Free Public Enemy by Bill Ayers

anticipated and vivid “chapter book” shared at morning circle. She animated her stories with a colorful cast of characters, nurses and friends, community activists and ordinary folks, in a Dickensian slog through the empire city, life in excruciating detail, world without end. But the core of each installment was a clash of two titans: on one side, the Reverend Timothy P. Mitchell, leading critic and charismatic leader, beautiful, brilliant, and brave, rallying the community in heated demonstrations; on the other side, rankling all the good people, the scary and gnarly Mayor Koch, a lonely, barren soul whose foul deed had set the drama in motion. The Mayor Koch of Susan’s story hated ordinary people—and Black people in particular—and was the embodiment of evil: the Wicked Witch of the West to the kids, Mistah Kurtz or Iago to the rest of us. Susan was in the thick of it, eyewitness reporter, participant observer, hero, sage, mom, and friend. She never mentioned the hardship of a no-pay payday—it was a children’s story, a magnificent fairy tale.
    When the ministers and their allies occupied Sydenham to keep it open, the kids were excited because, like Rosa Parks, they would not be moved. And when they escalated by announcing a hunger strike, the kids were electrified: “When will they eat?” “Are they sad?” “I’m hungry!”
    “Let’s bring them something to eat,” Z said at snack time that day. Good idea! We baked for the ministers two big carrot cakes, decorating each with hearts and stars. And next morning, right after circle, Susan led the staff, kids, and a couple of other mothers on a field trip to bring carrot cake to the hunger-strikers at Sydenham Hospital—missing the concept a bit, perhaps, but wholly aligned with the spirit of the struggle. We wanted the ministers to be strong and successful in their righteous effort, we wanted Susan to keep her job, and we wanted to stand up for justice and against health care denied.
    The bus dropped us a block from the hospital and we immediately heard the chanting and singing from down the street. We moved excitedly on, and when we got close Susan began greeting folks. She seemed to know everyone. The picketers cleared a path for us, smiled at the kids, and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” as we passed by. We were in the middle of the crowd when we spotted the famous Reverend Mitchell beaming at us. “Here you are!” he exclaimed, delighted. “Susan, come on up here.”
    And up we all went. Reverend Mitchell hugged every one of us enthusiastically, and spoke gently to each of the children, beaming. Z handed him one of the carrot cakes, and then allowed the reverend to pick him up. Holding the cake and the toddler aloft, Reverend Mitchell offered a prayer that stretched and searched beyond the available light, while TV cameras brushed the scene.

THREE
Learning to Walk
    Zayd, Malik, and I walked and toddled and wobbled our way to Broadway and Eighty-sixth Street after school to meet up with Bernardine, shop for groceries, and head home for dinner, baths, stories, and bed—our regular rhythm and routine by now and the best two hours of every day. I was stopped short at the corner news stand by the front page of the
New York
Post
, which featured a huge headline—“ COP KILLER! ”—and an oversized photo of a disheveled man bound in a straitjacket, his eyes swollen and his face bloody and bruised, being led by several cops into a police station. I’d heard fuzzy references on the news of a Brinks truck robbery near Nyack just north of the city, a car chase, and a shoot-out—typical train-wreck news as far as I was concerned, isolated and irrelevant, disconnected and distracting. But it was the photo that seized me, and staring at that picture, first in disbelief and slowly with a gathering certainty, things began to shift and the world flipped quickly upside down. I did a double-take and then another and another: David Gilbert, our