Daily Archives: December 24, 2017

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton
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United States Secretary of State

Hillary Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is currently serving as the 67th Secretary of State in the Obama Administration. She was a Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009, and ran for the Democratic Primaries in 2008. She was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001 as wife of President Bill Clinton whom she married in 1975.

Early Life

Hillary Clinton was born Hillary Diane Rodham to Hugh Ellsworth Rodham and Dorothy Emma Howell in Chicago, Illinois on Oct. 26, 1947. She has two younger brothers, Hugh Rodham and Tony Rodham. Her parents, who were United Methodist‘s who moved the family to Park Ridge, Illinois when Hillary was three-years-old. Her father operated a small business in the textile industry[1] while her mother was a homemaker.[2]

Early Political Activism

Growing up in a politically conservative household, Hillary began working for the Republican party from the age of thirteen. However during her college years, prompted by events such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, she changed her political views by the late 1960’s. She left the Republican Party for good in 1968.

Law School & Career

Hillary majored in political science at Wellesley Collge in 1965 before entering Yale Law School where her research focused on children and the law.

Marriage to Bill Clinton

In late Spring, 1971, Hillary began dating Bill Clinton who was also studying law at Yale. In 1974, following repeated requests from Bill Clinton to marry him, Hillary accepted. They were married on Oct. 11, 1975 in the Rodham’s living room. On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea, her only child.

Moving left

Hillary Clinton grew up as a Goldwater Republican, like her father, in the middle-class Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. By the time she was a freshman at Wellesley, when she was elected president of the College Republicans, her concern with civil rights and the war in Vietnam put her closer to the moderate-liberal wing of the GOP led by Nelson Rockefeller. By her junior year, she had to be talked by her professor into taking an internship with Rep. Gerald R. Ford and the House Republican Caucus. In her senior year, she was campaigning for the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy.
“I sometimes think that I didn’t leave the Republican Party,” she has written, “as much as it left me.”[3]

Schecter connection

Alan H. Schecter, far left Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Wellesley College served as Hillary Clinton‘s senior thesis advisor, and directed the Wellesley in Washington internship program in which she participated as a student. [4]

Alinsky friendship

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Alinsky Thesis

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The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, was on the work of Chicago radical Saul Alinsky.
The Clintons who asked Wellesley in 1993 to hide Hillary Rodham’s senior thesis from the first generation of Clinton biographers, according to her thesis adviser and friend, professor Alan H. Schechter, who describes taking the call from the White House. “A stupid political decision.”
Wellesley’s president, Nannerl Overholser Keohane, approved a broad rule with a specific application: The senior thesis of every Wellesley alumna is available in the college archives for anyone to read — except for those written by either a “president or first lady of the United States.”
So far, that action has sealed precisely one document: Hillary Rodham’s senior honors thesis in political science, entitled ” ‘There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”
Rodham took her thesis title — “There Is Only the Fight…” — from T.S. Eliot:
“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again.”
She began with a feminist jab at the clichés of male authors: “Although I have no ‘loving wife’ to thank for keeping the children away while I wrote, I do have many friends and teachers who have contributed to the process of thesis-writing.” She thanks particularly “Mr. Alinsky for providing a topic, sharing his time and offering me a job.”[5]

Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein

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Hillary Rodham served a:) clerkship in 1971 at one of America’s most radical law firms, San Francisco based Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.
One partner at the firm, Doris Brin Walker, was a lifelong Communist Party USA member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America’s most “dangerously subversive” lawyers. The Oakland-based firm was renowned for taking clients others rejected as too controversial, including Communists, draft resisters, and members of the African-American militant group known as the Black Panther Party. The other partner Malcolm Burnstein, maintained a lifetime commitment to radical causes.
The firm was involved in a volatile Black Panthers case the summer Mrs. Clinton worked there: the trial of Huey Newton for the 1967 killing of an Oakland police officer. Treuhaft represented a Newton associate whose role in the trial may have helped Newton win a series of mistrials and, eventually, the dismissal of all charges related to the officer’s death.
Partners at the firm said it was likely Mrs. Clinton also worked on politically sensitive cases involving a Berkeley student activist denied admission to the California bar over incendiary rhetoric, Stanford physician interns fighting a loyalty oath at the Veterans Administration, and men claiming conscientious objector status to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Mrs. Clinton’s only public recollection of her work at the Treuhaft firm is that she handled a child custody matter.
Mrs. Clinton’s most vivid memories from that summer may be personal ones that have nothing to do with the law firm with which she clerked. A fellow Yale law student, President Clinton, shared the Berkeley apartment where she was staying. The pair soon got serious and would move in together when they returned to New Haven that fall.
Mrs. Clinton’s decision to work at the Treuhaft firm was rooted in the turbulence, chaos and radicalism that buffeted Yale after she entered law school there in 1969. Most campuses saw their share of foment, but Yale saw more than its share in the spring of 1970 because of the impending criminal trial in New Haven of a Black Panthers’ leader, Bobby Seale, and several co-defendants, for kidnapping and murdering another member of the Panthers. Many, including Yale’s president at the time, doubted that Seale and other black militants could get a fair trial. As students prepared for a national student strike on May Day 1970, a suspicious fire broke out in the basement of a Yale law library.
Mrs. Clinton has written about joining a “bucket brigade to put out” the library fire and about organizing round-the-clock patrols in the wake of the blaze.
Ultimately, the May Day protest turned Yale into an armed camp, occupied by thousands of soldiers, but the event yielded little of the feared violence. That came three days later at Kent State University in Ohio when National Guard soldiers shot and killed four students protesting the Vietnam War.
The Black Panthers’ trial didn’t actually begin until the fall. During the lead-up, Seale’s attorney, Charles Garry of San Francisco, became a regular presence in the courtyards at Yale Law School.
At some point, Treuhaft and his wife, Jessica Mitford, passed through New Haven and threw a party to raise money for the Panthers’ defense. According to Gail Sheehy‘s biography of Mrs. Clinton, “Hillary’s Choice,” the future senator attended the Treuhaft-Mitford party. Many have surmised that this event laid the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton’s clerkship at Treuhaft’s law office.
One of Treuhaft’s partners, Malcolm Burnstein, said Mrs. Clinton’s internship was arranged by a national student group. “She was sent to us by the Law Students’ Civil Rights Research Council,” Mr. Burnstein told the Sun. The group also paid Mrs. Clinton during her summer at the firm, he said. It is possible Mrs. Clinton selected the Treuhaft firm and then arranged funding through the council. That’s how she set up her first law-school summer internship working with the future founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman.
Mrs. Clinton’s only public recollection of her stint at the Treuhaft firm came in her 2003 memoir, “Living History.”
“I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland, California and he announced that he would like to go with me,” she wrote. “I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case.”
A review of some of Mr. Burnstein’s legal files now at the archives of the University of California at Berkeley shows that the Treuhaft firm also handled two major cases in mid-1971 involving political dissent. One involved a protest leader who was elected Berkeley student body president, Daniel Siegel.
Mr. Siegel passed his the bar exam in 1970, but his admission was blocked on grounds that he was morally unfit. He was criminally charged with inciting the 1969 “People’s Park” riot, which left one man dead, others injured, and hundreds arrested.
Mr. Siegel was acquitted of that charge, but bar officials said his statements prior to the riot and thereafter indicated he was not suited to be an attorney. They also asked him if he was a Communist, which he denied.
Mr. Burnstein appealed the bar committee’s rejection to the California Supreme Court, arguing that Mr. Siegel was being punished for his political beliefs. The court eventually sided with Mr. Siegel, who joined the bar in November 1973.
Two other dissenters whose case was pending during Mrs. Clinton’s summer at the Treuhaft firm were Peter Cummings and Peter Rudd. Both were medical students from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio who won internships at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. On arriving at Stanford, they discovered they were required to fill out loyalty oaths to do a required rotation at the nearby Veterans Administration hospital. “It was the typical, ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?'” Dr. Cummings recalled in a recent interview. He said he and Dr. Rudd were not Communists, but chafed at signing the oath. “I’ve always been very annoyed by and not a fan of this kind of loyalty oath,” Dr. Cummings said.
Through the American Civil Liberties Union, the pair became clients of Mr. Burnstein. In the ensuing legal challenges, which went before riders of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals at least twice, the government argued that disloyal medical students might try to kill unsuspecting veterans who sought medical treatment. Mr. Burnstein prevailed and the loyalty oath for Veterans Administration doctors soon wound up as a footnote of history.
As Mrs. Clinton left the Treuhaft firm in 1971, one of its partners was gearing up for the defense of a Communist and black revolutionary, Angela Davis, against murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges stemming from a 1970 shootout that left a California judge dead. Ms. Walker became the resident Communist on Ms. Davis’s legal team. “I was asked by the Party to participate in Angela’s case,” the lawyer said. She said no one else at the law firm, including Mrs. Clinton, worked on Ms. Davis’s case.
At the trial, held in 1972 at San Jose, the Treuhaft firm’s winning record held up again. A jury acquitted the polarizing African-American activist of all charges.
By the time Mrs. Clinton arrived at the Treuhaft firm in 1971, its reputation as a defender of left-wingers and radicals was well established. Indeed, those at the firm assumed that reputation drew the Yale law student in.
“She did want to work for a left-wing movement law firm. Anyone who went to college or law school would have known our law firm was a Communist law firm,” Treuhaft told Ms. Sheehy in 1999.
“This was an old-left, radical law firm,” a staff attorney there during Mrs. Clinton’s summer, David Nawi, said. “Treuhaft was suing the police and doing wonderful work with the black community in East Oakland before anybody else.”
A Yale Law student who worked as a clerk at the firm the summer before Mrs. Clinton arrived, Mary Nichols, said Treuhaft was open about his stint in the Communist Party. “Treuhaft, he himself was proud of having been a Communist at one time. This was not something that they hid in any way. They were not people stockpiling dynamite. They were a respectable law firm, but still you knew they had experimented in that kind of way,” she said.
Mr. Siegel, the Berkeley protester-turned-lawyer, said committed student leftists in 1971 would have viewed the firm’s Communist connections as quaint, perhaps even conservative. “We almost universally thought Communist Party people were sellouts,” he said. “People of my generation who were getting involved were Marxists, Maoists, even Trotskyists. The Communist Party was pretty unpopular, unless your parents were in it.”
The details of Treuhaft’s membership in the Communist Party were not formally disclosed until 1977, when his wife, Jessica Mitford, published a humorous memoir of their years in the Communist ranks. In “A Fine Old Conflict,” she reported that her husband signed up in 1943 and that she followed in 1944. Both left the party in 1958, she wrote.
Ms. Walker joined the party in 1942. “I’m still a Marxist, and that’s why I stayed in,” she said.
While many American Communists quit the party in disgust in 1956 following the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin’s crimes, those events do not seem to have been the impetus for the departure of Treuhaft and Mitford, who stayed on for another two years.
A journalist who edited a recently published collection of Mitford’s letters, Peter Sussman, said the couple’s falling out with the American Communist Party was driven largely by its unyielding bureaucracy.
“She was bored with it,” Mr. Sussman said. “It was ineffective. She had worked to reform it and that was unsuccessful, and to give the American party some autonomy from Soviet Communism.”
Mr. Sussman said Mitford, who died in 1996, was also “bitterly disappointed” about a decision the party made to cut ties with a group dedicated to resolving racial inequities in America, the Civil Rights Congress.
A collection of Mitford’s letters indicates that Republican political operatives knew about Mrs. Clinton’s work at Treuhaft’s firm months before the 1992 election, but apparently chose not to raise it despite her prominence in her husband’s presidential campaign. In a July 4, 1992 letter to a veteran civil rights activist, Virginia Durr, Mitford wrote, “There was a v. long article in Vanity Fair by Gail Sheehy, an interview with Hillary in which every detail of her life from childhood on was explored — no mention of the internship in Bob’s law office. Quite right, I thought, as obviously if that came out it would be prime meat for the Bush campaign.”
Mr. Burnstein said he, Treuhaft, and Ms. Walker agreed upon learning of Mr. Clinton’s presidential bid not to talk publicly about Mrs. Clinton’s clerkship because they anticipated it would become fodder for Mr. Clinton’s opponents.
“We expected it,” Mr. Burnstein said. “We were very carefully not talking to the press back then. … We did not want her being unfairly tarred with someone else’s politics. Hillary’s politics were not Bob’s politics, which were not Doris’s politics, which were not mine.”
“For Hillary to pick the most left-wing firm really at that time in the Bay Area, it’s still a surprise to me that more hasn’t been made of that,” Ms. Walker said. “It was such an obvious thing for them to pick up, but they didn’t, and I’ve never understood it.”[6]

Bernard Rapoport connection

As Texas swung from a Democratic stronghold to an increasingly Republican and conservative state, Marxist leaning businessman Bernard Rapoport continued to support liberal Democrats and their causes, both with his money and his extensive national political connections. His contributions to George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign put Mr. Rapoport on one of President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies lists; contributions to the presidential campaigns of both Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton helped nourish a 40-year friendship. Mr. Clinton was scheduled to deliver a eulogy at a memorial service in May 2012, in Washington DC.[7]

Children’s Defense Fund

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New World Foundation

Hillary Clinton writes about her involvement with the Children’s Defense Fund, headed by Marian Wright Edelman, but omits any mention of the New World Foundation (NWF). Hillary followed Edelman’s husband, Peter Edelman, as chairman of the NWF. Mrs. Clinton chaired the group during a time, 1982-1988, when it gave grants to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, a front group for the communist terrorists; the National Lawyers Guild, a one-time-identified communist front; and the Christic Institute, an extreme left-wing group of lawyers which practiced “legal terrorism” against citizens, retired military and intelligence officials, and others who were perceived to be supporting the cause of freedom from communism in Central America.
Peter Flaherty writes, “Hillary’s official biography prepared by the ’92 Clinton campaign makes no mention of her stint as NWF chairman, despite the fact that she oversaw some $23 million in foundation assets. A few journalists, like Dan Wattenberg of The American Spectator, did report on the NWF grants during the summer of 1992, but the major media paid almost no attention. There was no need for Hillary to defend herself.”[8]

