Here’s a brief summary of Saul Alinsky’s relationship to Obama, via Wikipedia: “Alinsky codified and wrote a clear set of rules for community organizing. His rules for radicals are now used as key tactics to learn in the training of new community organizers and were the tactics used by then candidate Barack Obama to win the 2008 election. [...] Alinsky’s teachings influenced Barack Obama in his early career as a community organizer on the far South Side of Chicago. Working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project, Obama learned and taught Alinsky’s methods for community organizing.

The lines of evidence now converge: the founder of ACORN is Wade Rathke, who, like William Ayers, was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the student organization founded in 1960 as part of the New Left, was the gateway drug to the Weather Underground. In the early sixties, the SDS was idealistic and many reluctantly supported Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964, and grainy black-and-white pictures show clean-cut men and women registering southern blacks to vote. Tom Hayden was amongst this group. But that was then.

By 1969, their Great Society liberalism had been co-opted by Marxists, Maoists, Spartacists, and other assorted revolutionary groups. They were no longer interested in change, but overthrowing the government. It was during this time that Wade Rathke first came into contact with Bill Ayers.

Much has been made of Obama’s questionable judgment in befriending and working closely with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. Regardless of what Obama says, his political career was launched in Ayers’ home, Ayers served with him on Woods Fund, and promoted him to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, like Ayers, is a disciple of Saul Alinsky. Working for ACORN was an important step in Obama’s political career.

An article by Professor David Walls directly connects Rathke’s ACORN to Alinsky, ACORN’s mission of pressuring banks to issue risky mortgages, and the alliance between ACORN and unions:

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in 1970 as a spin-off from the National Welfare Rights Organization, founded by George Wiley, who enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in an Alinsky-influenced program at Syracuse University. From a base in Arkansas, Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado developed a replicable model of forming membership organizations and developing leaders in low-income neighborhoods — relying substantially on young middle-class staff working for subsistence wages. ACORN has established local housing corporations to rehabilitate homes, and has successfully pressured banks to provide mortgages and home improvement loans in low-income communities. ACORN has led “living wage” campaigns in many cities, and has forged alliances with labor unions.

But ACORN isn’t just Alinsky-inspired. It’s a direct off-shoot of his revolutionary agenda:

Around 1970 several national networks began to coalesce and develop systematic and distinctive approaches to community organizing. These include the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), ACORN, Citizen Action, National People’s Action, PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation. Each was indebted, in greater or lesser degree, to Alinsky and his early organizing programs in Chicago through IAF.

Citizen Action, mentioned above, is not “officially” connected to ACORN. But Citizen Action, like Rathke’s ACORN and Ayers’ radical education projects, was founded by another member of the Alinsky-SDS milieu, Heather Booth. But it’s not just SDS and the City of Chicago that binds this group. As the screen capture below shows, Heather Booth’s husband was both a member of the SDS and Alinski’s [sic] Industrial Areas Foundation.

Of equal significance, Citizen Action reported paying Citizen Services, Inc., the shadowy ACORN group first exposed at No Quarter, over half a million dollars for campaign work. This is the Citizen Services, Inc. who has received nearly a million dollars from the Obama campaign:

(Expenditure reports also show an October 18 payment to Citizen Services (ACORN) of $590,526.10 for “Campaign consulting.” This is not enough information to determine whether this payment was also for signature gathering, which would make the per-signature cost ludicrously high, or for get-out-the-vote activities, or something else.)

According to the Associated Press, the FBI is now investigating allegations of voter fraud committed by ACORN. It should come as no surprise that ACORN is steeped in a culture of corruption, and the manipulative actions of ACORN dovetail perfectly with Alinsky’s Rules. Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, was forced out the organization after his brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled more than $948,000 from ACORN and Wade Rathke covered it up. His brother was running one of the 294 ACORN groups which Larry Johnson discovered are all linked through the same address:

139. CITIZENS CONSULTING INC.
1024 ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70117-8402 NON-PROFIT FOREIGN CORPORATION Name Type:LEGAL
Status:ACTIVE
Indiana Secretary of State

The New York Times reports:

The amount Dale Rathke embezzled, $948,607.50, was carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.

Wade Rathke, prior to Obama’s rapid ascent, was formulating ways to converge the Alinsky Left and take control of the power of the state. This was written in January 2003. He begins his essay with the classic exhortations of a Bolshevik pamphleteer, and his words could not be any clearer:

The oldest cliché of our vast peoples’ movement over the last generation or more has got to be that there are so, so many tasks to be done, that there is a job for everyone – and that means, you, too, brothers and sisters!

~snip~

So, you sit here reading this on the fly between one job and another, home and school, heaven and hell, and you say, “hey, bullshit, no way:” every ad for an “activist” is just looking for a canvasser; all of these groups are just gangs with their own cliques – another secret handshake high school behind a storefront window; and, so, you say, what does it matter what I have to say, what I think, or whatever – I’ll just do my thing, my way, and live my life out of the mainstream

Here’s my plea – let’s build a bridge in the sky that links our worlds together, while allowing us to stay autonomous and anonymous.

First, why, and then, how.

The power of the state is in fact fairly awesome.

As a bonus for those of us who used to go to Taylor Marsh, that was another part of the trip down Memory Lane – before she became addicted to the Kool Aide and was actually a reasonable, rational person. Was that really only 8 months ago?? Seems like a lifetime ago, that’s for sure…

Then there is this:

Of course, I don’t understand why Morris, or the “52% of people” (I know, I know – there weren’t really that many given the duplicate fraudulent votes), DON’T think that Voldebama getting his start in Ayers and Dorhn’s living room, or working with him at Woods, wasn’t important! It goes to a pattern, a way of thinking, that is the issue here. That DOES matter, as Sean Hannity points out so succinctly (I know – I’m quoting Hannity, but he is right when he recites these associates. More in the media SHOULD have done so). Morris raises some great questions. Ones that were never answered by the media, that’s for sure. Just one more strike against them, in my humble opinion.

Anywho, I wonder how long it will be before Voldebama announces Bill Ayers as Secretary of Education? I think it will be January 21st. Maybe we should have a pool! Yeah, that’s the ticket!! And then we can watch all of the university professors who supported Voldebama, and others, trying to excuse the ideology of this unrepentant terrorist who wants to “radicalize” our youth. Oh, yeah – that should be some fun. If only it wasn’t so damn problematic. Let’s hope this is one bet that doesn’t come to fruition…

Just when you had wished you had indeed heard the last of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, it turns out they are publishing a new manifesto described in brief on Amazon.com.

What makes the book blurb – this one apparently not written by their long time, umm, colleague, co-education policy wonk, fellow intellectual and, yes, neighbor Barack Obama – worrisome is that it links what Ayers and Dohrn say is America’s continuing sin, racism and “white supremacy,” with their views on war. 

In other words just as Barack Obama moves to the White House, these two destructive figures out of the past are about to advocate an entire new world view for America built around their curious race-centric obsession. Presumably this will be an opportunity to peddle, one more time, their Third Worldist clap trap which mandates that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” 

This narrow and dangerous thinking is what led Ayers, Dohrn and others in their camp to embrace figures like Castro, Ortega, and Chavez even as they trample all over the civil rights of their citizens in order to maintain their authoritarian hold on power.  

[Editor's note: See Uppity Woman's October 28th article here, "RBO: Team Cuba” — Ayers, Dohrn, just “two political activists” from Obama’s neighborhood, visited Cuba in September 2008.]

Great. Our next president may not just be the most liberal politician to ever serve but his only major achievement will be his years working in an office with a domestic terrorist and a radical Maoist on failed educational projects.

Actually, what worries me as much as the anti-American, still-active extremists he’s hung around with for decades is that Obama is a failed executive and has never administered any venture that succeeded, except his own elections. Obama was handed a single U.S. Senate quasi-executive position as chairman of a Foreign Relations subcommittee, but failed to convene a single hearing, travel to any of the countries or NATO, a critical part of his responsibility, because he was too busy running for president. Obama is not a worker. Obama is a schmoozer. He attracts many followers hypnotically, but he is not a true leader who has ever made a tough decision once in the spotlight or under intense pressure. (The pre-war speech doesn’t count because he gave the speech in a safe liberal, academic Chicago neighborhood and never showed up to aid many brave people in D.C. who were in the cross-hairs, and truly tried to stop the war.)

Gateway Pundit and Verum Serum blogs provide screenshots of and links to documents that prove that the three shared the same office space. (By the way, NoQuarter has written many stories about Mike Klonsky, including law professor Steve Diamond’s memorable, “How is it under that bus, Comrade Klonsky?“)

Verum Serum‘s writer has done great work in tracing the MONIES that went to Bill Ayers, siphoned off of the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation on whose boards Barack Obama sat. For details on the money — over two million dollars went to Bill Ayers’ “Small Schools Project” — see Verum Serum’s stories, “Crossing Paths Daily: Obama and Ayers Shared an Office (Update: For Three Years) and “Ayers and Obama: Follow the Money (Updated: Nearly $2M to Ayers).”

