Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Are You Palling Around with Terrorists?

By Nat Parry
October 15, 2008

Although John McCain and Sarah Palin have toned down their rhetoric when it comes to associating Barack Obama with “domestic terrorist” Bill Ayers, the damage may already be done -- and not just to Obama's reputation.

Read on.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If Barack Obama can be attacked for "palling around with terrorists" because of his brief social and political contacts in Chicago with Bill Ayers - a member of the Weather Underground 40 years ago when Obama was an eight year old child - then I shudder at the thought of what I would be labeled by the McCain/Palin thought police squad.

I confess. Back in the late 70's and early 80's, I used to pal around here in Saginaw, Michigan with Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert - the two nuns mentioned in this article who were recently notified that they had been listed on a terrorist watch list.

At the time that I hung out with these two Dominican sisters, I was in my late 20's, interested in community organizing, and (of course) very impressionable. My insidious clandestine palship with Ardeth and Carol included door-to-door canvassing, lawn sign set ups, phone banking, and other leg work as a volunteer working on Sister Ardeth's nonpartisan political campaigns, in which she was twice elected by substantial margins to serve on the Saginaw City Council.

Back in those days, Ardeth Platte lived in a small house owned by the dioceses in one of the most poverty ridden neighborhoods of an economically deteriorating Rust Belt city. She and Carol Gilbert ran a makeshift soup kitchen for the local homeless, agitated shamelessly on behalf of the poor, the unemployed, and victims of discrimination and domestic violence. The sisters' signature national issue was nonviolent protest against nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Ardeth and Carol both ended up doing some heavy federal prison time for symbolically defacing a nuclear missle silo in Colorado.

The idea that Sister Ardeth and Sister Carol could ever be labeled "terrorists" in any coherent usage of the English language is an Orwellian absurdity of the highest order. The fact that the Republican National Committee and the McCain/Palin ticket thinks that resurrecting the spectre of Bill Ayers's antiwar activities from the Vietnam era as a partisan wedge issue in the 2008 presidential campaign speaks volumes about how out of touch with contemporary political reality the right wing of the GOP really is.

Time to take the toys away from the boys.

Bill from Saginaw

Thu Oct 16, 10:41:00 AM 2008

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