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How Does the Joyce Foundation Deal With Dissent? “Squash It!”
by Larry Jarvik

The Education Money Flow: Joyce’s Tidal Shifts
Charles U. Daly: Still A Power Behind The Throne
Funding The Greens
Funding Employment
“Gun Violence”? Squash It!
Statehouse Sellout: Joyce Money For Politics

The social and political war over school choice has many battle fields, but none may be as important as the struggle now occurring in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which pits low-income and minority parents against the Milwaukee Teacher’s Union, the National Education Association and the ACLU. The conflict, described by author Daniel McGroarty in a new book, Break These Chains: The Battle for School Choice (Prima, 1996), is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Wisconsin Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 this spring on the issue of the program’s constitutionality. The outcome of the case of Jackson v. Benson “will determine the future of the nation’s most promising educational reform,” says Institute for Justice attorney Clint Bolick, who represents the 1,500 parents and students participating in the program and who is pushing to expand it to 15,000 students. As part of a campaign to kill the voucher program in the cradle, a Milwaukee group called “Rethinking Schools” has published a 32-page pamphlet titled “False Choices: Why School Vouchers Threaten Our Children’s Future,” and it is working with the Milwaukee teachers union and the National Education Association to see that it is widely distributed. McGroarty writes that the pamphlet’s objective “is to taint the very idea of vouchers by portraying it as inherently racist.” In an introductory essay, Robert Lowe, editor of the eponymous newspaper put out by the group, charges that “the first school choice program provided white students in Virginia public funds in order to attend private academies in order to avoid attending public schools with blacks.” A cartoon in the Rethinking Schools newspaper, distributed free to teachers, shows black and white students drinking from separate water fountains. By poisoning a debate over educational policy with the red herring of racism, opponents of school choice think they can kill the program.

Fortunately Rethinking Schools and its allies have formidable opponents whose advocacy of school choice in Milwaukee cannot be vanquished by whispers of racism. One is former school superintendent Howard Fuller, who pronounced the public schools in his city “a failing system.” Fuller told Foundation Watch “I support low income vouchers. People with money already have choice. People like Bill and Hillary Clinton have choice. Vouchers empower poor people, and I support the expansion of vouchers to sectarian and religious schools.” Fuller resigned as superintendent after a bruising battle with the teachers union over vouchers. An African-American who holds a doctoral degree in Education (and who is married to the former Detroit Superintendent of Schools), Fuller is currently a professor of education at Marquette University. Another choice advocate is Polly Williams, the African-American Democratic state representative from inner-city Milwaukee who broke with her party’s leadership to push the choice program through the Wisconsin legislature. A passionate believer in doing whatever it takes to secure opportunity for those she represents, Williams told McGroarty, “The way I saw it, the system is preparing our children for slavery. Look at the situation: Drop out by tenth grade, get into the street life _ when you should be walking across that stage getting a diploma, you’re standing in front of a judge wearing chains.” Williams’ statement is a sharp retort to the white liberals who provide the funding for Rethinking Schools, a group who make convenient use of Rethinking Schools’ race-baiting to mask their own interests in maintaining the school system as a municipal power base and source of job security. For, contrary to the claims of Rethinking Schools, in the 1990’s the push for school choice has come from advocates like Fuller and Williams and from black parents whose children are trapped in collapsing urban school systems. School choice has become a weapon against the very forces of the white liberal power elite, forces which have impoverished the inner city and racially segregated its schools despite decades of political promises, court orders, and school busing. More rigid ideologues than pragmatic educators, the editors of Rethinking Schools are unmoved by the facts of the matter. They allege that schools of choice will unfairly siphon the “cream” of Milwaukee students, the best and brightest, from the public schools, making them ‘islands of excellence for the already privileged.’ In fact, Milwaukee’s choice program is limited to families at or below 175 percent of the poverty line and the privileged have left the system. But Rethinking Schools would rather kill the chance for low-income children to acquire a superior education in order to maintain control over a system that gives all children an equally inferior one.