Bill’s radical friends

Hillary Clinton also took advantage of Bill Clinton’s radical connections, many developed in his trips abroad. Strobe Talbott and Bill Clinton had been Rhodes Scholars in England together, for example, and Talbott and his wife, Brooke Shearer, “became friends of mine,” she writes. Brooke’s brother, Derek Shearer, another Yale graduate, became a friend of Bill and pro-Marxist economic advisor to Bill Clinton.[9]

Single-payer Bill

In 1994 Jim McDermott, John Conyers and Paul Wellstone promoted a “single-payer” health care bill (HR1200/S491).[10] Ellen Shaffer, a member of Wellstone’s staff told the People’s Weekly World that the authors had been “working closely” with Hillary Clinton. “She knows what they are doing” Shaffer said.[11]

Alamoudi connection

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FALN amnesty

Several U.S. lawmakers have championed a domestic terrorist group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (known by its Spanish initials of FALN) that seeks to impose a Marxist-Leninist regime on Puerto Rico and secede from the United States.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the FALN planted more than 130 bombs and killed at least six people. Reps. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), all left-wingers of Puerto Rican ancestry, embraced the cause of 16 convicted FALN members serving time in federal prison. Serrano called them “political prisoners,” according to the People’s Weekly World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA.
They campaigned to pressure then-president Bill Clinton to issue pardons to free the radicals, even though the terrorists themselves had not requested that their sentences be commuted. When Clinton agreed to grant them clemency in August 1999, Serrano blasted him for requiring them to renounce violence as a precondition of their release.
That presidential action caused problems for then-first lady Hillary Clinton, who was about to begin her campaign to become a U.S. senator. “President Clinton made his decision to release the FALN terrorists at the same time his wife was campaigning for the Senate in New York,” the Senate Republican Policy Committee reported in a policy paper.
“Many commentators believe he hoped to win votes for his wife from the large Hispanic population in New York City. However, law-enforcement groups and victims’-rights groups were outraged, and his clemency offer did not poll well in New York state. His wife then opposed the granting of clemency, and the president denied that she was in any way involved in the decision.”
The clemency offer did not otherwise fit the pattern of Clinton’s behavior, the committee noted: “The president had only granted three out of the more than 4,000 clemency requests during his presidency.” The terrorists didn’t even ask for clemency, and in granting it Clinton “did not follow the procedures that have been in place since Grover Cleveland was president,” granting it “even though the Justice Department did not take an official position as required.”
Ninety-five senators condemned Clinton’s action, voting in a resolution that “the president’s offer of clemency to the FALN terrorists violates long-standing tenets of United States counterterrorism policy, and the release of terrorists is an affront to the rule of law, the victims and their families, and every American who believes that violent acts must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
A joint congressional resolution declared that “making concessions to terrorists is deplorable,” and that “President Clinton should not have granted amnesty to the FALN terrorists.”
Hillary Clinton changed her position, but not two of her colleagues-to-be. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) were the minority of two standing on the far left with the amnesty. [12]

FMLN

San Salvador, June 1 — Nearly two decades after the end of a U.S.-backed war against El Salvador’s rebels, a representative of the former guerrilla movement took power on Monday — with a top American official applauding.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the inauguration dressed in bright red, the color of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front. It was an image that would have been unthinkable in the 1980s, when the United States poured $6 billion into El Salvador to fight the rebel group backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union.
The FMLN laid down its arms in 1992 and joined the political system. But some U.S. lawmakers still worry about the party, fearing it could propel El Salvador into the orbit of anti-American countries such as Venezuela. Forty-five House Republicans wrote Clinton in March warning about “potential threats to our security interests” if the FMLN candidate, Mauricio Funes, won.
Clinton, however, told reporters here that she expects “a positive relationship” with Funes, who is considered by many Latin Americans to be a moderate. Her visit signaled the Obama administration’s effort to reach out to a more assertive Latin America altered by a “pink tide” of socialist victories in recent years.
After meeting with Funes , Clinton told him: “The United States stands ready to assist you and your new government. This is a commitment President Obama and I share.”
“The secretary wants to engage Funes, because we don’t want him moving all the way to the left,” said Rep. Elio Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, who was with the U.S. delegation.
El Salvador has been one of the staunchest U.S. allies in Latin America, maintaining troops in Iraq until this year. Funes immediately signaled a departure from his predecessors, announcing the resumption of diplomatic ties with Cuba. Still, the new government is expected to maintain a strong relationship with the United States. El Salvador receives $4 billion a year from immigrants in Washington and other U.S. cities, and it sells half its exports to the U.S. market.
In his inaugural speech at an amphitheater packed with men in red ties and women in red jackets, Funes hailed his two political heroes: President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, a moderate leftist, and President Obama.
The men, he said, were “proof that progressive leaders, instead of being a threat, represent a new and secure road for their countries.”
He also singled out Clinton, saying: “This woman honors America.”
Some opponents of Funes had predicted he would cozy up to populist leaders in Venezuela and Nicaragua and introduce socialism. But the only revolution promised by the 49-year-old former broadcast journalist was one against corruption and poverty.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega had been expected to attend, but did not.
Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said the FMLN has a democratic track record, holding many mayor’s offices and congressional seats in recent years. “The FMLN has been part of the architecture of representative democracy in El Salvador. El Salvador’s resemblance to other countries in Latin America governed by the populist left are quite minimal,” she said.
Funes, however, will likely face pressure to shift further to the left from others in the FMLN, including his vice president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, analysts said.
Funes’s inauguration was deeply emotional for many Salvadorans who suffered through the 12-year civil war, which left 75,000 dead. “We fought the battle so we could have this change,” said Cecilia Hermin Navarro, 68, a tiny woman in a red shirt who said she was tortured by police during the conflict.
“So many people died so this day could come,” said Fernando Aguilar, a 28-year-old government employee. Clinton’s presence, he said, “breaks the paradigm that the United States had in the past, that if the left wins, the U.S. closes the door.”[13]

Terrorist pardon

Joseph Connor, an author and anti-terrorism advocate, spoke to The Daily Wire about how his father was murdered by a Puerto Rican terrorist group, and how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was directly involved in pardoning the terrorists.
“When Hillary Clinton was looking to run for senator of New York, she had no connection to New York at all. She was from Chicago to Arkansas,” Connor said. “And she got approached by various pro-terrorist politicians.”
These included Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), and New York City councilman Jose Rivera, who gave Clinton “a packet on clemency” and requested that she “speak to the president and ask him to consider executive clemency” for the FALN. A couple of weeks later, clemency was granted to the terrorists and Clinton’s Senate campaign expressed support for the move so long as the terrorists renounced violence.
“She was up to her ears in this,” Connor said.[14]

2000 WFP Convention

The New York Working Families Party 2000 Convention was held at the Desmond Hotel, March 26.
Attendees included;

There were sizable delegations from ACORN and Citizen Action.[15]

Clinton and communists helped Kucinich

During Dennis Kucinich‘s 1996 Congressional run, there was considerable controversy over his ties to Communist Party USA member Rick Nagin. Writing in the Communist Party USA paper People’s Weekly World Ohio Communist Party chairman, Rick Nagin, detailed the campaign which led to Kucinich’s election to Congress:[16]

“The election of Dennis Kucinich in Ohio’s 10th Congressional District was a ground-breaking event demonstrating the powerful political potential of a mass, grassroots coalition led by Labor.
Trade unionists and seniors provided the largest numbers of some 5,000 volunteers but many others came from Hispanic, environmental, peace and other organizations.
According to the campaign staff, the volunteers canvassed at least 600 of the district’s 750 precincts, some as many as four times. They turned the western half of Cuyahoga County and especially the west side of Cleveland into a sea of 15,000 bright yellow yard signs reading “Light Up Congress! Elect Dennis Kucinich” –[16]

Many organizations also issued their own literature and did their own mailings including the AFL-CIO’s Labor ’96, the UAW CAP Council, the Sierra Club, Peace Voter ’96, gay rights and senior groups. The United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers did plantgate distributions. The Ohio Council of Senior Citizens distributed 12,000 pieces with the positions of Kucinich and his opponent, incumbent Martin Hoke, on senior issues to senior buildings, nutrition sites and bingo games.
Then First Lady Clinton, Congressmen Louis Stokes, Joseph Kennedy and Barney Frank also helped out.

