Public Enemy: Memoirs of an American Dissident, by Bill Ayers
Bill Ayers got caught in the crossfire of the 2008 presidential election during a Clinton--Obama primary debate. While he and his graduate students watched from his living room, moderator George Stephanopoulos all but accused Obama of conspiring with domestic terrorists—him.
Ayers describes the night of the debate in his introduction as having the “sudden sense that this cartoon character, Bill Ayers, who looked exactly like me and shared my name, address, and social security number, was about to become a punching bag in a presidential campaign.”
The Right took that baton and ran with it, making a public enemy out of a college professor and community activist, “The Weather Underground, suspended in amber all these years, was reborn out of the blue, not only active and breathing fire, but all of a sudden, more menacing and dangerous—and far, far better known—than it had ever been before.”
In Public Enemy, Ayers picks up where he left off in Fugitive Days, with he and his partner, Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn, emerging from hiding to become educators, advocates for the disenfranchised, and parents.
Ayers explores the state of the left today and what it’s like when all the money and power of the Right turns its ugly glare on you.
Narrated by Jeff Woodman, who also read Ayers's Fugitive Days.
--Willow Pennell
