H. Brandt Ayers’s column (“Strangers — Dems and the South,” April 22) offers advice for Barrack Obama: “Here’s how President Obama, or any Democrat running for president, can crack the solid GOP South, ending the habit of ceding enough electoral votes that could clinch a Democratic victory.”

Well, unsurprisingly, we can add H. Brandt Ayers solidly to the list of Obama strategists, who prominently include William Ayers, Bernadette Dorn, Saul Alinsky (died in 1972), Richard Andrew Cloward (died in 2001) and Frances Fox Piven, to name a few.

H. Brandt Ayers’s passion to join in an Obama advisory capacity will be welcomed by:

William Ayers and his wife, Bernadette Dorn, who were involved with the Weather Underground Organization, which was responsible for bombings at the New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who was known as the “father of modern American radicalism.”

Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, one-time Columbia University sociologists who wrote the “Cloward/Piven Strategy,” whose goal was to “overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.”

Armond “Si” Simmons
Pell City