This is an introduction to the materials from the investigation of some hard-working bloggers. Our writers will have more soon.

Recently, a friend asked for information on now convicted Tony Rezko and Barack Obama. Here’s what I sent her, from more stories on the Obamas’ mansion to Obama’s entanglements in with Chicago slumlords to Rezko’s trial, conducted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s very able team:

First, I sent her a link along with some notes about Truthteller’s October 7th story:

“CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen

– Obama’s history with Rezko is lengthy (Rezko contacted him when Obama was still at Harvard Law School — I believe, although it’s a hunch, that they met when Obama was in Chicago before he went to Harvard). 

Their connections are political, business, and personal. Obama’s law firm represented Rezko’s interests, Obama pushed state legislation that helped Rezko, etc. The Woods Fund, along with its board members Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, was involved with Rezko and gave him financial grants.

In Obama’s own district, Rezko controlled former public housing and let it go to ruin. NoQuarter has numerous fact-checked stories on this + Flineo’s great videos offer rich fodder that can be used in TV/Web advertising.  Examples from Flineo’s channel:

THIS is an INVALUABLE video. Flineo included video footage of Carol Marin, a noted Chicago NBC reporter, saying that Rezko got over $100 million in taxpayer monies for his schemes IN Obama’s own district.  Ms. Marin shows the actual conditions of those properties.

Flineo then adds a still image of a map in which he highlights, one by one, how many of Rezko’s foreclosed, closed down properties are IN Obama’s own state senate district.  (That map comes from one of the Chicago newspapers — I can find the link if need be.)

Here are more links to some of our key stories and a radio show we did on how Obama used public housing privatization in Chicago to benefit his rich allies and political benefactors.

The Boston Globe did a great investigative piece on Obama’s links to the housing privatization schemes — but none of the rest of the MSM picked up their great work.  Our own Un Coup De Des wrote it up brilliantly in two parts:

     (a) Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron;

     (b) Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous; and

     (c) I wrote a story about a little boy, with video and photos, who was killed this summer — it was all over the Chicago newspapers and TV stations– because another of Obama’s political godfathers/benefactors failed to maintain his privatized housing property in a safe manner. That was Cullen Davis, the son of Alison Davis who gave Obama his first job at a law firm that handled Rezko’s housing schemes: “The Blood Money of Barack Obama’s Money Men.”

See also: Larry Johnson’s more recent story on the ties among Obama, ACORN, and Obama’s slumlord buddies, Allison and Cullen Davis (father and son): “Barack Worked For ACORN, Promises to Do So Again.”

Related:  How the Obamas got that mansion.  I posted several links to stories about the mansion, including “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford,” which details how Michelle Obama used her position as a member of a preservation board to find out about and get that mansion that had been labeled “historic.” 

::::: OPEN THREAD! :::::

The recent, reluctantly released papers from Obama’s time as head at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and his time on the board of the Woods Fund sheds new light on his relationship with Bill Ayers and the seamy milieu of Farrakhan’s Chicago.

The CAC and Woods Fund money paved the way for Obama’s political career:

the monies doled out through the Woods Fund to these groups, including [Bill] Ayers own Annenberg Challenge, helped cement Obama’s political relationships and bond with key players in Chicago.

Stanley Kurtz said that CAC money did not go directly to schools:

“Instead of giving money directly to schools, they gave to what they called external partners, and these external partners were often pretty radical community organizer groups.”

And Steve Diamond writes that Ayers was focused on what:

Ayers calls “social justice” approaches to teaching and “small schools” as well as race-based approaches to curriculum in the public schools.

Ayers and Obama funneled money intended for education to race-based curriculum. Matthew Weaver reports:

let’s also not forget organizations that received funding from Barack and Bill [Ayers], such as:

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by husband and wife Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Maoist Mike Klonsky, another terrorist member of the Weatherman Children and Family Justice Center, Bernardine’s organization. Trinity Unity Church and Rev. Wright.

Ayers is an important part of the Chicago racial Left, a loosely affiliated group of churches, academics, and activists who include Jeremiah Wright, Pfleger, Farrakhan, the group ACORN, and many others. The racial Left is not committed to fighting racism — a noble cause — but instead looking at the world through a racial lens. This means that issues of class — which affects whites, women, gays, etc. — is frequently dismissed. Instead, there are disquisitions on “white privilege,” without discussing the fact that poverty knows no color. The racial Left, of course, is a class struggle between those who have and those who do not, and many of it’s proponents have attended the best schools and hold the highest positions in the academy and in government. It’s no accident that Bill Ayers, the scion of a wealthy family, is a primary member of the racial Left. And it’s no accident that Obama, surrounded by millionaires in San Francisco, pointed out that his difficulties in Pennsylvania were due to skin color (identifying those resistant to him as white) and then ridiculing them as religious, intolerant of immigrants, and as the owners of guns, all cultural indicators to the racial Left of the despised lower-income whites. He could just have easily said those who are bitter cling to Jeff Foxworthy, shop at Wal-Mart, and hump their sister, or any other stereotype used against low-income whites.

The racial Left is about protecting status:

Not only is Ayers using Obama’s rapid ascent to celebrity in order to capitalize on his own unquenchable thirst for fame by having his memoir Fugitive Days reissued in January 2009, he is also working with Hollywood to have his memoir turned into a movie. As if that’s not enough, he and his wife, Bernardine Dorhn, have authored a book, soon to be released, entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy.

Belying it’s title, this book is NOT about white supremacists, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, but instead states that “white supremacy is the dominant political system” in American’. From Amazon’s Product Description:

Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors’ own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Stanley Kurtz has uncovered that Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March, and Obama’s close friend, Michael Pfleger, is close to Farrakhan:

Although it’s been discussed before (because it confirms that Obama attended Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March), a 1995 background piece on Obama from the Chicago Reader has received far too little attention. Careful consideration of this important profile makes it clear that Obama’s long-standing ties to Chicago’s most rabidly radical preachers call into question far more than Obama’s judgment and character (although they certainly do that, as well). Obama’s two-decades at Trinity open a critically important window onto his radical-left political leanings. No mere change of church membership can erase that truth.

As Matthew Weaver posted, Rev. Farrakhan just pronounced Obama the Messiah (watch the video here):

“You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.” – Louis Farrakhan

In addition to being the leader of NOI, Farrakhan is first and foremost a politician, and one of the most powerful in Chicago. And Obama has at least one NOI member on his payroll.

In a June article from Reuters entitled “BREAKING NEWS: Nation of Islam Activists on Obama Camp Payroll” states that

“Sen. Barack Obama employed and continues to employ senior staffers who belong to the Nation of Islam, and the presidential candidate has some “worrying” ties to the controversial group headed by Louis Farrakhan, a former key Obama insider told AARON KLEIN… The former insider confirmed Obama is directly aware of the Nation of Islam members on his staff.”

“A key constituency for Obama was Hyde Park, where Farrakhan lives. To be successful politically in that area, you need to be involved with Farrakhan, since he’s a strong power in the district,” said the former insider.”

“The former insider identified former Obama worker Shakir Muhammad as a Nation of Islam activist. Muhammad was paid by Obama’s office as a photographer…According to a black supremacist source tied to Farrakhan, Muhammad previously worked as a bodyguard for the Nation of Islam chief.”

In fact, according to the article, Cynthia K. Miller, a known Nation of Islam activist who served Obama in his early state Senate days and was treasurer for his U.S. senatorial campaign, and a paid consultant in 2003 and 2004, was the beneficiary of help from Obama by another one of his Chicago friends, Tony Rezko.

“The former insider said Obama asked indicted Chicago businessman and Obama financier Tony Rezko to get his treasurer, Miller, a state government job with
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”

While researching the source of Michelle Obama’s alleged “whitey” rant, we discovered direct connections between the Nation of Islam (NOI), Stokely Carmichael, Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology and, most prominently, Louis Farrakhan.

According to Larry Johnson’s sources, the Michelle Obama tape captures her in sordid company:

The sources who have seen the tape report that Michelle says
disparaging things about “whites” and that Louis Farrakhan is visible.
There is no identifying information on the segment they have seen to
identify the location or time when this was recorded. [emphasis added]

Those who are following this matter will recall that Michelle Obama, when asked about these allegations, is reported to have said that “whitey” is not a word used by African Americans today. However, we documented that Mrs. Obama’s primary text for her Princeton thesis was Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, and we showed how Carmichael used the term “whitey” repeatedly, thereby establishing an epistemological connection between Carmichael and Mrs. Obama. In other words, Michelle Obama is the intellectual offspring of Stokely Carmichael.

