When the Cloward-Piven Strategy was Unveiled by Richard Cloward & Frances Fox Piven, in 1966

by Trevor Loudon, at New Zeal & KeyWiki Blog

Many commentators on the U.S. left have tried to minimize the significance and importance of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, made famous by writer James Simpson and TV personality Glenn Beck.

According to Simpson and Beck, Columbia University sociologists, husband and wife team Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, devised a strategy in the early 1960s, to crash the U.S. economy and bring on socialist revolution by deliberately overloading state welfare rolls to the point of bankruptcy.

Many on the left regard this hypotheses as gross exaggeration at best, deliberate misrepresentation at worst.

Cloward and Piven outlined their strategy at the Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference , held September 9-11, 1966 at the Hotel Commodore, New York, in a panel entitled;

"Poverty and Powerlessness Organizing the Poor: Can it Be Done?"

Below is an eye witness report on this historic panel written by conservative journalist Alice Widener - a highly regarded authority on the U.S. left of the day. The report appeared in Widener's USA Magazine, September 16, 1966 page 28 and 29.

Read it and judge for yourself Cloward and Piven's intentions. Emphasis added. [I.O. Ed.: photo, of Richard A. Cloward]

Dr. Cloward's paper for the Socialist Scholars opened with a call for a systematic strategy of "irregular and disruptive tactics" among the poor, urging them to overburden city and state governments with their "demand,," as a means of forcing these governments to turn to the federal government for more and more funds.

Prof. Cloward said, "We need, to devote more attention to disrupting corporate power." He described the poor as mere "supplicants" in the welfare state, and said they have most to gain "from a major upheaval in our society." He said our welfare system is "lawless" and violates human and civil rights. He called for welfare recipients' forcing city welfare departments to impose the labor union "check-off system" for welfare clients, by withholding 50 cents to a dollar for each client as dues to a fund for unionization of welfare clients to impose their demands for special benefits.

Prof. Cloward explained that each welfare client in New York City is entitled under existing law to special benefits for clothing, blankets, etc. He said that in 1965 city special benefits welfare payments amounted to "about $40 per client" and he called for each welfare client to demand $100 to $1,000 in such benefits.

He said there are now 55,000 welfare clients in the city, but that by 1967 there probably will be 60,000. The poor, said Dr. Cloward, could become a stake and powerful organization "in small portions of power" within the context "of a broader point."

Dr. Cloward said he had consulted with legal experts and "we estimate that $200 million in special grants" could be obtained in New York City alone: Dr. Cloward said that 'in Cleveland, on June 20, 1966, 30 to 35 welfare recipients were joined by others in a demonstration that included the Hough area.

In early August, he said, he himself had taken part in "a national conference to organize the welfare recipients movement: Dr. Cloward said he personally had taken part in Wednesday night meetings with welfare clients "week after week, month after month," and that as a result, "Next Monday there will be a demonstration of welfare recipients at City Hall"

Dr. Cloward read his paper to the Socialist Scholars Conference in the East Ballroom of the Hotel Commodore on Saturday afternoon, September 10. On Monday night, September 12, CBS and NBC TV newscasts showed the demonstration of screaming welfare recipients that took place right on Cloward schedule. They shouted demands for more "special benefits," though the present city general welfare budget (including hospital services, etc.) is almost a billion dollars annually, the Mayor says the city is "broke," and New Yorkers were hit this year with a city income tax in addition to state and federal taxes to pay for it all.

Prof. Cloward was right about the success of his Wednesday night meetings. Evidently his strategy of "disruptive tactics" will require costly police reinforcements at city welfare departments throughout our nation.

The prospects delighted Prof. William Ryan, formerly of Harvard now of Yale, who described himself to the audience as "a radical without portfolio." He said, "I have been enchanted with the Cloward strategy of blowing a fuse in the welfare agencies, housing developments, and among unmarried mothers. I wonder what would happen if there was a really systematic overload."

When a member of the audience went to the floor microphone during the question period to ask whether Dr. Cloward's strategy is a substitute for "Socialist organization of the proletariat, the industrial factory workers," Dr. Frances Piven of Columbia replied from the dais: "I really only want to make one point -- the disruption of the system. Welfare rolls will begin to go up; welfare payments will begin to go up-the impact will be very, very sharp. The mounting welfare budget will increase taxes, force cities to turn to the federal government. We have to help people to make claims; for this they will organize and act."

The 1966 Socialist Scholars conference was organized by many of the leading radicals of the day including former and current Communist Party supporters Louis Menashe, James Becker, Philip Foner, Eugene Genovese, Paul Sweezy and James Weinstein - later a founder of the Marxist based Democratic Socialists of America, in which today Frances Fox Piven serves as an honorary chair.

One time Soviet Spy and Communist Party member Victor Perlo also addressed the conference, as did the Party's chief theoretician Herbert Aptheker.

No doubt all were impressed by Cloward and Piven's cunning plan.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<> I.O. <>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I.O. Notes: See the agenda for the 1966 Socialist Scholars Conference [posted here].

Does anyone reading this believe it ridiculous to think that fascism is a Marxist methodology? Such a person might note this line-up of conference panelists and their subject matter:

The Crisis of the Comintern: Fascism and the Popular Front

Communist Theories of Fascism, 1921-1935

• John M. Cammett, Rutgers University

The Formation of the Popular Front in France: Socialist-Communist Unity of Action in 1934

• Leslie Derfler, Carnegie Institute of Technology

No Pararan! - Notes on the Origins of the Frente Popular

• Robert G. Colodny, University of Pittsburgh

Radical Royalty - Obama's Federal Reserve Pick - Sarah Bloom Raskin

Obama File 104, by Trevor Loudon, of New Zeal

A seat on the U.S Federal Reserve Board, carries tremendous power. The seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. A full term is fourteen years. During that time, a board member can influence the financial policies of the world's most powerful economy. In some ways the seven men and women, have more power than Congress or even the President himself.

That's why appointments to the Federal Reserve Board deserve as much scrutiny as those to the Supreme Court.

President Barack Obama recently made three nominations to the Federal Reserve Board, Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin.

Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond, Sarah Bloom Raskin

While most "Obama watchers" said little, some commentators from the left did take notice;

Democratic Socialists of America member, Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute was pleased with the appointments;

I think these are all great choices, and ones that will move Fed policy in the needed direction -- responsive to the needs of middle-class and working families.

Of the three named, one stands out in particular- Sarah Bloom Raskin. That surname should ring alarm bells.

That's because Sarah Bloom married into what is perhaps the closest America has to a radical "royal family".

