Obama-file 19 Obama '08 "All the Way With DSA"

Obama-file 18 here

If Barack Obama's campaign for the US presidency has an unofficial slogan, it should be "All the way with DSA".


The Marxists of Chicago Democratic Socialists of America helped launch Obama's political career and have supported him ever since.

DSA linked unions have endorsed Obama's campaign for the Deocratic nomination and DSA linked figures such as Congresswomen Jan Schakowsky and Barbara Lee have come out strongly for the Senator.

While the iron disciplined Communist Party USA has committed itself totally to the Obama cause, the looser DSA is less obvious about its support.

Traditionally DSA allows its members more freedom to back candidates of their choice, but several prominent DSA members have stood up for Obama in recent times.

These range from senior union officials, to street level supporters, to well known academics.

An interesting example of Obama/union/political solidarity occurred in Chicago on March 3rd 2007.

I quote from blog Public Affairs

Speaking in a vernacular and cadence that showed the Harvard Law School and Columbia University trained Barack Obama can connect with working class people, the third year U. S. Senator wowed and energized a mostly labor union crowd of about 1600supporters this morning...

The event attracted some of Labor’s big hitters to join Obama on the dais and speak, including John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO and Gerald McEntee, President of AFSCME. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky [D-Evanston, 9th CD], an early and big-time supporter of Obama’s in the 2004 Senate Primary and Senator Dick Durbin [D-IL] also spoke...

Eight other individuals spoke at the rally, including local labor leaders and health care workers, as well as a local favorite for liberals, Dr. Quentin Young.

Cong. Jan Schakowsky [D-Evanston, 9th CD]: … Employers can intimidate, fire, threaten to move people from the day shift to the graveyard...it is a new day in our nation’s capital, it’s a new day for Resurrection workers and their friends, it’s a new day for immigrant workers, it’s a new day for all our working Americans who dream of the justice that ONLY the Union Movement can deliver. And, to the doubters I say, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait until we have a Labor Department under President Barack Obama.

Its a safe bet that Jan Schakowsky is angling to head the US Labor Department under President Obama.


John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO is the USA's most powerful labour leader. he is also a long time DSA member.

Gerald McEntee, the nation's top public sector unionist is a strong Sweeney ally. He is also allegedly a DSA member.

According to San Francisco DSA member Michael Pugliese;

BTW, for what it's worth McEntee, is one of the DSA notables in the labor bureaucrat column. As is John Sweeney.

Quentin Young is a well known Chicago DSA member and early Obama backer, who seems to have come back to the cause, after a period of disillusionment with his friend and neighbour.

Jan Schakowsky has close ties to DSA. Dick Durbin is a strong Obama backer and is regarded as one of the most far left members of the US Senate.


Illinois Senators Dick Durbin, Barack Obama

I found this interesting piece from the Young Democratic Socialists online magazine, the Activist.org

It even refers to yours truly!

It is true that Obama has delivered a lackluster performance in the Senate and that there are some bizarrely conservative people in his campaign. But Barack has some real left-wing street cred in Chicago. I will let this inaccurate right-wing attack on Obama (associating him with a certain organization near and dear to us) speak for itself: http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/01/obama-file-7-barack-obama-and.html . He is probably the only person running for president who could identify, say, Antonio Gramsci, and that should count for something shouldn’t it?

He has often attacked for being less outspoken than the Senior Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, but Obama actually takes his cues from Durbin who, along with DSA-friendly Jan Schakowsky, has been his main political sponsor.

A leading academic Obama backer is Princeton University professor of Religion and African American Studies, Cornel West.

An honorary chair of DSA, West was initially a Clinton backer and very cool towards Obama.



Now West is an unabashed Obamaphile.

Here Cornel West Introduces Barack Obama at the Apollo Theater, November 29th, 2007.

Note that West describes Obama as his "companion and comrade".



Further down the socialist/academic food chain is California State University, Sacramento, professor Duane Campbell.


A leader of DSA's Anti Racism and Latino Commissions, Campbell is an Obama zealot.

His blog Choosing Democracy focuses more on Obama than even mine does. He is a leading activist in the Sacramento area Obama campaign, including the Sacramento Obama Meetup group.

According to Cal State's The Hornet

Barack Obama's presidential campaign was brought to the attention of those who walked by a booth that was set up on the Library Quad today.

Bilingual and multicultural education professor Duane Campbell, who has been involved with political activities since the 70's, volunteers his time three days a week to educate students of the presidential candidate's campaign

DSA members certainly working hard to put their man in the White House.

Obama-file 20 here

Obama File 51 Top Communists Used Influence for Obama Victory

Obama File 50 here

I posted here on the huge role that unions played in the election of Barack Obama.

After John Sweeney of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) became AFL-CIO president in 1996, he oversaw the repeal of the ban on known communists holding office in AFL-CIO unions.

The once strongly anti-communist US union movement is now dominated by supporters of DSA and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).


Illinois unionist Scott Marshall is one the most influential socialists in the US. He is Vice Chair of the Communist Party USA and Chair of the CPUSA Labor Commission.

Scott Marshall directs the hundreds of CPUSA members and sympathisers who have re-colonised the US labour movement in recent years.

This gives Marshall control of millions of dollars of union money and thousands of paid and volunteer union political campaigners.

Scott Marshall used his considerable influence to help get Barack Obama elected president and he's pretty damn happy about it.

From the CPUSA's Labor UpFront Blog

Obama Wins!
Labor Wins!
Working Families Win!

The American people reject policies of greed
and union-busting!