Before going further, it should be noted that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was once a member of the Nation of Islam, though it’s not clear when he was involved with NOI. Ryan Lizza of the New Republic first reported that:

Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had
studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”[Emphasis added]

But back to Stokely Carmichael. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has released hundreds of pages from their files on Stokely Carmichael. It’s a treasure trove for those interested in the history of the civil rights movement. What we found most interesting, however, were the large number of documents connecting Carmichael with the NOI. For instance, the document below is an Airtel sent to Director Hoover on July 29, 1966, from Chicago. The subject is Stokely Carmichael and it concerns NOI leader Elijah Muhammed’s “CALL FOR SUMMIT MEETING, MAJOR CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS.”

There are three areas of interest for us: first, the Airtel came from the city of Chicago; second, the year 1966 (more on that later), and third, that the Nation of Islam — in the manner of the infamous mob meeting in Apalachin in 1957 — was organizing all of the major civil rights groups.

It has been widely reported, and documented here, that Carmichael was an “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party, and that he was the leader of the innocuous sounding Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The following document, however, shows that Carmichael was open to violence as a political tool–see the highlighted sentence below–”This nonviolence bit is just a philanthropic hang-up,” and that he was indeed a founder of the Black Panther Party:

In the following document we initially noticed Carmichael’s willingness to use violence. He is paraphrased as saying that “in his opinion, the black man is justified in using any means at his command to obtain what he believes is due him,” indicating an acceptance of violence as seen through a racial frame. What’s more interesting, however, is the next paragraph. “Louis Walcott, Minister of the New York City Muslim Mosque, Nation of Islam, also participated in this conference.” See the second paragraph below:

The name Louis, of course, was glaring. Could it be he? A quick Google search linked to a 1996 Morning Edition transcription of a Bob Edwards piece on Farrakhan:

The early life of Louis Farrakhan, who grew up as Louis Eugene Walcott, was heavily influenced by his loving but demanding mother and his poor but safe neighborhood of Roxbury, Boston, in the late 1940s.

Over the last decade, Louis Farrakhan has emerged as one of the most visible and formidable black political leaders in America

Let’s add up what we have so far: Stokely Carmichael, Michelle Obama’s primary source and intellectual ancestor, shared the stage with Louis Farrakhan, the same man who she allegedly shared a stage with when she said “whitey.”

Carmichael and Farrakhan may have shared more than a stage. The document below indicates but doesn’t conclude that Carmichael may have been a Muslim himself. Although heavily redacted, the FBI’s source said that “Stokely Carmichael, [redacted] as ‘one of us’ which this source interpreted as meaning a member of the Muslims.”

Whether or not Carmichael was a Muslim is unclear. What is clear is that at sometime in the summer of 1966 there was a meeting of the minds between some civil rights groups, black radicals, and the Nation of Islam. These groups organized into a force promoting and preaching a racist form of black nationalism. The document below describes a meeting that clearly shows this union of forces: Carmichael and Minister Louis “made it clear they wanted to unite with all Negro groups regardless of philosophy.” Note the date of August 18, 1966:

This takes us back to Jeremiah Wright and the question of when Wright was a Muslim. According to Wright’s Wikipedia entry:

In 1963, after two years of service, Wright joined the United States Navy and entered the Corpsman School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Wright was then trained as a cardiopulmonary technician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“In 1966, as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman,” the Wikipeida entry continues, Wright assisted with the care of President Johnson. Extrapolating from these dates, it appears that Wright was in Maryland between 1964 and 1966, and this may have been the time when he was a member of NOI. Wright didn’t start at Trinity until 1972, and evidently received spiritual training after receiving a master’s degree in English in 1969.

Also in Maryland in 1964 was Stokely Carmichael, where he was arrested “as a result of demonstrations in that city.” This doesn’t mean that Wright knew Carmichael, but surely Wright was cognizant of Carmichael’s work and of NOI as well. This is likely the time when he was a “Muslim and black nationalist.”

However Wright was radicalized, it is clear that he consciously appropriated the language and tenor of the Nation of Islam.

Wright’s statement that 9/11 was deserved retribution (“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans…America’s chickens are coming home to roost”) is a perfect echo of Malcolm X’s statement that “The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost.”

Although it appears that Wright began his focus on Black Liberation Theology sometime after 1966, his racial attitudes and rhetoric have imitated that of NOI since at least 1970. Wright’s blaming the United States for creating AIDS to kill minorities is but just one example of his thinking being in lockstep with NOI.

Black Liberation Theology was first formed in 1966. According to NPR:

Black liberation theology originated on July 31, 1966, when 51 black pastors bought a full page ad in the New York Times and demanded a more aggressive approach to eradicating racism. They echoed the demands of the black power movement, but the new crusade found its source of inspiration in the Bible.

Keep in mind that NOI’s Elijah Mohammad called for a summit of black leaders on July 11, 1966, only 20 days prior to the official formation of Black Liberation Theology. If the dates don’t convince you of a synergy between NOI and Black Liberation Theology, please note Wright’s mentor — and Black Liberation Theology founder — James Cone’s words about NOI’s Malcolm X:

Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’ The false Christianity of the white-devil oppressor must be replaced by an authentic Christianity fully identified with the poor and oppressed.

The black intellectual’s goal, says Cone, is to “aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.”

Couple these words with Wright’s own view that:

There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: ‘How can we become black?’

In 1998, Louis A. De-Caro, Jr. published a book titled Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity. De-Caro’s book underscores the racial nature and revolutionary intent of the NOI’s promotion of a black “Christianity”:

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam based their religious orthodoxy more on the Bible than on the Qur’an. In part, this was because they sought to convert black Christians. More- over, Elijah Muhammad taught that the Bible, actually the story of “dark people,” had been distorted by the white man in order to enslave and oppress black people in the United States.

The Nation of Islam and Black Liberation Theology are two doors to the same room. Black Liberation Theology is a “palatable” form of “Christian” black nationalism. The fiery anti-American, race-baiting words of Wright, Ayers, Meeks, Pfleger, and Moss are from the same philosophical cauldron as the Nation of Islam. It’s obvious now why Wright’s Trumpet Magazine featured Farrakhan on the cover:

Some have said that Michelle Obama’s thesis proves nothing because it was written more than 20 years ago. We suggest that it was no accident that the Obamas sought out Wright a mere 2-3 years after she wrote her thesis and stayed with him for nearly 20 years, even while he preached the vilest and most hateful sermons that our nation has been forced to hear. TexasDarlin writes:

It’s no wonder that the Obamas joined Trinity United, grew close to Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, and actively defended the church. And there is no doubt in this alert reader’s mind that Michelle Obama clung to Trinity as long as possible politically and, unfortunately for her husband, perhaps many years too long for most voters’ palates.

But the Obamas’ connections to the Nation of Islam go deeper than Rev. Wright. Louis Farrakhan’s political connections extend to the Obamas directly through Chicago politics and Tony Rezko. Larry Johnson writes that:

Before Barack came on the scene, THE MAN in his political district was Louis Farrakhan. No one could take Alice Palmer’s seat without Farrakhan’s blessing. No one. I do not fault Barack Obama for seeking out the blessing of Farrakhan, but the story of what was done behind the scenes to get rid of Barack’s predecessor—Alice Palmer—has not been told. A knowledgeable source tells me that Tony Rezko played a direct role in this feat. And Rezko has been tight with Farrakhan.

At some point, probably between 1964-66, Jeremiah Wright was a member of the Nation of Islam and was indoctrinated into its odious brand of racist theology. And make no mistake, Wright’s race-baiting is not indicative of the vast majority of black churches. A pastor at LivePrayer writes:

Please hear me very clear. Black liberation theology is a perverse view of the Scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a radical view held by a very small minority of black pastors. This is NOT representative of the black church or the overwhelming majority of black pastors who preach and teach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ without looking at it thru the lens of color. Every black pastor I know condemns Dr. Wright and this perverse racist theology.

In 1966, a group of “Christian” ministers, at the behest of Elijah Mohammad, began to preach the same teachings as NOI. Stokely Carmichael and Louis Farrakhan actively worked to bridge the gap between these two groups, and Carmichael would soon publish a book espousing much the same separatist ideas. Carmichael’s book “guided” Michelle Obama’s thesis and soon she and Barack would join Trinity United Church of Christ.

The continuity of the teachings of Carmichael, Farrakhan, Cone, Pfleger, Wright, and Ayers is incontrovertible; it’s all about skin color.

Christopher Hitchens asks:

how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama?

Obama’s targeted use of Malcolm X’s super-charged racial code words (“hoodwink, bamboozled”), and his followers’ continuous charges of racism against Obama’s opponents as a political tool has been well documented. It shows that Obama has a studied understanding of the racial radicalism of Malcolm X, Farrakhan, Wright, Pfleger, and Ayers coupled with the cold-blooded instincts of a heartless politician. The Obama campaign has already smeared as racists vast swaths of the Democratic Party, people who were drawn to the Party for its commitment to civil rights. Now he employs the same tactics against John McCain, a champion of immigrants who has never had a hint of racism associated with his name.

