It’s a presidential election year, and a deeply divisive imperialist war has split the public. As the Democratic National Convention gathers in Chicago, anti-war organizers vow to be in the streets to protest US responsibility for a genocide overseas. No, this isn’t 2024. It’s 1968. And the police riot that follows in the city of Chicago has effects on US politics that will reverberate for decades to come. Former member of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers joins The Marc Steiner Show for a timely look back on the events of the 1968 Chicago DNC, and its resonance with the current Chicago DNC happening amid the genocide in Gaza funded and perpetuated by the Biden-Harris administration.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.
Now, as we approach this election in a deeply divided nation, our nation’s future is at stake. I think about another Democratic convention that took place when I was much younger, in a year that saw so much upheaval and revolutionary activity. It took place in the same city, Chicago, where the Democrats will be gathering again.
The year was 1968, the year when the war in Vietnam was raging, when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. When, in the wake of King’s murder, rebellions broke out across the United States in Black communities in over 100 cities. Thousands of us camped out in Washington DC in Resurrection City as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. And the national mobilization to end the war in Vietnam, as thousands were dying in Vietnam and tens of thousands of Vietnamese were being killed, the organized protest outside the Democratic Convention, thousands came there. And what happened was a police riot ensued.
My guest today was there in ’68, was the leader of SDS. His name is Bill Ayers, and I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a distinguished professor — Or was, retired now — Distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Written extensively about social justice, democracy, education, teaching.
He was a teacher for years and a leader of the Students for Democratic Society and the Weather Underground, which took on the US government during the war and has written numerous books. Let me give you a couple of them: A Kind and Just Parent, Teaching Toward Freedom, Fugitive Days, Public Enemy, On the Side of the Child, To Teach: the journey, in comics.
And Bill, good to see you, brother. Good to have you here.
Bill Ayers: Great to see you. Great to see you, Marc. And it’s always a pleasure to be in conversation.
Marc Steiner: Let’s go back to that moment. It was really very different than what we’re facing today. In some ways we’ll get to later, it was kind of the seeds of what we’re facing today. But take us back to that moment, and you being one of the organizers of the massive protest outside the convention. What led to that?
Bill Ayers: Well, what led to it was years of opposition to the war. And as you know, the American war in Vietnam began in 1965. My first arrest opposing the war was inside a draft board in Ann Arbor. There were 39 of us arrested, which was a huge civil disobedience at the time. We were copying tactics and strategy from the Civil Rights Movement, but we were determined to bring a screaming, screaming response to the American invasion and occupation of Vietnam.
So I was arrested in 1965 when something like 20% of Americans supported the war. Three years later, 1968, close to 55% opposed the war and the Democratic Party was in crisis, and democracy was in crisis. Because the war had defined, the war, along with the Black Freedom Movement, the uprisings had defined the moral territory of the country. And so there’d been demonstrations.
I’ve been arrested dozens of times in those three years. There had been mobilizations on campuses, mobilizations in DC, all over the country. And yet the war ground on.
I think three things happened, really, in those three years that I think are worth noting. One is that people like me became full-time activists and organizers. I’d never been an organizer before, but I began not only demonstrating, acting, fighting the police in the streets, but also knocking on doors, which proved to be a very difficult undertaking. I got used to being beat up [Steiner laughs], but it’s hard to talk to strangers, and yet it’s the essence of democracy.
So I spent an entire summer in Detroit going door to door to door seven days a week trying to convince people that the war was immoral, illegal, unnecessary, wrong, wrongheaded, and so on.
That was important, but it wasn’t as important as the Black freedom struggle coming out against the war in those three years. So Muhammad Ali, you remember —
Marc Steiner: Yep.
Bill Ayers: …Said, “I won’t fight in the white man’s army. No Vietnamese ever called me the N-word,” and he refused service.
And that shook the country up. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee issued a statement saying, no Black man should go 10,000 miles away to fight for a so-called freedom he doesn’t enjoy in Mississippi. That shook the country up.
But most important, perhaps, was Martin Luther King’s famous Beyond Vietnam speech, which he gave at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967, exactly a year before his assassination. And King said, we’re on the wrong side of world history. We are the most violent nation on earth. We must get on the right side of history and morality. And he said, people who criticize me and say, stay in your lane, don’t understand me and don’t understand what my lane is. My lane is humanity. My lane is justice. My lane is peace. And he took a courageous stand and alienated a lot of his liberal followers. That was hugely important.
But the third thing I would point to in those three years was young men coming home from Vietnam and telling the truth about what they were asked to do there, what they saw there, what they suffered there. And they threw their medals, they organized their own groups, they added energy to the anti-war movement, and they threw their medals at the Congress that had sent them there. And the country was shaken.