Sarah Bloom Raskin is the wife of Jamin (Jamie) Raskin, a legal academic, Maryland State Senator and the son of Marcus Raskin - founder of the deservedly notorious Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

In 1963 Marcus Raskin and his partner, the late Richard Barnet founded their radical "think tank" in Washington DC. IPS quickly grew to become a highly influential, source of ideas, guidance and training for the U.S. and international left. Its critics claimed that IPS consistently supported policies that aided the foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union and weakened the position of the United States.

Since its founding, IPS has consistently followed a pro-socialist line on foreign policy, defense and the economy and has spawned a large number of spin-offs, other think tanks and public affairs organizations following the same radical agenda.

In 1978, in an article in National Review, Brian Crozier , director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict described IPS as the "perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB".

IPS became a place where leftist Congressmen, Senators and Capitol Hill staffers could mingle with third world radicals, East Bloc diplomats and even a few identified KGB agents.

The FBI was intensely interested in Raskin's institute, until IPS sued the agency and extracted a written agreement forbidding any further FBI surveillance - an agreement, I believe, that still stands today.

In the early 1990s IPS worked with Democratic Socialists of America and socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders to set up the now more than 80 strong Congressional Progressive Caucus. In 2003 IPS also helped set up the communist dominated "peace" umbrella organization, United for Peace and Justice.

Jamie Raskin admits that he grew up "in an environment of progressive politics".

An Harvard graduate and a "lifelong progressive Democrat", Jamie Raskin has brought "innovative ideas and a hands-on approach to government and politics at every level."

He has served on the Montgomery County Hate Crimes Commission, the Takoma Park Election Redistricting Task Force, and the Takoma Park Gun Policy Task Force.

In 1992, he served on President Clinton's Justice Department Transition Team for the Civil Rights Division. He was elected as a Kerry-Edwards Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

A member of the board of FairVote, the nation’s leading electoral-reform group, Raskin is best known as "a champion of voters’ rights". In his 2003 book, “Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus The American People,” Raskin documented the Rehnquist Court majority’s "assault on voting rights" in the 2000 election, and "placed Bush v. Gore in the context of a series of Supreme Court decisions undermining the participatory rights of the people."

Focusing on the Rehnquist majority’s statement that the “individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote” for president, Raskin argued for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote (and to get one’s vote counted) to all Americans.

Raskin has served as a Washington-area Board Member for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's heavily communist infiltrated National Rainbow Coalition.

He has worked closely with far left Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. to advance a voting rights amendment in Congress, and with IPS affiliated Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton to "advance a voting rights agenda for the people of Washington, D.C."

Unsurprisingly Jamie Raskin has done pro bono legal work for SEIU, ACORN, Greenpeace and the radical led Students Against Sweatshops. He has written for two Democratic Socialists of America and IPS affiliated journals, The Nation and In These Times.

Raskin has also served on the board of Progressive Democrats of America, an IPS spinoff , which is effectively the activist wing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

On March 10, 2006, IPS supporters, Yolande Fox and former Algerian Ambassador, Cherif Guellal hosted a book launch, in their Washington home, for Jamie Raskin's most recent book entitled "Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Versus the American People" at their home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Fox was a former Miss America (1951) from Alabama. Cherif Guellal was a former top lieutenant to Algerian revolutionary leader Ahmed Ben Bella - winner of the 1964 Lenin Peace Prize. Guellal also had ties to the British Fabian Socialist Society in the early 1960s. During the 1967, Six-Day War, Algeria severed diplomatic relations to protest United States support for Israel. Instead of returning to Algeria, Guellal became a Fellow at IPS.

Other attendees included Jamie's father and Marcus Raskin, , James L. Hudson and Ira Lowe.

Cherif Guellal, Marcus Raskin, James L. Hudson

Jim Hudson, a long time Washington "insider' was recently appointed by President Obama to the Directorship of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Ira Lowe is a trial lawyer and IPS supporter. He formerly represented IPS affiliate and Progressives for Obama founder, Tom Hayden.

Incidentally, IPS Trustee , Democratic Socialists of America member and Progressives for Obama co-founder Barbara Ehrenreich said of Raskin's book "This brilliantly argued and meticulously researched book both alarms and inspires"

Sarah Bloom has no known direct ties to the Institute for Policy Studies, but she did work for IPS connected Washington law firm Arnold & Porter from 1988 to 1993.

A current Arnold & Porter partner , Jeremy Karpatkin, is a former Democratic Socialists of America youth organizer. In 1992, in Chicago Karpatkin directed field operations during the successful Senate run of far left Democratic Party operative Carol Moseley Braun. Coincidentally Barack Obama ran the Project Vote voter registration drive that year that helped Moseley Braun to win. In 2004 Obama took over the same Senate seat.

Nearly three decades earlier, pioneering trial lawyer Charles Halpern became involved with IPS through Arnold & Porter. The firm handled IPS's legal work and partner Thurman Porter had been an IPS trustee.

Halpern became corporate secretary to IPS, keeping minutes and records. he began to attend IPS seminars and parties at the Institute and at the home of founder Marcus Raskin, where he met radicals "like Paul Goodman and Ivan Ilich".

When Raskin and several other activists were arrested for conspiring to obstruct the military draft, Halpern helped with the defense. Halpern flew with Raskin to a meeting with the other defendants and their lawyers at the Greenwich Village home of radical lawyer and secret Communist Party USA member Leonard Boudin - father of Weather Underground terrorist Kathie Boudin. Fellow terrorist Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn would later raise Kathie Boudin's son Chesa Boudin after she was jailed for her terrorist crimes.

The radical Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) was founded in 1968 by Charles Halpern and three other lawyers, with the assistance of former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who chaired the CLASP board.

A veteran of several communist fronts, Goldberg was, in the late 1940s, a Chicago law partner of Abner Mikva. A life long time associate of communists and socialists and an IPS affiliate, Mikva went on to employ a young law clerk named Elena Kagan and to mentor and befriend a young Chicago lawyer named Barack Obama.

In 1999 Charles Halpern went on to found a New York based "think tank" Demos, an official partner organization of IPS. Among those recruited to set up and join the first board of Demos was a then obscure Illinois State senator named.......Barack Obama.

Several years later a young San Francisco communist named Van Jones was also recruited to serve on the Demos Board.

Strangely, Jones was suggested as a possible "Green Jobs Czar" for the Obama administration by Demos and IPS staffer Chuck Collins, in an article written several months before the 2008 Presidential elections.

Robert Kuttner is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos and serves on the board of the Economic Policy Institute with Larry Mishel. He is closely aligned to to Democratic Socialists of America, which has described Kuttner as a "socialist".

Kuttner was very pleased when Obama nominated Sarah Raskin to the Fed. He wrote in the Huffington Post March 14, 2010;

Obama has also just appointed three relative progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of the state financial regulators. There is not a single businessman or banker in the lot...

