Archive for the ‘Bill Ayers’ Category

Weatherman domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is now confirming what the White House has previously denied – that he held a fundraiser in his living room for Barack Obama.

That 1995 meeting was said to have launched Obama’s political career.

In an October 2008 interview on MSNBC host Chris Matthews’ show, Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, categorically denied the fundraiser was ever held.

Matthews asked Gibbs: “Did [Ayers] have a fundraiser for [Obama], or not?”

Gibbs, who would become the White House spokesman, replied: “No, he did not have a fundraiser for our candidate as he said ten seconds ago.”

However, in an interview last week with the Daily Beast, Ayers recalled that fundraiser.

Stated Ayers of his relationship with Obama: “We were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was ‘a guy around the neighborhood,’ that was true.”

Does this explain infamous Ayers living-room meeting?

Is the socialist-oriented New Party the missing link at the center of that now infamous 1995 Obama fundraiser in Ayers living room in Chicago?

It was at that meeting that New Party member Alice Palmer announced she wanted Obama as her successor as state senator since she was stepping down to run for Congress.

WND has found that in the July 1996 edition of the New Party’s newsletter, the New Party news, the controversial party announced “the Illinois New Party capped off a month-long house party drive in Chicago.”

Further review of New Party literature from 1995 and 1996 finds that so-called house parties were regularly utilized by the New Party to introduce candidates to leading party activists as well as to raise money and recruit new members.

It is known that single-payer activist Quentin Young, who advised Obama on healthcare when the politician was a state senator, was present at the parlor meeting at the Ayers’ residence.

WND reported that Young was listed by the New Party as an early party founder and builder.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” Young was quoted as saying. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”

Chicago-based blogger Maria Warren was also present. She wrote that she remembered watching Obama give a “standard, innocuous little talk” in the Ayers’ home.

“They were launching him,” Warren wrote, “introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”

It would make sense that the New Party sponsored the get-together in Ayers’ living room for Palmer’s announcement.

Palmer was the New Party’s signed candidate for office. The New Party, which had partnered closely with ACORN, was mobilizing support for Palmer among its constituents and the larger Chicago progressive community.

New Party founder and Marxist activist Carl Davidson recalled screening Palmer and signing her up to the party.

Wrote Davidson:

In the next two elections in the city … the New Party has taken a slightly different approach. It organized a citywide candidates forum and invited a number of progressive candidates. Of those responding, two were of special interest, Alice Palmer and Willie Delgado … Both Palmer and Delgado attended the [New Party] forum and were thoroughly questioned by 70 or so New Party members. At the close, both publicly signed a “contract” with the New Party … Two weeks later, the New Party formally endorsed them and is now mobilizing support.

How was the New Party mobilizing the stated support for Palmer at the time, an effort that Palmer wanted transferred to Obama?

WND reported the New Party had such a close relationship with ACORN that at one point the two shared an office address, fax lines and email addresses.

ACORN led the New Party’s mobilization and voter drive efforts. In progressive circles at the time, the New Party was considered the de facto political wing of ACORN, a group with which Obama long maintained a close relationship.

Ayers and Dohrn, meanwhile, traveled in the same political circles as New Party leaders, making it even more likely the duo could have hosted a New Party house meeting. The duo were key supporters of Palmer.

In 1994 Dohrn and Bill Ayers were listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, which was co-chaired by New Party founder Davidson.

WND found that Chicago activists Joe Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner were also listed as New Party leaders.

Iosbaker is a University of Illinois-Chicago office worker and a union steward for his SEIU local. His home was raided by the FBI in September 2010 reportedly as part of a terror probe investigating material support for jihadist groups.

Together with other activists raided in the same probe, Iosbaker and Weiner are founders of the so-called Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which protested the FBI raids.

Another founder of the committee whose home was part of the same raid is Hatem Abudayyeh, the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.

WND was first to report that Obama, while serving as a paid director of the far-left nonprofit Chicago Woods Fund, provided two grants to the AAAN. Obama served at the Woods Fund alongside Ayers.

AAAN was founded by a longtime Obama associate, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, is president of the Arab American Action Network.