President-elect Barack Obama.

Those words ring with meaning. For organized labor they ring with pride, hope, and energy for the struggles ahead. No one feels like “labor’s candidate won, so now we can go home and rest.” Rather, as congratulation messages pour in from all parts of the labor movement, the critical subtext is, we are ready and eager to march with you for change. At the top of labor’s change agenda is boots-on-the-ground support for the Obama agenda of a new “New Deal” for economic recovery and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Organized labor played an amazing role in the election Barack Obama.

Unions played an extraordinary leadership role in winning the working class for Obama.

It’s been many years since labor was so totally united behind a presidential candidate.

Labor raised the struggle against racism and for class unity to a whole new level.

Unions gave vital leadership in building support for Obama on issues like the economy, workers rights to organize, protecting retiree’s pensions and social security, healthcare, and building green manufacturing that protects the environment and puts people back to work.

The labor movement took independent political action to spectacular new levels. Unions broke all previous records in mobilizing it’s rank and file for labor walks, phone banks, plant gate distributions, and member to member contact in the workplace. Labor continued to build and develop it’s own political apparatus and voice. Hundreds, if not thousands, of union halls became campaign central for the Obama campaign as well as for targeted Congressional contests.

As phenomenal as labor’s efforts were, the impact of the Obama upsurge and campaign on labor was also incredible. New coalitions were built or strengthened. A new depth was added to ties between labor and all the components of the Obama movement.

Labor’s role was hardly mentioned in the mainstream press. All the more reason for labor to have a big showing of celebration and support for our new President. Some in labor have begun to talk about a big mobilization for President Barack Obama’s “People’s Inaugural.”

What a great idea!


Joelle Fishman is Chair of the CPUSA Political Action Commission and Chair of the Connecticut Communist Party. She is also the daughter-in-law of the late senior Soviet spy and former head of the CPUSA Economics Commission, Victor Perlo.

Fishman's role in the CPUSA's Political Action Commission gives her responsibility for organising party support for "progressive" Democratic Party candidates at the state, congressional, senate and of course presidential level.

She has links to Obama friend and USAction leader, William McNary.

Like virtually all of the CPUSA's "red army", Joelle Fishman personally campaigned for Barack Obama.

Joelle Fishman writing in the Connecticut Communist Party'sCT People Before Profits Blog

It was enjoyable to knock on doors and find voters who were enthusiastic and inspired by Obama’s historic candidacy, like the teacher who said her whole family was spreading the word. There were several families of divided opinion and others who declined to say. The most challenging conversations were with voters who did not want to support Obama because they were caught up in the lies and rumors undermining his integrity and patriotism. Those who were ready to discuss appreciated the comparison of McCain’s anti-worker record with Obama’s near perfect score.

It was exciting to be part of the quarter million union volunteers across the country, the biggest election mobilization in labor’s history, which has influenced the political climate in working class swing states and districts, laying the basis for a much larger labor movement.

The example set by labor’s top leaders talking directly with white sisters and brothers about how Obama represents their best chance for a secure future will have a lasting impact...

This year the chance to uproot ultra-right corporate political dominance is much greater. Voters want to be part of history. They see that the policies of the Bush administration, which McCain-Palin would continue, are bankrupting the country and endangering the world.

Labor’s giant effort along with massive organizing by African American, Latino, women’s and youth groups has turned historically Republican states’ House and Senate seats into battlegrounds, including the Senate seat in New Hampshire.

A landslide victory for Obama and Congress will open the door for big new struggles to organize workers into unions and place the needs of working families front and center in this economic crisis.

The CPUSA has backed Obama electorally since at least 2004. This year the communists put every resource they had behind the Obama's campaign.

Why?

Obama file 52 here

Obama File 94 Concert or Coincidence? Obama and the Committees of Correspondence Connections

Obama File 93 here

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism is one of the US's most significant Marxist-Leninist parties.

The organization was born in 1992 out of a major split in the Communist Party USA, incorporating Trotskyites, former Maoists, socialists and anarchists to form an entirely new party.

The party has strong ties to Cuba , Vietnam, Venezuela and the communist parties of France and the former East Germany.

Committees of Correspondence, was and is strong in Chicago. I have written here how two leading CoC members have worked closely with Barack Obama.

Committees of Correspondence leader Manning Marable wrote in British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review in December 2008;

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...

He was almost certainly referring to his Chicago CoC comrades.

I have in my possession a Chicago Committees of Correspondence "Membership, Subscription and mailing list" dated October 14, 1994.


Of the nearly 400 names on the list, many have been identified as CoC members from other sources.

The list does not prove CoC membership per se, but it does indicate some degree of contact with the organization.

What struck me as significant were the names of several people who have promoted, or impacted on the political career of Barack Obama.

They include;

Carl Davidson Now one of four Co-leaders of the Committees of Correspondence. Davidson worked with Obama in the radical New Party in the 1990s. He later helped organize the famous 2002 peace rally in Chicago's Federal Plaza where Obama first became famous as an opponent of the Iraq War.

Danny Davis An Illinois Democratic Congressman and a member of Democratic Socialists of America with proven ties to the Communist Party and CoC.

Davis has been a long time Obama friend and political ally who campaigned with Obama in the New Party in 1995/96.

Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers Former leaders of the terrorist Weather Undeground. The couple hosted Obma's first known political gathering in their home in 1995.

Bill Ayers' ties to Obama run deep;

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 national committee. Professor Durham later 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

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.

Katz, with Carl Davidson helped organize Obama's appearance at the 2002 Chicago anti Iraq War rally.

