Repost: Obama's ultra-leftist backers

Today, June 23, 2008, the blog Gateway Pundit adds another piece to the selective history of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Barack Obama's first public speech was at an Occidental College event sponsored by the Students for a Democratic—Society a militantly leftist organization. 60's radical Tom Hayden played a pivotal role both as founder and as principal author of this student group's basic manifesto, the "Port Huron Statement." This document condemned the American political system as the cause of international conflict and a variety of social ills -- including racism, materialism, militarism, and poverty.

Barack Obama does not include his time at Occidental College on his resume but old friends and former teachers remember his role in protesting college investments in firms doing business in South Africa during the apartheid era. [...]

1969 Hayden's students for democracy group began imploding into factions. One of them, a group calling itself Weatherman, was elected to SDS leadership and proclaimed that the time had come to launch a race war on behalf of the Third World and against the United States. The Weatherman declared "war on AmeriKKKa" at its Flint War Council in 1969.

The new entity dissolved Hayden's Students for a Democratic Society and formed a terrorist cult in its place, which was given the name Weather Underground.

Is it really surprising then that after his first public speech at Occidental College Barack Obama would just happen to find himself working several years with William Ayers, the founder of the terrorist cult Weather Underground, in Chicago?

The following article, originally posted April 28, 2008, by RezkoWatch, adds more to the SDS story.

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In July 1996, the New York Times reported that Marilyn Katz, a former aide to Mayor Harold Washington and now a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)'s bid for the presidential nomination, "oversaw security for Students for a Democratic Society, a radical group at the eye of the Chicago protests" during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. "She was there."

Katz is a loyal foot soldier in a notable effort by the city and the Democratic National Committee to counterspin 1968 so vigorously that it almost becomes a source of civic pride, the gist apparently being: Then we gave you broken heads; now we bring the Bulls and Jim Belushi. Chicago '96, the host committee, has assembled a cadre of ex-radicals like Katz who are eager to share good news. Mayor Daley has held a huggy "reconciliation" with the former Chicago Seven member Tom Hayden. Even the police are taking sensitivity classes. What about those grainy shots of students getting clubbed in Lincoln Park? Consider 'em spun. "It's time to replace that footage," says Julie Thompson, a spokeswoman for Chicago '96. "Our story is now."

Fast forward to October 2, 2002, when Barack Obama delivered his then little-noticed but now-famous speech at a Chicago antiwar rally. On the event's fifth anniversary, activist Marilyn Katz, one of the rally's organizers, and now a member of Sen. Obama's national finance committee, posted the following on the blog of Chicagoans Against the War & Injustice (CAWI), which she had "put together", relying upon "some of her old contacts she met organizing anti-war demonstrations for Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s."

The rally in Chicago on October 2nd, 2002 was not organized by a politician or a recognized political force. Quite the contrary. It was organized by a loose group of friends—veterans of the women’s movement, the student movement, the civil rights movement, who alarmed by the prospect of what they considered an unwise and unfounded march to war and aware, yet seeing no one—from politicians to pundits to the press daring to speak out against a seemingly all-powerful republican juggernaut,—and fearing that if they did not speak out the war, the very room for disagreement with the White House on any issue would vanish, took it upon themselves to reclaim the public space for dissent.

Meeting in a living room in Chicago just ten days earlier, we chose to act agreeing that on October 2nd, 2002, we would assemble in Chicago’s Federal Plaza to stand against the war. With a gut feeling that other Americans also thought the invasion of Iraq was foolhardy, if not immoral and absurd, but with no assurance than anyone would come to a demonstration we agreed that "If we were five, we would be five." "If we were without any elected officials, we would be an involved citizenry. But we would take a stand."

But we were not alone. In fact nearly 3,000 people assembled in Federal Plaza on that day responding to the flurry of emails (a new organizing technology for us) that seemingly liberated people from their sense of isolation and offered them the opportunity of collective action - of community. Black, Latino, White, veterans of the peace and women’s movements, the 60s, high school and college youth, community activist—a mosaic of the City. Long time leaders like Jesse Jackson, Juan Andrade and Julie Hamos and a new voice.... not yet known to the crowd, to the media or to the nation.... the voice of State Senator Barack Obama."

Katz and former SDS president Carl Davidson, "two perennially engaged ’60s veterans and ex-SDS members", Jeff Epton wrote December 15, 2003, in In These Times, were "key organizers" of the October 2, 2002, anti-war demonstration. Originating as Chicagoans Against War with Iraq (CAWI), by December 2003 CAWI had morphed into Chicagoans Against War and Injustice. Davidson explained, "as the war transformed from invasion to occupation, CAWI activists managed to avoid splits over sectarian and strategic differences, and committed to stay together and move from 'protest to politics'."