The New Party, meanwhile, is coming under increased scrutiny after new information emerged further indicating Obama was a member of the party in the 1990s.

The New Party was a 1990s party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.

In 2008, Obama’s campaign denied the president was ever a member amid reports, including from WND, citing the New Party’s own literature listing Obama as a member.

Information uncovered in recent weeks, including Obama’s signed contract with the New Party, further establishes the president’s membership with the controversial organization.

Socialist goals

The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral “fusion,” which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party disbanded in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.

The socialist-oriented goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.

Among the New Party’s stated objectives were “full employment, a shorter work week and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth; and like programs to ensure gender equity.”

The New Party stated it also sought “the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets [and] community-controlled alternative financial institutions.”

Many of the New Party’s founding members were Democratic Socialists of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA.

Last month, WND reported on a 1996 print advertisement in a local Chicago newspaper that shows Obama was the speaker at an event sponsored and presented by the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA.

WND first reported on the event in 2010.

Obama listed as New Party member

In 2009, WND reported on newspaper evidence from the New Party’s own literature listing several new members of the New Party, including Obama.

Earlier this month, Kurtz, writing at National Review Online, reported Obama signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.

In 2008, Obama’s Fight the Smears campaign website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois Senate, as stating: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.”

Fight the Smears conceded the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/bill-ayers-confirms-what-obama-has-denied/#QjOCrLvATIIHefMO.99

BILL AYERS TO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: AMERICA‘S ’GAME IS OVER‘ AND ’ANOTHER WORLD’ IS COMING

Bill Ayers spoke at the University of Oregon last week on the subject of teaching and organizing for “social justice.” His speech was not free of the radical sentiments he is well-known for espousing (especially in the company of America’s youth). Case in point: he spoke of the end of America, a new world, and what our role ought to be in all of it.

(Related: Bill Ayers: ‘I Get Up Every Morning and Think…Today I’m Going to End Capitalism)

Almost as interesting as Ayers’ speech itself, perhaps, was how the leftist radical was introduced by the university students. One girl, who described herself as a doctoral student at the university, spoke of the privilege they would have with their honored guest, in an “evening [of] radical imagination.”

Two others, an associate professor at the university and a graduate student, remarked: “Most of us have in one way or another acknowledged the sovereign authority of the U.S. government– or the state of Oregon– in order to be here tonight, either admission to the university, applying for a job, or just paying the parking meter. We have not, however, asked permission of the [Native Americans] whose ancestral home this is, and to fail to acknowledge that this remains disputed territory would in effect be taking sides, [and] reinforce the erasure of indigenous history and indigenous peoples.”

When Ayers spoke, it was largely of how the “American Empire” is over, and what this means for her citizens (though there was a fair amount of “the wasteful American” theme throughout as well):
The great challenge for our generation [is] to find a way not just to live differently as individuals, but to find a way to think differently about what work means, to think differently about citizenship means, to think differently about what it means to be a ‘citizen of the world.’ One of the great dangers that we live in right now, is I don‘t think there’s any question, and I don’t think any of you would question, that the American Empire is in decline–that economically, and politically, and in some ways culturally, that we are in decline. And yet, the United States remains the most powerful, weaponized military system the Earth has ever known.
That’s a treacherous combination. A declining economic power, and an expanding military power. And we are going to have to find ways to re-imagine what it means to live in this coun–in this world. And here we are 4% of the world’s population, 4.5% of the world’s population, consuming vast amounts of natural resources, consuming vast amounts of finished goods, and no politician will say that the empire is declining and that the game is over.
It’s over. Now what? [Emphasis added]
Perhaps we will transform into a Euro-style state, though that was not a peaceful transition for Europeans, Ayers noted:

And you know, my optimistic friends say: “Oh boy, we’re going to look like Germany, or England, or France,“ and I think ”Jeese.” I mean, first of all, for England and France and Germany to become non-empires it took the deaths of millions and millions of people, so let’s remember that.
On a less chilling, and far more familiar note, Ayers called Republicans racist militants:

But let’s also remember that as power shifts, and as people feel something changing, they can either embrace it as a possible good thing in the world, or they can hold on to and become more, you know, reactionary. More racist, more militaristic, and that’s happening too. So it shouldn’t surprise us to see the Republican primaries.
I don’t know about you but I watch the debates as if watching a train wreck, I mean I was just fascinated with it– my wife is just sickened by it– but, I thought it was interesting and also telling that that is a tendency that we’re going to see more and more of.
But how does the leftist radical see the world from here? With all of the protests and the great changes throughout the world, what does Bill Ayers see for our future?