“The coalition embraced many political viewpoints: Democrats, independents, Greens, socialists, Communists, members of the Labor Party, even some disgruntled Republicans. Democratic Party figures, including First Lady Hillary Clinton, Congressmen Louis Stokes, Joseph Kennedy and Barney Frank visited Cleveland to help in the effort.”[17]

Take Back America Conferences

Hillary Clinton was on the list of 114 speakers (which included George Soros) at the 2004 Take Back America conference, which was organized by the Institute for Policy Studies, and Democratic Socialists of America dominated Campaign for America’s Future.[18]
She was back in 2006, 2007.

Arafat connection

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Admiration for Cesar Chavez

On April 1, 2008 Evelina Alarcon, Executive Director of Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday welcomed the backing for a Cesar Chavez national holiday from Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama who issued a statement on Cesar Chavez’s birthday Monday, March 31, 2008. “We at Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday appreciate the backing of a national holiday for Cesar Chavez from presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. That support is crucial because it takes the signature of a President to establish the holiday along with the Congress’s approval,” stated Evelina Alarcon. “It is also encouraging that Senator Hillary Clinton who is a great admirer of Cesar Chavez acknowledged him on his birthday. We hope that she too will soon state her support for a Cesar Chavez national holiday.”
Alarcon’s remarks were part of a statement made at a press conference at our nation’s Capitol on April 1st called by Chair of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) in support of HR 76, a resolution he authored with 62 Co-Sponsors that encourages the establishment of a Cesar Chavez national holiday by the Congress[19]

China connection

Less than a week after a Chinese Feng Yun rocket littered space with the remnants of their weather satellite, Hillary Clinton announced her intention to seek the Democrats’ presidential nomination in 2008. She forgot to mention that when husband Bill was seeking the presidency, she ran with him, as an unofficial partner-president. “Two for the price of one!” was the slogan.
The Clinton administration and his Democratic Party accepted massive campaign contributions from Loral Space & Communications, Hughes Electronics and other firms. Between 1993 and 1996, the administration allowed the export of ballistic- missile technology to Beijing. In 1996, Bill Clinton personally approved the launch of four communications satellites on Chinese rockets.
Once Hillary captured her U.S. Senate seat, she received, in 2003, $10,000 from the New York state company, Corning Inc., which manufactures fiber optics. A month later, the senator announced legislation related to reducing diesel pollution that would benefit Corning with millions of federal dollars.
Corning increased its donations and, by 2004, Hillary was attempting to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning’s products.
To get what she wanted, she involved the Chinese ambassador and President George W. Bush. As a result, Corning, a staunchly Republican company, held a fundraiser for her, resulting in thousands of dollars for her campaign.
As Hillary Clinton campaigns, she will expect the usual adulation from union members who have forgotten that from 1986 until 1992 “their Hillary” served on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, the union-busting behemoth that does more business with China than all but four countries in the world.
Then there is Hillary’s good friend and relative-by-marriage, Sen. Barbara Boxer, whose husband Stewart is a board member of the China Ocean Shipping Organization. Barbara’s colleague, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is married to the owner of Newbridge Capital Corp., Richard C. Blum, who has made many millions in very lucrative deals with the Chinese government.[20]

Vietnam visit

July 2010’s visit to Vietnam by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be a great opportunity to renew and expand the US government’s response to addressing the legacy of Agent Orange, said a senior official from the Aspen Institute, a Washington DC-based non-profit organization.
At a news briefing on Agent Orange in Vietnam , which was held in Washington DC on July 15 by the Agent Orange in Vietnam Information Initiative, David Devlin-Foltz said that Clinton had been briefed on the declaration and plan of action for period 2010 to 2019 released by the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group.
The plan calls upon the US government and other countries, foundations and non- governmental organizations, to provide an estimated 300 million USD over 10 years to clean the dioxin-contaminated soil and restore damaged ecosystems, as well as expanding services to people with disabilities and their families that are linked to the dioxin.
Devlin-Foltz said he expected that the US officials will discuss the Agent Orange issue in private meetings with Vietnamese government officials.
He said he hoped that the Secretary of State would encourage more involvement from the US government to see a more dramatic response to the Agent Orange problem as the relationship between both countries is improving.
According to him, the Agent Orange issue has been an irritant to the country’s relationship with Vietnam for many years, but the time has come to remedy this as it
He added that members of the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group know there are real opportunities to work to contain the spread of the dioxin; opportunities to stop the dioxin entering the local food chain; ways of restoring damaged agricultural land and ways of providing effective rehabilitation services to people with disabilities, regardless of the cost.
Also at the news briefing, Bob Edgar, a former congressman and currently head of the Common Cause organization in the US, said that he believed it was important to recognise that several senators, including Senator Tom Harkin, who was just in Vietnam last week, Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others have stated that they recognise that wars do not end just when the last soldier leaves the battlefield.
Edgar said that this is not only an opportunity for the US to both work to expand its partnership with the Vietnamese government, but also to work to address issues relating to Agent Orange in Vietnam.[21]

Support from Individuals

Hilda Solis & Dolores Huerta

In 2007 Hilda Solis, current Secretary of Labor, endorsed Sen. Clinton for president and signed on to co-chair of the Clinton campaign’s Environmental and Energy Task Force and co-chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Council.
Solis was joined by her friend and Democratic Socialists of America honorary chair, Dolores Huerta. Solis and Huerta had the honor of formally nominating Clinton for the Democratic primary.
Together Huerta and Solis campaigned for Clinton through California and Nevada on a tour themed “Juntos Con Hillary, Una Vida Mejor” (Together with Hillary, A Better Life).

