Daniel, Sam and I had picked him up at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in my cramped, early-model Jeep Wrangler. The name of the airport, and the fact that he (of all people!) isn't on the vaunted “No-Fly” list were topics of several earlier discussions, but this day the primary concern was simply spotting him as he walked up the corridor from Gate 25, non-stop from O'Hare to our fair city. We had a little paper sign, hastily printed out before our afternoon lecture, that simply read:
Bill
National Lawyers Guild
Georgetown Law
We were afraid to put his full name.
He's short, at least compared to me: that was one of the most surprising things about him. He doesn't project the stature that many assume he must have, being the most reviled private citizen in the country. He's a jokester, a veritable bon vivant, if I may be so elitist as to employ French. He's quite soft-spoken, though he seemed jubilant at riding in the Wrangler, and kept referring in phone conversations to us three fairly buttoned-down law students escorting him as wild-eyed psychopaths embarked on a reckless kidnapping scheme.
He hardly seems the boogeyman of right-wing legend. If he hadn’t been answering questions about it, he would be hard to imagine as a ‘60s radical. He actually bears a surprising resemblance up-close to Wolf Blitzer, who spoke just a few weeks ago on the same stage we were heading to, at an event where Byron York and Charles Krauthammer had pilloried our present guest.
We ended up at Starbucks because we had an extra half-hour built into our schedule. He said the only things he needed before going on were a cup of coffee and some hot water for the tea bags he brought with him. He bought coffees for the entire table. Venti for him and Daniel, grande for Samantha and me. I try to keep track of famous people who buy me coffee, so he now joins Carol Mosely-Braun as the only other Chicagoan on the list. But to be perfectly honest, she wasn’t nearly as funny.
He drinks embarrassingly complex lattes: he wouldn’t even tell us what he was going to order because he knew it was embarrassing. That's saying something, considering I had a grande chai tea latte, but once you start including frothed soy milk and hazelnut shots, you're simply in another league. The great embodiment of evil, ordering a triple shot like the dozen other professionals in line with him.
Cell phone practically clamped to his head, he had spent almost all our time together so far talking to all manner of interesting people (his wife; Clarence Page; the filmographer who made the documentary on the Weather Underground). He just once exchanged words with a random passer-by who recognized him and wanted to offer sympathy for the smears. They shook hands. It all took less than ten seconds.
Just another college professor, sitting at a too-small table in a coffee shop with some students.
He had agreed to come speak at our campus, offering at least half his time for Q & A, on any subject, no holds barred, take all comers. Television cameras, print reporters, photographers, and students--about 100 of us all together. I can't be sure of the count, because I couldn’t see the right side of the theatre, as I was seated under an overhanging balcony, next to the side door. As the driver, Campus Security made me sit next to the door where they'd rush him out in the event of an emergency. "Quick escape," they called it.
A word about security: we saw Georgetown Law at its most paranoid, and I cannot say it was entirely unjustified. Our NLG email account was read by the administration, checking for death threats that we might (for some unexplained reason) choose not to report. We learned today that Sam's email was likely also read, as her email was the contact given on the Facebook page about the event. We were required to notify the head of campus security before approaching the campus, and we were instructed that we were to park in a sub-basement with underground access to the theatre where the talk was to take place. The green room where we sat was locked and under armed guard. At least five armed guards were stationed in the theatre. We were under escort as soon as we drove onto campus, until the moment we drove off.
The right-wing blogs got wind of this appearance last week, starting with Michelle Malkin. There was a two-man protest in the back row, who stood and turned their backs as he mounted the stage, unschooled in the ways of public protest and not knowing that a gesture out of view of the cameras is generally less effective and less noteworthy. They spent an hour and fifteen minutes looking at the wall underneath the window to the tech booth. A student who was expecting a Navy commission asked if our guest hated him. Somewhat perplexed by the premise, he said "no, I don't even know you," then tried to address what he called 'misinformation' about his past, trying to create a context that explained--though didn't justify--his actions. He noted that Henry Kissinger is seldom if ever asked about his role in 3 million deaths.
He talked about how the Spring of '68 featured LBJ announcing his decision not only to forgo running for re-election, but to work to end the war. He said that he and his fellow students thought they had "won a great victory," and knew that their actions--peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience--had carried the day. And then a month later, Dr. King was dead. A few months later, Bobby Kennedy was dead. And shortly thereafter, Henry Kissinger descended from upon high with a secret plan to expand the war, and Richard Nixon became the 37th President. The movement fractured and splintered, and nobody knew what to do or who to blame. And he and his associates did what everyone else did:
They made bad decisions.
I suppose that’s one way to look at it.
He talked fifteen minutes longer than he was slated to, then spent a couple of minutes talking with Fox5 and ABC7, providing just a quick morsel to the sound byte-driven, everything-in-two-minutes-or-less-or-your-pizza-is-free news culture that he had, so shortly before, decried to three law students over lattes. We then escaped the subterranean holding pen, joking about the RPG-wielding assassin just beyond the garage exit. "We should go out the entrance, they'll never expect that," we laughed. But he made a point of noting how security was understandably concerned, given some of the "gruesome" threats he's received. He didn't show a real outward fear, but you could tell he took it seriously. And when I was starting my Jeep, which had been sitting unattended with a traffic cone inexplicably stuck behind it the entire time, it was the only time in my life I’ve ever worried that turning the ignition might cause an explosion.
Paranoia is not much fun.
I wrote most of this account at his next event (described here by Clarence Page), in the sanctuary of All Souls Church, rapidly obtained by Busboys and Poets (one of DC's best independent bookstores) to accommodate the crowd, with no visible security presence inside and at least twice the audience we had at Georgetown. There was a picket line outside of about six people, all white and middle-aged, several with signs that called him "Billie." He booked this appearance six months ago, he had told us in the car on the way over (and later told the audience), expecting maybe ten people sitting in a circle. Alas, fate.
Of course, he got a chance to swear in a church, so I suppose everything works out in the end.
He spent last Friday commemorating the anniversary of a group in Illinois that tried to oppose the death penalty, and told us about his experience at the execution of John Wayne Gacy, where he and ten other people (eight nuns and a married couple) lit candles in opposition to capital punishment amidst a celebratory throng reveling in the machinery of state-administered death, anxiously awaiting the dimming of the lights at the state penitentiary.
He spent last Saturday protesting against Proposition 8, and told us about his planned submission of “Proposition 9: A Bill to Ban Opposite Sex Marriage” (“Think of the children! Straight people have really screwed them up!”) that he put up on his Facebook page.
Aside from what he did forty years ago, and how he frames those actions, he’s pretty damn similar to most of us, in terms of both temperament and ideals.
Before he went out on stage at Georgetown, Sam had asked him how he'd like to be introduced.
"Father of three, grandfather of two," he said.
And that's how I spent my afternoon: palling around with Bill Ayers--father of three, grandfather of two--one drizzly Monday in Washington, D.C.