Posted on 06/25/2011 6:40:06 PM PDT by LucyT
It is now fairly well known that President Barack Obama enjoyed a close relationship with the socialists, Trotskyites and former communists, who made up the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.
It is less well known that while a California Congressman, Obamas Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta also worked closely with Santa Cruz based members of the USs largest Marxist organization.
Hugh DeLacy
A key point of contact was Hugh DeLacy, Panettas friend and correspondent from at least 1976, until his death in 1986. DeLacy was a long time Communist Party USA member who worked closely with members of the California Communist Party splinter group, who then went on to form the pro-Chinese New American Movement, which in turn joined with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in 1982 to form Democratic Socialists of America.
Santa Cruz New American Movement, and later Democratic Socialists of America, effectively took over the Santa Cruz City Council after NAMers Mike Rotkin and Bruce Van Allen joined with DSOCers Mardi Wormhoudt and John Laird to form a majority on the Council in 1981.
Another local DSAer, former Trotskyite Gordon Haskell, served on the Santa Cruz Democratic Party Central Committee for many years, while several other comrades held senior posts in the local party.
On September 6, 1986, Leon Panetta addressed a memorial service for Hugh DeLacy at the Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz.
Some of the names on the list above indicate the circles that both DeLacy and Panetta were moving in at the time.
Mardi Wormhoudt
■Presenter Mardi Wormhoudt was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, who became a Santa Cruz City Councilmember in 1981 and went on to serve three terms as town Mayor. Wormhoudt, a supporter of Nicaraguas Marxist-Leninist Sandinista regime, was a delegate on the Let Nicaragua Live Tour for the Coalition for Nicaragua in 1986. She was also a member of a 1987 Sister City Delegation to Alushta in the Soviet Union.
■Jack Berman was a life long leftist activist, a veteran of the Communist Party led Independent Progressive Party and an affiliate of the New American Movement. In the 1960s, Berman worked with Hugh DeLacy in support of United Farmworkers founder Cesar Chavez a disciple, like Barack Obama, of the Chicago based father of community organizing Saul Alinsky.
John McTernan
■John McTernan was a Los Angeles lawyer and a several decades veteran of the Communist Party USA. McTernan later joined the New American Movement and eventually the Democratic Socialists of America. In 1974, Hugh DeLacy applied to the Chinese government for a free trip for a delegation that would have included McTernan and several other communists, but the Chinese government ended up only paying for DeLacy and his wife. As a member of D.S.A., McTernan was on a list of wealthy leftists marked as possible funders of D.S.A. programs in Southern California. Others on the list included DSAers Ed Asner and Stanley Sheinbaum (later a supporter of Progressives for Obama), and entertainment figures Casey Kasem, Martin Sheen, Jackson Browne and Danny Goldberg (also Progressives for Obama).
Mike Rotkin
■Mike Rotkin had been a member of Students for a Democratic Society. He later went on to become a leader of the New American Movement. Using community-organizing techniques developed by Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, ACORN and Chicagos Midwest Academy, Rotkin built up a power base on Santa Cruzs West Side through agitation for a community health center in the area. In 1979, the Westside NAMers sought and obtained the endorsement of then Congressman Leon Panetta for their project. That support was re-affirmed in 1981. Rotkin used this power base to take over the Santa Cruz City Council, where he and his comrades used their power to pass such essential Council initiatives as calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. military and Economic aid to El Salvador and declaring Santa Cruz a nuclear free zone. Leon Panetta was no stranger to the other speakers at DeLacys memorial - he had worked with them for years. When Panetta first entered Congress in 1976, his campaign included staffer Don Lane, a future DSAer and Santa Cruz Mayor.
John Laird
A member of Panettas campaign committee that year was John Laird, a Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee member and yet another future Santa Cruz Mayor.
Leon Panetta would later work closely with John Laird in a successful campaign to stop oil drilling off the California Coast. Laird was recently appointed California Secretary of Natural Resources by incoming leftist Governor Jerry Brown.
