Obama File 40 Bill & Bernardine's Buddy Bert, Backs Barack

Obama File 39 here

Bert Garskof was a mentor to the '60s radical organisation Students for a Democratic Society. More lately he has been pursuing his ideals through the Green Party.

According to the New York Times of November 17th 2000

Professor Garskof, a research psychologist at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., was an architect of the Green Party's national political strategy and Ralph Nader's first run for president in 1996. He was a Connecticut party leader and remains a registered Green. He is also Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's brother-in-law.

So, although he campaigned for the Democrats this year, even helped organize a last-ditch Greens-for-Gore effort, isn't he at least partly to blame? Didn't the ragtag pro-environment, anti-free-trade movement that he helped channel into organized electoral politics deny Mr. Lieberman -- the brother of his third wife, Ellen, 50 -- a clear victory and perhaps the vice presidency?

Bert Garskof is also a long time friend of former SDS leaders and Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.


Like Ayers, Dorhn and former Weathermen Jeff Jones, Mark Rudd and Bruce Rubenstein, Garskov is a leader of the Movement for a Democratic Society, a support network for the the 2006 vintage new SDS.

MDS links senior members of modern Marxist organisations such as Democratic Socialists of America, Communist Party USA and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism with former SDSers and several former Weathermen.

MDS is also the parent organisation of a new group founded early this year-Progressives for Obama.

Like Ayers, Dohrn and most of his old comrades, Bert Garskof has learned little in the last 40 years.

He is still fighting against the Vietnam War.

Recently Garskof posted this defence of Bill Ayers in the comments section of this blog post.

Senator McCain suffers from a convenient historic amnesia as he carps about Bill Ayers. Nothing that supposed urban terrorist Bill Ayers said or did could compare to the mass destruction, the death and tragedy brought to the Vietnamese by McCain and the armed forces he blindly served. Better patriots than he saw the war on Vietnam for what it was – mass murder from the air and on the ground. Murder most foully unjustified. Justified not by international law, nor the US Constitution, nor the Charter of the United Nations.

Nor were our chances of winning the war supported by the long history of the conflict, or by the wishes of the masses of Vietnamese people. In fact, President Eisenhower said that if we allowed an election (something we never did) in Vietnam, 90% of the people would elect Ho Chi Min, the man at the head of the forces opposing us. Nor was the war supported by the American people as a whole. Most of us were horrified at the deadly force and murderous weapons of mass destruction brought down on the Vietnamese.

From high altitude bombing to napalm to rapid firing multiple barrel machine guns, our air and ground forces killed an estimated 2 million people. We actually rained down more bombs on the small country of Vietnam than were dropped by all participants in World War II on the whole planet. Nor was it, by the end, supported by many of the young men and women serving in that un-winnable and morally untenable war. Many service men refused to fight the Vietnamese. Many young men fought the draft, fought the intrusion of ROTC on campuses. Pilots refused to take part in this immoral action. One was a friend of mine, Captain Dale Noyd, who was Court Martialed. Were Dale, now deceased several years, to come back and run for president and were he to point to his war record, I would say here is a man who could serve the country as he did during the Vietnam War.

Whereas, Senator McCain represents today, all that was sordid and cowardly in those years. He reaps no glory for, nor brings any moral rectitude to his campaign because of his years flying high tech missions over Vietnam. His actions then against the Vietnamese, as his rah-rah support of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan now condemn him, most profoundly condemn him.

Bert Garskof

In November 2007 several former SDSers spoke at a reunion event at Michigan State University. Speakers on this video taken at the event include SDS founder Al Haber, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Bert Garskof.



Do I hear the ghost of Jimi Hendrix playing "All Along the Watchtower" or is it just the way the wind is blowing?

Here Garskof speaks of revolution and socialism and declares that he may work "for Obama". Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn share the panel.



Well perhaps Bert Garskof has learn't something after all. No more Green Party futility for Bert. Now comrade Garskof is pursuing his socialist ideals through the Democrats.

Bert did go to work for Obama. He is active in the Obama campaign in Connecticutt.

He also supports the aims of Progressives for Obama.

On March 2008 Garskof contributed this comment to The Nation article on Progressives for Obama.

I agree that we people to the left of the Democratic Party should join the Obama campaign. We need to do the hard work of electoral organizing alongside the thousands of volunteers who have created the Obama movement. I think that we should, along with jumping into the work of the electoral campaign, argue that the Obama volunteers could become the base of a mass ongoing movement that lives on after Obama wins, a movement that would be in place to give the Obama Administration direct, on-going, immediate information from the base up and hear what Obama thinks from the Government down.

We can try to create such grassroots advisory committees in every district. Even if we cannot make these ideas realities everywhere or even anywhere, raising the ideas is a good thing. And in some places we may be able to do it. Every town, or ward or even neighborhood that succeeds in creating a post-election advisory committee would be a great lesson, a great guide for others to build more participatory democracy.

Bert Garskof

Bethany, CT

I'm betting basement bomb builders Bill and Bernadine will be backing Bert backing Barack.

Obama File 41 here