Bill Ayers to speak at BC after all - by satellite
By adamg - 3/30/09 - 9:25 am
After BC rescinded his physical speaking engagement.
Meanwhile, relatives of Boston patrolman Walter Schroeder will protest Ayers's talk by holding an on-campus memorial tonight, even though there is nothing connecting Ayers's Weather Underground with Schroeder's 1970 murder at the hands of a convicted felon and two Brandeis undergrads he managed to convince to help him rob a Brighton bank.
Comments
Patrolman Walter Schoeder
I disagree that Ayers is not connected to Schoeder's murder.
Katherine Ann Powers freely admitted her membership in the WU, and her motives. Ayers was a leader in the group.
Bin Laden didn't pilot a plane, but I blame him for 9/11.
BC has withdrawn the invitation to speak via satellite.
Not correct
Katherine Ann Powers freely admitted her membership in the WU, and her motives.
It is true that Power was engaged in robberies at a Massachusetts National Guard armory and a bank that were vaguely related to protesting the war in Vietnam. But she wasn't affiliated with the WU -- they were a different set of bad guys.
The FBI Takes A Different View
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/jan04/weather012904.htm
Ms. Powers admitted her crimes.
She did indeed
... but they had nothing to do with the Weather Underground, a different set of bad guys.
With regard to the FBI page you link to, I'll refer to Dan Kennedy's comment:
Nobody is arguing she's innocent
She and Susan Saxe helped a convicted felon (along with another couple of thugs he recruited) kill an honorable cop doing his job. Nobody's questioning that.
The question is why she's being used as a weapon in the battle against Ayers. Aside from that one photo on the FBI Web site, there is no connection.
I happened to be a Brandeis student 10 years after Schroeder's murder. I spent a fair amount of time researching the case (even got FBI documents under FOIA) and interviewing people who knew them.
In 1970, Brandeis was very active in the anti-war movement (big surprise, right?). There was a student coordinating center that had run up huge phone bills. Saxe and Power were part of that, not the Weather Underground (which by that point had, as the name implies, gone underground).
At the same time, Brandeis had this program that tried to rehab felons or something - there were ex-cons wandering the campus. Quite the time.
One of them was Stanley Bond (who'd become a buddy of Albert DeSalvo in prison). He and Power became an item and he somehow convinced her that by helping him in robberies, she'd be helping the cause. The result: The death of Walter Schroeder. Something Ayers had nothing to do with.
Next Up
Bostonmaggie blames Jody Foster for the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Hinckley was trying to impress her after all, and she's part of Liberal Hollywood, no?
Actually...No
But thanks for thinking of me.
It's agreed that Bill Ayers had nothing to do with
It's agreed that Bill Ayers had nothing to do with Walter Schroeder's murder. However, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever with Catherine Power and the thuggish felons she hung out with at the time. The fact that she and her buddies thought it would be just dandy to rob a bank to fund their opposition to our war in Viet Nam is just disgusting, imho. She and her
thuggish friends were not only responsible for the death of a very well-known, decent and popular patrolman, but she left a whole family bereft of a husband and father.
It's not as if Catherine Power was some naive, starry-eyed adolescent who got caught up in all the excitement, didn't know what she was doing and got into an awful jam as a consequence of that. She was a consenting adult who knew what those people she was with were up to and what they were doing. Ms. Power could've/should've walked away from them...and she didn't.
I have no sympathy for Catherine Power despite the fact that her mental health was presumably threatened by this whole episode. She brought the whole thing down on her own head, and she did a great deal of harm to the cause, besides.
Huh?
Who was expressing sympathy for Kathy Power?
Nobody here on UH, but
I know a lot of people off-line, in real life who are sympathetic with Catherine Power, a position that I strongly disagree with.
How do you know this?
She played the stupid naive rich girl act and got off easy. I don't think she should have been tried for murder as she didn't shoot anybody (and the law said as much anyway), but I do think she should have done more time than she did given the wonderfully enjoyable free life she got to have while living on the lam in Oregon - privilege is no excuse for stupid. If she had been a working class girl driving her bank robber boyfriend away from a heist, I somehow doubt she would have had it so easy.
TRIVIA QUESTION: What is Power's link to Kurt Cobain?
I don't know, SwirlyGrrl.
This:
is something that I take issue with. I honestly think that Ms. Power knew who she was hooking up with. She would've had to be extremely dimwitted not to know that these guys were criminals. That's my take on it.
It's agreed that Catherine Powers didn't shoot down patrolman Walter Schroeder, but she was unquestionably an accomplice to this crime, which also put her in an extremely bad light, and is suffice enough to serve a jail sentence. Whether or not she should've gotten more time in prison, I'm honestly not sure of, however.
She's not talking about Kathy's time at Brandeis
But all her time Abbie Hoffmanning it up in Oregon (ah, Brandeis and its criminal alumni).
