Thread: protest greets William Ayers at Moraga speaking engagement

Raucous protest greets William Ayers at Moraga speaking engagement
By Paul Thissen
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 01/28/2009 08:26:45 PM PST
Updated: 01/28/2009 10:38:31 PM PST


The shouts of "Shame on you!" resounded across the small Saint Mary's College campus Wednesday night, where under the glare of television lights, a few hundred sign-carrying, flag-waving protesters gathered around a megaphone to object to an appearance by 1960s anti-war militant William Ayers.

Most of the protest and its speeches took place before Ayers spoke, but even as he took the stage inside the college's Soda Center, protesters outside crowded toward the doors and shouted, "Cop killer!"

Ayers has never been convicted of killing anyone.

Many who couldn't get inside the center hung around the entrance. At least one man had to be escorted out of the auditorium by campus public safety officials when he walked up to the podium where Ayers was speaking, carrying a book that resembled a Bible, and began shouting profanities.

Ayers was invited to Saint Mary's as part of the college's "Against the Grain" speaker series. A former leader of the Weather Underground, he is now a professor of education at University of Illinois-Chicago.

"I am appalled how Bill Ayers is able to come to a Christian-based campus to speak his rhetoric," said Jerry Converse, of Concord, who carried an American flag. "It's a free country, but this is the wrong place."

The crowd roared and chanted, encouraged by speeches by an FBI informant who had infiltrated the Weathermen and by a police officer who had been on the scene of a bombing at a San Francisco

police station that killed a sergeant. The officer said the bomb was set by Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a fellow Weather Underground leader.

"He hides behind being an educator," said Larry Grathwohl, the FBI informant who traveled from Ohio to attend the protest. "He claims he never killed or injured anyone." At that, the crowd erupted in chats of "Liar! Liar!" Grathwohl said Ayers had instructed him to make a bomb using fence staples to kill police officers, which Ayers has denied.

"Free speech does not give him the right to lie," Grathwohl said.

The protesters' chants sometimes competed with students and Ayers' supporters, who chanted "Saint Mary's College!" and "SMC!" And a few debates between the two camps escalated to the point of yelling.

"If we don't speak up, who will?" said Nancy Messer, who came from Half Moon Bay to protest the speech. "We don't want (the students) corrupted."

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_11577357

Glad to see people are speaking out against Ayers.

He's no patriot.

Originally Posted by CCUSA

Glad to see people are speaking out against Ayers.

He's no patriot.

*****
Ayers and Rev. Wright: How long do you think it will be before President Obama sneaks both Ayers and Rev. Wright into the White House and gives them the special, grand tour?

A few weeks? A few months? It is going to happen whether we like it or not. Don't say I didn't warn you.