Sinclair Lewis is frequently quoted as saying: “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

In today’s upside down world, racism has come to America embodied in a multi-racial politician and carrying the banner of the Democratic Party.

Writes Politico about this ad:

The Republican Party on Monday morning will make a new push to convince voters that distant ties between Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former radical William Ayers are somehow disqualifying for the presidency.

The Republican National Committee plans to e-mail “an audience of tens of millions” the link to a new video on the subject called “Guilt by Participation” and encourage recipients to forward it to friends and family, aides said. …

[...]

The title comes from a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by conservative scholar Stanley Kurtz, who wrote on Sept. 23: “The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming ‘guilt by association.’ Yet the issue here isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation.”

Here is the title and link to Stanley Kurtz’s September 23rd WSJ story:

“Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools”

Newsbusters.org’s Rich Noyes noted on September 23rd that Kurtz had two stories published that day:

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Stanley Kurtz traces Barack Obama’s partnership with former domestic terrorist William Ayers when the two collaborated at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity established to help Chicago’s public schools that was commandeered by Ayers to promote his radical agenda.

The association between Obama and Ayers has received virtually no attention from the three broadcast networks, with the conspicuous exception of a primary-season debate sponsored by ABC when George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with Ayers. Out of 1,365 broadcast evening news stories about Obama prior to the end of the primaries, only two mentioned Ayers — one a brief mention of the debate question on the April 17 Nightly News, and the other a World News Sunday story about McCain raising the Ayers issue on This Week.

With just 42 days left until Election Day, the broadcast networks have not presented a single in-depth report on Obama’s relationship with Ayers. But Kurtz’s review of the documents at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) shows the two “worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda,” which “flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism.” …

Of course, here at NoQuarter, we know that our own Larry Johnson and Steve Diamond have been on this story, in-depth, for months. Both Steve and Larry have written innumerable articles about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) — and that Bill Ayers HIRED Barack Obama as CHAIRMAN of the CAC.

“Would Bill Ayers have hired Barack Obama as chair of the CAC if Ayers were not sure that Obama would implement Ayers’ radical ideas about public education?,” I always ask those who don’t seem to get the connection, or why it is important.

But this isn’t about getting credit. This is about getting the story out. And this new RNC ad is going to help make voters stop and think.

Here is the link to the YouTube. Send it to your own e-mail list.

Murray refers to a report coming out of the NYTimes:

If small donors are going to be the fuel that powers campaigns from here on out, then the disclosure laws are probably going to have to change because there is a GIANT loophole. “An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations — some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names — raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.”

Ya think? If someone is entering gibberish for names, as LisaB pointed out in her excellent stories covering the donations of someone named “Derty Pouiiy”, are you really telling me that wouldn’t or shouldn’t raise any red flags for the Obama campaign?

“It is unclear why someone making a political donation would want to enter a false name. Some perhaps did it for privacy reasons. Another, more ominous possibility, of course, is fraud, perhaps in order to donate beyond the maximum limits. There is no evidence that questionable contributions amount to anything more than a small portion of Mr. Obama’s fund-raising haul. The Times’s analysis, conducted over a few days and looking for obvious anomalies, like names or addresses with all consonants, identified about $40,000 in suspect contributions that had not been refunded by the campaign as of its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, in September.”

I’m also not sure just how we can believe the NYTimes “tiny fraction” comment, particularly since last week, the NYTimes erroneously reported that Obama’s ties to unrepentant terrorist William Ayers amounted to ‘nothing to see here folks, let’s move on.’ We see what nonsense that was. The man launched his political career in Ayers’ living room, served on two boards with him and Obama has had continued significant contact with him over many years. I’d say that’s a little more noteworthy than Obama’s statement that Ayers “is just a guy who lives in my neighborhood.”

Perhaps a little further investigation on the part of the MSM will bear more fruit in reference to Obama’s receiving both fraudulent and foreign donations as well.

Next on Murray’s watchlist, per the Wall Street Journal,

“The Obama campaign said it was a mistake for an outreach coordinator to join a meeting last month attended by leaders of two controversial Muslim groups as it seeks votes from large Muslim populations in swing states. Minha Husaini, newly named as head of the campaign’s outreach coordinator to Muslims, attended a discussion session Sept. 15 with about 30 Muslim leaders and community members in suburban Washington, the Obama campaign confirmed. Participants included leaders of the Council of American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, which have been cited by the government in the past for ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.”

Since Hamas has already endorsed Obama – not really the kind of endorsement a future President would want, I would have thought – wouldn’t it have been wise for them to do a little checking before looking for votes with organizations that have questionable ties? And that, by the way, is not to offend or exclude members of the Muslim community who have no such ties.

“The Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach director participated in a meeting in mid September that was attended by several controversial Muslim activists,” NBC News’ Jim Popkin adds on the NBC Deep Background blog. “The Obama campaign now concedes that was a misjudgment, and that its top Muslim staffer would not have attended the meeting if she had known the full participant list beforehand. ‘Would a campaign staffer have attended if they were aware of the complete list of attendees? No,’ said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt in an email statement to NBC.”

Another Obama “misjudgment.” They are piling up like crazy. Who’s minding the mint over there?

Murray further tells us that talk radio is all over this today:

A Washington Times report essentially accuses Obama of doing something the Dems accused Reagan of doing in 1980. “At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn’t be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval. Mr. Obama’s conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate’s contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.”

“Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office – a charge the Democratic campaign denies.”

Well, of course the Obama campaign denies it. We have been asking this question for several weeks – did Senator Obama violate the Logan Act?

Please take a look at NancyA story, Obama’s Iraq Double-Take Gate Response and decide for yourself.

Interesting that the most significant story, in re Obama’s possible misconduct during his visit to Iraq, was buried at the bottom of Mr. Murray’s report. Were they hoping we wouldn’t notice?

I find it amazing that internet reporting is ‘suspect,’ meanwhile NoQ has been shouting about the above stories and more for months. ACORN fraud in particular is growing huge legs on TV and talk radio. See NancyA’s excellent reporting on this subject.

I have to wonder if MSNBC dipping a toe in the water in at least mentioning the above indicates the backlash they feel from viewers – their ratings have been tanking as a result of their egregiously biased coverage in favor of Senator Obama.

Money seems to be the bottom line with the corporate controlled media in terms of what they will report and who they favor. If their bottom line starts to hurt at the hands of more angry viewers turning them off, it will be interesting to see if more stories like this start cropping up in unlikely places.

But don’t hold your breath.

Before ACORN became a household name, Larry Johnson and Eastan McNeal reported that the Obama campaign has been funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to a shady ACORN shell corporation called Citizens Services, Inc. New information, including the photo above, proves that Obama’s past denials of his relationship with ACORN are not the truth.

According to the Leftist Dissent Magazine, the nebulous term, “community organizing,” has shaped Barack Obama:

Although he didn’t make community organizing a lifetime career—he left Chicago to attend Harvard Law School—Obama often says that his organizing experience has shaped his approach to politics.

~snip~

Since embarking on a political career, Obama hasn’t forgotten the lessons that he learned on the streets of Chicago.

Although Obama claims to never have been associated with ACORN, except when he was retained as their attorney, his community organizing experience is indistinguishable from ACORN’s mission:

In 1985, at age 23, Obama was hired by the Developing Communities Project, a coalition of churches on Chicago’s South Side, to help empower residents to win improved playgrounds, after-school programs, job training, housing, and other concerns affecting a neighborhood hurt by large-scale layoffs from the nearby steel mills and neglect by banks, retail stores, and the local government.

ACORN’s mission is to force governments and businesses, by threat of lawsuits and harassment, to support their agenda of obtaining the maximum services from government, coercing corporations to finance their projects, and forcing banks to approve high-risk loans. Additionally, ACORN works on voter registration issues and is suspected in mass voter fraud. This should be of special concern to the supporters of Hillary Clinton, many of whom witnessed caucus fraud during the primary season.

Stanley Kurtz details that ACORN may be at fault for much of the housing crisis we are now experiencing. Kurtz writes:

While the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act did call on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods, its exact requirements were vague, and therefore open to a good deal of regulatory interpretation. Banks merger or expansion plans were rarely held up under CRA until the late 1980s, when ACORN perfected its technique of filing CRA complaints in tandem with the sort of intimidation tactics perfected by that original “community organizer” (and Obama idol), Saul Alinsky.

Kurtz states that Obama, in his position on the board of the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) — both with domestic terrorist and Obama benefactor Bill Ayers — funneled large sums of money to ACORN:

as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to Acorn, and sending still more money Acorn’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported Acorn. And Acorn, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.