In contrast, Saxe got caught fairly early on (well, five years later) and did time at MCI-Framingham, where she then got in trouble for using the prison computer system in some sort of fraud scheme (they called their enterprise Con'Puter).
I'm aware of Catherine Power's underground life in Oregon.
During that period, Ms. Power also went under an alias name: Alice Metzger.
Trivia
Katherine Power was the inspiration for Susan Forest, a character in the episode "White Rabbit" on Law and Order in 1994. Susan Forest was played by Mary-Joan Negro who was in "Employee of the Month" with Matt Dillon in 2004. Matt Dillon was also in "Grace of my Heart" in 1996 with J. Mascis. Mascis, in turn, was in the movie "1991: The Year Punk Broke" which aired in 1992, with Kurt Cobain.
Either that or Kurt Cobain's mother-in-law was Power's shrink. I'm not sure which you were going for.
To be fair, however, I did have to google the second one.
Just for fun, previously unaired audio interview tapes were used to have Cobain narrate his own biopic, "Kurt Cobain: About a Son" in 2006, with Courtney Love who was in "Trapped" in 2002 with Kevin Bacon!
...who was also in "Loverboy" in 2005 with Matt Dillon...back to Mary-Joan Negro...and thus Katherine Power.
"Safety concerns"?
Ok, let's see... According to The Heights, BC's administration cancelled Ayers' appearance because
But it's not about politics, oh no.
By the way, in the article, Dunn states that the plan for a satellite conference on campus had yet to be approved by Student Affairs.
I can see what the title won't be
"Threat of Right-Wing Violence Cancels Talk."
There's no politics involved, noo! It would be exactly the same if a bunch of people called to threaten violence when some right-wing person with unacknowledged blood on her hands came to talk. They'd just cancel it and say 'darn controversy. It's too much. Besides which, she hasn't accepted responsibility for her crimes...'
Above all, we mustn't acknowledge that the majority of terrorist actions in this country, and the greatest terrorist threats to public safety, are from right-wing groups. Good old boy violence is cute, not like that dirty hippy and a-rab violence.
Terrorists have won?
So you're saying that they acquiesced to terrorists?
Isn't this one of the accusations that right-wing extremists level at liberals? :)
To be clear, I'm sensitive
To be clear, I'm sensitive to the objections people have to giving this speaker a soapbox. And I'd have to do more research and give it more thought before I could possibly be 100% comfortable with it myself.
I was just commenting on a bit of irony.
Who Threatened Violence
There is no proof that any threats were made.
We spoke out and said it was wrong. How is that violent?
The only person who mentioned threats was the spokesperson at BC who said it was cancelled becasue of "the threatening tone of a lot of the calls that we received".
I withold judgement without evidence. LOL After all, many are harping on the technicality that Ayers was never convicted.
Proof?
Jack Dunn, University Spokesman, said that one of the reasons the event was moved was a concern for student safety based on threatening calls received.
Are you suggesting he is lying?
I'm Suggesting
Dunn exaggerated. I don't think anyone threatened to do violence to the student body.
That's my opinion.
So much for a free thinking institute of higher education
When I heard about this yesterday, I was seriously disappointed. You don't have to attend, you can even go so far as to protest outside of his talk, but to cancel his invitation is disheartening. I have been to some very charged talks before: Christopher Hitchens after publishing his expose on Mother Theresa, a researcher who worked on cocaine addiction using primates, and a conservative political candidate advocating for near abuse of illegal immigrants, as three examples. Each time, while I may or may not agree with the speaker, I learned something. Sometimes the best way to prevent bad ideas from spreading is to expose them for everyone to evaluate just how wrong they are instead of ignoring them or forcing them underground.
I Have Also Been To Highly Charged Talks
and enjoy them immensely, but you do have to draw a line.
I loathe Jimmy Carter. Yet I would not object to his speaking publicly.
I seriously objected to Hitchens writings about Mother Theresa. Yet I would not object to his speaking publicly (and I would probably go).
But Hitchens and Carter? Who did they bomb? Who did they attempt to murder as Ayers attempted to murder soldiers and their dates at a dance at fort Dix? What? Does Ayers got a pass because their bomb went off prematurely and he was unsuccessful?
"...but you do have to draw a line. "
Why?
In A Civilized Society
there needs to be a line. Most of the people who protested Ayers coming here to speak see that line. Frankly, I think BC saw that line as well. After all this was not publicized the way other lectures are. Why not announce it loudly if you aren't ashamed?
In a Free Society
That line is intentionally tipped in favor of freedom of speech. How many of our founders outright incited violence in ways that led to sedition and revolution? You can check out Bell's Boston 1775 blog and find that out for yourself.
Besides, that Irani government official whose name I cannot spell ... he got his free speech and promptly shoved his foot in his mouth in an impressive show of fail. After all the protests, his freedom to speak - and be thought a fool - was a very good thing!
Mohammad Khatami?
Former Iranian president Mohmammad Khatami's 2006 visit to Harvard KSG?