Marilyn Katz 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. She was also an endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.

Fred Klonsky A former Students for a Democratic Society activist, brother of Mike Klonsky and endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.

Mike Klonsky Is a former leader of Students for a Democratic Society and the pro China Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).

Mike Klonsky is a long time friends with 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 A long time Communist Party sympathiser, Alice Palmer has travelled extensively in the old Soviet Bloc and was a leader of the soviet front International Organization of Journalists.

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. Pardo worked with Obama on voter registration in 1992. In the mid 1990s Pardo was active, with Obama in the Chicago New Party.

Dan Swinney A Chicago labor unionist and endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.


Kevin Tyson A former member of the Communist Party. Kevin Tyson has been a long time activist and co-parishioner with Obama in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.

Mildred Williamson A Chicago health professional, former Communist Party member and Committees of Correspondence leader.

An endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.

Is it significant that all these people, several of them previously unconnected, all supported Barack Obama's career?

Were they working, at least some of the time, in concert, to promote their mutual friend? Or are the Committees of Correspondence connections merely coincidental?

What do you think?

Obama file 95 here

Obama File 112 Amiri Baraka Hearts Barack Obama

Obama File 111 here

Amiri Baraka loves Barack Obama.

Amiri Baraka is a self proclaimed communist. Baraka once led the Revolutionary Communist League (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). In more recent years he has been a little closer to more orthodox Marxists such as the Communist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America. His wife, Amina Baraka, has been, in recent years, a member of the Communist Party USA.

Amiri and Amina Baraka were both involved in the June 1998 founding conference of the Black Radical Congress in Chicago.

Attendees at the conference included future Obama "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones, member of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement and a "9/11 Truther"; future Progressives for Obama founder Bill Fletcher, Jr. (Democratic Socialists of America and Freedom Road Socialist Organization); Obama's then pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and future Obama Black Advisory Council member, Cornel West (Democratic Socialists of America).

Rev. Wright and Cornel West spoke at the conference session entitled "Faith as a Weapon: Spirituality and the Role of the Church In The Radical Movement".

Baraka has written at least two poems dedicated to his idol - "Ode to Obama" and "Obama Poem".

On July 21 2008 Amiri Baraka prepared a statement "Amiri Baraka challenges Black radicals to "do something" about "The Parade of Anti-Obama Rascals", for circulation at the upcoming Black Radical Congress meeting in St. Louis Missouri.

Baraka urged his comrades to support Obama, rather than the more openly  radical, but completely  futile candidacy of former Congresswoman and "9/11 Truther" Cynthia McKinney.

I mention all this because it is criminal for these people claiming to be radical or intellectual to oppose or refuse to support Obama. I hope we don't have to hear about "the lesser of two evils" from people whose foolish mirror worship wd have us elect the worst of two evils.''

For those who claim radical by supporting McKinney or, brain forbid, the Nadir of fake liberalism, we shoud have little sympathy. As much as I have admired Cynthia McKinney, to pose her candidacy as an alternative to Obama is at best empty idealism, at worst nearly as dangerous as when the Nader used the same windy egotism to help elect Bush.''


The people who are supporting McKinney must know that that is an empty gesture. But too often such people are so pocked with self congratulatory idealism, that they care little or understand little about politics (i.e. the gaining maintaining and use of power) but want only to pronounce, to themselves mostly, how progressive or radical or even revolutionary they are.''


Faced with the obvious that McKinney cannot actually do anything by running but put out lines a solid left bloc should put out anyway, their pre-joinder is that Obama will be running as a candidate of an imperialist party, or Imperialism will not let Obama do anything different or progressive…that he will do the same things any democrat would do and that the Democrats are using Obama to draw young people to the Democratic party. Also that there is a sector of the bourgeoisie supports Obama to put a new face on the U.S. as alternative to the Devil face Bush has projected as the American image.''


Some of these things I agree with, but before qualifying that let me say that no amount of solipsistic fist pounding about "radical principles" will change this society as much as the election of Barack Obama will as president of the US. Not to understand this is to have few clues about the history of this country, its people, or the history of the Black struggle in the US. It is also to be completely at odds with the masses of the Afro-American people, let us say with the masses of black and colored people internationally. How people who claim to lead the people but who time after time tail them so badly must be understood. It is because they confuse elitism with class consciousness...''

Even the dumbest things Obama has said re: Cuba and the soft shoe for Israel must be seen as the cost of realpolitik, that is he is not running for president of the NAACP and not to understand that those are the stances that must be taken in the present political context, even though we hold out to support what he said about initiating talks with the Cubans, the Palestinians . After years of Washington stupidity and slavish support for the Miami Gusanos and Israeli imperialism, there is in Obama's raising of talks with the U.S. Bourgeois enemies something that must be understood as the potential path for new initiative. It is the duty of a left progressive radical bloc to be loud and regular in our demands for the changes Obama has alluded to in his campaign. We must take up these issues and push collectively, as a Bloc, or he will be pushed inexorably to the right.''


Obama has addressed the Israeli lobby and the Gusano (anti Cuba) lobby. But where is the Black left and general progressive, radical and revolutionary lobby? That is the real job we need to address. We must bring something to the table. It is time for the left to really make some kind of Left Bloc to support Obama...''

Clearly Amiri Baraka knew a lot more about Barack Obama in 2008, than did most of the millions of voters who elected him.

In June 2009, Amiri Baraka gave an interview to Russia Today, in which he confirmed his commitment to communism.

