UPDATE: Marquette University's College of Education, another Catholic institution, also joined Alverno and Mount Mary in sponsoring the event with keynote speaker terrorist Bill Ayers.
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UPDATE: Mount Mary College - School of Education, another Catholic institution, has joined Alverno in sponsoring the event showcasing terrorist Bill Ayers.
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Bill Ayers - Keynote speaker and special guest for the 25th anniversary celebration of Rethinking Schools in Milwaukee on Saturday, and unrepentant terrorist.
Alverno College is a Silver Sponsor of a fundraiser and 25th anniversary celebration for Rethinking Schools.
As one of the nation’s largest Catholic women’s colleges, Alverno is dedicated to your personal and professional development. We offer weekday and weekend undergraduate programs for women, as well as graduate programs for women and men.
Alverno may be one of the nation's largest Catholic women's colleges, but its Catholic identity isn't at its core.
It can't be.
A Catholic institution wouldn't sponsor an event proudly showcasing terrorist Bill Ayers. He's the keynote speaker.
25th Anniversary Celebration and Fundraiser
Time
Saturday, October 15 · 5:30pm - 8:30pm
Location
Stonefly Brewery, 735 E. Center St., in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood
Created By
Rethinking Schools
More Info
Rethinking Schools is having a 25th Anniversary Bash
Come and help us celebrate 25 years of teaching for social justice!
Saturday, October 15
5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
William Ayers, teacher, activist, award-winning education writer, and retired professor from the University of Illinois-Chicago will be our special guest and keynote speaker!
Entertainment, hearty appetizers, and cash bar.
Tickets: $25
See http://rethinkingschools.org/news/25thAnniversary.shtml for more information, including opportunities to become an event sponsor!
Here's a list of sponsors for the event. Read through it.
New York Collective of Radical Educators is also a Silver Sponsor, just like School of Education - Alverno College.
NYCoRE supports Rethinking Schools AND Occupy Wall Street.
NYCoRE believes that Occupy Wall Street is a profoundly important form of social action that is deeply connected to the struggle against the racial and economic oppression of poor, working, people and people of color. NYCoRE, as Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, said in a statement, “…is fed up with the corporate greed, corruption and arrogance that have inflicted pain on far too many for far too long.”
...We need NYCoRE members and allied groups to represent as a left contingent of the education movement!
We will be marching under the Teachers Unite, NYCoRE and Fight Back Friday banners.
This makes sense from a group that calls itself "radical educators." Naturally, this group would consider Ayers a hero, but Alverno is supposed to be grounded in CATHOLIC values.
How can a Catholic institution like Alverno support Bill Ayers?
Granted, he has a place in American history, but his page is one of violence and murder. Ayers co-founded the radical Leftist group the Weathermen, later called the Weather Underground Organization.
Here's a review of some of the group's "accomplishments":
(Hat Tip: Mark Levin, Hat Tip: AliVeritas - Stolen from TSchmereL)
For those who have forgotten or weren’t born yet here is a list of a few of the activities. Just think if this were happening today:
7 October 1969 – Bombing of Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago, apparently as a “kickoff” for the “Days of Rage” riots in the city October 8-11, 1969. The Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”
8 October-11, 1969 – The “Days of Rage” riots occur in Chicago in which 287 Weatherman members from throughout the country were arrested and a large amount of property damage was done.
6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO stated in their book “Prairie Fire” that they had did the explosion.
27 December-31, 1969 – Weathermen hold a “War Council” meeting in Flint, MI, where they finalize their plans to submerge into an underground status from which they plan to commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO).
13 February 1970 - Bombing of several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department .
16 February 1970 – Bombing of Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen.
6 March 1970 – Bombing in the 13th Police District of the Detroit, Michigan. 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, during that period, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.
6 March 1970 – “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members die . The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails TO INFILICT MAXIMUM CASUALTIES UPON DETONATION.
30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO “bomb factory” on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO “weapons cache” in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.
10 May 1970 – Bombing of The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C..
21 May 1970 – The WUO under Bernardine Dohrn’s name releases its “Declaration of a State of War” communique.
6 June 1970 – The WUO sends a letter claiming credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice; however, no explosion actually took place. Months later, workmen in this building located an unexploded device which had apparently been dormant for some time.
9 June 1970 - Bombing of The New York City Police Headquarters .
27 July 1970 - Bombing of The Presidio army base in San Francisco. [NYT, 7/27/70]
12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, break out and escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.
8 October 1970 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. [NYT, 8/10/70]
10 October 1970 - Bombing of Queens traffic-court building . [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]
14 October 1970 - Bombing of The Harvard Center for International Affairs [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]
1 March 1971 - Bombing of The United States Capitol . “ [NYT, 3/2/71]
April, 1971 – abandoned WUO “bomb factory” discovered in San Francisco, California.
29 August, 1971 - Bombing of the Office of California Prisons . [LAT, 8/29/71]
17 September 1971 - Bombing of The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY [NYT, 9/18/71]
15 October 1971 - Bombing of William Bundy’s office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]
19 May 1972 - Bombing of The Pentagon . [NYT, 5/19/72]
18 May 1973 - Bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York
28 September 1973 - Bombing of ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy . [NYT, 9/28/73]
6 March 1974 - Bombing of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco
31 May 1974 - Bombing of The Office of the California Attorney General.
17 June 1974 - Bombing of Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters .
11 September 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation).
29 January 1975 - Bombing of the State Department in (AP. “State Department Rattled by Blast,” The Daily Times-News, January 29 1975, p.1)
16 June 1975 - Bombing of Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York .
September, 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation .
