I would argue that there is a United States Problem, and that we need to continue the struggle that Bill Ayers works on against class disparity, racism, and imperialism – nationally and internationally. I use the recent macro-nationalism of members of the gold medal winning United States women’s basketball team and the inability of Barack Obama and Joe Biden to pull away from John McCain and his neo-fascist running mate Sarah Palin in the presidential race as lenses to argue how important it is for teacher educators to bring the ideas, values, and practices of Bill Ayers to students so that they might better teach our children.

When Bill Ayers joined SDS and later broke away with others to form the Weathermen there was a broad and vocal movement in the United States that questioned and in some ways even challenged the “shock doctrine” politics and economics that was practiced by the United States government both domestically and internationally. More specifically, the initial movement protested and acted against institutional racism and the war against the Vietnamese people. The fight, a fight that is possibly more necessary today than ever before, was against a corporate nationalism that allowed powerful companies and the people who own them and manage them to work with politicians and to use bureaucrats and soldiers to protect and expand their wealth and power. The disparity that is caused and nurtured in the United States and throughout the world is still ever present. Thus the ideas and causes that Bill Ayers represents, and not Bill Ayers the individual, are important.

While Ayers always excites future teachers and to paraphrase Barack Obama, Studs Terkel, and Craig Kridel, shouts for hope, the need for the fight is draped in a sadness of how far we have to go in 2008 to speak back to and challenge power that still oppresses. Further, it is neoliberal power that, like the colonialism that preceded it, somehow lies and cheats and steals as it controls so much of the heartland – so finally my examples.

The Irrationality and Mean Spirit of Nationalism though the United States Women’s Basketball Team

Bill Plaschke begins a Los Angeles Times commentary on the Olympic games with the following description:
"Is it the woman standing with head down and hand over heart during the national anthem? Or is it the women rocking and shuffling and squirming during the same anthem, clearly impatient for the darned song to end? The respectful woman was wearing a Russian uniform. The distracted women were wearing U.S. uniforms. Who is the American? The debate raged Thursday in a glittering basketball arena that felt like a small-town courthouse, two sides arguing a single point with passion, prejudice, and more than a little ugliness."

The passion, prejudice, and ugliness came from the coach and members of the United States women’s basketball team who were upset because Becky Hammon, a native of South Dakota, WNBA player, and more recently a 2 million dollar player in the Russian Professional Women’s Basketball League, was playing for the Russian Olympic team. Never mind that Chinese table tennis players represent almost every country in the World, Brazilian volleyball players are on various national teams, and Chris Kaman of the U.S. plays for Germany; the United States coach and her players were passionate, prejudice, and very ugly in their condemnation of Hammon as a traitor. While Hammon said that she wanted to play for the United States but was initially not invited to the tryouts, the U.S. players believe that she was unpatriotic because she received a huge paycheck to play for Russia. How suburban American of her? Anne Donovan, the United States coach, started the conversation. "If you play in this country and you grow up in this country and you put on a Russian uniform, you are not being patriotic." During the Russia-United States game, Hammon was pushed, shoved, and elbowed by U.S. players. In fact, Lisa Leslie, the star of the U.S. team, admitted that there was a debate before the game on whether or not to rough up Hammon. After the game, a 67-52 United States victory, our country's players refused to shake Hammon’s hand. Leslie asserted that "I didn't even acknowledge her because, today, she is Russian." Other players joined Leslie in referring to Hammon as un-American.

While the reaction to Hammon playing for Russia might be small and inconsequential, the spirit of the statements points to the sickness of nationalism that nurtures a view of we-and-they and allows for imperialism and oppression. United States players, black and white, were pulled into a view of patriotism that divides people and teaches Americans and people of other nation states not to question the oppression that exists throughout the world because corporate-nations extend their power and wealth at the expense of those who are weaker and poorer. So while George Bush has an 80% disapproval rate because he has waged war killing Americans and the people of Iraq in our names, the United States basketball team shows, along with many other patriotic Americans, that the work that Bill Ayers and many other people began over 40 years ago isn’t over. Ann Donovan and Lisa Leslie and many other Americans from the heartland represent what Tom Franks so insightfully describes and analyzes in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas? And that is a narrow outlook that understands disparity while at the same time bowing and not speaking back to power nor shouting out for hope.

The Irrationality and Mean Spirit of Racism in the 2008 Presidential Election

It is the we (power) and the they (Oppressed) that Bill Ayers has fought against since the 1960s. To refer to Ayers as a terrorist, in light of state terrorism, religious terrorism, and tribal terrorism that still very much exist in the world today, is patently absurd. In fact, I would argue that the events of the current Presidential election campaign provide yet another reason that we need the voice and actions of Bill Ayers speaking to power at the present time. Like many other people around the world, I had tears in my eyes when Barack Obama was nominated at the Democratic convention in Denver. As a sidebar, I want to mention that tears were also shed by colleagues and friends throughout Africa. It is historically monumental that an African American might be elected President of the United States in 2008. It also should be a political miracle that Barack Obama is running at a time when an incumbent Republican President has the worst acceptability rating of all time. But that is the rub! Why aren’t Obama and Biden running away from McCain and Palin in this election? During the primary campaign the first “Black” President of the United States, Bill Clinton, clearly used racism to try to enhance Hilary Clinton’s chances of winning the South Carolina Democratic Primary. That didn’t go very well for Bill or Hilary, but it did publicly voice the unspoken: is the United States ready for an African American president? I have flip-flopped many times in my predictions for November. First, I ignored the racism and was swept up in the energy and excitement that Barack Obama’s campaign generated. Then I joined the unfaithful, although still an Obama supporter I started to think that Hilary Clinton might have defeated John McCain more easily. After a few more flip-flops, I viewed the pick of Sarah Palin as an act of desperation and again thought that the Democrats would win. And although I do not have any romantic notion of an American president actually not being controlled by corporatism, there is no comparison between McCain extending Bush’s bumbling, fascist regime and the election of the first African American president. My worry now, corresponding to the important work that Bill Ayers and others continue to undertake fighting racism in education, is that racism is being infused into the political race and that the Republican tactic, spoken at their convention by Mitt Romney, Rudy Gulliani, Sarah Palin, and others, is the cynical use of “community organizer,” code word for Black, as a scare tactic to make Barack Obama the other – both Black and un-American. And my fear is that by subtly or even not so subtly infusing race into the election, McCain, Pallin, and of course Karl Rove are tapping into the deep seated, tribal, nationalistic racism that still exists, both overtly and covertly, in American society.