Since the election, I have heard about different interviews with and articles on Bill Ayers, all of which have prompted me to sit down at my keyboard to write something today. This would not be an important story to me at all to post about if it weren't for it being yet one more clear and powerful example of how the corporate owned media uses propaganda to divide, distract, mislead, and corrupt the ability of the American people to know the issues of real impact and to discern fact from fiction. Because I am deeply aware that having an informed citizenry is so critical to any democracy, it feels important to speak with a repeatedly strong voice against the American corporate media as long as it persists in intentionally and chronically standing as a roadblock to - rather than a facilitator of - facts and knowledge. Media reform is more than crucial to our country.
It is also criminal, dark, and dangerous for any political candidate of any party - Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, anyone - to point a finger at another candidate and accuse him or her of "palling around with terrorists" or anything comparable. Where have our morals gone, where are our values to respect and care for one another as Americans and as human beings when we allow such violent propaganda to be normalized and acceptable in this country? What does that say about our own propensity to collude in or commit passive or active acts of violence? Where are our strong individual and collective voices demanding again and again that this must STOP NOW?! For me, it is important to repeatedly speak to this not being a partisan issue, but rather a human issue - one which reflects either our grounding in or our lack of values rooted in integrity, inclusivity, connectedness, respect, truth, and caring for all .
This form of violent propaganda has gone on way too long. I refuse to listen to anyone on TV, the radio, or anywhere else who fires off hateful attacks on another human being. Yet, as one writer states "from Lee Atwater and the Willie Horton ads during the Bush I campaigns, to Rush Limbaugh's endless ad homonym hateful rantings, to Ann Coulter's uncouth bomb throwing rhetoric, to Michael Savage's on air incitements to violence, to Karl Rove's campaigns taken from the play book of Joseph Goebbels," the American tolerance and acceptance of violence is and has remained high to this very day.
And, of course, it is a myth that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." In truth, the cost of such expressed violence toward other humans beings, and the impact on us all, is profound and needs to become unacceptable and something we Americans will no longer tolerate. Just in this past election, the violent rhetoric and resulting threats against Barack Obama and his family are something we all, in my opinion, need to be aware of and need to collectively stand in strong opposition to. These stories make me cry. And they also increase my resolve to each and every day do my best to walk the path of the peacemaker and, as the Buddhists say, a path of no harm.
I am deeply humbled with the knowledge that so many countries around the planet know more of what our government and our country is up to than millions of Americans. Among my many hopes for change under an Obama administration is that rather than polarize, numb out, and dumb down the American people with chronic and inflammatory lies and violence, media reform will set in which holds the American newsmakers to a higher standard, one in which true journalists - as opposed to infotainers and propagandists - report the actual facts with integrity, courage, and a fierce commitment to truthtelling.
Below are several links which reflect just a tiny glimpse into both the cost of normalizing violence in our culture and the shocking gap that is found in the American media between fiction and fact. I say "tiny glimpse" because this distorted focus also very purposefully directs us away from looking at our own government's actions today or in the past - and it strongly steers our vision away from what we may find by looking in our own mirrors. May we use this information to fuel our passion for healing, truth, nonviolence, and respect and caring among ourselves as Americans and among all peoples and all life.
Blessed be the truthtellers - and may more and more of them shine their light in America and across the planet. And may we individually and collectively have the courage and conviction in our values and actions to be among them in increasingly strong and powerful ways.
- William Ayers and John McCain: by Jane Smiley at the Huffington Post, October 4, 2008 -- McCain once said of Ayers, "How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?"
- Obama Hatred At McCain-Palin Rallies: "Terrorist!" "Kill Him!" (VIDEO): October 6, 2008 by Rachel Weiner, The Huffington Post -- The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. The shout of "kill him" followed a Sarah Palin rant on Obama's relationship with radical Chicagoan Bill Ayers. (This post has three videos, with the third automatically playing first when this link is accessed.)
- Sarah Palin Blamed by the US Secret Service Over Death Threats Against Barack Obama: Saturday 08 November 2008 by Tim Shipman, The Telegraph UK -- Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign... Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"
- Democracy Now! Democracy Now! Exclusive (Part 1): Bill Ayers and ... November 14, 2008 -- Democracy Now! Exclusive (Part 1): Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn on the Weather Underground, the McCain Campaign Attacks, President-Elect Obama and the Antiwar Movement Today. In the late stages of the presidential race, no other name was used more by the McCain-Palin campaign against Barack Obama than Bill Ayers. Ayers is a respected Chicago professor who was a member of the 1960s militant antiwar group the Weather Underground. In their first joint television interview, Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn discuss the McCain campaign attacks, President-elect Obama, the Weather Underground, the legacy of 1960s social justice movements, and more.
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- Democracy Now! Democracy Now! Exclusive (Part 2): Bill Ayers and ...
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- University of Nebraska-Lincoln Disinvites William Ayers after Death Threats, Financial Pressure
By Matthew Rothschild, October 23, 2008: http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx102308.html
- Bill Ayers and the Demons to Come: Tuesday 18 November 2008 by: Steve Weissman, Tr u t h o u t Perspective -- Limbaugh went on to call Obama "a Chicago thug," and suggested that the incoming president would take advice, or even direction, from the 1960s radical Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground and the "terrorist" bogeyman that John McCain and Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around" with. "Bill Ayers is a silent adviser," warned Limbaugh. "Don't think he's not."
- What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been - Looking back on a surreal campaign season: November 7, 2008 by Bill Ayers for In These Times: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4028/what_a_long_strange_trip_its_been -- On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson
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