Will Sarah Bloom Raskin sail into fourteen years at the helm of the U.S. economy, on a pleasant face and zero scrutiny?

Or will Senate Republicans and the media do their job and ask some serious questions?

Obama file 103 here // Obama file 105 to come

Trevor Loudon, interviewed on The Awakening, with Arlen Williams, 5/24/2010
Trevor Loudon, interviewed on The Awakening, with Arlen Williams, 9/29/2009

Ray Stevens, 'Come to the USA' & We have the Flip Side, 'Come to the Greenwood Avenue House Party'

Come to the USA, illegal seniors and senoritas!

"Come to the USA"
h/t: Jim S., Alan E., Frances Fox P., Cesar C., et. al.

alas, not "everything is beautiful"

And you are cordially invited to come directly to your Welcome Center!

5046 S. Greenwood Ave., Chicago, IL 60615-2806
complements of Barry, Michelle, Tony Rezko, and the Giannoulias banking family

As Nina Easton (link) and Glenn Beck have reported, visiting homes is the new "in thing to do," Obama-style, so what better way to get accustomed to your new country away from country!

Glenn Beck's "The One Thing," yesterday featured Obama's ACORN's commissar sister union, SEIU, and their new house party idea. Keep watching past his initial remarks, about four minutes in:


Glenn Beck's "The One Thing," 5/20/2010
I have a similar story. When I was seven years old, the young and the hallucinogenic SDS revolutionaries were marching and rioting outside our door, 725 Geneva St., Lake Geneva, WI 53147, on July 4, 1966, also the same date, a year later. Our humble, old parsonage and the church next door were located right at the downtown section of that little resort town for wealthy Chicagoans -- Geneva and Broad, one block north of Main. Store windows were broken, cars messed with, and a park statue or two were torn down or damaged. The bikin' "Hells Angels" were also involved -- a communist/anarchist mix of the kind commonly orchestrated by Marxist instigators. The mix is seen in the black and red colors of anarcho-communism (and the Obama family's garb, at their eerie election victory part, in Chicago's Grant Park).

I remember a dream I had, back then; the rioters getting more and more violent, my older brothers decided they needed to defend the house. They shot down from the windows of the front room, second floor, the room where I slept at night. If I recall correctly, I was disappointed because they used up all the windows or all the rifles and I didn't get in on it, just seven years old.

Maybe that "guy in Obama's neighborhood," Commonwealth Edison CEO, Thomas Ayers' little Billie was there at the time, free from college for the summer, with his swaying and staggering SDS comrades. He wouldn't have wanted to miss being in the thick of setting it up. Maybe after we all welcome the La Raza illegals at the Obamas', we should walk over to the Ayers/Dorhn household and do some open air preaching. I am reminded of Ayers' recent blurt-out, "I considered myself partly an anarchist then and I consider myself partly an anarchist now. I mean, I'm as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist which is to say I find a lot of the ideas in anarchism appealing. I'm very open about what I think, and nobody here is surprised about what I think."

I'm sure that you were open with Barry and that he was not surprised, Bill. And right, Glenn, the banker's children will always remember it. - AW

Please ask and promote The Three SOVEREIGNTY NOW Questions.

Any ACORN Investigation 'Will Lead to the White House': Rep. Steve King Video

Posted by "Brian" in Freedom's Lighthouse, along with his comments, there:

Here is video of Iowa Rep. Steve King speaking at a forum on ACORN, where he said he is convinced that any investigation of ACORN will reflect poorly on the Obama administration. "These roads will lead to the White House."

King said "Obama has worked for ACORN," and he has been part and parcel of that - Project VOTE in particular." That entire network is something the Chicago Organization that now sits in the White House knows a lot about."

King also pointed out that the new White House Counsel - Robert Bauer - sent a letter to the Attorney General last year urging an investigation of President Bush and the McCain Campaign for "alleging that ACORN was promoting fraudulent voter registration activities."

h/t: shirley

James Simpson: Questioning Conspiracy

An excerpt from Jim Simpson's latest article, the excellent remainder found at its DC Independent Examiner page:

Questioning Conspiracy

Cloward and Piven were not merely two lone sociology professors conspiring on teacher salaries to bring down America. They were prominent socialists and lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest and oldest worldwide socialist organization. Therein lay their strength, both in recruitment and resources. The leftist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) held seminars for activists on how to use the CPS. Cloward and Piven’s Nation article was reprinted a record 30,000 times.

These folks were not alone. And they only added to the plethora of anti-American strategies being used, building on the already utilized Alinsky method. Also, we have been infiltrated since the 1930s by the KGB and their sister agencies in other communist countries whose goal has not merely been to obtain military secrets, but much more to create a subversive infrastructure in this country. The IPS, mentioned above, is largely a KGB front. All of its principals are American communists, who, by definition, work for the communist international, still run by the KGB despite the alleged "fall" of communism.

All these groups, the think tanks, the DSA, ACORN, ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the Communist Party and all their offshoots are led by people who know each other, have worked in the "movement" for years, and share the same goals, often trading places in the various organizations. It is well organized, powerful, and even deadly when necessary. Connections to foreign intelligence agencies like the KGB are well hidden, but very likely much closer than even a lot of people in the movement realize (those, like many prominent Democrats, are the useful idiots).

Finally, it doesn't take much for a conspiracy to work when you give participants a vested interest. That was an overtly stated component of the CPS. Cloward and Piven said:

First, this plan promises immediate economic benefits. This is a point of some importance because, whereas America's poor have not been moved in any number by radical political ideologies, they have sometimes been moved by their economic interests.

continued...

James Simpson: Cloward-Piven Government

"It is high time we overcome the denial...."

Excerpt 1, from Jim Simpson's article today, in DC Independent Examiner; I fervently suggest clicking through and reading the entire piece:

Cloward-Piven Government

In September of last year, American Thinker published Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for sabotaging our society. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show, Bill O’Reilly and now Mark Levin.

Excerpt 2:

The real goal of “healthcare” legislation, the real goal of “cap and trade,” the real goal of “stimulus” is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to government control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves, except in their ability to deliver power, and will make matters much worse, for that is their design.

Excerpt 3:

It is time to acknowledge that these people are our enemies. They don’t use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II. It is high time we overcome the denial, and fully digest and internalize this fact, with all its ugly ramifications.

Excerpt 4:

Every single citizen who cares about this country should be spending every minute of his/her spare time lobbying, organizing, writing and planning. Fight every initiative they launch. It is all destructive. If we are to root out this evil, it is critical that in 2010 we win competent, principled leaders willing to defend our constitution and our country. Otherwise the malevolent cabal that occupies the seat of government today will become too entrenched.