In 2005, Katz and Davidson co-authored Stopping War, Seeking Justice. Davidson is "now a figure in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, an offshoot of the old Moscow-controlled CPUSA," Cliff Kincaid wrote February 18, 2008, for Accuracy in Media.

Davidson is also an Obama supporter, now heading up a group called Progressives for Obama. On his personal blog Keep On Keepin' On, Davidson recently defended Sen. Obama's comments about small town people being bitter.

Katz appears to paint her SDS activities in a less colorful manner than the events of 1968 relate. In the April 18, 2008, Chicago Sun-Times, Katz said she had "met Ayers when he was 17 and they were members of Students for a Democratic Society, a peaceful group from which the Weather Underground splintered." (emphasis added)

Katz also told the Sun-Times that Sen. Obama's relationship with former domestic terrorist William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn—with whom Obama has been acquainted since at least 1995 when he launched his political career at the Ayers-Dohrn Hyde Park home—"should not be a campaign issue."

As much has already been written by RezkoWatch about Ayers and Dohrn, who served as SDS secretary, nothing more will be added here.

Now the head of MK Communications and a registered lobbyist with the City of Chicago, Katz has personally contributed $1,000 to Obama for America, Obama's presidential campaign fund. Katz, and Allan J. Katz, a shareholder and chairman of the Policy Practice Group at Akerman Senterfitt of Tallahassee, Florida, as well as a Member of the Florida Democratic Committee and Democratic National Committee, and a Tallahassee City Commissioner, are joint bundlers committed to raising a minimum of $200,000 for Obama's campaign.

Another Katz and Ayers associate—and Obama supporter—is Mike Klonsky. In 1968, he was SDS national chairman and a "demonstration organizer". Klonsky "would go on in post-SDS years to form the October League (Marxist-Leninist) and Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), part of the new communist movement that emerged in the 1970s."

Klonsky was named by Ayers in the 1990s to head the Small Schools Workshop (see his blog). In 1996, Klonsky, like William Ayers, was a consultant for Mayor Richard M. Daley's "agenda for public schools."

Now Klonsky maintains a community blog subtitled Freedom Teachers at MyBarackObama.com.

Tom Hayden, the SDS co-founder who organized the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago, has endorsed Sen. Obama.

Hayden authored the SDS political manifesto, known as the Port Huron Statement, which the group's founding members adopted in 1962. This document condemned the American political system as the cause of international conflict and a variety of social ills -- including racism, materialism, militarism, and poverty.

Todd Gitlin, SDS president from 1963 to 1964, is now a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University and a regular contributor to Josh Marshall's TPM Cafe. He blogs at ToddGitlin.com. Gitlin was contacted April 18, 2008, by The New Republic to respond to Sen. Obama's Philadelphia speech about his hate-spewing pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Gitlin's critique could hardly be expected as unbiased, since he had already "bet" on Obama February 4, 2008.

Paul Booth is a founder and the former National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and former President of Chicago's Citizen Action Program (CAP), formed in 1969 by trainees from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), according to Discover the Networks. Currently, Booth is an assistant to Gerald McEntee, president of the public employees union AFSCME.

In 1973, "radical activists" Booth and his wife, Heather Booth, founded The Midwest Academy (MA), a "training organization ... for a variety of leftist causes and organizations", which "describes itself as 'one of the nation's oldest and best known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change.'"

One of MA's funders is the Woods Foundation of Chicago, on whose board Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) served 1999 to December 2002 as a paid director with domestic terrorist William Ayers. In 1999, MA received a $75,000 from the Woods Fund of Chicago. In 2002 MA received $23,500 for its Young Organizers Development Program.

Additionally, in February 2004 Paul Booth contributed $500 to Obama's senatorial campaign. No record has been found documenting contributions to Obama's presidential campaign.

Updates

Be sure to check out the list of CAWI "allies" listed on the righthand sidebar, which includes: Arab American Action Network (AAAN) Chicago; ACORN; MoveOn.org; and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH.

One needs to look no further than the April 2, 2008, Progressives for Obama petition to find a celebrity list of ultra-leftists who support Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)'s candidacy for the 2008 presidential nomination.

Also see:

William K. Stevens, Activists Meeting to Plan a New U.S. Agenda, New York Times, August 7, 1987.

Trevor Loudon, Obama-file 14 Socialist Led Mega-Union Backs Barack Obama, New Zeal, February 16, 2008.