So here you are in the spring of ’68, Gene McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, announces that he’s going to challenge a sitting president for the nomination. Wow. And he was going to challenge him on the Vietnam War. That was incredible.
In late March 1968, last day of March 1968, Lyndon Johnson, the president, goes on television and says, I will not run for reelection. I will work to try to end the war. We were ecstatic, those of us who had been working against the war all over the country.
But I was in Ann Arbor. We swarmed out of the dormitories, out of our apartments, we swirled around the city, and we ended up on the lawn of the president of the University of Michigan. He had a bullhorn because he was the president, and I had a bullhorn because I was the president of SDS [Steiner laughs]. We had dueling bullhorns.
I said something idiotic that night, I don’t remember. But what he said that night was, he said, congratulations to you young people. You’ve won a great victory. Now you should be satisfied, and you should go home and count yourselves lucky, and the nation thanks you. I thought he was right. I thought we had won. A million people were needlessly dead, but it was over.
Four days later, King was murdered. Two months later, Kennedy was murdered. And a few months after that, Kissinger emerged with a plan to expand the war all over Indochina.
And this is what we were facing, Marc. All this energy, where was it going to go? We were standing up against genocide. Where should we take that energy? Every week that the war went on, 6,000 people were murdered. Every week. So it wasn’t like we saw the end in sight. All we could see was an endless carnage in our name. And so we felt a sense of urgency.
And where would all that energy from the year, two years before go? It went to Chicago. And we went to be heard and seen, not just by the Democratic Party, but by the world. And that’s why our slogan was “The whole world is watching.” And the whole world was watching.
Marc Steiner: The whole world was watching. And I remember, I was not in Chicago, Resurrection City was destroyed. They threw us out, the Poor People’s Campaign, and I decided to go back to college, so I was up in New Hampshire. But I remember watching it. And just even watching it, it was a horrific moment, watching the violence that took place, the police attacking, people being bludgeoned. And you were in the middle of it.
Bill Ayers: I was. I would say, one other thing, and then I’ll talk a minute about that moment, but our goal was to bring a million people to Chicago. And in that goal, we failed miserably for a lot of reasons, including the fact that Mayor Daley made it abundantly clear from his prior actions and from his threats that if you came to Chicago, you were going to be arrested, and you were going to be hurt. That certainly suppressed the numbers.
Marc Steiner: Yeah.
Bill Ayers: It was a fraught, frightening, dangerous time. And we knew that we were risking a lot by going there.
But our second goal was to show the world, first, that there was a group of Americans who were committed to an international stand, and we were not on the side of our government. We were against the government policies, and we could be counted on for being militantly opposed to this war-making machine.
But the other thing that we wanted to show the world was that the people in power were not able to meet except through police violence. And you called it a police riot. That was the official designation by the official commission set up to investigate the demonstrations. It wasn’t our riot, it was the police rioting.
The police riot created so many ripples. For example, they not only attacked the demonstrators, they attacked the kids who were there supporting Gene McCarthy. The piece Clean for Gene.
Marc Steiner: Clean for Gene.
Bill Ayers: Not only did they attack them, they attacked the press. And not only outside the convention, but inside the convention itself.
So you have people like Dan Rather who was kind of one of the very serious CBS commentators getting roughed up on the floor of the convention. This was unprecedented. And the police, who were under the direct control of the mayor, were determined to shut us down. And in trying to shut us down, they blew themselves up.
And I think there’s a cautionary tale there, which is, I felt, at the time, the wise thing to do would’ve been to say, this is democracy at work. Let’s let the demonstrators have the area outside the convention. They can shout all they want, and we can be in dialogue. They should have let the demonstrators camp at Soldier Field instead of harassing them and chasing them out of Lincoln Park.
And I feel the same way today. In fact, I’m not the least bit nostalgic for a ship that already left the shore. But I did have a déjà vu moment, which is when the police were called out this spring and attacked every Gaza encampment, every encampment for peace at campus after campus, starting with the horrendous actions at Columbia University, all I could think of was opportunity lost.
A wise administration would’ve said, this is what the university’s for: debating important issues. Let’s do it. And then they could have said, let’s open it up instead of shut it down.
The same thing is true today around Chicago. All that energy is coming to Chicago. What they ought to do is say, not only do we want the conversation, but we’re going to allow a speaker on the platform from the Uncommitted group in Michigan. 30 delegates inside the convention are going to be people who were elected from the Uncommitted block. What a great idea. Let them speak, have the discussion, don’t be so afraid of the people.
Marc Steiner: One of the things I was thinking about in terms of the convention in ’68 and what happened in that period, and Nixon winning that election, it launched the building of a reactionary movement in the wake of the anti-war movement, all the other work people were doing, organizing in poor communities.
And to me, it was kind of the beginning of a political tsunami from the right, to really begin an attack. And then many of you, many of us, you included, went underground to fight and to make a statement. And it just seems to me that was kind of the root of the beginning of what we’re facing now in Trump and the power of the right.
