Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Broadway Baby and the Weather Underground

When a Broadway baby says "Good night,"
It's early in the morning.
Manhattan babies don't sleep tight until the dawn:
Good night, baby,
Good night, milkman's on his way.
Sleep tight, baby,
Sleep tight, let's call it a day,
Listen to the lullaby of old Broadway.

"Lullaby of Broadway," 42nd Street, 1933.

The Underground is coming to the surface.

The Chicago Tribune's John Kass brings more to the story of the Weather Underground, and its two most famous alunmi, unrepentant ex-terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Kass picks up the tale at a relatively recent period, the late 1970s and early 1980s, and brings into the mix the former Manhattan children's boutique, Broadway Baby.

From his column, free registration may be required for the link:

So let's wait until Labor Day, when Broadway Baby may become a catchphrase. Here's why: According to a 1982 New York Times report, Broadway Baby was implicated in an investigation of a series of violent armed robberies in New York—netting more than $2 million over a two-year span—committed by former Black Panthers and Weather Underground members in the early '80s.

Their aim? Global revolution, naturally. They needed cash, but the rich white parents weren't in a giving mood. So their privileged offspring grabbed guns, pointed them at the faces of the working man and, sometimes, they pulled the trigger.

At Broadway Baby, customers often paid by check and used driver's licenses for identification. On Dec. 28, 1979, information from two customer files was used to apply for two driver's licenses at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. The fraudulent licenses were used to rent getaway cars for the gang.

The manager of Broadway Baby at that time? Bernardine Dohrn. Invetigators at the time pointed their fingers at Dohrn, who is now a law professor without a license to practice law, at Northwestern University.

Dohrn and her husband, fellow academic William Ayers, turned themselves into authorities in 1980, but the rump of the Weather Underground committed its final violent act in 1981, a Brinks trick robbery that ended up with the deaths of two police officers and a security guard.

More from Kass:

In 1982, Dohrn was brought before a federal grand jury investigating radical conspiracies linked to the New York robberies. She refused to cooperate or to provide a signature sought by FBI handwriting analysts. Dohrn was held in contempt of the grand jury and imprisoned for seven months.

Maybe....Maybe...Kass read my post from Saturday night, about Thomas Ayers, father of Bill, and his close ties to the first Mayor Richard Daley, as well as his longtime service on the board of trustees of Northwestern University.

Kass asked some questions, the same ones a lot of sensibly minded people are asking, about how someone with a nefarious past like Dohrn, ended up at Northwestern. University officials didn't know. The same story was given to Kass at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where Ayers is an education professor.

H/T to for the Kass article to ...With Both Hands

Related posts:

Sunday's Trib and Bill Ayers
Obama plans defense against "Swift Boat" tactics
The Daley family, the Ayers family, and the Land of Coincidences
Airing out the Ayers story
Ex-terrorist Bill Ayers: Still unrepentant
Obama's other radical friends: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
Weather Underground's 1970 Declaration of War on "Amerika"
It was thirty eight years ago yesterday...
Weather Underground's 2008 Tragical History Tour
Something in the Ayers last night for Obama
Obama visited home of ex-Weather Underground terrorists in '90s
Obama's Bill Ayers problem
Jonah Goldberg: Left wing terrorists never have to say "sorry"
Axelrod throws Ayers ball on ex-terrorist
University of Illinois at Chicago's Bill Ayers: Not a jarhead
The Weather Underground and Ward Churchill-UPDATED!
Bernardine Dohrn watch
David Horowitz says you should know about Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers
Moron Professor Bill Ayers
More on Bill Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn
Update on another campus radical: Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground

Thanks for the link: Fausta's Blog

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr Ayers comments about the role of the revolutionary base as an expandable area from which to grow the revolutionary movement and ideas is not Mr. Ayers idea but he is actually quoting Mao Zedong's book "Road to Power."

Anyone familiar with Maoism would have inmediately recognized the language.

Equally, Mr. Ayers analysis of the Iraq war as an opportunity for the revolutionaries to capture power is unadultered applied Maoism. ""There is great disorder under heaven...the situation is excellent." (Mao) "When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue." (Mao)

His, analysis of American "Imperialism" as a new form of colonialism is also Maoist political theory. "If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world." (Mao)

Equally, the phrase; "the belly of the beast" is from one of Fidel Castro's speeches (I have lived in the belly of the beast)

These characterizes Mr. Ayers, not only as a Marxist but as a Maoist. As in Cambodia's Pol Pot and Peru's "Shining Path."

The kind that believes that : "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. " (Mao)

Mr. Ayers is not only a terrorist but, a terrorist of the worse kind. The idea of allowing these people to educate our youth is the simplest implementation of American national suicide.

Believe me, when I say it may take 50 years but America would not survive if we continue to allow this relentless attack on our history, core values and institutions.

Mao's own words: "some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history;"

pathickey said...

Well said Stranger, especially the last bit about our history, culture and traditions.

The best weapon is the sharp ridicule of satire - show the world the size and scope of these asses, because there's bugger all depth to them.

Ayers is the punk that he was in the 1960's - a well-heeled and clouted punk.

The more people who laugh at these blouted egos the sooner they will disappear under society's Fridge.


http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2008/04/john-mccain-tom-hayden-of-lefty-vets.html

Anonymous said...

Guess who else lived/studied on the Upper West Side in the early '80's. It's probably coincidental, I know, but the geographical closeness of Obama and Ayers/Dohrn from about 1980 onward speaks to the possibility that they're much older friends than anyone suspects. Those who know how to look into these things should keep looking.

THIRDWAVEDAVE said...

Thx, John...Linked.

nick said...

aggravated assault?

mccain bombed babies! in N Vietnam