IV. Apprenticeship with Foundation-Funded Terrorists: Ayers and Dohrn 169group of businessmen concerned about race and education issues founded by Bill Ayers’ father,
Tom Ayers, once CEO of the large Chicago utility, Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon).’ (Steve
Diamond, ‘That “Guy Who Lives in My Neighborhood”: Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship,’
noquarterusa.net, June 19, 2008)
From the counterinsurgency point of view of Bill Ayers, it was the Local School Council
institutional machinery that mattered most, since these could be turned into a battering ram against
the teachers’ union on the one hand and the board of education bureaucracy on the other, wrecking
both while the municipal bond holders laughed all the way to the bank: ‘...in 1993 the CAC grant
proposal was seen by Ayers as an attempt, in part, to rescue the LSCs. The grant proposal states,
“We envision a process to unleash at the school site the initiative and courage of LSC’s....” Later, it
states “[t]he Local Schools Councils...are important both for guiding educational improvement and
as a means of strengthening America’s democratic traditions.” (Steve Diamond, ‘That “Guy Who
Lives in My Neighborhood”: Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship,’ noquarterusa.net, June 19,
2008)
Chicago was competing against many other cities for the massive largesse of the Annenberg
Foundation. In writing the grant proposal, Ayers obviously had to show that the Annenberg
Foundation could get more bang for its counterinsurgency buck by investing in the Chicago system:
‘Indeed, the CAC proposal effort led by Ayers and Hallett was a critical part of what the Project
Director of the CAC, Ken Rolling, described as the “political wars” being waged over schools in
Chicago at that time. Ken Rolling was a veteran of those wars because in his previous role he had
been a program officer of the Woods Fund, which supported the school reform effort through its
grants, including grants to Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project. Other groups in other
cities were competing for the same pool of funds (a total of $500 million made available by
philanthropist Walter Annenberg) and, perhaps even more importantly, other groups in the city of
Chicago with different policy views were applying to receive funds. However, the Ayers/Hallett
proposal was successful in the end with the decision made in late 1994. In January of 1995 the
formal announcement of a grant of $49.2 million was made. That money would have to be matched
by contributions from the private and public sector 2:1 for a total amount over the life of the project
of approximately $150 million dollars to be disbursed in Chicago. (Apparently the actual amount
raised was an additional $60 million for a total of $110 million.) The CAC set up an office in rent-
free space at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Bill Ayers taught.’ (Steve Diamond, ‘That
“Guy Who Lives in My Neighborhood”: Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship,’ noquarterusa.net,
June 19, 2008)
The one aspect of the Chicago Annenberg challenge which had no readily evident rational
explanation was the choice of the unknown mediocrity, Barack Hussein Obama, who, as we already
know, had been earmarked by the Trilateral Commission for greater things: ‘The first chairman of
the CAC Board was Barack Obama, at that point, 32 years old and a second year attorney at Davis,
Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a small Chicago law firm. He began the Board position in early 1995
and stepped down from the chairmanship in late 1999, though he remained on the Board until the
CAC phased itself out of existence and handed off its remaining assets to a permanent new
institution, the Chicago Public Education Fund, in 2001. The Board began to meet in March of 1995
and formally incorporated the CAC as a non-profit entity in April 1995. Other board members
included numerous already prominent Chicagoans: Susan Crown, Vice President of the Henry
Crown Company; Patricia A. Graham, President of The Spencer Foundation; Stanley Ikenberry,
President-Emeritus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Handy Lindsey, Executive
Director of the Field Foundation; Arnold Weber, former President of Northwestern University and