had written in 1997 to city and state officials in support of a low-income senior citizen development project headed by Rezko and partner Allison Davis. The project received more than $14 million in taxpayer funds, including $885,000 in development fees for Rezko and Davis.

In the South Carolina Democratic Party presidential debate on January 21, 2008, Senator Hillary Clinton said that Obama had represented Rezko, who she referred to as a slum landlord. Obama responded that he had never represented Rezko and had done only about five hours work, indirectly, for Rezko’s firm.

(Originally published October 20th, 2008)