Bill Ayers

January 28, 2024

A friend texted me, “what are we going to do??” OK just a thought here. Disagree if you like. The crisis we are facing is deeper than that Clown DT, and it goes back further. The Republicans and Democrats have been rushing us towards this crisis for decades. Certainly Reagan. But the whole campaign for “globalization” and de-industrialization, for NAFTA, for mass incarceration, for neo-liberal market-based logic to everything, that was all the Democrats. The Dems and Repubs are pretty much on the same team. The bigger movement is the end of the US empire which cannot really be turned around. Both parties are trying to aggressively pick fights with their two adversaries. Is it because they love Ukrainians so much? They love Taiwanese? No, these hot spots far from our shores are hot because the US is desperate to hold on to and extend its imperial grasp. It’s not going to happen. Do I love the Chinese leadership? The Russian leadership? Nope. But I don’t think we should salute our own oligarchs as they push us into these desperate wars. Trump is a clown and a fool but he’s the front man for very determined capitalists who are plotting last-gasp ventures to save the empire. They will fail. We can only fight them so their failure won’t cost too many lives. Yes we must resist DT. But let’s not pretend that this is some unique or worse threat, let’s not feed nostalgia for Biden and his genocidal wars. Everyone seems to be in shock now. Once we get our bearings and the lines are drawn, I trust that people will know what to do.

January 31, 2024

Another random thought: The fight for ethnic studies has been long and hard. It appears that it is now under attack by the “anti-woke” crowd. Let’s remember that the implementation of Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Asian American Studies, really all of ethnic studies was initiated through a long, hard strike at SF State. The establishment has over the years tried to make ethnic studies a non-threatening simple exploration, to domesticate it. But at its core, ethnic studies is a revolutionary rethinking of education and really of what is knowledge, what matters. Now even the mild versions are under attack and it is disgusting. What to do. In the long run, of course, we have to win it back and win it in its true, transformative reality. But for this year and the foreseeable future, I think we need to simply pursue this knowledge outside of the schools. Tucson school district cannot ban a Freedom School which meets a few evenings or on a weekend to delve into Mexican American history and culture. Those who ban books in the schools cannot arrest us for handing out and reading these books outside of school. If the schools won’t educate our kids, we need to do it ourselves. There is a long history of this kind of counter-cultural institutions, like the Freedom Schools in Mississippi in 1964 and after. They were still fighting to change the public schools but they held their own classes too. We can’t just wait around for the idiot politicians to “allow” us to teach and learn. And, think about it, these classes will be allowed to pursue their more radical core ideas once out of the surveillance of the school districts.

February 2, 2025

Reflecting on some parallels between the war in Palestine and our history: remembering the resistance to the American War in Vietnam:

· At first we called for a cease fire, stop the bombing. We were a little naïve perhaps but sincere.

· The US killed Vietnamese in wholesale slaughter, claiming that the evil resistance fighters were using “human shields” and that whole populations were part of a “free fire zone” because they supported the resistance. Three million Vietnamese were killed.

· In time we realized that the Americans were set on a genocidal course.

· Powerful institutions (schools, universities, employers, legislatures) condemned us and enacted draconian measures of repression.

· We conducted research and learned how deeply complicit these institutions were with the genocide.

· Then we worked for the defeat of the American war aims.

· Some asked, “But aren’t you a patriot? Don’t you love America?” We realized that the whole American project was corrupt. No, we were not patriotic.

· Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp explained openly that war is fought in four ways: violent destruction was one, but the others were moral, psychological, and political. The US was winning on the violence front but steadily losing on the other three. US generals could not understand what he was saying. “The Tet Offensive was a disaster for the Viet Cong, we killed so many!” the generals declared. They couldn’t see what a huge defeat it was, in the US population and in the eyes of the world. Even after the US had to scramble out in defeat, they were shouting, “But we won! The cowardly politicians and radical kids sold us out!”

· The Zionists have exacted devastating terror on the Palestinians, but Israel is forever delegitimized. Eventually, a single secular state with democratic rights (voting) for everyone is the future.