THE EDUCATION MONEY FLOW:
JOYCE’S TIDAL SHIFTS

Rethinking Schools’ anti-school choice tracts have been published with financial support from the New World Foundation of New York City and the Joyce Foundation of Chicago. In describing their motivation, James Miller, president of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, says that “Rethinking Schools is the new socialism. It has just been repackaged. They are very, very left of center, and to a large degree they are just apologists for the status quo in education.” With assets of some $21 million, the New World Foundation has never shrunk from the notoriety which its support for far-left causes has provoked. When the New World Foundation was chaired by Hillary Clinton (before she became First Lady) it funded such groups as the pro-Sandinista Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) Education Fund, the conspiracy-minded Christic Insitute, SANE/FREEZE, and the National Lawyers Guild. So its support for Rethinking Schools is not surprising. Rethinking Schools’ other patron is, however, far richer and, appropriately has been far more circumspect. Chicago’s Joyce Foundation was founded in 1948 by Beatrice Joyce Kean, whose family-owned timber business yielded profits which were invested and managed with the guidance of the family’s law firm, Lord, Bissell and Brook. When she died in 1972, ninety percent of her fortune went to the Joyce Foundation. Today, the Joyce Foundation is among the top fifty private grantmaking foundations in the United States, with assets listed at $587,899,563 as of December 31, 1995. Last year the foundation awarded some $21 million in grants in eight program areas. Joyce’s education division awarded the largest sum _ $7,157,740 _ to forty-three grantees. It may be presumed that Rethinking Schools grant application was reviewed by one or more of the division’s program officers. Warren Chapman was formerly an official of the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Corrections. He holds a doctorate in education. Ellen Alberding, an MBA who doubles as an investment officer for the foundation, was a scheduler on Senator Adlai Stevenson III’s Democratic gubernatorial campaign and worked in development for the Express-Ways Children’s Museum. Her husband was counsel to Mayor Richard Daley. Peter Mich, who also holds a doctorate in education, previously worked for the Boys and Girls Clubs where he specialized in computer technology. Last year, the Joyce Foundation gave $100,000 to Marquette University’s Institute for the Transformation of Learning to support a book project to be developed jointly by Rethinking Schools editor Robert Lowe and choice supporter Howard Fuller. Fuller told Foundation Watch that the Joyce grant was specifically “not for support of school choice.” Fuller, who has also received support from Milwaukee’s pro-school choice Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for other projects supportive of vouchers, says Joyce wanted him to conduct a project in cooperation with Lowe “looking at the social relationship of teachers to kids.” Fuller said he worked with Rethinking Schools because they do “professional development for teachers, work for more teachers in the school system, and look at developing a rigorous curriculum. I’m not going to say I’m not going to work with you on these things because you oppose school choice.” Meanwhile, Joyce’s education division awarded Rethinking Schools more than three times as much money to fight Fuller on the school choice issue. In 1995, the decade-old organization _ whose principal activity is publication and distribution of a quarterly tabloid newspaper and associated propaganda pamphlets _ received a grant of $348,380 “to publish and disseminate two booklets on school vouchers, school choice, and the issue of school equity; and to publish a series of articles about school-to-work, educational standards, assessment, and school accountability (3 years).” The Joyce Foundation-subsidized articles were published in the organization’s Rethinking Schools tabloid. Like the anti-voucher