It’s become apparent that ACORN is serving as Obama’s red-shirted shock troops for voter “outreach,” a euphemism for the mass voter registration fraud witnessed up to this point in the election. ACORN will do for voting integrity what they did for mortgage lending.

According to Obama’s “Fight the Smears” Web Site, he was never an organizer for ACORN:

Regardless of what the Web site says, Obama’s ties to ACORN go much further than simply writing the group large checks from CAC in his role as Bill Ayers’ toady. Although “Fight the Smears” says that Obama was not an organizer for ACORN, he was an attorney for an ACORN’s voter registration project.

However, in May of this year, Stanley Kurtz discovered that Obama and ACORN have a much closer connection:

While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

Further, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, elaborates that Obama was an attorney for ACORN, trained ACORN activists, and dispensed funds to ACORN:

In 1995, then GOP Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law. Allowing voters to register using only a postcard and blocking the state from culling voter rolls, he argued, could invite fraud. Mr. Obama sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and won. Acorn later invited Mr. Obama to help train its staff; Mr. Obama would also sit on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago, which frequently gave this group grants.

Kurtz lays the collapse of the mortgage giants squarely at the feet of ACORN:

Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts. The real problem, we’ve been told, lay with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess. ACORN used CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle Fannie and Freddie and the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard of the most basic financial standards. And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.

In a prescient article from 1998, entitled Capitalist Wealth Underwrites Assaults on Middle America’s Values, Robert Holland reports that ACORN received funding from Fannie Mae and other banks and that ACORN then pressured the federal government to force banks to make high-risk loans:

Corporate leaders may be dispensing this aid in the belief it will curry favor with radical groups, or they may calculate that regulation will favor their business’ interests over competitors. Some of the giving, however, just seems spectacularly misguided: For example, Bank America, Chase Manhattan, and Fannie Mae contributed $315,000 to ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), an outfit that threatens financial institutions with federal sanctions if they fail to issue high-risk loans at bargain rates to borrowers of ACORN’s choosing.

Matthew Weaver originally uncovered this photograph of Obama and The Rev. Michael L. Pfleger protesting payday loans in January 2000.

The caption from NBC 5 photograph does not detail who sponsored the protest. It’s striking, however, that one of ACORN’s primary missions is protesting payday loans. And the yellow signs are ubiquitous in nearly all photographs of ACORN from this period:

The caption reads: “ACORN members demand fair lending, not predatory lending! This march was part of ACORN’s National Convention in Philadelphia, Summer 2000.”

The protest in Chicago attended by Obama and The Rev. Pfleger was likely an ACORN-related event, and significant enough for Pfleger to list the protest on his Curriculum Vitae:

What’s interesting about Pfleger’s CV, in addition to the prominence placed on the lending protest, are the other two actions. In a period of one month, Pfleger was actively attempting to ban Indian bidis cigarettes (with Obama) and coordinating efforts with Rev. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.

But Obama’s ties with Pfleger did not end with fighting payday loans and exotic cigarettes, Pfleger is close to Farrakhan and Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March:

Obama was apparently at Farrakhan’s Million Man March, although his precise attitude toward the march is in dispute

Regardless of Obama’s proximity to Farrakhan, he continues to embrace the resurgent far-Left.

Dissent reports that Obama employs Marshall Ganz of Harvard to lead “Camp Obama,” a Saul Alinsky-inspired, ACORN-like retreat for the training of Obama organizers:

Obama enlisted Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor who is one of the country’s leading organizing theorists and practitioners, to help train organizers and volunteers as a key component of his presidential campaign. Ganz was instrumental in shaping the volunteer training experience.

Many Obama campaign volunteers went through several days of intense training sessions called “Camp Obama.” The sessions were led by Ganz and other experienced organizers

Ganz is a respected organizer and academic with long-term associations with ACORN. He was also a member of the Howard Dean campaign.

In an article last year on Talking Points Memo, Ganz notes that recent elections have been remarkably close and that organizing will decide this year’s election. Using Alinsky as his model, he proposes a grass-roots campaign to win in 2008.

Barack Obama, a man we know little truth about, was forced onto the Democratic Party by far-Left activists and obsequious Party elders. ACORN is engaged in fraudulent voter registration on behalf of Obama, and the leader of “Camp Obama” tells us clearly that this election will be about organizing. Obama’s close relationship with ACORN, as documented by Kurtz,

a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”

This is a frightening thought when you consider that ACORN is much to blame for the housing crisis we’re now experiencing. And it’s not surprising that the Obama campaign’s strong-arm tactics, inspired by Alinsky and perfected by ACORN, have made the Democratic Party foreign to so many of its loyal base.

We have listened ad nauseum to Obama spin about his relationship with Bill Ayers. We have just about heard it all, from “I was 8 years old when he did these things” to “He’s just a guy!” to “His [adult]children went to school with my children” to “Obama didn’t know who Ayers was“.

Well I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Barack Obama surely does know who Bill Ayers is now–and what his philosophy on America is.

Ayers stood on the flag in the photo at left when Obama already knew him for years. I guess Obama didn’t know about that either.

After all, Obama dispersed Millions of dollars under the direction of Ayers and the Chicago Annenburg Challenge. A program which was designed to radicalize children. How hard was that for Obama to understand? Surely Ayers didn’t pick Obama to dispense millions of dollars because he didn’t agree with him.

Here are video clips of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn speaking at the MSU SDS Reunion in 2007. These are not doddering older people tracking toward retirement. No Sir. These are two people with the same radical thoughts they had in the 60s about America. Only now they call it “activism”.

I wonder what those Annenberg Challenge lunch meetings between Ayers and Obama were like.

Once again, these video clips below are from November, 2007. You will hear Bernardine “Declaration of A State of War” “Charlie Manson “Fork Salute”” Dohrn discuss the overthrow of the government like you and I would talk about where we would like to go to dinner tonight.

You will hear an old hippy who looks like he never let go of the bong introduce Bill Ayers and nostalgically discuss how cool it was to hang out with him and how, although he thought he was a Communist, maybe he was an anarchist.

Anarchy gets a laugh from these people. It’s….cool.

You will hear Bill “Kill Your Parents” Ayers discuss “doing something” and you will hear him discuss how today’s young people view the ’60s romantically. You will hear him discuss how to “Build on the spirit of resistance”. You will hear about putting yourself on the line even if it gets your head busted. You will hear just how intolerable our world is and how we have to “act”.

He sees now as a moment of “Unprecedented Opportunity”. I either don’t hear very well or what I have just listened to is a goal of “organizing” all those who are discontented to overthrow capitalism to make way for Socialism, if not Communism.

Funny, I don’t remember these people being romantic at all. I remember them scaring the shit out of America, paralyzing a guy named Elrod, the guy Bernardine wrote the song **Lay Elrod Lay for — to poke fun of him lying in the street unable to move due to a broken neck. See photo at left. Eldrod is the guy on the ground, left.

Really funny, Bernardine. You’re a real human, aren’t you? If I had a kid in school right now, I’d really want him to be exposed to your stuff. Really.

I remember them making bombs with nails in them intended for a military base. I remember them blowing up homes with the intent to kill the residents, including 9 year old children. I remember them injuring cops. I remember the Brinks Robbery and murders. I guess I must remember these two innocent sweetie-pies the wrong way. Shame on me for not appreciating how cool they really were when they blew things up all around the country and how exciting their Declaration of A State of War was.

These were raw hateful terrorists, not Romantic Heroes.

But like Bill Ayers said, they “didn’t do enough”. So I guess an Obama Presidency will give him another shot at it. I don’t know about you, but that thought doesn’t exactly make me feel safe.

This is Ayers today. This is Dohrn today. These are the people Barack Obama hung out with in the past few decades. That much, he cannot deny.

Once you have seen these videos, Click here to hear audio clips of Ayers–Then and Now. It will be up to you to decide whether or not this strongly unrepentant terrorist wouldn’t love to have another shot at America today–and get young folks with stronger backs to lob the bombs for him. I already know what I think.

These are people who have their hand in the teaching of America’s children. Their reach goes far beyond Chicago already. Would you like their philosphy to infiltrate YOUR children? See Bill Ayers and The Subversion of Education.

**Bernardine Dohrn’s Gleeful Lay Eldrod Lay

Stay, Elrod, stay

Play with your toes for a while

“This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense…”

The very next day, the Obama campaign posted on its Web site under the title “Fact Check on Obama and Ayers” the following, each prefaced with “Reality” and backed up with one or media reports:

• Obama was eight years old when the Weathermen were active
• Ayers connection is “phony,” “tenuous,” “a stretch”
• Ayers comments were published on September 11; the interview occurred prior to publication
• Ayers is a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a “respected adviser” to Mayor Daley on school reform.
• Charges against Ayers were dropped and he served no time

Obama continued his lies about Ayers when he appeared on Fox News Sunday, April 27. Barack repeated the claim that, “Mr. Ayres (sic) is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood…” (Fox News, April 27, 2008).

