Obama File 56 Son of Atom Bomb Spy "Don't Mourn Obama's Leanings -- Organize to Push Him the Other Way..."
Obama file 55 here
The son of convicted Soviet atom bomb spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg wants to push Barack Obama further to the left.
Mike Meeropol, 2007 Left Forum
Michael Meeropol calls for a mass movement to exert pressure on Obama. His model is the communist led labour unions and "people's organisations" of the New Deal era which forced huge concessions from an only mildly sympathetic Franklin D Roosevelt.
Meeropol knows that while Obama has worked with socialists since his teens, he will still need pressure to keep him in line.
From The Rag Blog December 4,
All the stories about Obama's economic team and his economic instincts mean is that we on the left have to shout loud and clear to make the policies move in our direction.
That's what the socialists and communists did during the Depression and though the New Deal "saved" capitalism -- it also made it a lot more "worker" and "people" friendly ...
It wasn't revolution, but that didn't stop the socialists and communists of the 1930s from fighting for the right to organize unions, for anti-lynching legislation, for the minimum wage law, etc. etc. -- and it didn't stop the Civil Rights Movements of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s from demanding the most minimal rights already guaranteed under the capitalist constitution.
I think to a large extent, we ought to stop discussing whether Obama is being "good" or "bad" and focus on the POLICIES we want his administration (and Congress) to follow.
Whether he stays in the DLC-Clintonian mode or adopts policies that significantly move away from the right-wing economic concensus depends on US and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Joe Hill said, "Don't mourn for me, organize." We should say, "Don't mourn Obama's leanings -- organize to push him the other way..."
The reason this is significant is that Meeropol is no lone leftist wailing in the wilderness. He is part of an organisation at the heart of Obama's leftist support movement. He is close to people who know Obama well, he is reflecting a strategy that has been in place for some time.
That is-get our man into the White House, then mobilise mass pressure to keep him on target.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Meropol's leftist credentials are impeccable. His parents, both ardent communists were tried and then executed in June 1953, for passing on atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.
Abe Meeropol
The orphaned Rosenberg boys, Michael and Robert were then adopted by a New York school teacher and covert communist, named Abe Meeropol.
The two brothers have been involved in the left all their lives. Much of it spent campaigning to clear the names of their late parents.
That campaign suffered a major setback earlier this year when a 91 year old Morton Sobell, the co-defendant in the famous trial, after more than 50 years of denials, finally admitted that he and Julius Rosenberg, had both been Soviet agents.
Michael Meeropol is a leading member of the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS). It is a family affair, Robert Meeropol is also close to MDS (he was active in SDS in college) as is Michael's daughter Ivy.
MDS founder, former SDSer and DSA leader Paul Buhle
Founded in 2006 MDS unites all the main leftist currents behind the Obama campaign-the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the CPUSA offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)and former members of the '60s radical organisation Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)and its terrorist splinter group Weather Underground Organisation (WUO).
MDS board members 2007, former WUO terrorists Mark Rudd far left, Jeff Jones second from right, Manning Marable centre in black, Charlene Mitchell in red
The DSA board in 2006/2007 included Gerald Horne (CPUSA), Carl Davidson (CCDS, ex SDS, ex Communist Party Marxist-Leninist), Manning Marable (DSA, CCDS), Charlene Mitchell (CCDS, ex CPUSA) Angela Davis (CCDS, ex CPUSA), Noam Chomsky (DSA, CCDS), Barbara Ehrenreich (DSA), Bill Fletcher (DSA, Freedom Road Socialist Organisation), Paul Buhle (DSA, ex SDS), Mike Klonsky (ex SDS, ex Communist Party Marxist-Leninist) Bert Garskof (ex SDS), David Graeber (ex SDS), Tom Hayden (ex SDS), Mike James (ex SDS), Bruce Rubenstein (ex Weatherman), Bernardine Dohrn (ex SDS, ex WUO) Mark Rudd (ex SDS, ex WUO) and Jeff Jones (ex SDS, ex WUO).
Other prominent MDS activists include Marilyn Katz (ex SDS) and Bill Ayers (ex SDS, ex WUO).
Significantly of those listed above, at least five, Carl Davidson, Mike Klonsky, Bernardine Dorhn, Bill Ayers and Marilyn Katz have been personally close to Barack Obama.
Ayers and Dohrn are personal friends, helped launch Obama's career and in Ayers' case has worked in several organisationds with the president-elect. Klonsky, is a friend of Ayers and Davidson since SDS days and has worked with Ayers and Obama on "school reform." Davidson worked with Obama in the Chicago New Party and together with Katz organised the 2002 peace rally where Obama made his name as an opponent of the Iraq War. Katz fundraised for Obama during his campaign and seved as an Obama delegate to the 2008 Democratic Party convention.
