Dear Folks,

InTheseTimes.com is honored to present Bill Ayers' first published statement discussing the 2008 election.

Now that I have your attention, let me ask you for a favor.

As always, everyone here at In These Times appreciates your support.

We provide all the content on InTheseTimes.com to you and to our 250,000 other monthly readers without charge. That doesn't mean it's free. It costs us quite a bit. (Only 0.04 percent of our online readers contribute to the website's operating cost.)

As you can see with the Ayers piece, we're doing well editorially. But we're facing a severe cash-flow shortfall. October was leaner than we anticipated, and November looks even worse.

Two major factors are contributing to this:

First, the global economic crisis, which has resulted in fewer -- and smaller -- contributions.

Second, the presidential election, which led many donors to redirect their extra dollars to Obama.

Here's the favor I ask of you. If you're planning to make a contribution to In These Times this year, please send it as soon as you can. If you weren't planning to donate, please reconsider. We're scrambling to keep caught up with payroll, writer payments and production expenses. Your support will make a huge and immediate difference.

We're a small operation: Five full-time and eight part-time staff put together In These Times and InTheseTimes.com on a limited budget. Other monthly magazines have at least twice as many employees, and have a much larger budget. I'm proud that we're able to accomplish what we can with few resources. But we can't do it without support from you and other members of the In These Times community.

Now, back to Bill Ayers. This morning, on InTheseTimes.com, we posted his article "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been."

Ayers begins, "Whew! What was that mess? I'm still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing. ..."

He goes on to talk about Sarah Palin, the death threats he has received and the mixed legacy of the '60s. The article will be featured on the back page of our December issue. But you get the scoop now.

As some of you may remember, InTheseTimes.com ran a "View" in March called "Red-Boating Obama." In it, I predicted that the GOP would attempt to link Obama to the Democratic Socialists of America, Rashid Khalidi (an occasional In These Times contributor) and Bill Ayers (with whom I serve on a not-for-profit board).

It all came to pass, but fortunately it was all for naught.

I hope you enjoy Ayers' article, and thank you for your support of InTheseTimes.com. We couldn't do this without you!

In solidarity,

Joel Bleifuss

Editor & Publisher, In These Times