The campaign to persuade the public that Barack barely knew Ayers got a boost on August 21, 2008 from TruthFightsBack.com (John Kerry’s Web site for the Obama campaign). The site trumpeted, “Barack Obama Barely Knows William Ayers” and wrote that “The Republicans, desperate to smear Barack and try to build on their lies about his religion, insinuate that Barack Obama has a deep relationship with William Ayers. William Ayers was once a member of a radical group in the 1960s.” TruthFightsBack.com calls this lie “The Truth” under the title Barack Obama Barely Knows William Ayers:

“Barack Obama lived in the same area of Chicago as Ayers, and Ayers has been a politically active member of that community for years. Considering that, it’s actually remarkable how little the two have to do with each other. Early in Barack Obama’s career, he attended one reception in his honor at Ayers’s house. They also were separately asked by a charitable organization to serve on that organization’s board. And that’s it. There’s no friendship between the two, no relationship, no history of working together.”

The Obama team’s effort to cover up Barack’s ties to Ayers included an organized campaign to intimidate a Chicago radio station (WGN) that planned to interview Stanley Kurtz, who had succeeded in examining documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). The campaign emailed an Obama Action Wire to its supporters encouraging them to call in to the show and use following talking points (as found on the report form for supporters to log their call):

• William Ayers was involved with the Weather Underground when Barack Obama was eight years old, and Barack has roundly condemned their actions.
• Last night on Fox News, Kurtz tried to radicalize an education reform program in Chicago called the Annenberg Challenge. The Challenge was funded by Republican Walter Annenberg, introduced by Mayor Daley and Republican Governor Jim Edgar, and one of its initiatives was even praised by John McCain.
• Kurtz claimed on Fox News that William Ayers recruited Obama to the Annenberg Challenge — a flat out lie. Ayers did not serve on the board of the Challenge, and he had nothing to do with Barack’s recruitment.

Lies, big lies, and damned lies. The Obama team offers a disingenuous blend of fact and fiction in trying to cover up the true relationship between Obama and Ayers. The devil is in the detials and details do matter:

Ayers is just a guy who lives in my neighborhood, a tenured professor, and adviser to the local mayor

Ayers does live in Barack’s neighborhood (or vice versa). In fact, Barack and Bill currently live about two blocks apart on Greenwood Avenue and 50^th Street. And before Barack’s “boneheaded” deal with convicted felon Rezko to purchase the Greenwood mansion, Obama lived about 1-1/4 miles from Bill. But the dismissive “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” is a lie because Ayers was not just some fellow Barack bumped into at the corner market. They have a relationship that goes back nearly 20 years. Ayers was Barack’s friend, employer, colleague, and political supporter.

Ayers also is a tenured professor and multiple reports indicate he also is a buddy of Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley. In fact, Mayor Daley has defended him during the campaign saying they’ve worked together, that Bill Ayers is a respected educator, and valued member of the Chicago community (Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008).

It is unfair to say that Ayers’ actions 40 years ago when I was only eight should reflect upon me; anyway, charges against him where dropped and he did not serve any jail time. Plus, I’ve condemned the group’s actions

False. It is entirely fair to judge Barack by the people he surrounds himself with. Bill Ayer’s may have beat the terrorism charges but he has remained resolutely unrepentant about his actions. In 1981 David Horowitz quotes him bragging “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.” In 2001 he is quoted saying “I don’t regret settings bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” (New York Times, September 11, 2001). Bill’s wife, Bernadine Dohrn went to jail rather than aid the government after the deadly Brinks armored car robbery. I like the comment at Hot Air (February 24, 2008) where See-Dubya expresses concern about Barack’s “…frightening tone-deafness toward terrorism, and a blithe ignorance of the evil and chaos these radicals represent.”

Any connection to Ayers is phony, tenuous, or a stretch. It is ridiculous to suggest any tie with Ayers

False. Everything discovered to date undeniably document that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers have personal, professional, and political ties that span nearly 20 years. Steve Diamond believes they likely first met in 1988 following Chicago’s teacher’s strike. Barack was hired into a Woods Fund sponsored position with Developing Communities Project that was a member of Bill Ayers’ Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs) (Global Labor and Politics, June 7, 2008).

Consider as well:

• In November 20, 1997. Michelle Obama, then Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University of Chicago Community Service Center, organized and participated in a panel that included Barack and Bill, Should a child ever be called a “super predator?” at the University of Chicago. See also, Chicago Tribune.
• In 1997 Barack wrote a review of Bill’s book “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court”. Chicago Tribune published a blurb from Obama about books he was reading. See also USA Today.
• April 19-20, 2002, Barack, Bill, and Bernadine participated in a conference and panel “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?“. See also, Chicago Tribune.
• February 2005. Barack and Bill participated in a conference and dinner for Rashid Khalidi at Columbia wherein they offered testimonials to Khalidi. Mayor Daley also attended this hate-fest. (See The Sun and Campus Watch for some commentary. Khalidi subsequently lost his position at Columbia because of his comments, see New York Times.)

Ayers did not help launch my career

False. Back in 1995 after Barack Obama had returned to Chicago upon graduating from Harvard Law School, Bill Ayers hired the young Barack, then a third year associate at Davis, miner, Barnhill & Gallad. Together they spent upwards to $160 million dollars over the next seven years. As well, Bill and his wife Bernadine Dohrn feted him to the community as then-State Senator Palmer’s successor.

Early in Barack Obama’s career, he attended one reception in his honor at Ayers’ house

Not the whole truth. This was not a meet and greet reception. And Barack had more than one isolated sit down with Ayers and Dohrn. The Ayers/Dohrn home is where Barack Obama launched his campaign to oust then-State Senator Alice Palmer. This reception is reported in numerous articles including Ben Smith in Politico (February 22). Maria Warren writes about this gathering in her blog Musings & Migraines on January 27, 2005, “When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him–introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.” Ari Berman also reports in The Nation (May 1) that Bill hosted a fundraiser for Barack in 1996. (Possibly an error on Berman’s part as this might be the 1995 event since there is no other mention of a 1996 fundraiser.)

Ayers had nothing to do with my joining Annenberg Challenge. He did not recruit me, nor did he serve on its board

False. Bill Ayers founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, secured the initial $50 million from Annenberg Challenge, and claims to have co-chaired the Collaborative it with Barack Obama. While there is nothing to explicitly prove that Bill recruited Barack, it is simply not credible to say that Bill Ayers had nothing to do with Barack Obama joining the organization.

I do not exchange ideas with Ayers

Really? Can you say the same thing about your communications director, David Axelrod? According to a source who attended the Democratic National convention in Denver, an old friend of Ayer’s bragged that Axelrod and Ayers are in regular contact and coordinating on how to respond to the claims about the Ayers/Obama relationship.

Ayers has not ‘officially’ endorsed me

Really? So he’s backing McCain? The issue is not who Ayers has endorsed. The issue remains–why did Barack hang out for so many years with a guy like Ayers. Endorsement or not, it is a question that matter.

Ayers has been a politically active member of that community for years

True. First, as a home-grown domestic terrorist, then since around 1987 as a community activist, organizer, and financier. As Lynn Sweet wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times (March 3), “Hyde Park welcomed William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to the neighborhood after they resurfaced as local civic leaders following their years on the lam as members of the Weather Underground.” She notes Ben Smith observing in Politico (February 22), “While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.”

Considering that, it’s actually remarkable how little the two have to do with each other

Oh yeah?! Now this is where the lying really begins. As is increasingly clear, they worked together and shared the same circle of friends and families, same business associates, and same political associates.

They also were separately asked by a charitable organization to serve on that organization’s board

Not true. They were involved in at least three different “charitable” organizations. There was the Woods Fund of Chicago, which Barack joined 1993 and Bill Ayers joined in 1997. But what about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers founded and worked on with Barack Obama from 1995 through 1999. While Barack chaired the Challenge, Bill co-chaired its Collaborative arm. This was actually three connected organizations: Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC, the Board), Chicago School Reform Collaborative (the Collaborative, and Consortium of Chicago Schools Research (CCSR).

And that’s it. There’s no friendship between the two…

Ben Smith in Politico (February 22) writes that Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician, told him that they were “friends”. At the time Smith dismissed this for lack of supporting information and the denial by Barack Obama. (I wonder if Smith has since reconsidered?). Mayor Daley now says they are friends. Even Bill Burton acknowledges that they were friends.

…no relationship

False. They have family, community, business, and political ties. The only tie they appear to not share regards religion.

…no history of working together

False. Why is the media so reluctant to explore the CAC relationship?