In the late 1970s, Hugh DeLacy was effectively the California agent for the Chicago based socialist journal In These Times, a project of the New American Movement and the far left think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. Congressman Leon Panetta incidentally served on the Institute for policy Studies 20th Anniversary Celebrations Committee in 1983. In 1999, Barack Obama was himself summoned from Chicago to New York to help establish an I.P.S partner organization, the leftist non-profit Demos.
James Weinstein
In These Times was run by DeLacys friend, a former Communist and New American Movement founder named James Weinstein. In 2002, James Weinstein and his friends Carl Davidson and former NAMer Marilyn Katz, organized an anti-Iraq War rally in Chicagos Federal Plaza. They invited a then obscure little known Illinois state Senator to speak. Barack Obama used the opportunity to rail against the War, making his first mark on the national stage. The rest is history.
All these connections are of course mere coincidence.
President Obama chose Leon Panetta to head the CIA and serve as Secretary of Defense (despite zero intelligence and only two years military experience), because he was the best man in America for both jobs.
To think anything else would be paranoid
Possibly even racist.
Panetta Report 2: Leon Panetta Paid Tribute to Pro-Communist Peace Activist
Panetta Report 3: Leon Panetta and the Santa Cruz Socialists
http://trevorloudon.com/2011/06/panetta-report-3-leon-panetta-and-the-santa-cruz-socialists/
.
Isn’t it Leoon Panetta who got married exchanging rings made from US Aircraft downed by the North Vietnamese?
This charlatan Bolshevik died recently.
Her bio reeked of Leftist scammer - she lived on the West Side of Santa Cruz which is extremely expensive now, beautiful views of the Monterey Bay. Was said that she left "work" (a succession of county and city jobs) promptly at 5 PM to go home and tend to her garden.
In other words, a tax eater who preened herself as being "for the people"...but only if she got to live in the most beautiful part of the United States on the tax payer dime.
Nothing but a Lefty fraud, like they all are.
![]() |
Cruzio |
Send FReepmail if you want on/off the Santa Cruz County CA ping list | |
![]() |
|
The List of Ping Lists |
Lard (Yes, LARD) aligned himself with Ohaha in the last election and LOST.
In SANTA CRUZ COUNTY.
He still got his coveted state position as state secretary of resources.
He lost nothing.
Bump
I think you might be thinking of Obama's revolutionary communist/terrorists friends, Bill Ayers and his wife, co-founder of the Weather Underground, Bernardine Dohrn.
From American Thinker, September 16, 2008
Article: Obama's Foul Weather Friends
By Scott Swett and Roger Canfield
"As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who [Bernardine] Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam. Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with Vietnamese communists in Toronto. He later recalled being so moved by the gesture that he 'left the room to cry.' "
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/obamas_foul_weather_friends.html
______________________________________________
"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obamas circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
______________________________________________
From the Chicago Sun Times, November 13, 2008:
Ayers: Obama was 'family friend'
New afterword to 2001 book, Ayers describes Barack Obama as 'family friend'
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1278532,bill-ayers-barack-obama-book-111308.article#
Check out # 8 by ETL, interesting post about those community organizers.
Thanks again ETL, for your great research. - Your FR page is documented history, too. A lot of hard work there, and we appreciate it.
Free Republic Articles, w/ comments:
Panetta Report 1: Leon Panetta Paid Tribute to Two Longtime Communists
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2739220/posts
Panetta Report 2: Leon Panetta Paid Tribute to Pro-Communist Peace Activist
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2739713/posts
Panetta Report 3: Leon Panetta and the Santa Cruz Socialists
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2739977/posts
OUTSTANDING post, LucyT! Connecting the Collectivists...naming names. Thanks again for your work, ETL. Thanks to every poster.
Life, liberty and the pursuit and destruction of totalitarians.
You’re welcome, PG. We need to get info like this out to as many normal people as possible, particularly before the 2012 election.
BUMP!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.