I’m not a terrorist, says Ayers

Two weeks after the elections during which he dominated the media with speculations about his association with United States President-elect Barack Obama, Weather Underground veteran Bill Ayers has taken to the lecture circuit.

In the campaigns, Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin accussed Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, a reference to links with Mr Ayers, who gained notoriety as leader of the radical Weather Underground group during the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s.

Mr Ayers has been unapologetic about a series of bombings targeting the US establishment including the Supreme Court and the Pentagon defence department headquarters.

Allegedly launched

Mr Obama allegedly launched his 2004 campaign for the US Senate in Ayers’ living room, and has served on education boards with him in Chicago.

At Georgetown Law Monday evening, the University of Illinois professor of education revisited his radical past, suggesting that his behavior and actions in the 1960s may have been “illegal and extreme” but not terrorist.

What he had billed to be a talk about wrongful convictions and their place in conversations on social justice turned into a post-mortem on his politics and association with Obama.

“I would love to be remembered as a good father, a good grandfather. The Associated Press should write that if it is here,” he said, while responding to questions from nearly 50 students of law, whom he asked to help bring closure to debate about the 1960s.

Some had their backs to the wall in protest as he spoke. He advised those still poring over the recent elections and Obama’s victory to turn off the “television and go read a novel.”