Bill Ayers: Yes and no. I mean, I think there’s some differences. And I also think…
Marc Steiner: But let me just say I’m not blaming them.
Bill Ayers: [Crosstalk].
Marc Steiner: I’m just saying… Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bill Ayers: Well, let me give you my analysis of what happened. Hubert Humphrey, the liberal, happy warrior from Minnesota, very reminiscent of Tim Walz, right? I mean, he was an ultra liberal from Minnesota, and yet he had tied himself tightly to the Vietnam War. When he tried to pivot away from it, it was too late.
Marc Steiner: Right.
Bill Ayers: So my view is Humphrey lost the election. The left didn’t lose the election for him.
Marc Steiner: Oh, right, right.
Bill Ayers: Every time the right wing surges, the talking heads, the pundits, establishment commentators all say, well, the left did it. So it was the Green Party that got Bush elected in Florida. No, it was Gore’s failure, not somebody else’s victory.
This is true today. If I were giving the Democrats advice — And I’m not [Steiner laughs], and they’re not asking for it. But if I were, I would say, go with your strengths. Don’t try to be a little bit like Trump.
In terms of when did the right wing reaction begin, I’m not sure I would date it from when you date it. I could date it to McCarthyism. I could date it to the success of trade unions. Certainly, we could date it to the Civil Rights Movement or reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. Mass incarceration, in many ways, was a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. So we always do have this push and pull.
But what I’m reluctant to get involved in is saying, here we have an election coming up, would all the queer people please be quiet? And would the women not demand anything right now? And would Black people chill for a minute? Then we’ll get elected and do all the right things.
I don’t think it works that way. I think the right has been on the rise. I think we have in this country a material base for white supremacy that existed from the beginning, and it stirred up and mobilized. I’ve never seen it as mobilized as it is today, but I don’t think it began with ’68. And I think you could say the Reagan revolution was the beginning, and so on.
But I think that the white supremacist base is as well organized and as forceful as I’ve ever seen it. And what that tells me is that not only should we continue to build an independent, irresistible social movement for racial justice and for peace, but we should also unite to defeat fascism. We really have to. Because the territory I want to live on and organize on is served better if we don’t have a fascist government.
Marc Steiner: So here we are in the midst of this Democratic Convention 2024, and some of the things we went through, I was thinking about as you were responding. One is what does 1968 say to activists today, young activists as they confront what’s happening in Chicago again at the Democratic National Convention? Let me just stop there. And I have another piece I want to say, let me just stop at that moment.
Bill Ayers: Well, I think, first of all, as I said, I’m not nostalgic, but I also believe that the young have everything to teach us. And that when we were young, we were looking to older people to learn. Now that I’m quite old, I’m looking to the young to learn. And so I’m not sure that I can draw lessons.
I would say this though. My analysis of what’s going on is that contradictions like the contradiction of war, the contradiction of white supremacy, these things were not resolved in ’68 or ’70 or ’72. They go on and they endure. People mythologize the ’60s. I’ve told you this before, but I didn’t know a single person who looked at their wristwatch on Dec. 31, 1968 and said, oh shit, it’s almost over [Steiner laughs]. In ’69, nobody did that.
Marc Steiner: Right, right.
Bill Ayers: There’s no such thing as the ’60s. But I understand what people are pointing to.
I would say that it’s important to remember that we had two relatively modest goals. They got more ambitious as they went along. One goal was to end a war, the war in Vietnam. And then, as we got deeper and became more radicalized, we wanted to end the cause of war.
We failed to end the war in Vietnam. It went on for eight years, seven years after a majority opposed it. And we couldn’t figure out how to stop it. And as I say, 6,000 people a week were being murdered.
So it’s important to remember, as glorious as some of us thought the ’60s were, it didn’t do the minor thing we wanted to do, which is end the war. We wanted to end segregation, Jim Crow. We wanted to end white supremacy.
And again, here we are, the same contradictions, the same themes, the same issues. Not because history’s repeating itself, but because we’ve never resolved those fundamental contradictions.
Marc Steiner: So in ’68, unlike now, there was a war that was killing tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people. Legal segregation was just ending. There was a sense of revolutionary fervor in the air, especially among young people, people organized, and that was happening.
We’re in a very different time at this moment in that way. None of that’s going on at the moment. Maybe some of the revolutionary fervor’s there, but in all my talking to people, I don’t get the sense… It’s not the same firmament.
I wonder from your perspective, where we are now as we’re in the midst of this Democratic National Convention. Where are we at this moment? How do you push that now?
Bill Ayers: Well, I think you’re asking the most important question, and that is we should ask each other and we should ask everybody: What is this political moment? And when I name the political moment we’re living in, I think it’s the worst of times, in some ways. There’s a proxy war in Europe, a cold war growing in Asia, a genocidal war in the Middle East.
