- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I saw the documentary "The Weather Underground" and came out thinking that those kids were crazy, had no strategy, and veered perilously close to the kind of logic that extremists use to justify evil against innocents - an act of God or incompetence prevented that by having that one town house bomb, intended for a soldiers' dance, backfire on the bombmakers.
However, in this interview, Ayers vividly explains the general atmosphere of insanity at that time and explains how a group of kids could think that when compared with daily killings of thousands of innocents, their own property destruction didn't amount to a great shakes in terms of condemnable behavior.
If there's one thing the far left still has going for it, even today, it's the reminder that "presidents can't save us" and that it takes social movements to achieve social change. When Obama gets around to grievously disappointing the liberals, the far left will remember that democracy isn't just about finally managing to pull the lever for the right person.