booklet, they were full of venom. The Spring, 1996 issue, looking more like a 1960’s-era copy of The Daily Worker or The Militant than an educational publication, featured articles with sloganeering headlines — “Stop the ‘English-Only’ Nonsense” and “’Stand for Children’ June 1 in Washington” — alongside advertisements for pamphlets with titles like “Rethinking Columbus,” which promised to “critique traditional versions of the conquest and its legacy.” Particularly noteworthy is Rethinking Schools “Special Report” by editor Barbara Miner entitled “Splits On The Right.” A credit line reads: “This package on the right wing was made possible through a grant from the Joyce Foundation.” Accompanied by unflattering pictures of Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Lamar Alexander, William Bennett, and Phyllis Schlafly, among others, the report described the political forces that it sees arrayed against Rethinking Schools in the fight over school choice. Miner reports that Robertson has been charged with advocating “an authoritarian theocracy” and adds parenthetically, “The paramilitary right is generally considered a distinct phenomenon, although it maintains strong links to some groups within the religious right.” She suggests that other conservatives _ significantly nameless, because to name anyone at all would reveal how baseless her charges are _ demonstrate a “willingness to espouse blatantly white supremacist and anti-Semitic views.” Repeatedly, Miner makes assertions of the “bigotry, white supremacy, homophobia, and theocratic authoritarianism of the religious right.” Miner’s feature asserts that the Christian right wants “education based on rote obedience and memorization, and prefers to provide children ready-made answers instead of encouraging them to think for themselves.” The issue carries a number of sidebars. One, headlined “Bradley helps bankroll movement,” attacks parental rights groups. It blames “Republican guru” William Kristol and Bradley Foundation president Michael Joyce for “building a movement for parents’ rights as a way to counter the women’s and gay movements and to rally people against the ‘nanny state.’” Also included is a three-page spread in tiny type listing “Economic Conservatives and Religous/Far Right Organizations” (including Capital Research Center, publisher of Foundation Watch), “Progressive Groups Monitoring the Right Wing,” and “Conservative Publications,” a list which includes The New Republic. Other indicators of the publication’s skewed view of reality include a “Multicultural Resources” listing which features such items as “Mother Jones, One Woman’s Fight for Labor,” “Sexual Harrassment Institute,” “Teasing and Bullying Workshops,” “Viva La Causa!” and “Overcoming Homophobia in the Elementary Classroom.” A crude cartoon called “Something For Nothing” shows a member of Congress calling for repeal of the Emancipation Proclamation and asking, “Without slavery, how can we compete with China?” Howard Fuller is charitable when asked about the Joyce Foundation’s support for Rethinking Schools. He says, “Sometimes both sides get out there. I like [Joyce Foundation president] Debby Leff. I have great respect for [education program officer] Warren Chapman and what he’s trying to do to make change for kids.” The opinion of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute’s Miller is more candid: “Rethinking Schools is way out there on the fringes,” Miller told Foundation Watch, “and I’m sure that the Joyce Foundation people are aware of that.” But when asked about the publications she funded with Joyce Foundation money, Foundation president Deborah Leff pleads ignorance. “I don’t know everything that group did,” she told Foundation Watch when asked about the special section smearing conservatives. “We did not fund Rethinking Schools to publish photos of Ralph Reed and Phyllis Schlafly. We funded them on the choice issue.” Yet managing editor Barbara Miner told Foundation Watch that Joyce was probably aware of her group’s activities, and suggested calling the Joyce Foundation to inquire. Her organization