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Read other letters about this article
Salon's excellent article on Bill Ayers is more about a generation than it is about a single man and his actions. It is more than about a small radical organization --- the Weather Underground. It is an important document about how a portion of a generation responded to a moral issue that got too big to ignore.
(See http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/11/17/ayers/?source=newsletter)
Did the 1960s Weather Underground do the right thing in responding violently to violence? Historians and pundits have and will continue to argue that question.
As a member of that generation and one who participated fully and nonviolently in the anti-war movement, I can only say that their response was understandable.
The Ayers interview rekindles an ageless moral imperative and reminds us that the issue of war is no different today than it was 40 years ago. We are still asked to stand up and be counted and still frustrated by the refusal of government to respond to peaceful protest.
For me, Ayers ' most notable quote in this article is, "this is where we need to move in the future -- that we cannot believe that presidents save us. They cannot save our lives. We have to do for ourselves the important work of transformation, the important work of reframing the last eight years, the last several decades, into something more hopeful"
I hope to hear more of Ayers' thoughts on that transformation.