And that means, for me that means, that it’s our responsibility to fight here and now for a little more democracy, a little more participation, a little more peace, and keep putting our shoulder on that wheel because the opposition is fighting for– you know, another world is definitely coming, but that doesn‘t mean it’s going to be a better world, and it’s our responsibility to jump in.

In this excerpt below from his book “Dreams from my Father” (written by Bill Ayers) (page 196 of the paperback edition) Obama explains how racial hatred and scapegoating of whites can provide a beneficial effect for blacks. Such racism and scapegoating is used by black nationalist and Afrocentric groups, such as the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party and his own church, Trinity United Church of Christ of Chicago. Obama is describing a time that was before he joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity church. So, it shows that Obama was well-aware of the racial hatred of such groups, before he even met Jeremiah Wright. His conclusion is that such racism may be a necessary evil to improve the condition of the black race.

The same kind of “therapy” also produced a great improvement in the self-esteem of many Germans in the 1930′s and 1940′s. It is a proven technique! Though Obama claims that he does not personally feel good about such racial hatred, one has to take into account that he has a political career to protect. He could hardly say outright that he approves of racism without harming his career. However, he did join Wright’s church, which has a black nationalist doctrine, based on racial hatred and extreme anti-Americanism. Actions speak louder than words.

Obama demonstrates his general familiarity with the racist doctrine of black nationalism by discussing the finer details of the racism contained in the autobiography of Malcolm X and quoting Marcus Garvey, the father of the modern black nationalist mass movement. One of Garvey’s famous quotes, which Obama uses is a call for the black race to rise, “Rise up ye mighty race!” From reading other parts of this book, it is very obvious that Obama understood quite well the basic racist tenets of Black Nationalism at least since he was a teenager in Hawaii. This is to be expected, because he is not unintelligent and was very interested in exploring his black identity. He was fascinated and preoccupied with all things having to do with black culture, including black nationalism. The entire book is about his search since childhood for racial identity.

The doctrine of Trinity Church is based on Black Liberation Theology, which is a more sophisticated, pseudo-Christian version of the black identity theology of the Nation of Islam. Black Liberation Theology was written by a black professor in a seminary, James H. Cone. It is somewhat less direct in its racism and seems designed to be more socially acceptable in order to spread the racist concepts and extreme anti-American bigotry of the Nation of Islam among black urban professionals and black churches.

The theology of the NOI is not orthodox Islam but is branch of a wider black identity cult movement, whose various branches present a facade as Judaism, Islamic or Christian. They are really none of these religions, but closely-related black sects, based on a common, similar Gnostic doctrine, which all hold the black race to be the chosen people or actually God and the white race to be the ultimate evil or the devil.

When an author wants to express a controversial view in a book, but not have it blamed on himself, sometimes he will use a third party to state what they want to say. Rafiq, in this excerpt that follows, has never been identified with a real person and some people think that he is just a literary construct by Obama, which allows him to discuss the racism of Black Nationalism, while attempting to maintain some personal distance for himself. Obama writes in his analysis below that he does not feel good about it, but that racism may be necessary to improve the condition of the black race. This is the wrong conclusion! — especially, for a president of the United States!

When the two of us were alone, though, Rafiq and I could sometimes have normal conversations. Over time I arrived at a grudging admiration for his tenacity and bravado, and, within his own terms, a certain sincerity He confirmed that he had been a gang leader growing up in Altgeld; he had found religion, he said, under the stewardship of a local Muslim leader unaffiliated with Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. “If it hadn’t been for Islam, man, I’d probably be dead,” he told me one day. “Just had a negative attitude, you understand. Growing up in Altgeld, I’d soaked up all the poison the white man feeds us. See, the folks you’re working with got the same problem, even though they don’t realize it yet. They spend half they lives worrying about what white folks think. Start blaming themselves for the shit they see every day, thinking they can’t do no better till the white man decides they all right. But deep down they know that ain’t right. They know what this country has done to their momma, their daddy, their sister. So the truth is they hate white folks, but they can’t admit it to themselves. Keep it all bottled up, fighting themselves. Waste a lot of energy that way.

