Posted on 10/07/2008 4:39:36 PM PDT by Amityschild
Its 1981, New York City. Barack Obama is residing two blocks away from Weather Underground leader William Ayers. We know very little about Obamas life in NYC during that period; supposedly he transferred from Occidental College and completed undergraduate studies at Columbia University. Obamas academic records and, in fact, the records of his life from those years in New York are lost. [See references at end.]
At Occidental, Obama belonged to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical socialist organization of which the Weather Underground was an off-shoot. Did Obama continue his SDS membership at Columbia? (I read recently that Columbia was a major SDS center.)
In 1981, former Weather Underground members along with a few former Black Panthers are arrested in association with the robbery of a Brinks armored truck 20 miles north of Manhattan. A guard is killed and the driver is wounded. $1.6 million is recovered.
One of the Weather Underground members arrested for the Brinks crime is Kathy Boudin. She is sentenced to 20 years-to-life. Boudin leaves behind a child, Chesa Boudin, who ends up being raised by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn while her mother lives in prison.
One of the former Black Panthers arrested in connection with the Brinks robbery is Nathaniel Burns, a member of the Black Liberation Army. Burns is also known as Sekou Odinga. Burns/Odinga is sentenced to 25 years-to-life for attempted murder of a police officer. (ODINGA, sound familiar?)
Obama and Ayers later end up collaborating on several controversial projects in Chicago. They work together to grant funds to Rashid Khalidi, Trinity United Church of Christ, and ACORN, among other worthy recipients. Ayers and Dohrn host a soirée at their home to launch young Baracks political career. (But were now to believe that Barack did not know that Ayers and Dohrn created and starred in the Weather Underground, for which they were tried as criminals.)
As we often see in Obamas history, here again there are a few degrees of separation that cause curious and intelligent people to ask: Is this just another set of odd coincidences?
I believe that Obama knew Ayers in New York City, and that hes hiding the association with Ayers, among others, in refusing to provide information about his life there.
Obviously Obamas campaign is lying (and insulting our intelligence) when it audaciously claims that Obama knew nothing of Ayers affiliation with the Weather Underground, up until when?..(I must have missed that part of Axelrods explanation. When does he claim that Obama learned about Ayers lifelong project, the WU?)
In any event, accepting Axelrods explanation would require us to conclude that Obama is stupid. Really stupid, which sort of flies in the face of the magna cum laude thing from Harvard, right?
Everyone knows that the REAL questions are:
When did Obama first learn about Ayers? When did he first meet Ayers? What were his off-campus activities in New York? Perhaps if Obama were open about his life, and did not go to such extreme lengths to cover up fundamental facts of his existence, we would not be forced to outline such events as the 1981 Brinks robbery.
Please stop insulting our intelligence, Senator.
h/t miri and rwa
I’d bet just about anything he lived with them for 2 years...
bookmarking for later
Would like to see proof of the SDS membership. That should blow the ACORN mangod out of the running for president.
I agree. I never heard that before and it seems to me that I would have seen it if it were true.
Obamas Boys of Summer
Klonsky, whose disgust for mainstream politics led him to launch a new, Maoist Communist Party in the 1970s, today supports Barack Obama so enthusiastically that until recently he was blogging on the Illinois senators campaign website. And boycotting this Novembers election, Klonsky maintains, would be a tragic mistake. He notes that Barack Obama isnt Hubert Humphrey, 2008 isnt 1968, and the strong movement he served back then is relatively weak now. My own support for Obama is not a reflection of a radically changed attitude toward the Democratic Party, Klonsky recently explained to me. Rather, its a recognition that the Obama campaign has become a rallying point for young activists and offers hope for rebuilding the civil rights and antiwar coalitions that have potential to become a real critical force in society.
Michael Klonsky is hardly the only 68 radical supporting Obama this year. In 1968, when Mark Rudd organized the student strike that shut down Columbia University, the SDS chapter that he chaired ridiculed Kennedy and McCarthy as McKennedy, claimed that neither peace candidate offers an alternative to the war policies of Lyndon Johnson, and suggested sabotage as an alternative to voting. Rudd succeeded Klonsky as national SDS leader, presiding over the organizations metamorphosis into Weatherman and performing a liaison function for the plot to bomb a Fort Dix soldiers dance that instead killed three Weathermen, including two of Rudds Columbia SDS colleagues. Today, Rudd renounces bombs, embraces ballotsand supports Obama. Probably the biggest difference between Columbia SDS people in 1968 and in 2008 is forty years, Rudd explained in an e-mail. Most of us have lived with compromise our whole lives. As kids we were raving idealists who thought that The elections dont mean shit was a slogan that meant something to somebody. It didnt.