Baraka praises Obama's "tacit nationalization" of much of the auto industry and also supported Obama's moves towards a "people's democracy" - Marxist code for socialism.

Amiri Baraka remains one of America's most committed Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries.

He still supports Barack Obama, when some other leftists have deserted the U.S. president. Why?

Obama File 113 here

Obama File 41 Obama Was a New Party Member-Documentary Evidence

Obama File 40 here

This post is for journalists who care about the future of their country more than their careers.

I have previously posted about Barack Obama's involvement in the socialist led Illinois New Party here, here and here.

Below are scans from New Party News Spring 1996.

They prove that Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois New Party and was endorsed by them in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race.

Front page-scanned from a photocopy


Front page close up-scanned from a photocopy


Front page ultra close up-scanned from a photocopy


Note that the text refers to Barack Obama as a New Party member, while Willie Delgado is only "NP endorsed"

The New Party clearly drew a distinction. Obama was on on the wrong side of the dividing line.

Page 2, scanned from a photocopy.


Page 2 closeup-scanned from the original.


The New Party was the creation of the quasi-Marxist Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the radical community organisation ACORN. The Communist Party splinter group Committees of Correspondence (CoC) was also involved.

I quote from Chicago DSA's New Ground of September/October 1995

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."

Here is part of an undated New Party document probably from 1995. Scanned from a photocopy.


It lists approximately one hundred"community leaders, organizers, unionists, retirees, scholars, artists, parents, students, doctors, writers and other activists who are building the NP."

Those listed include;

Elaine Bernard-A Labour academic and prominent DSA member.

Noam Chomsky-Linguist and activist, member of both DSA and CoC.

Barbara Ehrenreich-Author, activist and DSA leader. Early this year Ehrenreich was one of the four founders of Progressives for Obama

Bill Fletcher-Former Maoist, a labour activist and leading DSA member. Early this year Fletcher was one of the four founders of Progressives for Obama

Maude Hurd-Longtime ACORN president. Awarded for her work by Boston DSA. ACORN is heavily involved in the Obama campaign.

Manning Marable-A founder of DSA and a leader of CoC. Regarded as a driving force within the New Party. Now an Obama supporter.

Frances Fox Piven-A senior DSA member. Regarded as the brains behind ACORN. Piven is now an endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.

Raphael Pizzaro-New York labour activist and former CPUSA member. An official of both CoC and DSA.

Gloria Steinem-Author and senior DSA member An Obama supporter and volunteer.

Cornel West-Academic and prominent DSA member. West now serves as an advisor to the Obama campaign.

Quentin Young-Chicago doctor, prominent DSA member. Quentin Young is a neighbour, friend and supporter of Barack Obama. he attended the famous 1995 meeting in the home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn where Barack Obama was introduced by Alice Palmer as the chosen successor to her Illinois State Senate seat.

Carl Davidson, former Chicago CoC National Committee member, New Party activist, associate of Barack Obama and friend of Bill Ayers, now serves as Progressives for Obama webmaster.

The originals of these documents are held in the Washington DC area. I personally viewed them when I visited Washington in May 2008.

If any journalist, media organisation or publisher would like to view the original documents they may email Trevor Loudon, to be considered-address is on the side bar under New Zeal Research Associates.

I urge my US readers to forward this post to any journalist you consider may have the courage or ability to use them to good effect.

Bloggers-feel free to copy the images posted above.

PS For a superb article on the radical networks around Obama and the US government, go here

Obama File 42 here

Obama File 62 Obama "Understands What Socialism Is", Works With "Socialists With Backgrounds in the Communist Party"

Obama file 61 here

A leading US Marxist claims that president elect Barack Obama has read some of his books and "understands what socialism is."


Columbia University professor of African American Studies, Manning Marable, writing in the December Issue of British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review, also alleges that Obama works with socialists "with backgrounds in the Communist Party"

According to Dr Marable;

Obama represents a generation of what might be called post-racial black politicians-by which I mean they espouse a politics that minimises matters of race. They do not like to talk about race and subsume it under the rubric of poverty and class. So they are generally left of centre, or liberal, on social and economic policy. Obama is a progressive liberal.

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 is certainly in a position to know about Obama's views and reading habits. Whether Dr Marable and Barack Obama have ever met I'm usure, but they have been "close" for many years.

Since the 1980s Dr Marable has been a regular speaker at DSA's annual Socialist Scholars Conference, usually at held Cooper Union in New York. In the early 80s, Obama "went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn".

Perhaps Dr Marable inspired Obama then, just as Obama inspires Dr Marable today?

In the mid 1990s Dr Marable was a key founder of the New Party, which Obama joined in 1995 to help him with his successful Illinois State Senate.

Several key New Party people knew Obama personally, including Carl Davidson , Obama's friend and neighbour Quentin Young and long time colleague Congressman Danny K Davis.

Incidentally, when Dr Marable voted for Barack Obama, he voted for him not as a Democrat, but on the New York Working Families Party (WFP) line. Manning Marable is a member of the WFP which is a direct descendant of the now defunct New Party.


New York WFP rally

Says Dr Marable;

"Why vote for Obama on a Working Families ticket? You are counted independently of the Democrats and it shows there is a left constituency in the state of New York. It gives us some leverage on decision-making and policy and we run our own candidates at local level".

Dr Marable has been for at least 20 years a leading member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)and as such would probably know most of the many DSA connected types in Obama's orbit, including Quentin Young, Lou Pardo, Danny K Davis, Jan Schakowsky, Cornel West, David Bonior, Major Owens,the late Rabbi Arnold Wolf, Jackie Grimshaw, William McNary, Jose LaLuz and Hilda Solis.