Tonight on "The Awakening" at 9pm ET, 6pm PT, we will examine our opportunities for activism, especially electoral activism, and some of the prominent organizations at work. You may listen at this Sentinel Radio location.

5th ACORN Video Released Today, by O'Keefe, Giles & BigGovernment.com

From Fox News -- James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles released their fifth ACORN video today, at the National Press Club, in Washington, DC. This tape was made in ACORN's Philadelphia office and was shown, to refute ACORN's claims that they were turned away, when the office staff understood they were pimp and prostitute.



The video was presented without audio, since it is intended to be used as evidence in court. U.S. Representatives Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) and Steve King (R-IA) attended this press conference.

h/t: Fb. Stephanie

Update ~ from biggovernment.com:

**BREAKING** ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in Philadelphia, PA Part I

by James O'Keefe *UPDATE Below* Alinsky Rule #1: "Power isn't only what you have, it's what the enemy thinks you have."

Now that ACORN lied to you, Media Matters, what are you going to do?

**UPDATE 2:24 PM EST** We muted the audio of the ACORN employees...

Read more...

Deepak Bhargava 'Advancing Change in the Age of Obama'

New Zeal, Obama File 89

Trevor Loudon was our guest on Sentinel Radio's "The Awakening," this past, Monday, 9/28, 9-11pm ET,,, 6-8pm PT (it is archived for listening, here, also downloadable from the Sentinel Radio page in BTR).

by Trevor Loudon

Indian born, New York raised, Harvard educated, Deepak Bhargava may have seldom crossed paths with Barack Obama-but he is a key player in 44th president's movement to transform America.

Deepak Bhargava is connected to almost every aspect of the Obama movement-from George Soros to ACORN, to Democratic Socialists of America, to The Nation, to the communist dominated United for Peace and Justice, to a whole raft of "progressive" non profits.

In the video below, Deepak Bhargava opens the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum December 10 2007 - a forum exclusively for thousands of community organizers including ACORN personnel.

Note that Obama promises to invite community organizers to the White House even before his inauguration, to contribute to setting his "agenda for change."

Deepak Bhargava's main base for activism is the Washington DC based Center for Community Change, (CCC) which he joined in 1994, after several years as legislative director for ACORN.

Bhargava became the Center's Executive Director in 2004 and has successfully pushed the organization to "develop the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change the policies and institutions that affect their lives."

Deepak Bhargava has sharpened the Center's focus on grassroots community organizing as the "central strategy for social justice and on public policy change as the key lever to improve poor people's lives."

Bhargava conceived and led the Center's work on immigration reform, which has resulted in the creation of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a "leading grassroots network pressing for changes in the country's immigration laws."

He has spearheaded the creation of innovative new projects like Generation Change, a program that recruits, trains and places the next generation of community organizers, and the Community Voting Project, which brings "large numbers of low-income voters into the electoral process."

Helping Bhargava change America, is CCC board member Heather Booth, the former Students for a Democratic Society radical, turned Democratic Party power player.

Booth runs the Midwest Academy out of Chicago-churning out hundreds of "community" and union organizers.

Booth and her husband Paul, a labor union power broker, both have close ties to the US's largest marxist organization, Democrativc Socialists of America.

As does Deepak Bhargava.

Over September 20-22 2002 Frances Fox Piven, Deepak Bhargava and Holly Sklar were billed as keynote speakers at “Confronting the Low-Wage Economy” at the First Congregational Church-Washington, DC, organized by Democratic Socialists of America.

This conference will kick off DSA’s Low Wage Justice Project, which is designed to bring the human consequences of the low wage economy to the attention of the American people.

DSA member Frances Fox Piven is the co-author of the famous Cloward-Piven Strategy developed in the 1960s-widely used by ACORN, DSA and US "community organizers" ever since.

The strategy calls for organizers to encourage the "poor" to enroll for every entitlement possible, in order to bankrupt the US government, to bring about chaos and eventual social revolution.

In his speech to the conference Deepak Bhargava refered favourably to the work of DSA founder [Michael Harrington and his book "The Other America"-which is widely credited with sparking the massive growth of US welfarism in the 1960s under Kennedy and Johnson.

So I do want to say that I enter this new period with a tremendous amount of optimism. Before nine-eleven we saw larger numbers mobilized in the streets on a whole range of issues, immigration, living wages than we'd seen in a long, long time. There is no question that nine-eleven has taken the wind to some degree out of those sails, but I think both the demographic, the organizational, the economic realities underneath that momentum at the local level are still present, and it's up to our imagination and our will to rekindle it over the next couple of years. But I think we can make great strides on this anniversary of Michael Harrington's The Other America in doing something serious about it...

Deepak Bhargava's radical ties extend in several directions.

At the higher level, Bhargava is a board member at George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI).

On November 29, 2006 Bhargava participated in a roundtable discussion at OSI New York entitled "How Do Progressives Connect Ideas to Action?"

Individuals and organizations with similarly progressive goals often dilute their power by working alone or even working at cross-purposes. As Americans who are politically left of center move forward, questions of infrastructure, communication, and collaboration are particularly important.

Participants included:

• Robert Borosage-A trustee of the far left Washington "think tank" Institute for Policy Studies and founder/CEO of Campaign for America's Future.
• Rosa Brooks Daughter of IPS Trustee and DSA member Barbara Ehrenreich. Now a senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy.
• Anna Burger AFL-CIO, later a Progressives for Obama endorser and key player in labor union/Obama White House dealings.
• Eric Foner DSA member.
• Katrina vanden Heuvel IPS trustee, The Nation editor.
• John Podesta Center for American Progress founder. CAP is a key source of "progressive" personnel for the Obama Administration.
• Joel Rogers Key DSA aligned "progressive" activist. A founder of the radical New Party which Obama joined in Chicago in 1995.

As of July 17, 2007 Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change was affiliated with United for Peace and Justice-the US peace movement umbrella group.

UFPJ was intiated to oppose the Iraq war by the Institute for Policy Studies . It is completely dominated by communists and radicals, which doesn't seem to bother Bhargava.

Also leading organizations affiliated to UFPJ in July 2007, were Communist Party members Judith LeBlanc, Rosalio Munoz, Alfred Marder and Erica Smiley, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism aligned activists Leslie Cagan, Attieno Davis, Howard Wallace and Van Gosse, DSA leaders Jason Schulman and Lucas Shapiro, Freedom Road Socialist Organization Maoists, Dennis O'Neil and Juliet Ucelli, IPSers Phyllis Bennis, Saif Rahman and Arthur Waskow and a very familiar name to readers of this blog-Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Bhargava serves on the editorial board of the The Nation--effectively the house journal of the IPS.

