Bill Ayers

San Francisco Chronicle

Oct. 28, 2021

Regarding “Boudin’s father granted parole for Brink’s robbery” (Bay Area, Oct. 27): David Gilbert was granted parole because he had an exemplary record during his 40 years in prison, served far longer in prison than his co-defendants and had enormous support.

Mr. Gilbert was convicted of murder under the archaic felony-murder rule, now rejected by California. It makes individuals who participate in a crime resulting in death guilty of murder although they have absolutely nothing to do with the killing. Mr. Gilbert was unarmed and drove a getaway car.

The article quotes Ritchie Greenberg accusing District Attorney Chesa Boudin of abusing his office in supporting his father’s release. He did not use official stationery and wrote as a son. More influential in supporting Mr. Gilbert’s release were: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Laureate; Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mohandas Gandhi; The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; and a multitude of religious and civic leaders.

Mr. Greenberg’s uninformed comment is not deserving of being included in this article.

Ellen Chaitin, retired Superior Court judge, San Francisco

Our son (and San Francisco DA) Chesa Boudin, on the parole of my co-padre David Gilbert:I am so grateful to the Parole Board. I’m also grateful to everyone who has supported my father during his more than 4 decades behind bars. I’m thinking about the other children affected by my father’s crime and want to make sure that nothing I do or say further upsets the victims’ families. Their loved ones will never be forgotten. And I am thinking of the other people inside who have worked so hard to transform their lives and hope one day to return home.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/FMfcgzGlkXsddcsNBjcRsrkHFqVCJPTh

Rest in Power, Brother!

https://chicago.suntimes.com/platform/amp/2021/10/13/20827314/timuel-black-historian-civil-rights-activist-author-obituary

Remembering George Floyd on the anniversary of his birth.

Rest in Power!!

As  a future ancestor, I’m writing to you from the so-called Chicagoland area of Illinois, a conundrum wrapped in a contradiction—both a crime scene and a confirmation. These lands were stewarded for millennia by Indigenous peoples and nations and lineages, including the Three Fires Confederacy— the Potowatami, the Ojibwe, and the Odawa. They raised their children here, created their communities, made sense and meaning for one another, experienced the flowing and the passing of their time together, planned for the future, and buried their dead here. We acknowledge them and thank them all. I note that following the settler violence culminating in the Blackhawk War of 1832, Indigenous peoples were murdered or forcibly removed from these lands. Over a century later, under a different set of oppressive policies, many were once again coerced to migrate, this time back to the urban centers where their ancestors had earlier been robbed and forcibly removed—Chicago has the third largest urban Native population in the US today, with more than 65,000 Native Americans in the greater metropolitan area.

Chicago’s name, derived from the Algonquian language, means “river whose shores are lined with wild leeks,” and it’s true: Chicago is a confluence of water, wildness, peoples, hopes and aspirations, a place of outsized and crazy complexity, built up by the hands of immigrant workers and African-ancestored people escaping terror and the after-life of slavery during the Great Migration. Justice seekers, freedom fighters, teachers and cultural workers, artists and creators, organizers and activists—all of us must remember and honor a history of stolen land and resources, a history of genocide and exploitation, and we must also  pledge to keep our eyes and our hearts open in our shared struggle for peace and repair, justice and joy, balance and love.

Chicago is where I reside and work, where I rise up filled with gratitude and awe on each new morning. This is where I recommit to projects of repair and revolution in this bruised and battered world. Chicago is where I begin again.