Posted on 10/17/2008 7:38:13 PM PDT by Interesting Times
Why did Barack Obama move to Chicago? Why did he choose a city famous for its corruption and distrust of outsiders as a launching pad for his political career?
Did Obama's boyhood mentor, life long communist Frank Marshall Davis influence that choice?
Obama admits he was inspired to first move to Chicago in 1983 by the election of the city's first black mayor Harold washington. Obama even unsuccessfully wrote away for a job in Washington's administration.
Frank Marshall Davis had lived in Chicago for many years until moving to Hawaii in 1948. He had been active in Chicago's post War Communist Party while Harold Washington was a left leaning young law student. Had the two ever met?
Possibly not, but there was only one degree of seperation.
Frank Marshall Davis was involved in Chicago's South Side Community Art Center "a meeting place for young African American writers and artists during the 1940s". An outgrowth of the Federal Art Project, the Art Center was a hangout for Communist Party members and sympathisers including Richard Wright, Margaret Burroughs, Marion Perkins and Arna Bontemps.
Another center regular was a young journalist named Vernon Jarrett. Davis and Jarrett also worked together on the black run newspaper, the Chicago Defender.
According to Marxist historian Alan Wald;
By the 1940s many of the themes, slogans, demands, and cultural icons of this would-be Negro Peoples Front were virtually hegemonic on the South Side; the Chicago Defender, for example, without ever referring to the Communists or other left organizations, frequently presented the race-and-class based radicalism of the Communist Party.
Vernon Jarrett went on to forge an impressive career in journalism. He became the Chicago Tribune's first black syndicated columnist and was a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists. He became an icon to Chicago's black community.
According to a Washington Post obituary May 25th 2004
Mr. Jarrett continually shone a light on African American history and pertinent issues in Chicago and throughout the country. He stoked the political embers in Chicago that led to the 1983 election of the city's first African American mayor, Harold Washington.
Vernon Jarrett was a key influence in Washington's decision to run for the Chicago mayoralty and remained a key supporter through his four year tenure.
Here is Vernon Jarrett speaking to Washington's memorial service after the mayor's death in office in 1987.
Harold Washington defeated the Daley machine to win the mayoralty backed by a coalition led by Chicago's Communist Party and the local branch of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Historian Paul Buhle wrote in a 1992 article for the Encyclopedia of the American Left;
Communists also gained from long-standing political contacts in the black community. Victories of black mayoral and congressional candidates with decades old ties to the CP a short list would include Coleman Young and George Crocket in Detroit, Gus Newport in Berkeley, and somewhat more ambiguously, Harold Washington in Chicago
Paul Buhle knows his socialists.
A former member of the Students for a Democratic Society, Buhle is now a leader of DSA. He also serves on the board of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) where he works with former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeff Jones and Mark Rudd. Buhle and Rudd are also involved with the MDS offshoot Progressives for Obama.
Washington was close to Chicago DSA, which in turn went on to endorse Barack Obama during his 1995/96 illinois State Senate race.
Chicago DSA organised a major dinner every year to honour US socialist leaders, Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington.
Harold Washington MCed the 1981 Debs Dinner but had to cancel out of the 1983 event.
The 1983 Norman Thomas - Eugene V. Debs Dinner was held at the McCormick Inn on Saturday, May 7... Newly elected Mayor Harold Washington was unable to attend at the last minute. Carl Shier, who was to have introduced him, read a message from him instead, and spoke of DSA's considerable role in Washington's election campaign.
Future DSA leader the late Carl Marx Shier, veteran socialist Egidio Clemente and Harold Washington at the 1981 Debs Dinner
The Chicago Communist Party was right behind Harold Washington, just as they later supported his "proxy protoge" Barack Obama.
I quote from remarks by Illinois Communist Party organiser John bachtell to a "Special District Meeting on African American Equality and Building the Communist Party and Young Communist League, Chicago", IL September 30, 2007
The legacy of Harold Washingtons election and his administration is in the collective consciousness not only of the African American community, but the entire city. Many of his democratizing achievements endure 20 years later.
The historic election of Washington was the culmination of many years of struggle. It reflected a high degree of unity of the African American community and the alliance with a section of labor, the Latino community and progressive minded whites. This legacy of political independence also endures...