Then theres Carl Davidson, who was one of SDSs three elected national officers in 1968, when the organization first urged young people to refrain from voting. His disillusionment with traditional politics became so pronounced that, in the post-sixties hangover that followed, Davidson joined Klonsky in rejecting traditional politics for fringe Marxist movements. More recently, he helped organize the 2002 rally in which Obama first spoke out against the Iraq War and now serves as the webmaster of Progressives for Obama. The last thing we need is a simple repeat of 1968, which saw Nixon and the new Right as an outcome, as well as the defeat of [Humphrey], Davidson contends. One thing Ive learned. Social change is not made by elections, but it certainly proceeds through them, not by ignoring them or chasing the illusion of end runs around them.
Former SDS president Tom Hayden is also in the Obama camp. Hayden organized the made-for-TV protest outside the 1968 Chicago convention. But the catharsis of throwing debris at the Chicago police, the purer-than-thou sanctimony that tolerated no distinction between Lyndon Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, and the exhilaration of voting in the streets instead of in election booths combined to ensure liberal defeats. Haydens orchestrated anarchy proved more damaging to Humphreys presidential aspirations than any dirty trick Nixons henchmen could have dreamed up. Klonsky remembers Hayden plotting to spread nails on a highway; another SDS leader recalls Hayden encouraging activists to firebomb police cars. If the Democrats couldnt run a convention, many Americans wondered, how could they run the country? Did the radicalism of Chicago elect Richard Nixon? Hayden asked, clearly pained, in his 1988 memoir. Having struggled with that question for twenty years, I find there is no neat answer.
Now Hayden is one of the organizers of Progressives for Obama. The difference is that back then the Democratic Party was directly carrying out the Vietnam War, which meant there was no anti-war critic to vote for after Kennedy was assassinated and McCarthy defeated by the establishment, he offered in an e-mail last month. Today the Republican Party is directly carrying out the war, which obviously will make a lot of people favor changing the presidency despite the uncertainty of what the Democratic candidate will do when in office.
Progressives for Obama resembles a Whos Who of SDS luminaries. In addition to Hayden, Rudd, and Davidson, the group includes Bob Pardun, SDSs education secretary during the 196667 school year; Paul Buhle, a radical professor who has recently attempted to revive SDS; Mickey and Dick Flacks, red-diaper babies who helped craft 1962s Port Huron Statement, a seminal New Left document; and SDSs third president, Todd Gitlin. Age and experience have mellowed some of the SDSers in Obamas camp. Gitlin, for instance, has evolved into a respected Ivy League professor and milquetoast liberal. But others still glory in a past that can only damage Obamas future. The aging New Left still practices a therapeutic politics that places a higher value on feelings of personal liberation than on restrained pursuit of political aims.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/whos-who-of-1968-radicals-support-obama
Interesting, if true, because Students for a Democratic Society was disbanded in 1969.
My question would be “who is this Odinga person??” ??
Seriously, that is the real problem just now, Isn't it??
It is time that the Michelle Obaba-Bernardine Dohn relatiobnship is investigated in depth. Their activity goes far beyond employment in a Chicago law firm, and it is quite possible that Dohrn mentored the young Michelle. While Obaba claims (mendaciously) that Ayers was just an acquaintance when he first entered politics, Michelle could hardly plead ignorance of the Ayers/Dohrn history in the Weather Underground.
Ping - needs to be spread around a bit more..
He would have been of the right age. He knows Ayers. If he was involved then he was *involved*.
I think he was.
marking for later
From all appearances, Michelle was just a grievance monger at Sidley. I doubt anyone hardly spoke to her, much less confided in her.
Is it OCTOBER yet?
Surprise Surprise!
Raila Odinga is the Prime Minister of Kenya, and Obama’s cousin...Odinga lost the election as President, but his goons killed over 1600 people in bloodshed so bad that Kofi Annan UN, went to Kenya and brokered a deal to give Raila Odinga half of Power as PM, and half of cabinet...I read in Kenya paper today Odinga is complaining two leaders is a problem, so what do you think that means.....I have heard Seokou Odinga’s name before, and I think he is a son or nephew of Odinga, but not sure will have to research...
I wonder if Obama could get a top secret security clearance if a registered past member of SDS.
He could if he were President, G-d forbid.
I think the allegation that he is a past member of SDS is false. Maybe someone will prove me wrong.
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