Since 1992 Dr Marable has held leadership roles in the Communist Party offshoot, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). As such, he would certainly know well fellow CCDS leaders Carl Davidson and long time Obama friend and supporter Timuel Black.

In 1998, Manning Marable helped found the Black Radical Congress (BRC), a coalition of black socialists including many members of the Communist Party, DSA and CCDS. In BRC Marable worked with two DSA leaders, Cornel West, who went on to become half of Obama's 2008 Black Advisory Council and Bill Fletcher jnr, who founded Progressives for Obama with DSA member Barbara Ehrenreich and the ubiquitous Carl Davidson.

Obama's long time pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright was also involved in BRC.

Since January 2007, Manning Marable has been chair of Movement for A Democratic Society, a radical alliance of Communist Party, DSA an CCDS activists and former leaders of the radical Students for a Democratic Society and its terrorist splinter, the Weather Underground Organisation (WUO).


Marable centre, black shirt MDS conference New York January 2007

In MDS Dr Marable worked with several more Obama friends or colleagues including former WUO terrorists Bill Ayers and Dernardine Dohrn and former SDS leaders Mike Klonsky aaaaaa-a-a-nd CARL DAVIDSON!

Dr Marable has also been involved in the radical Washington based think thank Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). through IPS Marable may have gotten to know several other Obama friends, colleagues or supporters, including David Bonior, Congressman John Conyers, Obama mentor Abner Mikva, Bill Fletcher jnr, Barbara Ehrenreich, Quentin Young or even Obama's choice for CIA boss, Leon Panetta.

Dr Marable may never have met Obama but...

Manning Marable goes on to say;

Among the post-racial black leadership, Deval Patrick is the governor of Massachusetts, David Paterson is the governor of New York, Cory Booker is the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and Harold Ford Jr is head of the Democratic Leadership Council - the right wing of the Democratic Party. Obama is a part of that cohort. He is more liberal than most of that group, but he is in it. The group is pragmatic and centrist. It cooperates with Republicans and tries to present a non-partisan or post-partisan appeal, the way Obama does. So you will see Republicans in some key positions in Obama's administration.

This does not trouble Dr Marable, as a Marxist tactician, he understands that to win elections and promote his policies Obama has to be subtle. He must bring his opponents on board and be careful not to scare centrist voters.

Obama regularly sends text messages to millions of people. He just sent a message saying, "Don't go away, now I need you to help govern." There is a debate right now within the Obama campaign about whether to move fast or go more slowly. The argument is that there have been 10 elections for president between 1968 and 2004and Republicans have won seven of them. Obama is looking at the history and so are progressives who worked with him or critically endorsed him, like myself.

Again Dr Marable is emphasing that a slow but sure pace is more likely to be successful. Marable then goes on to lay out the left's agenda for Obama, in order of priorities;

My argument is simple. The left must force him to carry out the agenda he promised, and that includes a national healthcare system...That is the number-three priority. The main priority is ending the war in Iraq. The second is the economic crisis. We need a robust Keynesian approach to employment and investment in infrastructure - a lot of the bridges built by the works projects administration of Franklin D Roosevelt 75 years ago need to be rebuilt and the roads are crumbling.

We also need a solution to the foreclosures, to keep families in their homes. The fourth issue is green energy - a national challenge to be independent of foreign oil in 10 years. And a fifth priority is immigration - essential to Latinos. There are 12-14 million undocumented Americans living in this country as so-called illegal aliens and there has to be a pathway to citizenship for them.

Dr Marable then gives the standard "Obama is not a socialist" disclaimer. One that I have seen many times before in Communist Party and DSA literature;

Obama is not a Marxist or a socialist - he is a progressive liberal with a kind of centre-left strategy. He will be Keynesian on economic policy. He is an astute politician who is trying to construct a coalition that has striking parallels to the New Deal, built on these core constituencies I have identified - working women, Hispanics and blacks, who are overwhelmingly working class. But he is going to put forward policy that is centrist or "moderate".

In some ways he is a reverse of Reagan, in that Reagan ran a hardline right campaign but appealed to moderates through certain initiatives. He unified people - the so-called Reagan Democrats - around positions that transcended the Republican Party. Barack is doing the same in reverse. He is anchored to the progressives in the Democratic Party, but reaching to the centre on policy and through certain values, for example on faith-based initiatives.

Dr Marable goes on to explain the role of the left-that is the Communist Party, DSA, CCDS, MDS, Progressives for Obama and the countless unions and "community organisations" under their control.

All these key organisations continually push the line that they must create a mass movement to push Obama to the left-just as the communists and socialists did in the 1930s when they forced Roosevelt to adopt their (sometimes justified) policies.

Most of us on the left have taken a position of critical support toward Obama. We have to press him to carry out his own agenda.


US Socialist Party leader A Phillip Randolph with Eleanor Roosevelt

The analogy of FDR is appropriate. But someone has to play the role of A Philip Randolph, the black socialist leader who attacked FDR from the left and in 1941 forced him to sign an executive order outlawing racial discrimination in factories producing for the war effort that refused to hire black people. Randolph threatened to bring 100,000 black workers to surround the White House. Roosevelt capitulated and signed an order that was the foundation of affirmative action.

We need a network that can do it. That is the challenge for socialists in the US.

Manning Marable is in a far better position than most American voters to know Barack Obama's true thoughts and goals.

As a life long Marxist, Dr Marable believes that Obama is on the right track and wants his comrades to show understanding and offer support.