The struggle for African American representation and political independence also led to the historic election of Carole Moseley Braun for Senate and many African American state legislators and local elected officials.
The African American community, and especially trade unionists have played a crucial role in the struggle to defeat the ultra right. This includes massive voter turnout in election after election, but also the swing state mobilizations in 2004.
This was also reflected in the historic election of Barack Obama. Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election. Once again Obamas campaign reflected the electoral voting unity of the African American community, but also the alliances built with several key trade unions, and forces in the Latino and white communities.
It also reflected a breakthrough among white voters. In the primary, Obama won 35% of the white vote and 7 north side wards, in a crowded field. During the general election he won every ward in the city and all the collar counties. This appeal has continued in his presidential run.
Chicago Communist Party member and pro-Obama activist Pepe Lozano quoted black trade unionist Elwood Flowers in this February 23rd 2008 article from the Peoples Daily World.
The movement to elect Barack Obama today is almost identical to Washingtons, but nationwide, said Flowers. Our members wanted to be involved in the political process, similar to people today for Obama, said Flowers.
What Obama can do for the country will help all communities including providing jobs and health care. And the number one issue is stopping the Iraq war, which is draining our economic resources. If those things bear fruit, then they will benefit all working-class communities, he added.
It was Washingtons example and the power of working people that will always remind us about what is possible. The greatness is in our hands.
Vernon Jarrett was also a fan of Barack Obama. he watched his career from its early stages and became an ardent supporter.
In 1992 Barack Obama worked for the ACORN offshoot Project Vote to register black voters in aid of the Senate Campaign of Carol Moseley Braun. Unsurprisingly Moseley Braun had strong Communist Party and DSA ties and was Harold Washington's legislative floor leader.
Obama helped Moseley Braun win her Senate seat, then took it over himself in 2004-backed of course by the same set that had elected his political "ancestors" Washington and Moseley Braun.
Commenting on the 1992 race Vernon Jarrett wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times of August 11th 1992;
Good news! Good news! Project Vote, a collectivity of 10 church-based community organizations dedicated to black voter registration, is off and running. Project Vote is increasing its rolls at a 7,000-per-week clip. Just last Saturday it registered 2,000 during the Chicago Defender's annual Bud Billiken Parade. But now, the not-so-good news: If Project Vote is to reach its goal of registering 150,000 out of an estimated 400,000 unregistered blacks statewide, "it must average 10,000 rather than 7,000 every week," says Barack Obama, the program's executive director...
Dee Myles is a Chicago activist and chair of the Education Commission of the Communist Party USA. In 2004, after Vernon Jarret's death from cancer she penned this tribute for the People's Weekly World of June 5th.
Vernon Jarrett: a Partisan Journalistic Giant
Readers like me can be extremely selective of the journalists we read habitually... We are selective about the journalists to whom we become insatiably addicted, and once hooked we develop a constructive love affair without the romance...
Such was my experience with Vernon Jarrett, an African American journalist in Chicago who died at the age of 86 on May 23. I became a Vernon Jarrett addict, and I am proud of it!
Vernon Jarretts career as a journalist in Chicago began and ended at the Chicago Defender, the African American daily paper. In between, he was the first Black journalist at the Chicago Tribune, and I first began to read his articles during his tenure at the Chicago Sun-Times
Jarretts claim to fame is that he was a partisan of the cause of African Americans in the broad democratic tradition of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois...
Incidentally Robeson and DuBois were both Communist Party members. On April 9th, 1998 at Chicago's South Shore Cultural Center Jarrett hosted a Paul Robeson Citywide Centennial Celebration event with his old comrade Margaret Burroughs and former Communist Party members Studs Terkel and Oscar Brown jnr.
Dee Myles continues;
Jarrett was fanatical about African Americans registering and voting in mass for socially conscious candidates. He championed Harold Washington like a great warrior, and this March, from his hospital bed, wrote an article appealing to Black Chicago to turn out to vote for Barack Obama in the Illinois primaries. Obama astounded everyone with an incredible landslide victory as the progressive, Black candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. From his sickbed, Vernon Jarrett issued a clarion call, and the people responded.
