Memoirs don’t characterize misbehavior and apologize for it – instead they are meant to describe a person’s journey through a specific moment in time, said Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers on Thursday night at a reading of his new book.
Ayers promoted “Fugitive Days,” an account of his experiences in the Weather Underground activist group of the late 1960s and his subsequent run from the government, to more than 70 vocal supporters and critics at Barnes & Noble, 1701 Sherman Ave.
Now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Ayers and his wife, Northwestern Law School Assoc. Prof. Bernardine Dohrn, have been at the center of a controversy since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with critics accusing them of being unrepentant for their actions 30 years ago.
Although 15 NU alumni have retracted donations to the school because of Dohrn’s position, Ayers had no qualms about coming to Evanston and sharing his book.
“The book had the strange fate of being born on September 10, and the event in Michigan that night had a wide-ranging discussion,” he said. “September 11 changed the equation dramatically. But I still think it’s worth examining the themes of (the Vietnam War) time to understand these times.”
Ayers divided “Fugitive Days” into two sections, comparing his formative years growing up as the rich son of former NU Board of Trustees chairman Thomas Ayers and getting involved in the anti-war movement while a student at the University of Michigan to his life underground after the explosion of a bomb his group was building in Greenwich Village that killed three Weathermen.
The Weathermen set off more than 20 bombs in protest of the war, none of which killed people but one of which exploded in the Pentagon.
Ayers opted to read three passages from the book’s first half, describing his mother, his first war protest and his experience in Students for a Democratic Society, the activist group from which the Weathermen branched off. Ayers characterized the book’s second part as “an attempt to pull back from the abyss we created.”
“The extreme, off-the-track actions we engaged in, I hesitate to read,” he said.
Ayers then fielded questions from the crowd, many of which led to spirited exchanges. One man equated Ayers to Osama bin Laden and said “it’s horrifying to think you can be in here selling your books.”
Ayers responded by accusing the government of creating its own terrorism through the Vietnam War.
“If you lived in south Afghanistan now and your government had terrorism as a policy, wouldn’t you try to stop them? What was the right behavior at that time to resist the horror?” he asked the man.
Another audience member then said the right course of action would have been to create change in the government through the electoral process.
“In this country, we vote the government out (of) office and try to make changes democratically,” said the man, a Chicago resident who refused to give his name. “When people engage in bomb-making, it makes it harder to make changes through elections.”
Although some members of the crowd berated the author for his actions, Ayers also had his supporters. Evanston Township High School senior Ted Boggs said Ayers has every right to have his voice heard, even after Sept. 11.
“Regardless of September 11, his life is history and history needs to be told,” Boggs said. “Angst overcomes me when I hear about what we do in other countries. I understand how that can motivate someone to violence.”
Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Sarah DiFrancesco said the bookstore would continue to invite controversial authors and give them an open forum for discussion.
“Our mission is to bring the widest selection of titles to customers, and leave it up to them to decide what to buy,” she said.