Someone has been fooled here. Is it the American voter-or is it Manning Marable?

Obama file 63 here

Obama File 110 Collusion! How Socialist Harold Meyerson Kickstarted the Obama Propaganda Machine

Obama File 109 here


I have contended for some time that Barack Obama owes his political career to three marxist organizations, Communist Party USA, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and Democratic Socialists of America.

Of the three, Obama's decades old ties to Democratic Socialists of America are most easily documentable.

Part of this support has come in the form of favorable media stories about Obama and in orchestrated attacks against his opponents. It is no coincidence that several members of the recently exposed, pro Obama JournoList had close ties to D.S.A.


Harold Meyerson is both a leading U.S. journalist and a vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America.

Meyerson is an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and is the editor-at-large at The American Prospect.

While not an identified member of JournoList, Meyerson is professionally and politically associated with several.

• Washington Post "JournoListas" so far identified include - Alec McGillis, Greg Sargent, Dave Weigel,
• The American Prospect "Journolistas" include - Spencer Ackerman, Dean Baker, Sam Boyd, Tim Fernholz, John Judis, Ezra Klein (JournoList founder), Mark Schmitt, Adam Serwer, Robert Kuttner (author of two books on the Obama Administration) and Paul Waldman
• Democratic Socialists of America affiliated "JournoListas" include - Joel Bleifuss, Todd Gitlin, a Progressives for Obama supporter), John Judis, Michael Kazin, Scott McLemee, Rick Perlstein, Katha Pollitt (Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama) endorser and Robert Kuttner

On April 6, 2010, a seminar "Labor, the Left, and Progressives in the Obama Era" was held at Georgetown University - further evidence of D.S.A. -JournoList collusion in favor of Obama.

After the success of health care reform, what’s next on labor’s agenda? How can the labor movement grow and engage with a progressive movement that speaks to the Obama era? What is the role of younger workers, workers of color, and women? Is there a new “New Deal” on the horizon?

Speakers included;

• Barbara Ehrenreich, - D.S.A. leader, Progressives for Obama founder
• Christopher Hayes - Washington editor of The Nation, JournoList member, affiliate of D.S.A. linked publication In These Times
• Gerry Hudson - D.S.A. member , executive vice-president of the very pro Obama SEIU.
• Michael Kazin (co-editor of Dissent, JournoList member, close to D.S.A.
• Harold Meyerson.

One of the speakers above, Gerry Hudson has written how the late founder of D.S.A., Michael Harrington would view the election of Barack Obama.

It’s tragic for so many reasons that Michael died too young; his voice and his wisdom are sorely needed. How he would marvel at the election of Barack Obama and the promise that this victory affords all of us on the democratic left! He is sorely missed. But were he alive, I would hope—and expect, that he and others who are informed by this vision of democratic socialism would join with us in SEIU as we seek to take advantage of a moment most of us have spent our lifetimes only dreaming of.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Harold Meyerson was the one of the first, if not THE FIRST , journalist to promote Barack Obama outside his his adopted state of Illinois.

From the Washington Post February 25, 2009;

In March of 2004, a few days before the Illinois Democratic senatorial primary, I wrote a column for this page headlined "A Bright Hope in Illinois." It was, I believe, the first column for a daily newspaper outside Illinois devoted to a rising young pol named Barack Obama. Bolstered by polling that showed Obama to be the clear leader in the race, I fearlessly predicted that he'd become Illinois' next senator and quoted the assessment of Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic member of Congress from Chicago's Gold Coast district, that Obama would "march right onto the national stage and the international stage."

Jan Schakowsky, also a major Obama supporter, is of course also a very close friend of Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.

Jan Schakowsky 2002

At Chicago D.S.A's 2004 46th Annual Eugene V Debs - Norman Thomas - Michael Harrington Dinner, Jan Schakowsky told the story of a meeting in Washington with U.S. president George Bush.

The Congressional Black Caucus had demanded a meeting with President Bush to discuss the situation in Haiti.

Schakowsky had also been invited because of her strong interest in the issue.

According to Chicago DSA's New Ground, May/June 2004;

Bush finally, at the insistence of caucus members, made it to this meeting and spent enough time to display his ignorance of the issue. He noticed Jan, a lone white face, and seemed to "jump back" when he saw her button. Osama? No, Mr. President. Barack Obama, and you'll be hearing from him when he becomes the Senator from Illinois.

This is what Harold Meyerson wrote about Barack Obama in the original March 12, 2004 Washington Post article. The narrative that would put Obama inthe White House is clearly already in play. Meyerson touches all the bases that would be repeated endlessly in the media from 2006 to 2008.

You'd think his name alone would keep him from winning: Barack Obama. Put an "Obama for Senate" bumper sticker on your car and the dyslexic or myopic might just try to punch you out.

Yet, three days ago, in its last preelection poll before Tuesday's primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reported that Obama, a 42-year-old state senator, had opened a wide lead over the six other candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to succeed the departing Peter Fitzgerald...

Organization men are a staple of Illinois politics, of course, and investment bankers seem poised to take over the Senate in our plutocratic age. Obama, by contrast, is a candidate who all but defies categorization -- and who would certainly mark a radical departure for the stodgy Senate...

