~snip~
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.)
~snip~
This needs to be documented- because IF it’s true, it will resonate with my generation (boomers) in a major way. I’ve often wondered if he was a member- but need proof.
**********************EXCERPT*******************
The Education Radicalization of Barack Obama
Largely due to his association with Frank Davis, Barack was sent to the mainland with a set of ready-made contacts and a set career path. Potentially as early as high school, Barack was introduced to Bill Ayers.
Barack Obama’s first public speech was at an Occidental College event sponsored by the Students for Economic Democracy a branch of the Campaign for Economic Democracy [CED]. Far Left radical Tom Hayden who met with Marxist officials several times during his antiwar career chaired this fringe group in the late 70’s and early ’80’s. Several of the CED principal activists were also veterans of the Hayden-campaign and of the very radical group, Students for a Democratic Society.
Hayden was an important anti-American figure in the Students for a Democratic-Society a militantly leftist organization. 60’s radical Tom Hayden played a pivotal role both as founder and as principal author of this student group’s basic manifesto, the “Port Huron Statement.” This document condemned the American political system as the cause of international conflict and a variety of social ills — including racism, materialism, militarism, and poverty.
The Port Huron Statement reflected certainly elements of the CPUSA ideology regarding the national and international problems and results of the ‘American political system’.
In 1969 Hayden’s students for democracy group began imploding into factions. One of them, a group calling itself Weatherman, was elected to SDS leadership and proclaimed that the time had come to launch a race war on behalf of the Third World and against the United States. The Weatherman declared “war on AmeriKKKa” at its Flint War Council in 1969.
The new entity dissolved Hayden’s Students for a Democratic Society and formed a terrorist cult in its place, which was given the name Weather Underground.
It seems then that in the beginning of Barack Obama’s speaking career the group he was involved with had links to Marxists, the Weathermen, and Bill Ayers. Years after his first public speech at Occidental College Barack Obama found himself working several years with William Ayers, the founder of the terrorist cult Weather Underground, first in New York at Columbia, and then in Chicago.
After a short time at Occidental, Obama finished his undergraduate education at Columbia University in New York where he attended from 1981-1984. Bill Ayers received a degree from Bank Street College in 1984. Colombia and Bank Street College are only two blocks apart. It is likely that Obama and Ayers were neighbors in New York, and attended similar events like the “socialist conferences” Obama has admitted to attending in New York. As cited here at NQ, Obama visited Pakistan with his college roommate in 1981 using an Indonesian passport.
In the crucible of radical left discussions that are always present in the international city of New York, Obama is likely to have attended lectures by Khalid Al-Mansour, Louis Farrakahn, and other internationalists, socialists and black liberationists as Obama furthered his career. Al-Mansour’s viewpoints were described in an excellent post by Larry Johnson. In his studies at Columbia in Political Science, he is likely to have studied Marxist thought, black revolutionary movements, and revolutionary techniques such as those espoused by Saul Alinsky, Maoists, the Black Panthers, and American left radicals such as Ayers.