distributes 40,000 free copies of Rethinking Schools quarterly in the Milwaukee area and that “pretty much our only function is one of publishing.” She added that “Joyce has never dictated to us what to say. But as with any grant proposal, we mentioned that there were several articles about several big issues in the education reform movement which were currently of concern.” When asked, if Joyce did not know or approve of it, why Rethinking Schools gave the Joyce Foundation printed credit for its support of the feature articles bad-mouthing conservatives and the Bradley Foundation, Leff responded, “I apologize for not being familiar with the publication. Grantees are going to put forward different perspectives, and just because a grantee takes on a position, there is no one position that’s right. That’s wrong. God help us if we have such a narrow debate so that there’s only one way to go. We identify smart people, differing people.” Some find Leff’s explanations difficult to swallow. “That’s a crock,” says Miller. “Did she know that Rethinking Schools were the major people who drove out [former Milwaukee superintendent of schools] Howard Fuller? They are connected to a bunch of people who call themselves the New Party and Progressive Milwaukee, and all basically have the same address. There was a major election in Milwaukee right before Fuller resigned. The teachers union was heavily involved and the reformers lost. Rethinking Schools was very much involved in that kind of stuff. They are totally opposed to school choice.” Miller’s own think-tank, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, received Joyce funding for work on the school choice issue before Leff became president in 1992. But Miller subsequently spoke with Joyce staff members who told him, off the record, that “no one like us would get funded with them again, not while Debbie Leff was there.” Leff, says Miller, is rather unlike her predecessor, Craig Kennedy. “Kennedy was different, in that he was interested in new ideas. It didn’t matter who you were, it was what you were interested in doing,” he explained. “I think she’s interested in new ideas if they’re politically correct. But if you’re not politically correct, you’re not going to get funded. Everybody who seems to get money from them in Milwaukee is way left-of-center, and the dividing issue in getting money in Milwaukee is: Are your opposed to private school choice?” Dr. Chester Finn, director of the Educational Excellence Network and a former Department of Education assistant secretary for educational research, agrees with Miller. “I have had no direct knowledge of the Joyce Foundation since she took over,” he told Foundation Watch. “I knew it quite well under Kennedy. It was one of the most interesting and open-minded foundations. It gave me some support to study school reform in Chicago. It was characterized by inquisitiveness, receptivity to standards and heterodox thought. I would never have thought of it as a fellow-traveller of the education establishment when Craig was running it. I even talked to the board sometimes.” Finn says the atmosphere changed when Kennedy left the foundation to work for Chicago businessman Richard J. Dennis. “Craig left and this woman from the world of television arrived. I never met her. A lot of people I know just rolled their eyes. It was no longer an interesting, unconventional, or open-minded place under her leadership. A kind of window closed, a shade came down. There was no further communication. All gone.” Leff retorts sharply to complaints from past recipients like Miller and Finn, “If you haven’t applied for funds, you can’t get them.” Paula Wolff, a Joyce board member since 1989 and currently president of Governors State University in University Park, Illinois, adds that shifts in foundation priorities are normal over time, and that no one should expect the same grantees to be funded when new administrations take over foundations. “There certainly have been some new initiatives, rewriting of the guidelines, but foundations are changing all the time,” she told Foundation Watch.

