WHAT AYERS THINKS ABOUT HIS 2001 BOOK

From the WSJ:

I've been lucky, over the past six weeks, to have had the opportunity to speak with people in 21 bookstores in 18 cities across the nation. I've met some extraordinary American booksellers and learned that they continue to provide a critical platform for community dialogue. I'm grateful for the commitment booksellers have shown to free speech and open discussion, and their courage in holding events, sometimes in the face of enormous pressure to silence or control conversation. Barnes & Noble in Evanston, Illinois, is part of this tradition, and I look forward to speaking there on November 15th.

Fugitive Days is about the years of the American War in Viet Nam. It was published on the eve of the atrocities of Sept. 11th. The book narrates an acute personal experience played against a huge historical backdrop. Fugitive Days is a memoir, not a manifesto or polemic, it is a story of one boy's journey through an America in crisis. It describes, without defending, the extreme, sometimes despairing choices I made as part of the anti-war movement and the Weather Underground.

What happened on Sept. 11 is an appalling crime--a crime against humanity on a massive scale. It was terrorism plain and simple--fundamentalist thugs slaughtering innocents in the name of some "higher goal." My book is in fact a condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, most pointedly official government terror against the people of Viet Nam. While the resistance I participated in was sometimes extreme, and sometimes illegal, I never intended to injure or kill other human beings and, in fact, I never did. My bookstore appearances have been the occasion to discuss these complicated issues in this most difficult time, and that's why this event, and others, are so worthwhile.

Bill Ayers
Chicago, Ill.
November 9, 2001