“I tell you one thing I admire about white folks,” he continued. “They know who they are. Look at the Italians. They didn’t care about the American flag and all that when they got here. First thing they did is put together the Mafia to make sure their interests were met. The Irish—they took over the city hall and found their boys jobs. The Jews, same thing . . .you telling me they care more about some black kid in the South Side than they do ’bout they relatives in Israel? Shit. It’s about blood, Barack, looking after your own. Period. Black people the only ones stupid enough to worry about their enemies.”

That was the truth as Rafiq saw it, and he didn’t waste energy picking that truth apart. His was a Hobbesian world where distrust was a given and loyalties extended from family to mosque to the black race — whereupon notions of loyalty ceased to apply. This narrowing vision, of blood and tribe, had provided him with a clarity of sorts, a means of focusing his attention. Black self-respect had delivered the mayor’s seat, he could argue, lust as black self-respect turned around the lives of drug addicts under the tutelage of the Muslims. Progress was within our grasp so long as we didn’t betray ourselves.

But what exactly constituted betrayal? Ever since the first time I’d picked up Malcolm X’s autobiography, I had tried to untangle the twin strands of black nationalism, arguing that nationalism’s affirming message-—of solidarity and self-reliance, discipline and communal responsibility—need not depend on hatred of whites any more than it depended on white munificence. We could tell this country where it was wrong, I would tell myself and any black friends who would listen, without ceasing to believe in its capacity for change.

In talking to self-professed nationalists like Rafiq, though, I came to see how the blanket indictment of everything white served a central function in their message of uplift; how, psychologically, at least, one depended on the other. For when the nationalist spoke of a reawakening of values as the only solution to black poverty, he was expressing an implicit, if not explicit, criticism to black listeners: that we did not have to live as we did. And while there were those who could take such an unadorned message and use it to hew out a new life for themselves—those with the stolid dispositions that Booker T Washington had once demanded from his followers—in the ears of many blacks such talk smacked of the explanations that whites had always offered for black poverty: that we continued to suffer from, if not genetic inferiority, then cultural weakness. It was a message that ignored causality or fault, a message outside history, without a script or plot that might insist on progression. For a people already stripped of their history, a people often ill-equipped to retrieve that history in any form other than what fluttered across the television screen, the testimony of what we saw every day seemed only to confirm our worst suspicions about ourselves.

Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people’s brutal experience in this country, served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them. Rid them from your mind and find your true power liberated. Rise up, ye mighty race!

This process of displacement, this means of engaging in self-criticism while removing ourselves from the object of criticism, helped explain the much-admired success of the Nation of Islam in turning around the lives of drug addicts and criminals. But if it was especially well suited to those at the bottom rungs of American life, it also spoke to all the continuing doubts of the lawyer who had run hard for the gold ring yet still experienced the awkward silence when walking into the clubhouse; those young college students who warily measured the distance between them and life on Chicago’s mean streets, with the danger that distance implied; all the black people who, it turned out, shared with me a voice that whispered inside them-“You don’t really belong here.”

In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential nationalists. The anger was there, bottled up and often turned inward. And as I thought about Ruby and her blue eyes, the teenagers calling each other “nigger” and worse, I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage toward whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyalty above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.

It was a painful thought to consider, as painful now as it had been years ago. It contradicted the morality my mother had taught me, a morality of subtle distinctions between individuals of goodwill and those who wished me ill, between active malice and ignorance or indifference. I had a personal stake in that moral framework; I’d discovered that I couldn’t escape it if I tried. And yet perhaps it was a framework that blacks in this country could no longer afford; perhaps it weakened black resolve, encouraged confusion within the ranks.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and for many blacks, times were chronically desperate. If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.