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.

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.

The Fruit of ACORN's Marxist Union Cousin, SEIU

Caveats: language & violence

St. Louis, Thursday


I.O. wonders if Crispus Attucks was watching, from a house in Heaven.


Tampa, Thursday

it begins