Marc Steiner: Right.
Bill Ayers: The police murder of Black citizens continues apace. Women are being asked to get back in the medieval definition of who they are. Queer people are under attack. And we could go on and on. The kind of racist approach to immigration is just staggering. So it’s the worst of times.
And then I can turn my head the other way and say, it’s the best of times. That is, I’ve never seen a larger outpouring against racial apartheid than I saw just three years ago, and you saw it too. It was extraordinary, what a wonderful outpouring. And yes, we haven’t stopped police killings and we haven’t abolished the police or the prisons, but we have really gained huge consciousness and understanding. Women are not going back into the closet. They are not going back to the Middle Ages. Queer people are not disappearing.
And most importantly, perhaps environmental activism. While the planet is under tremendous stress and destruction, the environmental movement is growing. It’s growing in sophistication, in militancy. So I say it’s the best of times.
So I think Charles Dickens would understand this political moment perfectly [Steiner laughs]. The best of times is the worst of times. And I think that is the universal condition of humanity: contradiction. The question is how do we dive into and live within that contradiction? The Democratic Convention is just one site where that contradiction will be fully available and fully illuminated.
Marc Steiner: So as someone who was there in ’68 outside the convention, arrested twice, spent your life since coming back from the underground, above ground as a teacher. And you’re sitting in a room now with a lot of young activists, young revolutionaries, young radicals.
Bill Ayers: And very honored to be there.
Marc Steiner: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely, always. So I’m just curious, when people do ask questions about what happened in ’68 and what we’re looking at in ’24, and what’s the connection, what are the differences, what do you say to people as they approach fighting what they see at this moment?
Bill Ayers: Well, as I say, I don’t have a lot of advice for people. I really have learned a ton from the Black Lives Matter people in the last 10 years. I’ve learned a ton from the incarcerated people I work with. I teach at Stateville Prison.
Marc Steiner: Oh, you’re still doing that? Good.
Bill Ayers: I’m still doing it. And I’m learning all the time from my students and from young people.
But I will say that, I said a minute ago, and I’ll repeat that the themes that animated our movement are the same themes animating the movement today. That is racial justice and peace in the world. That is women’s freedom. These were our issues. This is what we cared about.
And I remember when I was a community organizer, we had two slogans. One was “Let the people decide.” We were for participatory democracy. And two was “Build an interracial movement of the poor.” I still think those things are relevant.
Marc Steiner: Me too.
Bill Ayers: So I don’t think they’ve gone away.
But if I had any advice for people at all, my advice has pretty consistently, for the last several decades, been don’t be self-righteous. You may be right on the issues, but when you feel yourself being certain that you’re right and the other guys are dead wrong, you’re in danger. You’re in danger of dogma, you’re in danger of orthodoxy and you’re in danger of stopping thinking.
So I’m all for continuing to experiment with life, continuing to experiment with politics. I’m for trying everything and rejecting so much of the old. But I think we should be very careful about being certain that we and only we have the truth. We have to talk to people, we have to be in dialogue. We have to speak with the possibility of being heard. We have to listen with the possibility of being changed. I mean, this is fundamental pedagogy, and it’s where I live.
Marc Steiner: It’s also fundamental organizing.
Bill Ayers: That’s right. And to me, teachers and organizers have pretty much the same job. When you go into a classroom or you knock on a door, you assume an intelligence there. And it’s your job to uncover it, to mobilize it, to unlock it. Your job isn’t to spread wisdom all over the tops of people’s heads [Steiner laughs]. No, your job is to listen. Your job is to mobilize. Your job is to learn. And the greatest teachers I’ve ever known are always learning as they’re teaching. That’s true of organizers as well.
Marc Steiner: Bill, it’s really good to have this conversation with you. Bill Ayers, it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, it’s good to see you. Give my best to Bernadine and I’ll…
Bill Ayers: I will. And I hope I see you in Baltimore.
Marc Steiner: You will.
Bill Ayers: I have that new book. I have a new book coming out called When Freedom is The Question, Abolition is the Answer. And I’ll be at the Baltimore Book Festival, and I hope we can get together.
Marc Steiner: What’s that date? Do you remember?
Bill Ayers: I don’t remember. Sometime in late September.
Marc Steiner: We’ll figure it out. But we will be there. That’s great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it.
Bill Ayers: Thank you, brother. It’s always a great honor. Take care.
Marc Steiner: Once again, let me thank my old comrade and friend Bill Ayers for joining us today. His perspectives are always enlightening. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program and audio editor Alina Nehlich for all of her work, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.
Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Bill Ayers for being our guest today. And please keep listening to all the reporting and stories my colleagues are producing now at the Democratic National Convention.
So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