CHARLES U. DALY: STILL
A POWER BEHIND THE THRONE

School choice is but one example of the debate over shifting fund ing policies at the Joyce Foundation since Deborah Leff departed New York City and ABC News for the foundation presidency in Chicago (salary $180,000). Yet one prominent member of the Joyce board disagrees with the perception that there has been a real change in priorities. Charles U. Daly is a veteran of “Camelot.” A personal friend of members of the Kennedy family and keeper of its secrets as director of the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston and, currently, director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, Daly is a former president of the Joyce Foundation. He served on the search committee which chose Leff from a shortlist of eight finalists, “all of whom were women,” he told Foundation Watch proudly. “It was time for a change from the white Anglo men,” he added (Daly is Irish and maintains a farm in Ireland). A practicing Catholic, he notes with some pride that even under Leff, “you won’t find Joyce funding abortion.” Daly held the presidency of the Joyce Foundation from 1978-86 after serving as vice-president for government and community affairs at Harvard University (1971-76) and vice-president of the University of Chicago for public affairs and development (1964-71). He is a smart politician of the old school, bluff, gruff, and tough. He salts his conversation liberally with profanity and is at once charming and intimidating. Daly makes it impossible to doubt his assertion that his gamble of putting 80% of the assets of the foundation into the stock market allowed it to grow from $160 million in 1986 to over $500 million today. He also claims credit for convincing Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, to change the tax laws in a way which permitted foundations to expand rather than expend their portfolios. An active Democrat, and traditional Kennedy liberal, Daly is a staunch champion of Leff ( who made a personal contribution of $1,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1992 ) and believes she is supporting precisely the kinds of social concerns which excited him when he headed Joyce. Trained as a journalist (he has a masters degree from Columbia Journalism School) the Dublin-born Daly was a White House staffer in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He has edited three publications: Media and the Cities, The Quality of Inequality, and Urban Violence. A self-professed risk-taker and high-stakes gambler, he likens selecting Joyce grantees to his Korean War service as a Marine: “A lieutenant said, `I know damn well not enough of you are doing well, because not enough of you are getting killed.’” Leff should wear criticism like a purple heart, Daly thinks — it means she’s doing her job at Joyce. “Kennedy did a better job than I did,” Daly told Foundation Watch, “and Leff is doing a better job than either of us did. I think it is a place that is not afraid to be on the cutting edge. I welcome that sort of continuing change.” Leff is precisely the type of president Daly had in mind, one who would shake things up. “The last thing we wanted was some busted-out university president who wanted to put on a tweed coat and enjoy life,” he added. “I think independent foundations ought to be independent. Let’s not all get in the same club. I get so frustrated on all this ‘lets get together and fund things...’ In other areas of society, you’d call the antitrust lawyers in.” Daly says Leff must be allowed to decide her own priorities. “You hire the chief executive and let that person do the job. The problem is you get used to the same people telling you you’re terrific. So you’re funding Checker Finn and everyone tells you you’re doing great work.” Daly says he approves of the new directions Leff is charting. He seems happy that Leff is annoying people. “I see any kind of lock-step stuff as a problem area,” he told Foundation Watch. “There should be true free enterprise in foundations.” Yet Daly’s own testimony gives evidence that Leff is taking the foundation away from where Daly might have led it. Daly said he liked to fund both sides of a debate, and like that his successor, Craig Kennedy, funded the Heritage Foundation, “so you could talk to them.” When pressed, he admits that during his tenure he was not personally against school vouchers. “We put money into St. Ignatius,” he recalled. “I asked Professor John Hope Franklin, `Have we screwed up the public school system by supporting private education?’ And he said, `Anything you can do to help a child get an education is worth it.’ There is some balance.” However, Daly was skeptical of the Bradley Foundation’s program of grants of scholarship money to the poor children of Milwaukee, arguing, “For a foundation to piss away its assets on scholarships is not the best thing to do.” Daly did confess that he had himself attended Columbia Journalism School on a $600 scholarship (Leff was on scholarship at Princeton). However, Daly’s faith that Leff shares his commitment to independent thinking and debate may be misplaced. She told The Chicago Tribune in 1993: “Would I fund a dissenting point of view just to have a dissenting point of view? No. It may not be valuable toward reaching [a program’s] goal, especially considering the foundation has very limited funds.”