Megan Hull

Between Feb. 2, 2008 and August 28, 2008, Megan Hull contributed $6,900 to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Nomination race.[22]

Sheinbaum

Stanley Sheinbaum has many influential friends on the U.S. left.
His walls are adorned with framed photos with Fidel Castro, King Hussein, Barbra Streisand and other world leaders and A-list celebrities.[23]
Key political players such as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Queen Noor of Jordan and former Sen. Gary Hart, have made the pilgrimage to his Westside salons in search of intellectual stimulation and money for their pet causes — sometimes their own political campaigns.
“Sheinbaum keeps the New Deal torch alive in an age when it’s not fashionable to do so,” said former senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, a longtime friend. “He’s a voice of conscience.”
For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton is the woman she met 35 years ago (2016) , a young mother cradling her infant daughter at a dinner party at the home of Hollywood activist Stanley Sheinbaum.
“I was expecting to meet this formidable, firm woman,” she said in an interview. “When the door opened … there was Hillary Clinton off to the side holding Chelsea in her arms. There she was as a mom.”[24]

George Soros

By 2008, Barack Obama was one of only a handful of candidates to get a personal contribution from George Soros. The others include Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.[25]

Huma Abedin relationship

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Support from Organizations

Council for a Livable World

The Council for a Livable World, founded in 1962 by long-time socialist activist and alleged Soviet agent, Leo Szilard, is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to “reduce the danger of nuclear weapons and increase national security”, primarily through supporting progressive, congressional candidates who support their policies. The Council supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in her successful Senate run as candidate for New York.[26]

Planned Parenthood

Clinton received $1837 in lobbying funds from Planned Parenthood in 2008.[27]

EMILY’s List

Clinton has been supported by EMILY’s List during her campaigning.

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

The 700,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, one of the nation’s largest and most politically active trade unions, endorsed New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton for President. They also took the unusual step of endorsing a Republican candidate for the primaries, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

The OIC connection

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The Istanbul Process

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Obama appointment

In January 2009, Clinton was nominated by the Obama administration for the position of Secretary in the Department of State and confirmed in January 2009.[28]

Iran lobby

Kirsten Gillibrand had also picked up money from the Iran Lobby’s Hassan Nemazee. Namazee was Hillary Clinton’s national campaign finance director who had raised a fortune for both her and John Kerry before pleading guilty to a fraud scheme encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars. Nemazee had been an Iranian American Political Action Committee trustee and had helped set up the organization.
Bill Clinton had nominated Hassan Nemazee as the US ambassador to Argentina when he had only been a citizen for two years. A “spoilsport Senate” didn’t allow Clinton to make a member of the Iran Lobby into a US ambassador, but Nemazee remained a steady presence on the Democrat fundraising circuit.
Nemazee had donated to Gillibrand and had also kicked in money to help the Al Franken Recount Fund “scour all the cemeteries for freshly dead votes”, as well as to Barbara Boxer, who also came out for the Iran nuke deal. Boxer had also received money more directly from IAPAC. [29]

Meeting McAllister

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with convicted Irish terrorist Malachy McAllister at the Clinton rally in New York April 2016.
After the meeting McAllister stated, “She was shocked to hear that my case is still going on, that it hasn’t been settled,” McAllister told the on Irish Voice newspaper.
“She remembered me from my speaking at a Brehon Law Society event in 2004. She was very surprised that I’m facing deportation.”
She is one of many US influential figures to call for justice in the McAllister case. Irish American organizations are increasingly angry over the enforced deportation of a good and decent man who has been a valued member of the Irish community for over two decades.[30]

Meeting Wing

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October 30, 2015, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Caesar Mitchell, Butch Wing.

Barack Obama and the Committees of Correspondence

President Barack Obama
Barack obama1.jpg
44th President of the United States
Assumed office: January 20, 2009

Born August 4, 1961
Birth name Barack Hussein Obama II
Nationality American
Political party Democratic Party
Spouse Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
Political party Democratic Party
Religion Christian Liberation Theology
Signature Obama-signature-small.png
This article is part of a series about
Barack Obama
BiographyPolitical CareerControversial and Radical AssociatesRadical AppointmentsTies to IslamPresidency
Invovlement with: Democratic Socialists of AmericaNew Party/Progressive ChicagoCommunist PartyCommittees of CorrespondenceLabor MovementACORN & Project Votemore…

Contents

Barack Obama and the Committees of Correspondence.

Founding

The process of forming Committees of Correspondence (CoC) began in late 1991 when approximately one third of the Communist Party USA membership split from the party to form a new organization.
The former communists joined with former Maoists, Trotskyists, socialists and anarchists to launch CoC at Berkeley, California in 1992 and to convene the official founding conference in Chicago in 1994.
In 2000, Committees of Correspondence (CoC or CofC) became Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS).

Obama and the Committees of Correspondence

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The Committees of Correspondence (CoC) worked with Obama in Chicago through the New Party, the Alice Palmer campaign and the anti Iraq War movement.
In 2008 Committees of Correspondence actively campaigned for Obama and several supporters were endorsers of the Progressives for Obama website.
CCDS leader Manning Marable, writing in the December 2008 issue of British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review, explained Obama’s relationship to the Chicago left.[1]

What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he 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…

Manning Marable was almost certainly referring to the numerous former Chicago Communist Party USA members working with Obama who had become members or supporters of Committees of Correspondence.

Timuel Black

Timuel Black

Timuel Black is an historian, activist and nonogenarian icon of the Chicago left. Black is a veteran of the Socialist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America. For several years he has served on the Committees of Correspondence advisory board.
Timuel Black’s relationship to Barack Obama stretches back until at least the early 1990s[2];

So it’s no surprise that in 1991, when a community organizer named Barack Obama returned to Chicago with a Harvard law degree, he sought advice from Black. Seventeen years later, on November 4, 2008, Black and his wife, Zenobia, watched the election coverage in their home with friends. “When we learned that he had made it, that there was no turning back, the house just went wild

In 1995 Timuel Black attempted to mediate a dispute between Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer and her chosen successor Barack Obama.
Alice Palmer had allegedly promised Obama her State Senate seat if she was successful in a run for the U.S. Congress.
She wasn’t successful, but Obama refused to stand aside and went on to win the seat unopposed-after getting all his opponents (including Palmer) disqualified on voting technicalities.
I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant,” Obama said. “It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently.”
His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.
“There was friction about the decision he made,” said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer’s behalf. “There were deep disagreements.
Despite the mess, Timuel Black became and remains an admirer of the ambitious young politician.
“My first impression was this was a very, very brilliant young man,” Black says.
Black said Obama’s biggest obstacle would not be from whites, but from blacks.

“The biggest thing he has to face is the accusations by some blacks that he is not black enough…He has to overcome that without being so black that he alienates potential white supporters.”

Timuel Black addressed a largely black audience at the Woodson Regional Library auditorium on Feb. 11, 2007[3].
Speaking of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign he said;

Obama is the test of how deep racism is in this country…Barack is the recipient of the struggle of other generations…That means that you feel proud of your ancestors, your successes…(Obama), based on the opportunities that were opened to him by others, is in the position to prove to the world whether the United States of America is a true democracy, or is a continuing hypocrisy.

Timuel Black was involved in Obama’s campaign committee during his successful 2004 U.S. Senate race.
In December 2008 Barack Obama sent a note to Timuel Black‘s 90th birthday celebrations, which read in part[4];

For forty years, he shaped our young men and women into those citizens. And though he may have retired from the teaching profession nearly two decades ago, he never stopped being a teacher. We are all his students in a classroom that never closes.

Carl Davidson

Carl Davidson

Carl Davidson was a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society, a staff writer for the Maoist publication The Guardian and an activist with the pro China Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist) and the League for Revolutionary Struggle[5], before joining Committees of Correspondence on its founding in 1992.
One of the Committees of Correspondence‘s early projects involved establishing the radical New Party in the early 1990s.
Committees of Correspondence played a leading role in the orgainization, alongside activists from ACORN, SEIU, Democratic Socialists of America and the Institute for Policy Studies.
In the mid 1990s Carl Davidson was leading activist in the Chicago New Party, where he worked closely with New Party member and candidate Barack Obama[6].