Ayers and Dohrn also subscribe to the mass pressure theory. The pair were interviewed for the August 17 2006 edition of the socialist journal In These Times
To mount a movement, “let’s look at history,” said Dohrn between bites of her tuna nicoise salad. “Lyndon Johnson was not a civil rights leader; Lyndon Johnson was responding to a civil rights movement. FDR was not a labor leader; FDR was responding to a labor movement. We confuse these things when we think about them today.”
Indeed, that’s “a great mistake. Lyndon Johnson was the most effective politician of his generation, but it took a movement independent of Lyndon Johnson to get Lyndon Johnson to use that effectiveness for the good.”
MDS board members Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and Carl Davidson were four of the six founders of Progressives for Obama.
Designed to unite socialists behind the Obama campaign, PFO also subscribes to the "mass pressure" policy.
According to PFO founders Ehrenreich, Fletcher and Hayden
It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws.
And it will be the Obama movement that will make it necessary and possible to end the war in Iraq, renew our economy with a populist emphasis, and confront the challenge of global warming. We should not only keep the pressure on [Obama] but also connect the issues that Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision.
There is no doubt that Meeropol, Ayers, Dohrn, Rudd and their MDS colleagues have the power to mobilise millions of Americans.
MDS's three affiliate socialist organisations-CPUSA, CCDS and DSA between them dominate the AFL-CIO and the rival Change to Win labour federation. They completely control the peace movement peak body United for Peace and Justice and dominate or influence dozens of mass organisations including the NAACP, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Black Radical Congress, Jobs With Justice, ACORN, USAction and La Raza.
Therefore it is a mistake to think that activists like Meeropol and his comrades have no influence. They sit in a powerful position. They helped put their man in the White House-they can mobilise millions to push him in the direction they want.
The MDS wants to change America forever, through the Obama presidency. MDS unites several thousand hardened activists, many of whom have been working for socialism since the '60s.
This is their last, best chance. They are not going to let it slip by without a fight.
Will Michael Meeropol get to realise his parent's aborted socialist vision?
Obama file 57 here
The son of convicted Soviet atom bomb spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg wants to push Barack Obama further to the left.
Mike Meeropol, 2007 Left Forum
Michael Meeropol calls for a mass movement to exert pressure on Obama. His model is the communist led labour unions and "people's organisations" of the New Deal era which forced huge concessions from an only mildly sympathetic Franklin D Roosevelt.
Meeropol knows that while Obama has worked with socialists since his teens, he will still need pressure to keep him in line.
From The Rag Blog December 4,
All the stories about Obama's economic team and his economic instincts mean is that we on the left have to shout loud and clear to make the policies move in our direction.
That's what the socialists and communists did during the Depression and though the New Deal "saved" capitalism -- it also made it a lot more "worker" and "people" friendly ...
It wasn't revolution, but that didn't stop the socialists and communists of the 1930s from fighting for the right to organize unions, for anti-lynching legislation, for the minimum wage law, etc. etc. -- and it didn't stop the Civil Rights Movements of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s from demanding the most minimal rights already guaranteed under the capitalist constitution.
I think to a large extent, we ought to stop discussing whether Obama is being "good" or "bad" and focus on the POLICIES we want his administration (and Congress) to follow.
Whether he stays in the DLC-Clintonian mode or adopts policies that significantly move away from the right-wing economic concensus depends on US and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Joe Hill said, "Don't mourn for me, organize." We should say, "Don't mourn Obama's leanings -- organize to push him the other way..."
The reason this is significant is that Meeropol is no lone leftist wailing in the wilderness. He is part of an organisation at the heart of Obama's leftist support movement. He is close to people who know Obama well, he is reflecting a strategy that has been in place for some time.
That is-get our man into the White House, then mobilise mass pressure to keep him on target.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Meropol's leftist credentials are impeccable. His parents, both ardent communists were tried and then executed in June 1953, for passing on atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.
Abe Meeropol
The orphaned Rosenberg boys, Michael and Robert were then adopted by a New York school teacher and covert communist, named Abe Meeropol.
The two brothers have been involved in the left all their lives. Much of it spent campaigning to clear the names of their late parents.
That campaign suffered a major setback earlier this year when a 91 year old Morton Sobell, the co-defendant in the famous trial, after more than 50 years of denials, finally admitted that he and Julius Rosenberg, had both been Soviet agents.