At the risk of being redundant, sometime in 1987 Bill and Bernadine returned home to Chicago, where both had family. Michelle likely already knew both through her Robinson family ties and then in her 1988 work at Sidley Austin, where Bernardine was also employed. It is likely that Barack at least knew of Bill Ayers because he was already involving himself among with the Ayers family and their players in the community. Bill Ayers operated in relative obscurity until February 2008 when his ties to Barack and Michelle Obama became a matter of discussion in Barack’s presidential aspirations.

As a community organizer in Chicago from 1985 to 1988 Barack Obama received funding from and worked with numerous groups, such as Developing Communities Project. Bill Ayers joined in this arena upon his return in 1987 through his own group, Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs). They both surely crossed paths as Ayer’s father, Tom, provided funding to Barack and Bill through Chicago United, a group of businessmen concerned about race and education issues in Chicago. Tom Ayers was once CEO of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) (Steve Diamond, Global Labor and Politics, June 18, 2008). Michelle, the Robinson daughter, continued her own involvement but details are murky at best. Barack Obama shows up again in Chicago after graduating from Harvard Law School, ends up at Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, and joins the Woods Fund board, 1993, as a freshly minted 32 year old law school graduate, where he remained through 2002 and continued association with until gaining a seat in the U.S. Senate. Bill Ayers formally joined the board in 1999 but had ties throughout the earlier years, including receiving funds from the group.

Anyway, in 1993 Bill began organizing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Despite his unrepentant terrorist past he succeeded in securing nearly $50 million from Annenberg Challenge and immediately named Barack as his co-chair. Together over the next five years they spent at least $110 million for “radical” school reform in Chicago (Steve Diamond, Global Labor and Politics, June 18, 2008 and August 18, 2008). Then, or shortly afterward, the remains of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was handed over to Chicago Public Education Fund.

This was a small circle of people, families, and businesses. They were figuratively partners in crime, Chicago’s political mafia enriching themselves through their political position, through federal, local, and state funding, and through their positions and funds given from private organizations, especially, of immediately focus here, from the Woods Fund and Annenberg Challenge. It is likely that there are other organizations and people involved and this needs to be explored further. Stanley Kurtz, Steve Diamond, and others are now beginning to look into what Annenberg Challenge did with its more than $160 million in private and federal dollars.

But first, let’s get back to Barack, Bill, and Bernadine. Again, Michelle plays at least a bit role in this but to what extent is still unclear. Over the years Barack, Bill, Bernadine, and Michelle show up together, along with other Chicago figures that include Rev. Wright, Minister Farrakhan, Rev. Meeks, Rev. Pfleger, Sen. Jones, and many, many more. Throughout this Barack also had his early ties with friend, businessman, and political financier Tony Rezko and Rezko’s partners and associates. And finally, let’s also not forget organizations that received funding from Barack and Bill, such as:

• Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
• Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by husband and wife Rashid and Mona Khalidi.
• Maoist Mike Klonsky, another terrorist member of the Weatherman
• Children and Family Justice Center, Bernardine’s organization.
• Trinity Unity Church and Rev. Wright.

Finally, what role did Barack’s position as a sitting state senator play in all of this?

Summary

Fairly or not, Chicago has a long reputation as a corrupt political city. It is increasingly clear that Barack joined and became a willing partner in this corruption. The families, organizations, and businesses involved enriched themselves off of the private and public funds that Barack controlled. That Barack Obama lied and continues to lie about his relationship with Bill Ayers is a smokescreen and the tip-of-the-iceberg about the depth of his involvement in what are, or may be, corrupt practices among these people and their organizations.

A Bit of Background and Unresolved Items

As long as this post is, it is still embarrassingly incomplete. In writing this I have read every post at Larry Johnson’s NoQuarterUSA and Steve Diamond’s Global Labor and Politics blogs involving terrorist William Ayers. I also dug through scores of articles and posts at various media sites and blogs. While some matters are consistently reported, others vary significantly. I’m sure I’ve missed many salient points.

It is especially dramatic to read earlier compared to newer posts. Consider Ben Smith’s “Obama once visited ’60s radicals” from February 22, 2008. The title alone shows the naivety of Ben and everyone about the level of Obama’s involvement with Bill and Bernadine. That Obama let such false picture spread without correction, including then and now on his campaign Web sites, further reflects his clear intent to deceive voters.

Four unresolved items in an incomplete list of questions are:

• What is Michelle’s involvement in all of this?
• How did Barack’s role in the Illinois Senate affect or was a part of all of this?
• What are Barack’s other board and organization memberships?
• Where did the money go? E.g., to friends, family, personal and professional associates, and political cronies?

Suggested Readings

The body of evidence and discussion on the relationship among and between Barack and Michelle Obama, William Ayers, and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn is growing daily. As we get beyond the lies and begin to follow the money I recommend reading the following:

• Larry Johnson at his Web site NoQuarterUSA and as I have summarized here.
• Steve Diamond at Global Labor and Politics and as often published at NoQuarterUSA.
• Stanley Kurtz at National Review has made a start and it will be worth watching to see what he develops as he researches the Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers he’s now gained access to.
• Selected articles from multiple sources are summarized here.
• My posts at The Problem With Obama and The Independent View.

Matthew Weaver
Reprinted from It’s Not Just a Lie, It’s a Matter of Character

Chicago is home to a retired conservative University of Chicago professor named Milt Rosenberg who hosts an evening talk show on WGN radio.  WGN stands for “World’s Greatest Newspaper” because it is owned by the Tribune Company which also owns the Chicago Cubs. Jack Brickhouse, the voice of the Cubs for years when I was growing up, broadcast on WGN. And these days many people follow the Cubs on WGN cable television all over the country. 

In other words, the folks at WGN are Chicago icons.

Yet the Milt Rosenberg show was the subject of a wave of hostile attacks from followers of the Obama campaign because Milt had the nerve to put on his show Dr. Stanley Kurtz, a journalist and conservative intellectual who writes for National Review Online.

Dr. Kurtz has been writing a series of articles on Obama and, in particular on Obama’s political activities while in Chicago.

Most recently, Dr. Kurtz has turned his attention to a subject that Global Labor has been exploring – albeit from a left perspective – the relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers particularly on the $160 million six year long Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) from 1995 to 2001.

In fact, Kurtz was in Chicago this week to examine the records of the CAC held at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).  UIC had invited him to look at the records and then, very oddly, revoked their invitation after a discussion with the donor of the records. Then they reversed course again and invited him back, along with a host of mainstream media representatives who were now paying attention to this issue for the first time.

Caller after caller to WGN read off talking points provided them by the Obama campaign alleging that Dr. Kurtz, and by implication and sometimes directly, Milt Rosenberg, was “smearing” Barack Obama and finding Obama “guilty by association.”  They also accused Kurtz of lying.  

Yet, when pressed for specifics, these callers had none.

This gang of callers and emailers reminded me of the “turbas” – the street thugs organized by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas who would be deployed on a moment’s notice to harass independent trade unionists, human rights activists and government critics during the Sandinistas’ rule over Nicaragua in the 1980′s.  Hugo Chavez in Venezuela – a favorite haunt of Bill Ayers and other “Progressives for Obama” – uses similar bodies in Caracas neighborhoods.

Now keep in mind for those of you not familiar with the Rosenberg show: it has run for decades and has always been thought of as a quiet sober discussion space; generally conservative but usually open to a range of views. 

My father, a lifelong Chicago liberal and former Democratic party precinct captain, has called in and jousted with Rosenberg several times over the years (Milt called him a “professor of sophistry” in one exchange).  Yet, listeners are blogging tonight that they have never heard anything like what happened this evening.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the tactics of the Obama campaign – attempting to squash a legitimate discussion on the respected Rosenberg show of these sensitive issues. 

But it suggests to me a whiff of panic inside the campaign. Sure, John Kerry should have gone after the swift boaters in the last election. But this is not swift boating. We are talking about a decade or more of close political activity involving Ayers and Obama. 

Far from being a smear, the accusation made that Dr. Kurtz and Global Labor is engaged in “guilt by association” is really a form of McCarthyism. I have experienced this in the past from some on the left and wrote here about it.  

(For the record, I was called up by the Milt Rosenberg show and asked to join in the conversation last night.  In doing so, I pointed out that those in the Obama camp like Mike Klonsky and David Axelrod who are red diaper babies ought to be particularly sensitive to the use of McCarthyite tactics by those in the Obama camp. 

It turns out I misspoke, as far as I can tell only Klonsky is, in fact, the son of members of the Communist Party. I had seen web references to Axelrod as a son of CP members but I went back last evening to check and I found that those seem unreliable. 

Instead it appears that Axelrod is the son of fellow travelers, i.e., folks who worked side by side with CP members and shared many of their views but who did not formally join the party. Axelrod’s mother, it appears, was a writer for PM magazine, a 50′s era magazine heavily influenced by the CP.  