I’m from Chicago, too, and known Obama from the time he came to the New Party to get our endorsement for his first race ever. I’ve been in his home, and as an IL legislator, he’s helped or community technology movement a number of times. He said all the right things to the ACORN and New Party folks, and we endorsed him, but I noticed too, that he seemed to measure every answer to questions put to him several tmes before coming out with it.

Carl Davidson was one of several Chicago area residents, including Don Rose, Marilyn Katz and James Weinstein, who first came together as Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in September 2002 to campaign against the war in Iraq.
In June 2003, they changed their name to Chicagoans Against War and Injustice[7].
On October 2 2002 Chicagoans Against War in Iraq organized the famous anti war rally in Federal Plaza Chicago, where Illininois State Senator Barack Obama made his name as a strong opponent of the war. Some of the people around Davidson, later held a fundraiser for Obama when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004[8].

He spoke at our first antiwar rally. He spent most of his speech detailing all the wars in history he supported, then finally made a distinction between just wars and ‘dumb’ wars, and going into Iraq, which was still six months down the road then, was a ‘dumb war,’ and he flatly opposed it. Good, that put him on our side, and some of us organized a fundraiser for him for his Senate race.

Danny K. Davis

New Party News Spring 1996 page 2, Danny Davis center, Barack Obama right

Illinois Congressman Danny K. Davis is a member of Democratic Socialists of America and also has connections to Committees of Correspondence.
According to Chicago DSA’s New Ground of September 1994[9];

“Over 500 delegates and observers (including 140 from Chicago) attended the founding convention of the Committees of Correspondence (CoC) held here in Chicago in July.

New Ground reported that speakers…included Charles Nqukula, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, Dulce Maria Pereira, a senatorial candidate of the Workers Party of Brazil, Angela Davis of CoC, Andre Brie of the Party of Democratic Socialism of Germany (a revamp of the old East German Communist Party). Guests during the Convention included Cook County Commissioner Danny Davis, Chicago Aldermen Helen Shiller and Rick Munoz, a representative of the Green Left Weekly of Australia and a representative of the Cuban Interest Section.
In 1994 Danny Davis, Chicago, was listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence[10].
Davis has been a long time friend and supporter of Barack Obama-one his most loyal political allies.
In the mid 1990s, Danny K. Davis joined the Chicago New Party (along with Barack Obama ) during his successful Congressional 1996 campaign on the Democratic Party ticket.
New Party News Spring 1996 page 1, celebrated the Davis’ Congressional victory and went on to say;

“New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)…”these victories prove that small ‘d’ democracy can work’ said Obama”.

Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers

In 1994, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, Chicago, were listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence.[10]
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, former leaders of the terrorist Weather Underground Organization hosted Obma’s first known political gathering in their home in 1995.
Bill Ayers‘ ties to Obama run deep[11];
The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system. They appeared together on academic panels, including one organized by Michelle Obama to discuss the juvenile justice system, an area of mutual concern. Mr. Ayers’s book on the subject won a rave review in The Chicago Tribune by Mr. Obama, who called it “a searing and timely account.”
Mr. Obama further expanded his list of allies by joining the boards of two well-known charities: the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.
These memberships have allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants over the years to groups that championed the environment, campaign finance reform, gun control and other causes supported by the liberal network he was cultivating. Mr. Brazier’s group, the Woodlawn Organization, received money, for instance, as did antipoverty groups with ties to organized labor like Chicago Acorn, whose endorsement Mr. Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.

Earl Durham

A former member of the Communist Party USA national committee, Earl Durham‘s name appeared on 1994 “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence.[10]
Professor Durham went into “education reform” in the 1970s and in the 1990s founded the organization Community Organizing and Family Issues.
Barack Obama served on the organization’s sponsoring committee in 1994/95[12].

Marilyn Katz

Marilyn Katz

Now a prominent Chicago public reations professional and Democratic Party activist, Katz has a background in Students for a Democratic Society and the socialist New American Movement.
In 1994 Marilyn Katz, Chicago, was listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence.[10]
Katz, with Carl Davidson helped organize Obama’s appearance at the 2002 Chicago anti Iraq War rally.
She has worked closely with Barack Obama since meeting him through his position at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in the 1990s.

It was through the law firm that Mr. Obama met Marilyn Katz, who gave him entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s.
“For better or worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home. “Everyone is connected to everyone.””

Katz was a major fundraiser and a delegate at the Democratic Party convention for Obama.

Mike Klonsky

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Mike Klonsky is a former leader of the Students for a Democratic Society, the pro China October League and the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).
In 1994 Mike Klonsky, Chicago, was listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence.[10]
Mike Klonsky is a long time friends with Carl Davidson and Bill Ayers and was involved with some of the educational project which Ayers and Obama worked together on.
Until June 2008 Mike Klonsky ran a Blog on Barack Obama‘s campaign website.
It was pulled at very short notice after adverse publicity began surfacing on the blogosphere.

Alice Palmer

Alice Palmer

A long time Communist Party USA sympathiser, Alice Palmer traveled extensively in the old Soviet Bloc and was a leader of the Soviet front International Organization of Journalists.
In 1994 Alice Palmer and her husband Buzz Palmer, Chicago, were listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence.[10]
Barack Obama was Alice Palmer’s chief of staff when she ran for Congress in the mid 1990s. She was the main sponsor of Obama’s early political career until he took her old Illinois State Senate seat in 1996.
It was Alice Palmer who introduced Barack Obama to the meeting in the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Lou Pardo

Also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, Lou Pardo worked with Obama on voter registration in 1992. In the mid 1990s Pardo was active, with Obama in the Chicago New Party.
In 1994 Lou Pardo, Chicago, was listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence.[10]

Committees of Correspondence and Progressives for Obama

Progressives for Obama was originated by socialists, for socialists.
Of the four main founders, two Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Barbara Ehrenreich are senior members of Democratic Socialists of America. The fifth founder, Chicago activist Carl Davidson, the organization’s webmaster is now one of four co-leaders of Committees of Correspondence.
Of the website’s endorsers[13] James Campbell, Barry Cohen, Van Gosse, Zenobia Johnson-Black, Marilyn Katz, Fred Klonsky, Eric Mar, Jay Schaffner, Dan Swinney, Harry Targ, John Trinkl and Mildred Williamson have proven Committees of Correspondence connections.