But that scarcely begins to describe the distinctiveness of Obama. His father was Kenyan, his mother a white girl from Kansas. The two met and married at the University of Hawaii in 1960 (when miscegenation was still a felony in more than half the states). His father disappeared from his life when Obama was 2; his mother raised him in Hawaii and Indonesia. Obama went to college at Columbia, then moved to Chicago for five years of community organizing in a fusion of civil rights crusading and Saul Alinsky house-to-house plodding. He then went to Harvard Law School, where he became the first black president of the Law Review; returned to Chicago to run a program that registered 100,000 voters in the '92 elections, entered a civil rights law firm and became a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. ..

Seven years ago Obama was elected to the state Senate from a district in Chicago's South Side. In Springfield, he developed a reputation as an impassioned progressive who was able to get support on both sides of the aisle...

In October 2002, Obama made an eloquent case against the impending war in Iraq at a rally in downtown Chicago. Declaring repeatedly that "I don't oppose all wars," he distinguished what he termed "a dumb war, a rash war" from a string of just and necessary wars in which the United States had engaged. He is surely the progressives' darling in the field, drawing enthusiastic support from white Lake Shore liberals as well as the African American community. But he's also won the endorsements of virtually all the state's major papers, many of which -- such as Chicago's Tribune and Sun-Times -- note their disagreement with him on the war but hail him as a brilliant public servant nonetheless. Should Obama win, says Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, who backs his candidacy, he'd "march right onto the national stage and the international stage..."

While practicing law in the early 1990s, Obama wrote "Dreams From My Father," a memoir and meditation of genuine literary merit that depicts his understandable quest for his identity -- a quest that immersed him in the world of Chicago's poor and that took him to a Kenyan village in search of a father he never knew. It's a story of worlds colliding, fusing and redividing, of a life devoted to re-creating in a grittier world the idealism and sense of community of the early civil rights movement, which provided the backdrop for his parents' marriage.

If by "American" we mean that which is most distinctive about us and our ideals, if we mean it to refer to our status as a nation of immigrants that could yet become the world's first great polyglot, miscegenistic meritocracy, then Barack Obama, if elected, would not only become the sole African American in the Senate: He would also be the most distinctly American of its members.

Here's Harold Meyerson plugging Obama outside the Democratic Party convention in Denver in 2008.

Yes, Barack Obama is Harold's man alright!

It is clear that D.S.A. has had "the fix" in for Obama, for some years.

Would Barack Obama be president of the United States today, without JournoList and a sympathetic "progressive" media?

Would JounoList have existed, or have been as influential, without Democratic Socialists of America?

Does America owe its current president, at least partly, to D.S.A. - a few thousand strong marxist organization, that most voters have never even heard of?

Obama File 111 here

Obama File 108 Pro Obama "JournoLista" Outed - New "Can of Worms" Opened

Obama File 107 here

JournoList was an email group of approximately 400 journalists, bloggers and academics, who reportedly worked to influence news reporting in favor of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party during and after the 2008 Presidential elections.


The latest list of alleged "Journolistas" has turned up a very interesting name - Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect. This man is no basement blogger or CNN hack, he is the author of two books on the President and is connected to some of Obama's most influential enablers.

Robert Kuttner's March 2008 "Obama's Challenge:American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency" is a call to use the Obama presidency to change America in a more "progressive" direction.

According to leftist "think tank" Demos;

In this urgent and important book, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect, explains what a President Obama must do to solve America's economic crisis--the gravest since the Great Depression--and, in the process, become a truly transformative leader.

Kuttner's March 2010 book "A Presidency in Peril" , is an acknowledgement that Obama hasn't entirely lived up to some "progressive's" hopes, but that things could yet still be salvaged;

From Demos;

In this hard-hitting, incisive account, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow Robert Kuttner (author of the New York Times' Obama's Challenge Best-Selling) shares his unique, insider view of how the Obama administration not only missed its moment to turn our economy around-but deepened Wall Street's risky grip on America's future. Carefully constructing a one-year history of the problem, the players, and the outcome, Kuttner gives readers an unparalleled account of the president's first year.

More importantly, Kuttner shows how we could-with swift, decisive action-still enact real reforms, and how Barack Obama could redeem his promise.

Note the phrase "insider view". Clearly Demos believes that Kuttner has some kind of access to Obama Administration thinking and policy.

That view is probably accurate. Back in 1999, then obscure Illinois State Senator Barack Obama was brought to New York, to help establish a new organization.

Demos was founded by "social entrepreneur" Charles Halpern. Most of Halpern's recruits to Demos were well known politicians or activists - except Barack Obama..

From the Demos website;

By 1999, Halpern had assembled a talented working group to develop Demos. Among them were David Callahan, a fellow at the Century Foundation; Rob Fersh, a long-time policy advocate; Stephen Heintz, Vice-President of the East-West Institute; Sara Horowitz, founder of Working Today; Arnie Miller, a leading executive recruiter; Barack Obama, then a state senator from Illinois; David Skaggs, a congressman from Colorado; and Linda Tarr-Whelan, an internationally recognized expert on women and economic development. This working group would eventually form the core of Demos' staff and Board of Trustees.

Barack Obama was an early Demos trustee, as was some years later another obscure young radical, this time from San Francisco, named Van Jones.

Interestingly Demos staffer, Chuck Collins in a September 26 2008 article, posited several names he thought would make suitable appointments for an Obama administration.



One of them was;

"Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center, to direct the Commerce Department’s new “green jobs initiative..."

Collins, was incidentally a founder of the radical New Party, which Obama joined in the early/mid 1990s in Chicago.

Kuttner and Obama have something else in common - a close relationship to America's largest Marxist based organization Democratic Socialists of America.

