Exclusive: Bill Ayers On the Weathermen, Obama’s Crap Job & More
by Marlow Stern Apr 3, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
Robert Redford plays a member of the Weather Underground in The Company You Keep. The groups real-life founder, Bill Ayers, tells Marlow Stern about its radical agenda, how we provoked North Korea, and more.
In The Company You Keep, in theaters Friday, Robert Redford stars as a former member of the Weather Underground, a group of radical anti-Vietnam War protesters that bombed numerous U.S. landmarks. Hes made a new life for himself as Jim Grant, a widowed father and public policy attorney in Albany, N.Y., but the FBI has been chasing him for three decades in connection with a Michigan bank robbery that left one security guard dead. When Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon), another Underground member, is arrested, an ambitious young reporter (Shia LaBeouf) exposes Grant, forcing him to go on the run.
While the film, directed by Redford and based on a novel by Neil Gordon, is almost entirely a work of fiction, there are some parallels between Redfords character and Bill Ayers, the real-life founder of the Weather Underground who is married to another WUO member, Bernardine Dohrnthough divulging them would give away a crucial plot twist.
In an in-depth interview with The Daily Beast, Ayers opened up about the Weather Underground, whether he has any regrets about the groups actionswhich included bombing the Pentagon, an NYPD precinct, and a Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that left three members deadhis relationship with President Obama, why he thinks Obamas doing an awful job in office, and much more.
How did you get involved with the anti-war movement?
I would describe going from a cloistered prep school in the northern part of Chicago to the University of Michigan in 1963 as an abrupt awakening; I was shocked into seeing the world anew. I got involved in the civil rights movement right away, and I lasted at Michigan for a year and dropped out and joined the Merchant Marines. I was in Piraeus, the port of Athens, in early 1965 and I came across a story about Vietnamthat was the first Id heard of it. When I came back to the U.S. I went back to Michigan and got caught up with a group of people who were trying to organize some consciousness about Vietnam.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/03/exclusive-bill-ayers-on-the-weathermen-obama-s-crap-job-more.html