FUNDING THE GREENS

True to Daly’s account, Leff has maintained some longstanding Joyce programs. The foundation has a tradition of support for environmentalism, and it is a major supporter of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes. Last year the foundation made sixty-one grants totalling $6,154,413 to environmental projects, making this area its second largest program expenditure. One foundation insider told Foundation Watch that Joyce’s environmental grants traditionally mix support for “wacky” political advocacy groups with more praiseworthy mainstream efforts. And Jonathan Adler, director of environmental studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of Environmentalism at the Crossroads (Capital Research Center, 1996) observes that the foundation “is one of the few philanthropies that has made grants to Greenpeace.” A $20,000 award was made to the radical environmental group in 1993 for “Eco-Clean,” a “green” drycleaning method which does not use solvents. In 1995, Joyce gave $750,000 to San Francisco’s Tides Foundation for environmental projects; $225,000 to Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a Washington, D.C. consumer advocacy group whose founder, Ellen Haas, now oversees food labelling, food stamps and the school lunch program as President Clinton’s appointee in the Department of Agriculture; and $50,000 to the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice “to identify and develop strategies for implementing President Clinton’s Executive Order on Environmental Justice.” A $100,000 grant went to the Union of Concerned Scientists Biotechnology Policy Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Adler told Foundation Watch, “They’ve been heavily involved in biotechnology _ in stopping it. Why does anyone ever want to stop progress?” But Leff strongly defends biotechnology’s critics, arguing “If you start introducing genes into crops, there is a risk that the crops will become pesticide resistant over time. You don’t know what the long-term ramifications of what that gene-splicing will be. Is it going to be for better or worse?” Adler observes that Leff’s attitude would block most scientific research because her demands can never be satisfied. No one can ever fully anticipate the consequences of a new technology before it is implemented. “I think some of their funding of that area reflects a skeptical view of the value of technology. They gave some money to the Rockford Institute once, the Chronicles people, for anti-progress environmental stuff. It was an effort by Jeremy Rifkin-types to woo paleo-conservatives.” Leff disagrees: “We’re not against biotechnology. We are just looking at industrial tradeoffs. We are working with industry people. We are concerned about the midwestern United States. We are deeply concerned about the vitality of the region.” A $200,000 grant to the Environmental Defense Fund “to encourage the use of market incentives to reduce air pollution” offers some evidence that Leff is right to deny that the Joyce Foundation is reflexively anti-business. Kara Kellaher Mikulich and Margaret O’Dell are the program officers for Joyce’s environmental grantmaking. O’Dell, at Joyce since 1989, previously worked in the University of Chicago’s department of Foundation Relations. Mikulich, who arrived in 1996, is a Stanford law school graduate, was finance director for Senator Edward Kennedy’s 1988 campaign, and worked for Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA), prior to stints with private law firms and a job as staff attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago.

FUNDING EMPLOYMENT

Employment is a third area of Joyce Foundation concern. About two- thirds the size of the environment program, the division last year spent $4,477,373, under the supervision of Mikulich and Unmi Song, an M.B.A. who was formerly a vice-president of Bankers Trust Company. A political edge is evident here as well, with grants of $100,000 to the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C.; $100,000 to the Women’s Legal Defense Fund; and $60,000 to the 9 to 5 Working Women Education Fund. Carin Clauss, brought on the Joyce Board of Directors by Leff, and U.S. Solicitor of Labor in the Carter administration, served on the litigation committee of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, and knew Leff from her political activities [see box on page 8]. Other large grants went to more mainstream projects such as $100,000 to MIT “to investigate policy and investment strategies for the metalworking industry in the Midwest region to increase its international competitiveness while expanding job opportunities.” The foundation is also a major funder of sometimes controversial “school-to-work” programs.

“GUN VIOLENCE”? SQUASH IT!