2008 election

Shortly before the November 2008 election CCDS issued a statement “A Critical Moment-a message to CCDS membership” calling for a major effort to defeat the Republicans and elect Obama.[14]

With less than three months remaining before the November 4th general election, CCDS members together with all left and progressive forces are urged to work wholeheartedly to ensure a massive defeat at the polls for John McCain and his war-mongering, neo-conservative, right-wing sponsors.
Only a massive turnout of new, young, African American, Latino, Asian American, trade union, and progressive voters casting a ballot for Barack Obama can insure this defeat. We must find ways to argue the stakes inherent in a McCain win on key issues: ending the war, the faltering economy, creating “green” jobs, a sustainable environment, universal health care, and restoring the right to organize unions.
The various smears, racism and fear mongering surrounding the first viable African American presidential candidacy are making inroads among large segments of the public. CCDS members have a role to play in challenging the racism, joining with broad efforts like that of the petition campaign against Fox TV’s racist characterizations of the Obamas organized by the Color of Change. Hip hop artist, Das and 150 others delivered 620,000 signatures to Fox TV’s studios in Manhattan in July.
It is important to find ways to pressure the Obama campaign from an independent platform, and resist efforts to demoralize, sidetrack, and divide the movement to elect Obama. Progressives For Obama (P4O) is one such vehicle. It emerged in March 2008 during the primary campaign and has become a viable voice of critical support from the left, aiming to countervail the growing right-wing pressures on the Obama campaign.
We urgently ask CCDS members to link up with local campaigns and organizations like Progressives for Obama (P4O) to infuse the election campaign with the issues that matter most – and making the campaign at the base a deeply progressive project.
The NEC, at its most recent meeting, discussed issuing a message urging members in local areas to help build Progressives for Obama. At the launch of P4O, a draft call was issued by Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Danny Glover. Carl Davidson, a member of the NCC of CCDS, is a key organizer and moderator of the P4O web blog. The list of endorsers has grown impressively to include leaders of labor, peace and justice organizations, and leading progressive individuals.

Carl Davidson added his own addendum to the message, urging CCDS members to work with Tent State, Progressives for Obama, Progressive Democrats of America, United for Peace and Justice and The Nation magazine.

Work locally to expand the electorate in a younger, more progressive direction. Register new voters, and work with other groups, including the young people around the Obama campaign. If it’s a normal election, McCain can win. If it’s not, and turnout is new and different, we have a good shot. It really boils down to that.
Get out the vote. Registering doesn’t help if they don’t go to the polls. Again, work with others and the Obama youth, to do this. Be resolute, don’t get sidetracked by the bumpy ride, stick to the slogan, “Stop McCain, Stop the War, Vote Obama 2008!
Get outside the usual comfort zones and make new allies. We’re going to need them to wage struggle with the Obama White House in 2009…
Hook all this up with a local progressive blog or two or three, or start one yourself…Be a public face, then link to others across the country and with us nationally. This is the scaffolding of a national network.
If you’re up for adventure, come to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. Hook up with Tent State, P4O, PDA, UFPJ and the Nation Magazine. We’ll put you to work!
CCDS members have a lot to contribute as an independent force committed to advance the fight for peace and for a massive jobs program in this year’s crucial elections. From this perspective we urge members to consider joining and or supporting Progressives for Obama with our ideas, activism and financial support.
For those members and friends who are supporting other independent candidates, we urge that we go forward together to register new voters, fight hard on the issues and lay the groundwork for expanding and consolidating the progressive majority.[14]

Barbara Lee

In 1991/92, the Communist Party USA split, with many members leaving to form, the Committees of Correspondence.
At the Committees of Correspondence founding conference, Berkeley California, July 17-19, 1992, Barbara Lee was a candidate for the CoC National Coordinating Committee, while still a Democratic California State Assembly person.[15]

Barbara Lee endorsing Barack Obama

While most California Democrats initially supported Hillary Clinton, in December 2008, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee, became the first California Democrat to endorse Barack Obama.
Lee wrote in the December 10 2008 Huffington Post[16];

I wanted to share some exciting news with you, as today I announced my endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States.
Like so many Americans, I first heard Senator Obama when he delivered his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Deep down, I knew I’d witnessed history in the making.
Barack Obama represents a bridge to the future. He embodies the hope and new direction that our country so desperately needs. As I’ve watched Senator Obama campaign for the presidency, I am convinced that he is a real agent of change; a man who can lead our nation in a new and positive direction.
This century cries for social, environmental, diplomatic, global, and neighborhood solutions to the misery that confronts far too many people in our own country and around the globe. I share Senator Obama’s vision and active commitment to building a society based on activism, progressive values and a keen sense that we must act now and outside of the usual bounds of partisanship and expediency.
I know that a President Obama would find a prompt and effective way to end the occupation of Iraq and that he would strengthen U.S. diplomacy and international development as an instrument of national policy to prevent crises that lead to war and conflagration.
I know that a President Obama would place education, health care, poverty, economic security, criminal justice reform, climate change and all of the important domestic issues at the top of his agenda.
And, I know that a President Obama would make the eradication of HIV/AIDS at home and abroad a top priority.
I founded One Voice PAC as an organization dedicated to helping elect truly progressive candidates who will challenge the status quo. To that end, I am honored to endorse Senator Obama’s candidacy and I hope you will join me in helping him secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Van Jones and the Committees of Correspondence

Van Jones and Barack Obama

Barack Obama‘s former “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones also had strong ties to the Committees of Correspondence.
Van Jones and his own Marxist-Leninist organization, STORM worked closely for years with members of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
Bay Area left identity Betita Martinez, a CCDS Advisory Board member[17]was close to Jones and helped “mentor” his Ella Baker Center for Human Rights staff. Martinez, Committees of Correspondence supporters Max Elbaum and Felicia Gustin, Van Jones and Adam Gold of STORM served together on the organizing committee[18]of anti-Iraq War newspaper War Times.
When leading Committees of Correspondence member Max Elbaum released his book “Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che” in 2002- Van Jones contributed these comments on the flyleaf;

By unearthing a hidden history of radical U.S. politics, Max Elbaum has erected an invaluable bridge between the generations. Finally, we have one book that can successfully connect the dots between the battles of the 1960s and the emerging challenges and struggles of the new century.”

In February 2006 Van Jones was guest speaker at a Committees of Correspondence fund raiser in Berkeley. Kendra Alexander was a Communist Party USA and Committees of Correspondence leader[19].

The second annual CCDS and Kendra Alexander Foundation Banquet will take place on Sunday, February 19 at the Redwood Gardens community room in Berkeley with Van Jones, a pioneering human rights activist known as a steadfast opponent of police brutality and mass incarceration, as keynote speaker.
Jones is now working to create environmentally friendly, “green-collar” jobs for formerly incarcerated persons.
The banquet is titled “Towards Building a Progressive Majority” and benefits the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and the Kendra Alexander Foundation. The Foundation was named in honor of the visionary leader of the Committees of Correspondence.

Barack Obama and the New Party/Progressive Chicago

President Barack Obama
Barack obama1.jpg
44th President of the United States
Assumed office: January 20, 2009

Born August 4, 1961
Birth name Barack Hussein Obama II
Nationality American
Political party Democratic Party
Spouse Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
Political party Democratic Party
Religion Christian Liberation Theology
Signature Obama-signature-small.png
This article is part of a series about
Barack Obama
BiographyPolitical CareerControversial and Radical AssociatesRadical AppointmentsTies to IslamPresidency
Invovlement with: Democratic Socialists of AmericaNew Party/Progressive ChicagoCommunist PartyCommittees of CorrespondenceLabor MovementACORN & Project Votemore…

Contents

Barack Obama and the New Party
Strong in the mid to late 1990s the New Party was an electoral alliance dedicated to electing leftist candidates to office-usually through the Democratic Party.
Two organizations formed the backbone of the New Party– the Democratic Socialists of America and the U.S.’s largest radical organization, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ). Radical labor union SEIU also had considerable input, as did members of the Communist Party USA breakaway group, Committees of Correspondence.
Another very strong influence was the far left Washington DC based “think tank” the Institute for Policy Studies.
In Chicago, the New Party founded an equally radical “sister organization” Progressive Chicago.
There is strong evidence that Barack Obama was a member of both organizations.

