Jeff Haas, Bill Ayers Discuss New Book About Fred Hampton And
Activism At Chicago Bookstore
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/08/jeff-haas-bill-ayers-disc_n_453332.html
by Samira Said
02- 8-10
"Back [in the 60's] segregation was normalized so it's easy to say
'If I would have been alive I would have been right there.' But would
we have been?" Bill Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, posed the question Thursday night to a standing room only
audience in the back room at Barbara's Bookstore on South Halsted.
Ayers, ironically, was himself a left wing radical and founding
member of the controversial group Weather Underground during the
Vietnam War. He recently returned to the spotlight as questions arose
over his connection to then-presidential-hopeful Barack Obama, nearly
costing Obama the election.
Ayers joined a panel of activists at different levels of career
revolutionism, to discuss the legacy of Fred Hampton and to promote
Jeff Haas' book "The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and
Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther." The panel was hosted by
Barbara's Bookstore in honor of Black History Month.
Haas' book recounts his personal story of growing up a privileged
white man in Atlanta, then coming to Chicago after graduating from
law school. He learned of the Black Panther movement as a young
lawyer working to get Hampton released from prison. He succeeded,
only to have Hampton assassinated on December 4th, 1969, in what he
worked for years to prove was the work of Chicago police and the FBI,
tracing all the way up to its director, J. Edgar Hoover. Haas
co-founded the People's Law Office and worked to uncover the covert
and often illegal government program to obtain secret evidence on
activists, COINTELPRO.
Ayers was moderator of the panel that included Haas, headliner of the
evening; LaDonna Redmond, Chicago community activist and co-founder
of Graffiti and Grub; Dr. David Stovall, a University of Illinois at
Chicago professor in Educational Policy Studies; and honorary guest
Bill Hampton, Fred Hampton's brother.
In his southern drawl, Haas began the discussion by giving a
substantial recap of the events leading up to the incident that
shocked Americans and enraged civil rights activists over 40 years
ago. He read an excerpt of the book describing his visit to a church
on Chicago's West side to hear Hampton speak, quoting him:
"If you ever think about me and you ain't gonna do no revolutionary
act, forget about me. I don't want myself on your mind if you're not
going to work for the people. If you're asked to make a commitment at
the age of twenty, and you say I don't want to make a commitment at
the age of twenty, only because of the reason that I'm too young to
die, I want to live a little longer, then you're dead already."
The panelists discussed the legacy of Fred Hampton, hoping to
encourage people to get involved in defending civil rights.
"We are all living in a living history," Redmond said. "If we want
peace, don't ask what Obama did, ask what you did."
Afterward, Haas signed copies of his book and signed mine:
"Tell truth for power. Keep the struggle for justice alive."
.
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