Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, Good Americans

Listening to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn speak yesterday at the Green Festival here in San Francisco, I couldn't help but think back to last year's absurd attempt by the Republican Party to link then-candidate Barack Obama with terrorism, via a bridge with this couple's past.

The layers of irony here are that these are two extremely privileged people from rich families who are highly educated and have devoted their entire adult lives to helping other people.

For a relatively brief period of their youth, perhaps because they came from such sheltered backgrounds, they flirted with what they thought was "revolution," and participated in a bunch of activities anyone from a lower class background, such as mine, could have told them would turn out to be unsuccessful and counter-productive.

Though a fellow son of the Midwest, and a University of Michigan student like Ayres, our paths never really crossed until yesterday, though of course I was aware of him, and attended some meetings as he and others were forming a precursor group of the ill-fated Weather Underground fantasy.

But, after their speeches yesterday, I briefly encountered him outside the hall, touched his arm and said, "Nice job, Bill."

That's it, I'm sure, the only contact I will ever have with Bill Ayres, but had we had a bit longer together, I would have also said these things:

"Thank you for being funny and self-deprecating. If anyone on the purported 'right' in this country had even a fraction of your sense of humor, many other Americans might become conservatives, because all our collective instincts hew in that direction. But, no, the only laughter at self we ever encounter comes from the outsiders on the left. (Mike Huckabee is probably the lone exception on the right, which is why I liked him, as well.)"

"That said, thank you for reminding us that we, those of us who share progressive ideals, are actually the majority in this country, even though for some reason we act, most of the time, as if we were outside of the mainstream.You and Bernardine reminded me today that we actually are the mainstream. It is the right-wing that is living on the margins of the new America."

"Thank you, most of all, for the obvious love you and your wife have for each other. She, too, is a gifted speaker and activist. You both are, clearly, loving parents and grandparents."

For my part, I feel lucky, as an American, that we have people like Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, among us, still working hard and speaking out about what truly matters if we are to become a truly great nation, not just one that throws its military and financial weight around like a bully on the world's playground.

I'll repeat something I wrote a year ago. I'd love to have dinner with Bill and Bernardine. They have much to say about our society, where it has been and where it is headed.

Plus, I'm quite sure that if it was safe for him to say so, President Obama would agree with me, but he can't and he won't, not until he leaves office and rejoins the rest of us still trying to organize our communities to transform this nation into a true Democracy...which, due to class, it is not tonight, as I write these words.

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