Michael Meeropol is a leading member of the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS). It is a family affair, Robert Meeropol is also close to MDS (he was active in SDS in college) as is Michael's daughter Ivy.
MDS founder, former SDSer and DSA leader Paul Buhle
Founded in 2006 MDS unites all the main leftist currents behind the Obama campaign-the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the CPUSA offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)and former members of the '60s radical organisation Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)and its terrorist splinter group Weather Underground Organisation (WUO).
MDS board members 2007, former WUO terrorists Mark Rudd far left, Jeff Jones second from right, Manning Marable centre in black, Charlene Mitchell in red
The DSA board in 2006/2007 included Gerald Horne (CPUSA), Carl Davidson (CCDS, ex SDS, ex Communist Party Marxist-Leninist), Manning Marable (DSA, CCDS), Charlene Mitchell (CCDS, ex CPUSA) Angela Davis (CCDS, ex CPUSA), Noam Chomsky (DSA, CCDS), Barbara Ehrenreich (DSA), Bill Fletcher (DSA, Freedom Road Socialist Organisation), Paul Buhle (DSA, ex SDS), Mike Klonsky (ex SDS, ex Communist Party Marxist-Leninist) Bert Garskof (ex SDS), David Graeber (ex SDS), Tom Hayden (ex SDS), Mike James (ex SDS), Bruce Rubenstein (ex Weatherman), Bernardine Dohrn (ex SDS, ex WUO) Mark Rudd (ex SDS, ex WUO) and Jeff Jones (ex SDS, ex WUO).
Other prominent MDS activists include Marilyn Katz (ex SDS) and Bill Ayers (ex SDS, ex WUO).
Significantly of those listed above, at least five, Carl Davidson, Mike Klonsky, Bernardine Dorhn, Bill Ayers and Marilyn Katz have been personally close to Barack Obama.
Ayers and Dohrn are personal friends, helped launch Obama's career and in Ayers' case has worked in several organisationds with the president-elect. Klonsky, is a friend of Ayers and Davidson since SDS days and has worked with Ayers and Obama on "school reform." Davidson worked with Obama in the Chicago New Party and together with Katz organised the 2002 peace rally where Obama made his name as an opponent of the Iraq War. Katz fundraised for Obama during his campaign and seved as an Obama delegate to the 2008 Democratic Party convention.
Ayers and Dohrn also subscribe to the mass pressure theory. The pair were interviewed for the August 17 2006 edition of the socialist journal In These Times
To mount a movement, “let’s look at history,” said Dohrn between bites of her tuna nicoise salad. “Lyndon Johnson was not a civil rights leader; Lyndon Johnson was responding to a civil rights movement. FDR was not a labor leader; FDR was responding to a labor movement. We confuse these things when we think about them today.”
Indeed, that’s “a great mistake. Lyndon Johnson was the most effective politician of his generation, but it took a movement independent of Lyndon Johnson to get Lyndon Johnson to use that effectiveness for the good.”
MDS board members Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and Carl Davidson were four of the six founders of Progressives for Obama.
Designed to unite socialists behind the Obama campaign, PFO also subscribes to the "mass pressure" policy.
According to PFO founders Ehrenreich, Fletcher and Hayden
It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws.
And it will be the Obama movement that will make it necessary and possible to end the war in Iraq, renew our economy with a populist emphasis, and confront the challenge of global warming. We should not only keep the pressure on [Obama] but also connect the issues that Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision.
There is no doubt that Meeropol, Ayers, Dohrn, Rudd and their MDS colleagues have the power to mobilise millions of Americans.
MDS's three affiliate socialist organisations-CPUSA, CCDS and DSA between them dominate the AFL-CIO and the rival Change to Win labour federation. They completely control the peace movement peak body United for Peace and Justice and dominate or influence dozens of mass organisations including the NAACP, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Black Radical Congress, Jobs With Justice, ACORN, USAction and La Raza.
Therefore it is a mistake to think that activists like Meeropol and his comrades have no influence. They sit in a powerful position. They helped put their man in the White House-they can mobilise millions to push him in the direction they want.
The MDS wants to change America forever, through the Obama presidency. MDS unites several thousand hardened activists, many of whom have been working for socialism since the '60s.
This is their last, best chance. They are not going to let it slip by without a fight.
Will Michael Meeropol get to realise his parent's aborted socialist vision?
Obama file 57 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at
12/12/2008 04:41:00 PM
1 Comments:
Oh my god we need to do all we can to stop this terrorist becoming out president.
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