I think Black Chicago was passionately in love with Vernon Jarrett...His unrelenting drive kept us reminded of a sense of purpose and helped to instill the courage of our convictions in struggle as a people. We will forever be indebted; we will never forget.
Indeed, Vernon Jarrett's legacy is far from forgotten. Much of it lives on in the work of his daughter-in-law Valerie Jarrett.
Another former Harold Washington staffer, Valerie Jarrett is a close friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama.
Jarrett met Barack Obama when she hired Michelle to work with her in Mayor Daleys City Hall. Valerie Jarrett ran the finances for Obamas 2004 Senate bid and served as treasurer of Obama's HOPEFUND.
According to Take Political Action May 24th 2008;
"Shes always been the other side of Baracks brain. Thats how an Obama insider described Valerie Jarrett as an Obama campaign aide announced Thursday night the former CTA chief and current Habitat Co. CEO is taking on a larger role to help her close friend win his White House bid.
The development comes as Jarrett, a charter member of Sen. Barack Obamas kitchen cabinet, has been formalizing her portfolio and stepping up the pace within the past few weeks as a top advisor within the campaign.
Though she will be part-time, Jarrett will be one of the most visible and powerful African-Americans in the top rungs of the Obama operation...
Valerie Jarrett has been tipped for a top post in an Obama administration.
Did this all start with an almost forgotten communist poet named Frank Marshall Davis?
New Zeal ping.
Barack Obama's Marxist Mentor [Frank Marshall Davis]
By Trevor Loudon, NewZeal.Blogspot.com, March 29, 2007
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2007/03/barack-obamas-marxist-mentor.html
___________________________________________________________
Barack Obama, from Dreams from My Father, Three Rivers Press, New York, Revised Edition, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-8277-3, p. 76-7:
"But by the time I met Frank [Frank Marshall Davis] he must have been pushing eighty, with a big, dewlapped face and an ill-kempt gray Afro that made him look like an old, shaggy-maned lion. He would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with Gramps out of an emptied jelly jar."
___________________________________________________________
From Accuracy In Media | AIM.ORG
Obamas Red Mentor Praised Red Army
AIM Report | By Cliff Kincaid | April 30, 2008
Barack Obamas childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, wrote a poem dedicated to the Soviet Red Army. Smash on, victory-eating Red Army, he declared. He also wrote poems attacking traditional Christianity and the work of Christian missionaries.
The Red Army poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:
Show the marveling multitudes
Americans, British, all your allied brothers
How strong you are
How great you are
How your young tree of new unity
Planted twenty-five years ago
Bears today the golden fruit of victory!
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/obamas-red-mentor-praised-red-army/
____________________________________
Frank Marshall Davis
Obamas Communist Mentor
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | February 18, 2008
excerpt...
"through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his 'poetry' and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just 'Frank.'
The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations."
Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator's victory in the Iowa caucuses:
"Obamas victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary 'mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through."
People's Weekly World (PWW), official newspaper of the Communist Party, USA
Source article: Obamas Communist Mentor
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/
Thanks....very interesting!
It’s weird that Obama looks almost exactly like his white grandfather. Last night Obama compared his own ears to Alfred E. Neuman. Good graphic!
[Its weird that Obama looks almost exactly like his white grandfather.]
Nit, that’s why I made that slideshow! They keep trying to say Davis is his father. Obama looks nothing like his own father.
I have posted what you say, that he looks almost identical to his grandfather Dunham - and nobody will reply to it because they ‘want something else’.
.
Grampa’s big ears bump
Big ears yes, but he was a good looking man. Obama resembles him strongly but to me he missed out on the more ‘manly’ look. Maybe it’s just his mean look.
Thanks for the post!
I wonder if anyone has put in a request for a FOIA file on Stanley Dunham.
.
Dunham steered him to a real Commie
That is one nutcase family Obama sprouted from
Thanks for the ping. Communists are supporting Obama in this country and all over the world.
Too cool.
obumpa
Whenever I see that kid, I wonder what his life is like now, or if he’s even still alive.
BTTT
Smoke but no fire.
More like another piece of the puzzle.
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