Grants in the area of “gun vio lence” are the most evident sign of Leff’s impact on the Joyce Foundation. Under her personal supervision _ Leff is listed as program officer in the Foundation’s annual report _ Joyce gave $1,170,392 to ten projects last year. Among them were the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan in Chicago, which got $140,000 for “a national coalition of groups committed to a public-health approach,” $42,500 to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Policy and Research “to develop and promote an advertising code for firearms,” and $200,000 to the Violence Policy Center in Washington, DC. (For more about gun-control groups see “Gun Control: Is theTide Turning?” by Austin Fulk, Organization Trends, June 1996.) Leff says she first became aware of the issue when she worked at ABC News and “looked at the number of gun deaths in Bangladesh compared to the number of gun deaths in Harlem. To hear that men in Harlem lived less long than men in Bangladesh was shocking.” Perhaps because of the Kennedy assassinations, Daly is also a strong proponent of initiatives to deal with crimes committed with guns. Leff argues that since “nobody wants 40,000 Americans to die of gun violence,” the solution is obvious: “Let’s take it out of the political debate and make it a consensus.” To achieve consensus on an issue that turns on the interpretation of the second amendment to Constitution, Leff resorts to the popular appeal of therapy and the authority of medicine rather than law. She went to Jay Winsten, a biology Ph.D. on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication, whose specialty is public relations campaigns — most famously for the “Designated Driver.” Leff gave Winsten $50,000 in 1993 “to develop strategies to get the public to think of gun violence as a public health problem.” That same year Joyce gave the Harvard School of Public Health $93,500 to conduct a Harris poll to determine “how the connection between guns and health can be made.” In an April, 1996 Weekly Standard article called “Handgun Control, M.D.” Tucker Carlson described the logic underlying Leff’s approach: “Framed in medical terms, gun-related mayhem begins to look like one of society’s most easily solved problems _ nothing at all like the complex affliction that has stymied the best efforts of police, judges, and criminologists for better than a century. If violence is a disease, the cure is simple: Get rid of the guns.” But as Carlson points out, “guns aren’t pathogens; not biologically, not even metaphorically. Genuine pathogens, as any doctor knows, cause disease when introduced into a pathogen-free environment. Considering that there are more than 200 million privately owned firearms in the United States, only a miniscule fraction of which are ever used in acts of violence, guns don’t qualify under this definition.” Carlson argues there is no shooting epidemic, since the incidence has remained fairly steady in recent years and even declined in some localities. The medical metaphor won’t work. No matter. The facts of criminal justice won’t stand in the way of Leff’s goal: “changing social norms.” What gun owners saw as a second amendment right was instead a medical problem and the reason Leff turned to Winsten, who developed Harvard’s “Squash it” campaign at Leff’s instigation. Winsten works with gang members and “gangsta rappers” to get his public relations message across. He asks recording artists to include a “Squash it” lyric, and has developed his own gang-like hand signal. The Harvard professor arranges for public service announcements on television by “gangsta rap” stars. His goal is not to eliminate violent songs, but to add to them the option of walking away from confrontation. Unlike Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), former drug czarWilliam Bennett or National Political Congress of Black Women president C. Delores Tucker, Winsten likes and approves of “gangsta rap.” He argues, “Gangsta Rap is going to continue to have violent images in it. I don’t believe it caused what’s happening on the streets. It’s a reflection of it.” Instead, Winsten maintains his goal is to provide listeners with a choice _ to fight or to walk away. He explains, “If there’s a point where someone makes a business decision to walk away, offering two options, you can choose to fight or not to fight, I’m more than willing to settle for a mixed message.” Winsten (who told Foundation Watch he did not believe the Beatles were promoting LSD use in “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” when he heard the song as a youth) has great faith that urban youth can learn nonviolent conflict resolution through “gangsta rap.” One Winsten script for a P.S.A., by Vinnie of “Naughty By Nature”, illustrates Harvard’s “Squash it” approach: No argument is worth winning especially if it means you could lose your life. You can keep your self-respect without getting into a bunch of senseless violence. When you’re involved in an argument that looks like it’s going to get ugly, show that you’re the strong one. Just walk away. Yo, it may not be easy at first but you can handle it. You’re strong. And walking away from confrontation is the thing you’ll have to learn for self-preservation. So, you, avoid the drama. Squash it (hand signal). There can be no better illustration than these lyrics of what Jeffrey R. Snyder has called the “Nation of Cowards” approach to crime. Writing in the Fall, 1993 issue of The Public Interest, Snyder notes, “The media and law enforcement establishment continually advise us that, when confronted with the threat of lethal violence, we should not resist, but simply give the attacker what he wants...How can one who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of that self-determination?” Yet that is precisely what Winsten wants. And incredibly, the member of Harvard’s public health faculty does not advocate that inner-city youth report crimes to the police. It is a strange position for a professional working in the field of public health, dependent as it is on epidemiological reporting data. Yet Winsten told Foundation Watch, “ When you walk up to the cop, do you think anything is going to happen? It’s like a parking violation to write up the theft of a gold chain. The criminal justice system has zero credibility with these kids.” Winsten’s decriminalization approach — and the concomitant medicalization of urban crime — transfers police authority to kids who belong to criminal gangs and the singers who glorify them.. “They see that one arrest after another they are back out on the street, and [law enforcement] has major problems with credibility in the inner-city,” he said. “Gangsta rappers” have credibility with street hoodlums the police lack.