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514170
I'll sound it out
I think it was Achmadidajad? He spoke at Columbia last year, and told everyone that Iran didn't have gay people.
Ahmadinejad
Oh yeah, that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjOLj7olsXM
Better versions
Blessedly, a transcript:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/24/AR2007092401042.html
C-Span version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDsDQCfZQ-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqTjm-TlHTQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-7v5LdcKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwE13jzqU9s
Doesn't answer the question
You avoided the question almost entirely; it's a very simple one.
If Ayers spoke at BC tonight, civility would not be lost by that act. So, try again.
Why?
I Don't See Where I Avoided
the question. That is my reason. I think Bill Ayers should have no place in our society as a respected authority on anything. There are people who should be social pariahs. There are people who should be considered beyond the pale. They should not be given a forum.
Much better
Last response you rambled on about who sees the line and whether the hosts were embarrassed.
Now to address your stated reason for drawing a line excluding Bill Ayers from speaking at BC, are you willing to consider that a well-respected institute of higher learning (U of Illinois-Chicago) considers him worthy of a faculty position, other well-respected universities such as Vassar and University of South Carolina have honored him with distinguished visiting professorships, and he has published books in collegiate press? Aren't these signs that a person has obtained recognition among his profession and peers?
Beyond whether he has good standing in his field of professorship, there's nothing in your reasoning that requires that he not be allowed an invitation to speak. Making him an outcast by refusing to listen or by speaking in opposition to his ideas (many of which conservatives would have a hard time distinguishing from their own if his name were removed from them) suffices. Fundamentally, the rest of your argument is circular. "We shouldn't let him speak. Why? Because he should not be given a forum to speak."
So, your whole argument hinges purely only whether he has a "place in our society as a respected authority". BC, whose invitation it is to give, did not refuse him for lack of authority in his field among their myriad of justifications. Given that and his professional accolades and accomplishments by respected institutions, I'd say you're opinion on his competence as a "respected authority" is lacking substance.
Of course, it's easier to castigate anything he might say by simply not letting him say it. You can put words in his mouth and assign actions that are not his and then deny him the forum to convey his true words. Not hearing someone out makes it easier to continue doing whatever you want without considering whatever they might have gotten right that would improve you or your ideas in any way.
As the Kids Say, Mad Props to You
I have lurked here forever and never felt the urge to participate. But Kaz, to you I must say that your comment kicks serious butt. It's well-argued and well-written and reminds me why I waste such huge amounts of time reading blogs. I don't care a whole lot about Bill Ayers, but I am a great fan of the First Amendment. Thank you for doing what you can to protect it for the rest of us.
No
I didn't ramble. Your tone is condescending. But whatever.
No, having a lot of people make the same mistake, doesn't impress me at all.
I am still of the opinion that Ayers and other WU leaders bear some responsibility for the violence of those who admired and followed him. However, for the purpose of this discussion, we will put that aside the matter of Patrolman Schroeder's murder.
Ayers planned, advocated, encouraged, and attempted to facilitate the violent overthrow of our government. That is why I don't think he should be given a forum for anything.
He would have slaughtered Americans at Fort Dix if his plan had not failed. He isn't sorry about that. Why would it matter what he has done or written since then?
I have put no words in the man's mouth.
My problem with having him come speak at BC is that, in my opinion, it confers undeserved respectability on the man. I object to that.
People who should be considered beyond the pale
Like Condoleeza Rice.
Condoleeze Rice is no longer in office,
so this:
isn't relevant anymore.
WHOOSH!
I think it was meant to be a stupid pun. Made me laugh anyway.
Stupid pun, check
Couldn't resist it, what with the recent controversy over Condoleeza Rice getting an honorary degree from BC. But the best puns do double duty. It was a shocking sellout on the part of BC which lessens their credibility in the Ayers case.
You know - put up the cross in the classroom, but then turn around and and grovel to someone who lies like breathing and is involved in justifying war crimes. Can't have them graduate without learning the importance of hypocrisy. Kids! You didn't think we really believed this crap, did you?
So BC's line is somewhere between William Ayers and Condoleeza Rice. The lesson here is that if you're going to be peripherally involved in murder, make sure it's hundreds of thousands and make sure they're brown. Cuz then BC will give you a bye. Oh, that was far away, and they weren't Christians anyway, so they don't count.
One assumes William Ayers' counterparties, like Henry Kissinger, would still be on the unforgivable side of the line. His complicity in war crimes is not debatable. Hence the warrants out for his arrest in a dozen countries. Warrants out for Ayers: 0.
The thing is, though, Bostonmaggie
that, as several other posters on here have correctly pointed out, if we really and truly want a democratic society at large, we're going to have to give people floors and forums to speak, no matter how repulsive their viewpoints may be to us. If people use forums, etc., to say stuff that people don't like, the right to rebut it is there. Suppression of adverse points of view isn't the answer.