Bill Ayers
Bill Ayers
William Charles "Bill" Ayers is an American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the counterculture movement who opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s radical activism and his current work in education reform, curriculum and instruction. In 1969, he co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group with the intent to overthrow imperialism, that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildingsduring the 1960s and 1970s in response to US involvement in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth26 December 1944
CountryUnited States of America
I was involved in the anti-war movement.
The massive anti-war movement, which I was a part of and which was a major part of my life, never stopped the war in Vietnam.
I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.
I thought in 1965 that my job was to convince most Americans to be against the war. So I spent summers knocking on doors, handing out literature, trying to talk to people who didn't agree with me, trying to get them to see the war was wrong. And by 1968 a majority of Americans did oppose the war.
Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war.
Now you may like the images of long-haired hippies running in the streets throwing tear gas canisters, but we didn't end the war. And that's what we set out to do. What was not ended by the anti-war movement was ended by the Vietnamese. That's our shame.
I'm not so much against the war as I am for a Vietnamese victory. I'm not so much for peace as for a U.S. defeat.
The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.
I have an addiction to caffeine.
We should open our eyes, see what's in front of us, and act.
Chicago '68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I've talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock.
I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement..
The nice thing about being detained in Canada is it's like being in a Days Inn; it's very clean and very nice.
Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.