Chicago New Party

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In Chicago, the New Party consisted mainly of ACORN, Democratic Socialists of America, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Committees of Correspondence (CoC). A breakaway from the Communist Party USA, CoC worked closely with DSA and many activists were members of both organizations.
The Chicago New Party began to get organized in January 1995.[1]

On Saturday, January 14, the New Party in Chicago took another step in its effort to establish itself as a political force by holding a major outreach meeting directed at Chicago’s Left. About 100 people, with sizable delegations from DSA and CoC among others, heard Bruce Colburn and Elaine Bernard preach the gospel of the New Party…

Elaine Bernard, a Labor Studies lecturer at Harvard, is a prominent DSA member. Bruce Colburn was an officer of the Milwaukee Central Labor Council and the Chair of the local New Party affiliate in Milwaukee.

The meeting was held at the meeting hall of SEIU Local 880, a local that is tackling the extremely difficult task of organizing home health care workers in Illinois. SEIU Local 880 and ACORN share office space.

Potential third party

DSA and their CoC allies saw the New Party as a vehicle for major political change-to both move the Democratic Party leftward and to eventually prepare the ground for an entirely new third party.
At a meeting attended by Chicago DSA members Kurt Anderson and Bob Roman, plus CoC members Ronelle Mustin and Sandy Patrinos, CoC leader Carl Davidson explained the New Party’s role in first working through the Democratic Party then eventually replacing it.[2]

On January 27th approximately 45 people attended the Chicago DSA and Chicago CoC organized public form at the ACTWU hall on Ashland Ave. Each organization had two representatives on the panel to present their particular elections ’94 post-mortem perspectives. Chicago DSA was represented by Co-Chair, Kurt Anderson and Political Education Officer, Bob Roman. CoC was represented by Carl Davidson, who is a member of CoC’s National Coordinating Committee and Ronelle Mustin, an activist from the 22nd ward. The event was chaired by Sandi Patrinos, chair of Chicago CoC…
Carl Davidson wanted to focus on “voting patterns.” There were essentially two winners. Naturally the Republicans, but so were the most left in Congress such as the Progressive and Black Caucuses. The latter were re-elected while the neo-liberal and conservative Democrats were voted out. More importantly this election was the de facto defeat of the elitist Democratic Leadership Council who do not care about the poor or Labor.
To win elections, Davidson emphasized that there are two necessary coinciding factors. First, a passive majority… Secondly, a militant minority, which came to fruition for the Right wing with the Christian Coalition
Hence Davidson emphasized that in this historical period the Left’s strategy must be electoral politics not revolution. Consequently the Left must galvanize the “majority” – the working class and poor… Moreover the democratic left needs get active in the New Party which has won 20 of 30 local elections. Thus a short-term strategy of working with the Democratic Party and in the long-term work with the New Party.

Obama gets involved

Barack Obama clearly saw the potential of the New Party, because he was soon seeking their support -alongside Michael Chandler, Willie Delgado, Miguel del Valle, Alice Palmer, Sonya Sanchez and Jesse Garcia.[3]

About 50 activists attended the Chicago New Party membership meeting in July. The purpose of the meeting was to update members on local activities and to hear appeals for NP support from four potential political candidates. The NP is being very active in organization building and politics…
The political entourage included Alderman Michael Chandler, William Delgado, chief of staff for State Rep Miguel del Valle, and spokespersons for State Sen. Alice Palmer, Sonya Sanchez, chief of staff for State Sen. Jesse Garcia, who is running for State Rep in Garcia’s District; and Barack Obama, chief of staff for State Sen. Alice Palmer. Obama is running for Palmer’s vacant seat…
Although ACORN and SEIU Local 880 were the harbingers of the NP there was a strong presence of CoC and DSA (15% DSA)… Four political candidates were “there” seeking NP support.

Barack Obama won the 1996 election, by using legal technicalities to get all his opponents disqualified-but he still encouraged New Party volunteers to join his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.[4]

The NP’s ’96 Political Program has been enormously successful with 3 of 4 endorsed candidates winning electoral primaries. All four candidates attended the NP membership meeting on April 11th to express their gratitude.
Danny Davis, winner in the 7th Congressional District, invited NPers to join his Campaign Steering Committee.
Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in 7th Subcircuit Court, explained that due to the NP she was able to network and get experienced advice from progressives like Davis.
Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration…

Did Obama join the New Party?

There is strong evidence that Obama actually joined the New Party.
Danny Davis joined the Chicago New Party during his successful Congressional 1996 campaign on the Democratic Party ticket.
New Party News Spring 1996 page 1, celebrated the Davis’ Congressional victory and went on to say;

“New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)…”these victories prove that small ‘d’ democracy can work’ said Obama”.

This photo from New Party News names Obama and Danny Davis as “NP endorsed” candidates.

New Party News Spring 1996 page 2, Danny Davis center, Barack Obama right

These clippings from the same issue of New Party News page 1 name Obama and Davis as New Party “members”.

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Np4.JPG

Progressive Chicago

Progressive-chicagos.jpg

Progressive Chicago was founded in 1993 by members of the New Party, in particular Madeline Talbott and Dan Swinney.
In an April 27, 1993 letter to prospective Progressive Chicago members, Dan Swinney wrote;

I recently have become interested in the New Party as well as committed myself to see if we can build a Progressive Chicago network, working with Madeline Talbott of ACORN – the local New Party convener.
I wanted to introduce you to the NP and Progressive Chicago and would like to talk to you about it to see if there is a role you want to play.
Enclosed is a brochure, a longer description of the NP and the ideas behind it…

A circa 1993 Progressive Chicago introductory pamphlet stated;

Progressive Chicago was started by members of the New Party who wanted to be able to put together an organization strong enough to win: If that means supporting a candidate running as a Democrat, then fine. If that means running our own candidates in aldermanic or state representative races on whatever line that gives them the best chance of winning, fine.

Obama involvement in Progressive Chicago

Barack Obama was probably approached to join Progressive Chicago as early July? 7, 1993 as this unsigned handwritten note suggests.

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According to the same note Obama was “more than happy to be involved”;

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By September 1993 Obama was one of 17 people listed as a signatory on all Progressive Chicago letters – as shown by the second page of this September 22 Progressive Chicago letter to Joe Gardner.

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On December 31, 1993, Progressive Chicago wrote to all key members, including Obama, inviting them to a January 19, 1994 meeting.
Clearly Obama’s involvement in Progressive Chicago was high level and lasted at least several months.

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Socialist control

Like its “sister organization”, the New Party, Progressive Chicago was heavily infiltrated by supporters of Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party USA off-shoot Committees of Correspondence.
In late 1993 Progressive Chicago letters were always signed by 17 people;[5]

People targeted or solicited to join Progressive Chicago included Obama political mentor and Communist Party USA affiliate Alice Palmer, Communist Party member Frank Lumpkin, Rev. Jim Reed of Christians for Socialism and Democratic Socialists of America associates Miguel Del Valle, Carole Travis, Clem Balanoff, Sue Purrington and Jane Ramsey.