Fellow Editorial board members include;

• Barbara Ehrenreich DSA member, IPS Trustee, New Party and Progressives for Obama founder.
• Eric Foner DSA member.
• Lani Guinier Daughter of communist Ewart Guinier.
• Tom Hayden SDS and Progressives for Obama founder.
• Deborah Meier DSA member and speaker in 1998, with Barack Obama at the memorial service of Chicago DSA member Saul Mendelson)
• Victor Navasky IPS Trustee, The Nation.
• Marcus Raskin IPS founder.

Below is a video of Deepak Bhargava speaking at a The Nation forum in April 2009, on the prospects for "progressive" gains under Obama's "stealth agenda".

On February 26 2009, Mike Lux, Miles Rapoport of Demos, Deepak Bhargava and Gloria Totten of Progressive Majority spoke at the Center for Community Change in New York at a forum entitled "Progressives in an Obama World: The Role of the Progressive Movement in a Democratically Controlled Washington".

The forum blurb identified Obama as a "progressive" and went on to say:

Since the 2004 election, the progressive movement has built a powerful infrastructure of think tanks, media outlets and advocacy organizations. Frustrated by the conservative ascendancy and the dominance of conservative ideas, individuals and institutions have put forward new paradigms for government and promoted a bold vision for the future.

But now a progressive holds the highest office in the land. As the movement struggles to define its role in the Obama era, important questions remain unanswered: What is the role of such organizations in Washington and how can they best create political space for Obama to act? On what issues should the movement compromise and on which take strong stands? How can progressives build consensus to make their efforts more effective?

The panel will feature progressive leaders Deepak Bhargava, Miles Rapoport and Mike Lux; the speakers will draw on two new books, ‘Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era,’ and The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, as they discuss what progressives can do to create momentum for greater boldness at a time when opportunities and challenges abound.

Miles Rapoport is another former SDSer, DSA associate, ACORN defender and ardent Obama supporter. Interestingly Rapoport became president of New York "think tank" Demos in 2000-while Obama was still a founding Trustee of the organization.

Van Jones, incidentally is still listed as a Demos Trustee.

Below is another Bhargava speech from February 2009, given to the Liberty Hill foundation "Advancing Change in the Age of Obama".

Mild-mannered Deepak Bhargava is at the heart of the US social revolution.

He and Obama may never have exchanged more than a few words, but they are assuredly working for the same future.

This article originally appeared in Trevor Loudon's blog, New Zeal.

Parallel Lives? Obama's 'Go To' Man, Patrick Gaspard and New York Socialism

New Zeal, Obama File 88

Trevor Loudon was our guest on Sentinel Radio's "The Awakening," this past, Monday, 9/28, 9-11pm ET,,, 6-8pm PT (it is archived for listening, here, also downloadable from the Sentinel Radio page in BTR).

by Trevor Loudon

In June 2009 Patrick Gaspard, a Brooklyn-based, 41-year-old Democratic operative, became White House director of the Office of Political Affairs.

Patrick Gaspard’s official responsibility is to provide the president with an "accurate assessment of the political dynamics affecting the work of his administration" and to "work with powerbrokers around the country to help push the president’s agenda".

According to Rep. Gregory Meeks, "He’s a low key, behind-the-scenes, no-fingerprints kind of guy. I need something, I call Patrick. And if he calls, it’s a big deal. He’s close to the president.”

Considerable attention has been focused on Gaspard's ties to the radical community group ACORN.

This post looks at Gaspard's ties to the groups behind ACORN-the groups that helped President Obama during his Chicago days-Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Patrick Gaspard was reportedly born in Kinshasa, Zaire, after his father, a political opponent of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, fled there.

Patrick Gaspard’s father moved with his wife from Haiti to "post-liberation" Zaire, when its pro-communist leader, Patrice Lumumba, appealed to French-speaking academics of African descent to teach there.

Three years after Patrick Gaspard’s birth, the family moved to New York.

Like Obama, Patrick Gaspard wrote poetry. Like Obama , Patrick Gaspard grew up admiring third world leftists and revolutionaries. He reportedly idolized Aime Cesaire, a radical poet/politician from the French colony of Martinique.

Cesaire was elected to the French Parliament with the French Communist Party, but later left to form his own leftist party in Martinique.

Cesaire also taught the anti-colonialist Marxist theorist Frantz Fanon, of whom Obama wrote admiringly in his autobiography, Dreams From My Father.

Patrick Gaspard got his start in politics, in the mid 1980s, organizing demonstrations in New York City for "social justice" in Haiti.

He got his first taste of campaign work in the 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson-like Obama a product of the Chicago socialist machine.

Patrick Gaspard went on to David Dinkins’ first New York mayoral race, as an intern in Dinkins' office and then to City Hall, when Dinkins won the New York Mayoralty.

Dinkins was at the time, a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

In 1997, outgoing Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger, also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, enlisted Gaspard for her doomed mayoral campaign against Rudy Giuliani.

After the Messinger debacle, Gaspard became chief of staff to Councilwoman Margarita Lopez, a radical feminist from the Lower East Side.

In 1999, Lopez loaned Gaspard out to help Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to organize a march in protest of the police shooting death of Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant.

Gaspard was allegedly a key organizer of the civil disorder that followed Diallo's death.

The union was one of the central organizers of the civil disobedience that followed, and 1199 President Dennis Rivera and then-Political Director Bill Lynch asked Gaspard to coordinate those efforts.

Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199, recruited Gaspard to the union- where after some he rose to the rank of union Executive Vice President.


It is important to realize that Local 1199 is one of New York's most powerful and militant labor unions.

Founded in 1932, the union was left led from the start and was investigated in 1948 by the House Un-American Activities Committee for Communist "infiltration".

At at a March 2007 meeting to celebrate the [[Communist Party USA]] donation of its papers to New York's Tamiment Library, Steve Kramer, executive vice president of Service Employees Union [[Local 1199]], spoke of the Communist Party’s role in building and maintaining his union.

Recounting 1199’s “''disastrous”'' 1984 strike and internal strife in which “''the union almost tore itself up'',” Kramer said that but for the party’s efforts, “''1199 would have been a small union''” Today, with nearly 300,000 members, it is the world’s largest union local.

When the Communist Party split in 1991, several Local 1199 officials joined the dissenting faction and took many comrades into the breakaway Committees of Correspondence.

Among those Local 1199 officials signing the Communist Party dissenter's "An initiative to Unite and Renew the Party" document, which brought tensions to crisis point, were Paul Friedman (Local 1199 Vice President), Rafael Pizarro (Local 1199 organiser), Geoffrey Jaques (associate editor 1199 News) and Marshall Garcia (Local 1199 executive Vice President).