Oddly, Rosenberg suggested I was “maligning” Axelrod by suggesting he was a red diaper baby. I don’t know why being a red diaper baby would be considered maligning Axelrod: after all, we do not choose our parents. In any case, I have known many red diaper babies and they are no better and no worse than anyone else on the political scene with a wide array of viewpoints. 

So I apologize for misspeaking but not for making the suggestion that someone was a red diaper baby, since that is not anything to apologize for.  And I stand by my original statement that someone with a 50s era background in or around the CP should be particularly sensitive to the use of McCarthyite tactics like those being used by Obama supporters against critics of the Obama/Ayers relationship.)

So why this ginned up outrage from the Obama camp? 

Becuase Dr. Kurtz has found out as we have been discussing here for some time, that, indeed, Bill Ayers co-founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and then co-chaired its Collaborative arm while Barack Obama was selected to chair the board of directors of the Challenge. 

Together Ayers and Obama worked to hand out more than $160 million in and around the Chicago school system to groups that allegedly were going to work to improve student achievement.  The effort failed, miserably, at least on the level of achievement.

But Ayers and others claim it was a success – no doubt because it helped them in their battle with the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley Jr. who was trying to wrest control of the Annenberg Challenge grant away from Ayers and Obama. Daley was also trying to crush the Local School Councils set up in 1988 after a campaign that Ayers and Obama both participated in.  Those Councils were aimed to be a watchdog over the Teachers Union and the School Board. They were failing too and Ayers and Obama viewed the CAC money as a conduit to prop them up.

So it is a hard fact that Ayers and Obama knew each other well before the time the Obama campaign has stated in the past.  And clearly Obama well knew that Ayers was not just a guy from the neighborhood as he stated on national TV.

That must be a difficult problem for the Obama camp to swallow – they pushed their candidate to deny, deny, distance, distance, when, in fact, they long knew of the close political relationship between Ayers and Obama. For all we know, the relationship continues.  Ayers backs a key policy proposal of Obama education advisor, Linda Darling-Hammond: to wit, the repayment of the alleged “education debt” to people of color.  

I warned of this very dilemma for the campaign many months ago.  I pointed out that the hope for change that the Obama campaign had raised among many in the anti-war and labor movement, for example, would be crushed if Obama could not explain why he was involved with someone like Bill Ayers 

Ayers was one of the most destructive forces on the left for many years – in fact, he should not be called a leftist.  He is an authoritarian who is more comfortable with figures like Hugo Chavez than he is with genuine democratic activists like those in the labor movement.

For whatever reason, Obama chose Ayers as an ally at a critical point in his career.  The post at the CAC was big step up for the young lawyer.  Obama, though, could have made other choices. He could have said no to Ayers.  But they worked together on school reform for years, then on juvenile justice issues and then on the board of the Woods Fund.

As some on the left – often inappropriately – like to say: those chickens are coming home to roost.

You can listen to the podcast here.

The strength of the ad is its accuracy. Unlike the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s ads, there is no available counter-argument. Bill Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist. Obama’s political career was launched at Bill Ayers’ house. Obama did serve on the Woods Fund board with Ayers. The ad hits Obama hardest on his self-proclaimed good judgment. As law professor Steve Diamond states, Obama wasn’t just friends with Ayers, he wasn’t just a guy in the neighborhood, he was Obama’s benefactor for 20 years.

Obama’s slide from national goodwill coincided, not coincidently, when Americans began to learn more about him. It occurred on April 16, 2008, when George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson did something unique that night, they questioned Obama about his troubling associates. The liberal blogs and the MSM were in hysterics; bias, they screamed. Rick Hertzberg, writing in The New Yorker, complained that:

Yet for most of the next hour Gibson and Stephanopoulos limited their questioning to the following topics: Obama’s April 6th remark about “bitter” small-towners; whether each candidate thinks the other can win; the Obama family’s ex-pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. … Obama’s failure to wear a flag lapel pin; and Obama’s acquaintance with a college professor in his Chicago neighborhood who, while Obama was in grade school, was a member of the Weather Underground. And the problem wasn’t just the questions’ subject matter, or the fact that all but the last had been thoroughly raked over already; it was their moral and intellectual vacuity.

Regardless of what Hertzberg considers moral and intellectual vacuity, it’s incontrovertible that Obama is good friends with a terrorist and, because of Ayers’ past, many of us consider that immoral. What really happened during the debate in April was that Obama experienced a real vetting (which was mild next to what Hillary had been subjected to in previous debates), and then Clinton cleaned his clock in every important contest after Americans learned of his despicable friends and watched his evasive answers. But of course no one was allowed to criticize Obama then; it was in such bad taste to question The One.

Although Hertzberg downplays Obama’s association with the odious Ayers by making his views seem like something from the past, the picture below from 2001 shows his hatred for the United States continues to today:

In May, Larry Johnson wrote that:

if you are involved with politics you ought to understand that if you hang with, work with, and politic with a guy who is an unrepentant terrorist that it might reflect badly on you. In fact, you should put some distance between yourself and said terrorist.

Sensible advice for a politician. Because, Johnson continues:

The only doubt is whether the Democrats will insist on finding out the truth first or will let the Republicans serve them a steaming pile of crap come the fall. And while the image of Bill Ayers gleefully stomping the American flag makes the rounds, Obama’s vain attempt to portray himself as a new kind of non-politician will be stomped into oblivion.

These documents were provided to me by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. They include the original grant application submitted by Bill Ayers and Anne Hallett to Brown which hosted the national Annenberg Challenge.

In addition these documents include the program reports and annual and semi-annual reports prepared on a regular basis by the Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Ken Rolling. Rolling had been recruited to head the CAC from a position at the Woods Fund where he had been active in support for the controversial 1988 reform of Chicago schools.  Obama’s Developing Communities Project received more than $27,000 from the Woods Fund during that period.

I have posted the documents in the precise form that they were provided to me. There are some missing pages.  Within the annual reports are included financial statements and minutes of the Board of Directors, which was chaired by Obama.

My analysis of the history of the CAC can be found here.  The key to understanding the CAC is its political context.  The CAC was established to shore up support for the Local School Councils established in 1988.  The LSCs were a new power center set up to watchdog teachers, principals and school administrators.  While Ayers celebrates it as a form of battling “bureaucracies” and as a democratic reform, in fact it has disturbing authoritarian overtones and was the source of resistance by union teachers and professional administrators and was not actively supported by major black organizations like Operation Push.

One example of the political firestorm that the CAC helped fuel was its effort to spend millions of dollars through a Leadership Development Initiative to recruit and train candidates for the LSCs.  This proposal from the CAC Collaborative, co-chaired by Bill Ayers, was sent to the Board of Directors, chaired by Barack Obama, where it ran into objections from Arnold Weber, former President of Northwestern University and a representative from the business community.  

At about this same time, Mayor Daley was leading the charge to gut the entire LSC structure that Ayers, Obama, Mike Klonsky* and others had fought to create and build.  The CAC was seen by Ayers as a way to protect and sustain the LSCs against the attempt to re-centralize power over the troubled schools in the hands of the Mayor.

Obama led the effort on behalf of the CAC board to reach an accomodation with the Ayers-led CAC Collaborative to shape the Leadership Development Initiative.  After Obama’s intervention, Weber’s objections ceased (as far as I can tell from the records I have been provided) and the proposal went forward.

*Mike Klonsky was a former SDS comrade of Ayers and later helped found a maoist party in the United States, travelling to meet with Chinese leaders in 1977 for their endorsement of his effort here. Klonsky’s Small Schools Workshop received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CAC headed by Obama and Ayers.

The Documents

The Original CAC Grant Proposal submitted by Ayers and Hallett

CAC First 1996 Program Report

CAC Second 1996 Program Report

CAC Interim Report 1997

CAC Annual Report 1997

CAC Annual Report 1998

CAC Mid Year Report 1999

CAC Annual Report 1999

CAC Mid Year Report 2000

CAC Annual Report 2000

……………..

From my blog, Global Labor and Politics.

I am a lawyer, a law professor and a political scientist on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. I teach courses on the global capital markets, the international economy, corporate governance and international labor and human rights. Prior to joining the faculty I was in private legal practice in New York and in Palo Alto. I also have an extensive background in the labor movement and advise a wide range of unions, workers and institutional investors on financial and legal issues. This website is an independent project and hence is my responsibility and it is not affiliated in any other way with the law school or Santa Clara University. You can email me off line comments at sjfd2001@yahoo.com

The Challenge through a multi-million dollar Leadership Development Initiative intervened in the School Council elections in the middle of what was known as the Chicago School Wars. At the same time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was pushing, successfully, to gut the power of the Councils.

6) In the Palmer of his hand: 

In 2008 Klonsky ran a blog on the official Obama campaign website on education policy and “social justice” teaching. When discussion of the Klonsky blog emerged in the blogosphere, it was promptly shut down by the campaign and all of the posts made by Klonsky were removed from the site.

10) The Great Debate: George v. Barack