To quote D.S.A. connected "JournoLista" Joel Bleifuss;

In particular, Obama can be linked to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Democratic Party-oriented organization that is a member of the Socialist International

Obama has been close to D.S.A., possibly back to the early 1980s. Certainly key Obama friends and allies such as Quentin Young, Timuel Black, the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Cornel West and Congressmen Danny K. Davis and Neil Abercrombie have been "DSAers".

Other D.S.A types, such as Eliseo Medina, Harry Boyte and David Bonior have worked on Obama's campaign, or in his Administration.

Kuttner's ties to Democratic Socialists of America, go back almost as far as Obama's.

In November 1989 Robert Kuttner addressed the D.S.A. November 1989 national convention in Maryland, on "the state of domestic politics".

In 1990, Democratic Socialists of America was selling a list of pamphlets, including "Democratic Promise:Ideas for Turning America in a Progressive Direction", by D.S.A. founder Michael Harrington, William Julius Wilson and Robert Kuttner.

William Julius Wilson, incidentally, addressed a Democratic Socialists of America organized forum at the University of Chicago, with Obama in early 1996.

Over three hundred people attended the first of two Town Meetings on Economic Insecurity on February 25 in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago. Entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America", the meeting was sponsored by the UofC DSA Youth Section, Chicago DSA and University Democrats.

The panelists were Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman of Chicago's 4th Ward, Barack Obama, candidate for the 13th Illinois Senate District, Professor William Julius Wilson, Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago, Professor Michael Dawson, University of Chicago and Professor Joseph Schwartz, Temple University and a member of DSA's National Political Committee

In 1998, Robert Kuttner was honored at a Boston Democratic Socialists of America awards ceremony alongside D.S.A. member Deborah Meier. In March that year, Deborah Meier spoke at a Chicago memorial service for "DSAer" Saul Mendelson, as did Barack Obama.

In 1998 Democratic Socialists of America described Kuttner as a "socialist".

American Prospect The journal of "liberal" intellectual politics, though half of the writers, and one of the co-founders, Robert Kuttner, are socialists. This journal sees its mission as the reinvigoration of "liberalism," betraying a clear disregard for liberalism's expressed desire to accept death

So far at least eight identified "JournoListas", have ties to Kuttner's, "The American Prospect".

In 1996, Robert Kuttner helped found, with at least two dozen "D.S.Aers", the highly influential "progressive" umbrella group Campaign for America's Future.

Fellow C.A.F. founders Robert Borosage, John Cavanagh, Barbara Ehrenreich (D.S.A.), Frances Fox Piven (D.S.A.), Mark Ritchie (a Communist Party "friend") and Joel Rogers had helped establish Obama's New Party.

C.A.F. founders Tom Hayden and Barbara Ehrenreich went on to found, in 2008, Progressives for Obama, which was support by other C.A.F./D.S.A supporters Dick Flacks, Todd Gitlin, Adam Hochschild, Frances Fox Piven and Stanley Sheinbaum.

Besides Kuttner, three other C.A.F. founders, James Galbraith, Todd Gitlin, and Michael Kazin , would later turn up as "JournoListas".



C.A.F. has run for several years the successful Take Back America and America's Future Now! conferences, which annually attract the cream of the U.S. "progessive" movement, including many "DSAers", "JournoLista's", Robert Kuttner and then Senator Barack Obama.

Earlier this year Robert Kuttner was serving on the Advisory Board of the Cry Wolf Project. This organization caused some controversy after it was found to be offering money to academics for articles countering conservative attacks on "progressive" programs.

Serving on the advisory board with Kuttner was Janice Fine of Rutgers University, an early founder of the New Party and a member of the Editorial Advisory group of Wade Rathke's D.S.A./ACORN linked journal Social Policy.

Cry Wolf's three co-leaders were "DSAers" Peter Dreier and Nelson Lichtenstein and Donald Cohen, a member of the board of Directors of Van Jones' Oakland based Green For All.

Another close tie to the Obama Administration comes through Kuttner's membership of the board of the Economic Policy Institute.

The Washington based "think tank" is led by "DSAer" Larry Mishel and boasts several D.S.A affiliates on its board, including Barry Bluestone, Teresa Ghilarducci (a Demos fellow), Julianne Malveaux and Bruce Raynor. New Party founder Larry Cohen and Campaign for America's Future founders Thomas Buffenbarger, Jeff Faux, Ray Marshall, Gerald McEntee, Robert Reich, Andy Stern (also Progressives for Obama) and Richard Trumka also serve.

Two E.P.I board members have joined the Obama administration, William Spriggs as a Senior Adviser in the Department of Labor and Rebecca Blank as Under Secretary for Economic Affairs in the Department of Commerce.


More importantly long time E.P.I. staffer and "JournoLista" Jared Bernstein has served as an Obama campaign adviser and currently works for Vice President Joe Biden.

Interestingly, leftist economist and "Journalista" Paul Krugman, argued in November '08 that, given the "centrist makeup" of President Barack Obama's economic inner circle, the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board could be used to "give progressive economists a voice," and mentioned Jared Bernstein and fellow E.P.I economist, and E.P.I. president, "DSAer" Larry Mishel as "progressive economists" who might be suitable for the board.

The Biden appointment was a step in that direction.

Were the "Journolistas" really just a "chat group", or were they a conduit of information to and from the Obama Administration?

Did some of their members actually have some influence on policy and/or appointments within the Obama Administration?

Was JournoList, actually an intelligence and influence brokering network for the Obama campaign and Administration?

Somebody needs to ask Robert Kuttner and other "Journolistas" some serious questions.

Obama file 109 here