Friedman, Pizarro, Jacques and Garcia all went on to support Committees of Correspondence.

Pizarro also went on to help found the radical New Party, which Obama joined in Chicago in 1995.

Many other 1199ers also supported Committees of Correspondence, including Lenore Colbert (Local 1199 Vice President), Pat Harris (Local 1199 Vice President), David Kranz and Socorro Laguerra (Local 1199 rank and file), Pam Mills (Local 1199 Seattle), Bruce Richard (SEIU San Francisco, now a Local 1199 Vice President), Angela Doyle (Local 1199 Vice President) and Nelson Valdez (Local 1199 Vice President}.

Doyle, Valdez and Richard still hold senior positions with the union.

In addition, leading Committees of Correspondence member Mael Apollon is involved with the Local 1199 Child Care Fund.

Also of note is the late Merrilee Milstein , who was from 1972 to 1994, Vice President of the New England Local 1199. Milstein was a hard left activist in her own right and was married to Communist Party member Brian Steinberg.

Milstein left 1199, to become assistant to then Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapoport-now president of the ACORN supporting, DSA linked, New York think tank Demos.

Barack Obama was one of Demos' first Trustees when it was established in 1999.

Gerry Hudson, now a vice president of the SEIU, also got his start at Local 1199 in New York. Hudson is a member of Democratic Socialists of America and also serves on the board of the Apollo Alliance-founded by Obama's recently departed "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones.

In 2003, Patrick Gaspard was granted leave from Local 1199 to work as the deputy national field director for the presidential campaign of Howard Dean. After Dean was eliminated from the race, Gaspard became national field director for George Soros’ political action group America Coming Together.

Later Gaspard helped Yvette Clarke win the Congressional seat vacated by Democratic Socialists of America member and Communist Party supporter Major Owens.

Clarke is now a member of the leftist Congressional Progressive Caucus-which has long and deep ties to DSA.

In 1995 Patrick Gaspard was an organizer for the New Jersey chapter of the New Party, a creation of ACORN, DSA and Committees of Correspondence.


By 2001 Gaspard was a leading activist in the New Party offshoot, the New York Working Families Party-a DSA/ACORN/Committees of Correspondence/Communist Party collaboration.

Gaspard and Bertha Lewis of ACORN, wrote a letter to the July 2, 2001 issue of The Nation, "In the course of their letter, Gaspard and Lewis describe their extensive joint involvement in Working Families Party activities." The letter is signed, "Bertha Lewis, ACORN, WFP; Patrick Gaspard, SEIU State Council, WFP."

According to DSA's Democratic Left Summer 2001

Veterans of the left will remember that the 1968 Peace and Freedom Party and the 1980 Citizens Party arose at moments of greater left-wing strength and did not significantly alter the national electoral landscape. Nor has, unfortunately, the New Party, which many DSAers work with in states where “fusion” of third party and major party votes is possible (such as the DSA co-sponsored Working Families Party in N.Y. State).

The DSA youth wing's 2004 "Life After Bush" Conference included, "A series of well-attended workshops detailed the nuts-and-bolts of electoral activism, lead by veteran campaigners from trade unions and the NY DSA-affiliated fusion Working Families Party."

Speakers at Life after Bush included:

• Cornel West, DSA, New Party founder, 2008 member of Barack Obama's Black Advisory Council. A Progressives for Obama endorser.
• Frances Fox Piven, DSA, New Party founder, co-creator of the famous Cloward-Piven Strategy for wrecking the US economy. A Progressives for Obama endorser.
• Steve Max DSA Director of Organizing and Training, Midwest Academy Chicago.
• Leslie Cagan Committees of Correspondence, National Coordindator, United for Peace and Justice
  
• Ian Williams DSA, a correspondent for In These Times and The Nation
• Bertha Lewis, Co-Chair, Working Families Party, Executive Director, New York ACORN.

Bertha Lewis

DSA member Jay Mazur is also prominent in the Working Families Party and is also an endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.

Patrick Gaspard is still listed on the advisory board of the the WFP aligned Working Families Center, alongside:

• Working Families Party co-chair Bob Master
• Working Families Party Secretary and New York ACORN head, Jon Kest.
• SEIU's Hector Figueroa-a regular speaker at DSA's Socialist Scholars Conferences - including the 2004 event where Van Jones also spoke.
• Andrea Batista Schlesinger -on the board of the Oakland based Applied research Center which is closely aligned with Van Jones' Ella Baker Human Rights Center.
• Former Committees of Correspondence National Coordinating Committee member Nathan Newman, who recently wrote in the Daily Kos, "I knew Van (Jones) pretty well back in the early 90s when we were both involved in community organizing efforts, including involvement in a variety of left-leaning groups."
  

Barack Obama, as a young man, admired third world revolutionaries like Frantz Fanon. He went into community organizing and the DSA/Committees of Correspondence aligned Chicago left, before moving on to the White House.

Van Jones, as a young man, admired third world revolutionaries like Amilcar Cabral. He went from radical community organizing into the San Francisco Committees of Correspondence and the New York DSA aligned left (like Obama, Jones was a Trustee of the DSA aligned Demos), before moving on to the White House.

Patrick Gaspard, as a young man, admired third world revolutionaries like Aime Cesaire. He went into radical organizing and mixed with the DSA/Committees of Correspondence aligned New York left, before moving on to the White House.

Parallel lives? Or just the way US socialism works?

a.k.a., Marxism, a.k.a., communism, a.k.a., tyrannically control you

This article originally appeared in Trevor Loudon's blog, New Zeal.

New York Times Says the Darnedest Things, Regarding ACORN, Van Jones, and so on and so forth

What do you make of this? Yes, it is humorous, but, I don't think that was the main effect they were going for, over at Marxstream Media, Manhattan.

THE PUBLIC EDITOR
Tuning In Too Late

By CLARK HOYT

Published: September 26, 2009

ON Sept. 12, an Associated Press article inside The Times reported that the Census Bureau had severed its ties to Acorn, [sic, ACORN] the community organizing group. Robert Groves, the census director, was quoted as saying that Acorn, one of thousands of unpaid organizations promoting the 2010 census, had become “a distraction.”

What the article didn’t say — but what followers of Fox News and conservative commentators already knew — was that a video sting had caught Acorn workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes. The young woman in streetwalker’s clothes and her companion were actually undercover conservative activists with a hidden camera.

It was an intriguing story: employees of a controversial outfit, long criticized by Republicans as corrupt, appearing to engage in outrageous, if not illegal, behavior. An Acorn worker in Baltimore was shown telling the “prostitute” that she could describe herself to tax authorities as an “independent artist” and claim 15-year-old prostitutes, supposedly illegal immigrants, as dependents.