October 20, 1981 - Brinks robbery in which several members of the Weather Underground stole over $1 million from a Brinks armored car near Nyack, New York. The robbers murdered 2 police officers and 1 Brinks guard. Several others were wounded.
1981 “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country,” Ayers said when interviewed by David Horowitz.
September 11, 2001 “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers is quoted in NYT article
Clearly, Ayers is not like the hundreds of thousands of Americans who participated in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, not even close. It's a lie to suggest that his participation in protests was remotely similar to that of hundreds of thousands of Americans. It's a flat-out lie.
Ayers actively sought to overthrow the government of the United States. He was at war with our country.
Here's some suggested reading for those in Alverno's School of Education: Prairie Fire.
It has a red cover. Nice touch. It reminds me of Mao's Little Red Book. The title, Prairie Fire, is all Mao, too. Mao wrote, "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire," on January 5, 1930.
(Note: The following excerpts and photos are all from zombietime.)
May 9, 1974
Sisters and brothers,
Here is PRAIRIE FIRE, our political ideology - a strategy for anti-imperialism and revolution inside the imperial US. It comes out of our own practice of the last five years and reflects a diversity of experiences. This paper is not the product of one or two people, nor even a small handful of us. Rather PRAIRIE FIRE represents the politics and collective efforts of an organization. It has been the focus of our study groups and our political education. It has been chewed on and shaped in countless conversations, struggles and written pages. It has travelled around the country, growing, developing thru the attempt to understand the shape of world forces and the revolutionary possibilities before us. The paper was rewritten four times and collectively adopted as the political statement of the Weather Underground. The twelve-month process of writing PRAIRIE FIRE, squeezed between on-going work and practice and action, has now reached a kind of end-point. A cycle is done.
We undertook this analysis to explain the changes in US and world conditions since the Vietnam ceasefire and to evaluate the consequences of the Vietnamese victory. We have come some distance in evaluating the political situation, the priorities for revolutionary work since we began this writing. Now many more revolutionaries will need to shape and change the paper. The politics cannot be realized unless and until the content of the program is activated in thousands of situations, among thousands of people in the coming period. PRAIRIE FIRE will be a growing thing.
We hope the paper opens a dialectic among those in the mass and clandestine movements; we hope people will take PRAIRIE FIRE as seriously as we do, study the content and write and publish their views of the paper as well as their analysis of their own practice. We will respond as best we can.
Our movement urgently needs a concrete analysis of the particular conditions of our time and place. We need strategy. We need to battle for a correct ideology and win people over. In this way we create the conditions for the development of a successful revolutionary movement and party. We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society. Getting from here to there is a process of coming together in a disciplined way around ideology and strategy, developing an analysis of our real conditions, mobilizing a base among the US people, building principled relationships to Third World struggle, and accumulating practice in struggle against US imperialism.
PRAIRIE FIRE is written to communist-minded revolutionaries, independent organizers and anti-imperialists; those who carry the traditions and lessons of the struggles of the last decade, those who join in the struggles of today. PRAIRIE FIRE is written to all sisters and brothers who are engaged in armed struggle against the enemy. It is written to prisoners, women's groups, collectives, study groups, workers' organizing committees, communes, GI organizers, consciousness-raising groups, veterans, community groups and revolutionaries of all kinds; to all who will read, criticize and bring its content to life in practice. It is written as an argument against those who oppose action and hold back the struggle.
PRAIRIE FIRE is based on a belief that the duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution. This is not an abstraction. It means that revolutionaries must make a profound commitment to the future of humanity, apply our limited knowledge and experience to understand an ever-changing situation, organize the masses of people and build the fight. It means that struggle and risk and hard work and adversity will become our way of life, that the only certainty will be constant change, that the only possibilities are victory or death.
We have only begun. At this time, the unity and consolidation of anti-imperialist forces around a revolutionary program is an urgent and pressing strategic necessity. PRAIRIE FIRE is offered as a contribution to this unity of action and purpose. Now it is in your hands.
Bernardine Dohrn
Jeff Jones
Billy Ayers
Celia Sojourn
For the Weather Underground
The manifesto states:
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. We are deeply affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside.
This is a violent, radical group bent on overthrowing the U.S. government, not just a bunch of idealistic young people involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements.
This really makes me sick:
The following snippet is taken from the book's dedication page, and shows that the Weather Underground dedicated the book to Robert F. Kennedy's killer Sirhan Sirhan, among many other now-obscure '60s-era radicals, criminals and revolutionaries:
Here's the two-page spread of the dedication page and copyright page in high-resolution, showing the full list of people to whom the book is dedicated:
SIRHAN SIRHAN.
The Weather Underground manifesto is dedicated to Bobby Kennedy's assassin.
"To All Who Continue to Fight and To All Political Prisoners in the U.S."
Ayers and his fellow radicals equate Sirhan Sirhan with Harriet Tubman in their dedication!
Ayers has never apologized for any of this.
Rethinking Schools makes no apologies for having Ayers as their keynote speaker.
In case anyone is wondering why we chose Bill Ayers as our special guest for the 25th anniversary celebration this weekend, among his accomplishments are Citizen of the Year Award, Chicago, IL, 1997 and Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1999-2010. Dr. William Ayers is a distinguished educator we are proud to have him as a Rethinking Schools supporter.
They're proud to have Ayers as a supporter.
PROUD!
Ayers is a distinguished educator?
Really?
A distinguished educator doesn't dedicate a manifesto to Sirhan Sirhan.
Ayers has no regrets, other than that he didn't manage to do more damage to our country.
It's disgusting that Alverno is willing to be associated with this fundraiser.
It is a black mark on the college's reputation.
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