But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes — closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser — suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

Some editors told me they were not immediately aware of the Acorn videos on Fox, YouTube and a new conservative Web site called BigGovernment.com. When the Senate voted to cut off all federal funds to Acorn, there was not a word in the newspaper, although a report in the Caucus blog that day covered the action. When the New York City Council froze all its funding for Acorn and the Brooklyn district attorney opened a criminal investigation, there was still nothing.

Readers noticed. James Jeff Crocket of New Britain, Conn., spoke for many when he said he was sure he knew why the paper was silent: “protecting the progressive movement.”

The piece goes on, tip-toeing an imaginary line between confession and denial, apology and excuse. This, particularly, brings a lasting smile:

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.

Liberal bias? Naaaa. The solution to the not really bias? Let us see that again: "...assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies." The "controversies" of "opinion media?" Is that what you call journalism, from those pesky Americans who happen to believe government should abide by the Constitution, Mr. Hoyt? And, do you really purport, your comrades are so Old World that they fail to heed any particular kinds of new, er... "opinion media?"

Here is how it closes. (Still grinning and shaking my head, as fingers move around the keyboard.)

But Rosenstiel said The Times has a particular problem with conservatives, especially after its article last year suggesting that John McCain had an extramarital affair. And Republicans earlier this year charged that the paper killed a story about Acorn that would have been a “game changer” in the presidential election — a claim I found to be false.

“If you know you are a target, it requires extra vigilance,” Rosenstiel said. “Even the suspicion of a bias is a problem all by itself.”

The public editor can be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.

Do you really think he is reachable? Look up! Take my hand, Clark! What are you trying to say, Mr. Hoyt? Hint: what were you just trying not to say?

Here is one email, to the public editor:

Come out from that closet,
Before the door closes,
And brings more pain,
To your reporters' toeses.

Escape "the polemic world...
...of" which your noses,
Snort up all their lines,
from the Daily Kozes.

Okay, maybe not straight from Daily Koz, all the time; call it poetic license. And, if you read this as you begin your day, Clark, I don't mean to distract you too much, during the morning conference call with Pravda John Podesta.

Hard Evidence! Proof that Obama's Hawaii and Chicago Communist Networks were Linked?

New Zeal, Obama File 77 - 6/1/2009

Trevor Loudon will be our guest on Sentinel Radio's "The Awakening," today, Monday, 9/28, 9-11pm ET,,, 6-8pm PT (link, here).

It may be said that there have been three significant African-American sociological movements in America. The primary path, bearing positive results, took root with Frederick Douglas, gained form with Booker T. Washington, then accelerated with Martin Luther King. It is the way of claiming equality in the God-given privilege of pursuing one's free and righteous way, in the American Republic.

A deviant path is traced to W.E.B. DuBois, key founder of the NAACP and a Communist. Frank Marshall Davis was among those who sought to accelerate that movement. While King was taking the lead, in the explosive development of civil rights and equal regards, Davis, among other subversions, was tinkering with a time bomb, named Barack Obama. (Obama's connections to and participation with the other deviant movement, of separatist Black Muslims, may be treated elsewhere.) Here, Mr. Loudon explores some of the bomb making.

by Trevor Loudon

It is now well established that Barack Obama was linked to the Hawaiian Communist Party network through his boyhood/teenage mentor Frank Marshall Davis.

It is also well known that after moving to Chicago, Obama linked up with the local communist networks.

Manning Marable, a leader of the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism claims that Obama "understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years..."

This leads to two key questions.

A. Were the Hawaii and Chicago networks connected?

B. Did Obama's connection to Frank Marshall Davis in any way influence his progress up the Chicago political ladder?

If the answer is yes to both, there are significant implications.

It means that that the Communist Party USA was watching Obama from an early age and was willing to help his political career.

Frank Marshall Davis was active in the Chicago Communist Party until he moved to Hawaii in late 1948.

I speculated in this post that Davis may have known left wing journalist Vernon Jarrett in post war Chicago. A connection would be significant because the Jarrett family has played a very important role in Obama's rise to power.

Both Jarrett and Davis worked in the communist dominated South Side Community Art Center and on the communist influenced Chicago Defender newspaper, in late 1940s Chicago.

I have since found conclusive evidence that Davis and Jarrett not only knew each other, but worked together in another Communist Party dominated organisation-The Citizen's Committee to Aid Packing House Workers.

"organized to support the united packing-House workers of America C.I.O. now on strike"

The letter above is dated April 12, 1948. Note that CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) was at the time a communist controlled labor federation.










To the left is a partial list of Citizen's Committee to Aid Packing House Workers officials.

Note the names Oscar C. Brown (Treasurer) and Louise T. Patterson (Assistant Treasurer), F.M. Davis and Vernon Jarrett.












To confirm the connection, below is a close-up of the committee's publicity committee. Note that it is chaired by Vernon Jarrett and includes Frank Marshall Davis.


That the Citizen's Committee was communist influenced is beyond doubt.





Louise T Patterson was the wife of Illinois Communist Party vice-chairman and attorney William Patterson and a prominent Party member in her own right. Louise Patterson was still a leader of the Illinois Communist Party well into the 1970s.






Further down the page was list of the organization's "Food and groceries committee". Named among them was Ishmael Flory, a leader of the Illinois Communist Party from the late 1930s until his death in 2004.

Incidentally, one of the eulogists at Flory's funeral was Timuel Black, a well known member of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy&Socialism and a long time friend and political supporter of Barack Obama.




Oscar C Brown-later a famous jazz musician under the name Oscar Brown jnr, was also at the time a Communist Party member. he joined in 1946 and was expelled around 1954.



In 1948 Vernon Jarrett left his job as journalist at the Chicago Defender to start a black oriented radio show "Negro Newsfront" with Oscar Brown.

Jarrett was clearly on the far left and almost certainly, like his colleague Frank Marshall Davis, a covert member of the Communist Party.

Jarrett worked hard promoting socialist causes including the communist controlled Progressive Party.


Vernon Jarrett went on to become the Chicago Tribune's first black syndicated columnist and was a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.

According to a Washington Post obituary May 25th 2004

Mr. Jarrett continually shone a light on African American history and pertinent issues in Chicago and throughout the country. He stoked the political embers in Chicago that led to the 1983 election of the city's first African American mayor, Harold Washington.

Vernon Jarrett was a key influence in Washington's decision to run for the Chicago mayoralty and remained a key supporter through his four year tenure.

Harold Washington defeated the Daley machine to win the mayoralty backed by a coalition led by Chicago's Communist Party and the local branch of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

DSA member and socialist historian Paul Buhle, wrote in a 1992 article for the Encyclopedia of the American Left;

Communists also gained from long-standing political contacts in the black community. Victories of black mayoral and congressional candidates with decades — old ties to the CP — a short list would include Coleman Young and George Crocket in Detroit, Gus Newport in Berkeley, and somewhat more ambiguously, Harold Washington in Chicago

Washington was actively involved in Communist Party fronts such as the US Peace Council and the Chicago Committee on Southern Africa, right up to winning the mayoralty-with Party support. After victory he stacked his administration full of communists, socialists and sympathisers to create one of the most far left administrations in US history-cut short only by his pre-mature death after four years in office.

I quote from remarks by Illinois Communist Party organiser John Bachtell to a "Special District Meeting on African American Equality and Building the Communist Party and Young Communist League, Chicago", IL September 30, 2007.

The legacy of Harold Washington’s election and his administration is in the collective consciousness not only of the African American community, but the entire city. Many of his democratizing achievements endure 20 years later.

The historic election of Washington was the culmination of many years of struggle. It reflected a high degree of unity of the African American community and the alliance with a section of labor, the Latino community and progressive minded whites. This legacy of political independence also endures...

This was also reflected in the historic election of Barack Obama. Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election. Once again Obama’s campaign reflected the electoral voting unity of the African American community, but also the alliances built with several key trade unions, and forces in the Latino and white communities.

It also reflected a breakthrough among white voters. In the primary, Obama won 35% of the white vote and 7 north side wards, in a crowded field. During the general election he won every ward in the city and all the collar counties. This appeal has continued in his presidential run.

Barack Obama has stated that Harold Washington's victory in 1983 was the spur that made him leave New York to move to Chicago.

Vernon Jarrett was also a fan of Barack Obama. He watched his career from its early stages and became an ardent supporter.

In 1992 Obama worked for the ACORN offshoot, Project Vote to register black voters in aid of the Senate Campaign of Carol Moseley Braun. Unsurprisingly Moseley Braun also had strong Communist Party ties and was Harold Washington's legislative floor leader.

Obama helped Moseley Braun win her Senate seat, then took it over himself in 2004-backed of course by the same communist/socialist alliance that had elected his political predecessors Harold Washington and Carol Moseley Braun.

Commenting on the 1992 race, Vernon Jarrett wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times of August 11th 1992;

Good news! Good news! Project Vote, a collectivity of 10 church-based community organizations dedicated to black voter registration, is off and running. Project Vote is increasing its rolls at a 7,000-per-week clip...If Project Vote is to reach its goal of registering 150,000 out of an estimated 400,000 unregistered blacks statewide, "it must average 10,000 rather than 7,000 every week," says Barack Obama, the program's executive director...

Dee Myles is a Chicago activist and chair of the Education Commission of the Communist Party USA. In 2004, after Vernon Jarret's death from cancer she penned this tribute for the People's Weekly World of June 5th.

Readers like me can be extremely selective of the journalists we read habitually... We are selective about the journalists to whom we become insatiably addicted, and once hooked we develop a constructive love affair without the romance...

Such was my experience with Vernon Jarrett, an African American journalist in Chicago who died at the age of 86 on May 23. I became a Vernon Jarrett addict, and I am proud of it!

Vernon Jarrett’s career as a journalist in Chicago began and ended at the Chicago Defender, the African American daily paper. In between, he was the first Black journalist at the Chicago Tribune, and I first began to read his articles during his tenure at the Chicago Sun-Times

Jarrett’s claim to fame is that he was a partisan of the cause of African Americans in the broad democratic tradition of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois...

Robeson and DuBois were both Communist Party members. On April 9th, 1998 at Chicago's South Shore Cultural Center, Jarrett hosted a Paul Robeson Citywide Centennial Celebration event, with his old comrade and Party sympathiser Margaret Burroughs and former Communist Party members Studs Terkel and his old friend Oscar C.Brown.

Dee Myles continues;

Jarrett was fanatical about African Americans registering and voting in mass for socially conscious candidates. He championed Harold Washington like a great warrior, and this March, from his hospital bed, wrote an article appealing to Black Chicago to turn out to vote for Barack Obama in the Illinois primaries. Obama astounded everyone with an incredible landslide victory as the progressive, Black candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. From his sickbed, Vernon Jarrett issued a clarion call, and the people responded.

The Jarrett/Obama conection did not end with Vernon Jarrett's death-it moved to a higher level with his famous daughter-in-law Valerie Jarrett.

A former Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development under Harold Washington, Jarrett continued to work in the mayor's office into the 1990s.

In 1991, while Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard Daley, Jarrett hired Michelle Robinson, then engaged to Barack Obama.

Later Valerie Jarrett ran the finances for Obama’s 2004 Senate bid and served as treasurer of Obama's HOPEFUND.

The relationship is more than professional-Jarrett is regarded as one of the Obamas' closest friends and advisors.


According to Take Political Action May 24th 2008;

"She’s always been the other side of Barack’s brain.” That’s how an Obama insider described Valerie Jarrett as an Obama campaign aide announced Thursday night the former CTA chief and current Habitat Co. CEO is taking on a larger role to help her close friend win his White House bid.

The development comes as Jarrett, a charter member of Sen. Barack Obama’s kitchen cabinet, has been formalizing her portfolio and stepping up the pace within the past few weeks as a top advisor within the campaign.

Though she will be part-time, Jarrett will be one of the most visible and powerful African-Americans in the top rungs of the Obama operation...

Today Valerie Jarrett serves as one of three Senior Advisors to President Obama. She is Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, and Chairs the White House Commission on Women and Girls.

Frank Marshall Davis works closely in communist causes with Vernon Jarrett in Chicago. Davis moves to hawaii where he eventually meets and mentors a young Barack Obama. Then Obama moves to Chicago where his career is promoted by both Davis's old colleague Vernon Jarrett and the Communist Party. Vernon Jarrett's daughter-in-law employs Barack Obama's fiance, befriends the family and becomes one of President Obama's most trusted advisors. The Communist Party throws its entire weight behind Obama's presidential campaign.

Are we expected to believe that this is all mere coincidence?

Would there be an Obama/Jarrett relationship today, if there had been no Frank Marshall Davis/Jarrett connection through the Communist Party of post war Chicago?

What role, if any, has the modern Communist Party USA played in fostering that relationship in more recent times?

The Communist Party USA continues to back their "friend" Barack Obama.

How deeply has the Communist Party been involved in advancing Obama's political career-through the Jarrett family, or by other means?

The answers to these questions will have major implications for the future of what's left of the free world.

This article originally appeared in Trevor Loudon's blog, New Zeal.