STATEHOUSE SELLOUT:
JOYCE MONEY FOR POLITICS

One other major Joyce Founda tion priority is a special Project on Money and Politics directed by Lawrence N. Hansen, formerly a professor at George Washington University who headed the “Democracy Agenda Project.” Hansen was once vice-president of the failed Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, which was well-endowed by Richard Dennis, and whose board included Henry Cisneros, Alan Sagner (a Clinton appointee to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), and Peter C. Goldmark, Jr., president of the Rockefeller Foundation (see Foundation Watch v.I, n.4, May, 1996, “The Rockefeller Foundation: The Big Money Behind Multiculturalism”). He also had been administrative assistant to Senator Adlai Stevenson III (D-IL) and Vice-President Walter Mondale. Hansen made thirteen grants totalling $1,082,190 to this project in 1995. Joyce grants in this category include a $30,000 grant to the leftist magazine Mother Jones for articles on the 1996 campaign finances of the 1994 freshman class in Congress; $200,000 to the Center for Responsive Politics to track campaign contributions; $80,000 to National Public Radio to cover campaign finance issues; $75,000 to the Radio Television News Directors Association for seminars on campaign finance; and $30,000 to the Tides Foundation to monitor radio coverage of money and politics. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. is on retainer with ABC News, Leff’s former employer. It is headed by Charles Lewis, like Leff a former television producer (for Nightline and 60 Minutes). Last year it received $109, 912 from Joyce for a project which resulted in a special series The Indianopolis Star: “Statehouse Sellout: How Special Interests Hijacked the Legislature.” Of course, the story paid scant attention to the interests of foundations, or the power of their money (for example, Joyce grants approved by Daly during his presidency stopped the World’s Fair from coming to Chicago). The Star’s front page photo caption read “Money Talks,” the lead read: Something was missing from the Indiana General Assembly last year. Oh, the lawmakers were there, all right. The lobbyists were out in force. And so was big money. Nowhere in sight? Democracy. Such apocalyptic and hysterical language is echoed in Leff’s “President’s Letter” in the Joyce Foundation’s 1995 Annual Report. Featuring the quotation from the Star, Leff’s prose reads as if it had been ripped from the 1960’s manifesto of a New Left Radical: The date: 1996. The place: Governments across America. The crimes: Theft of the American people’s confidence in the institutions that govern them. Assault on the belief they have a voice and that those they elect will listen to them. Leff concludes her letter with an impassioned call to arms: In the past, Americans have rallied when democracy is in danger. It is time we do so again. Before it is too late, Charles Daly and the board of the Joyce Foundation should take another look at the direction their Foundation is heading. The warning signs are clear for those who wish to see them.

The Board of Directors of the Joyce Foundation

John T. Anderson (Chairman)
Managing Partner
Lord, Bissell and Brook, Chicago, IL

Richard K. Donahue (Vice-Chairman)
Attorney, Donahue and Donahue
Former president of Nike, Inc.
Lowell, MA

Cushman B. Bissell, Jr.
Attorney,Lord, Bissell and Brook, Chicago, IL

Robert G. Bottoms
President, DePauw University
Greencastle, IN

Lewis H. Butler
Chairman,California Tomorrow
San Francisco, CA

Carin A. Clauss
Professor,University of Wisconsin
School of Law, Madision, WI

Charles U. Daly
Director, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, Boston, MA

Roger R. Fross
Attorney, Lord, Bissell, and Brook,
Chicago, IL

Carlton L. Guthrie
President, Trumark, Inc.

Marion T. Hall
Director Emeritus
Morton Arboretum
Madison, IN

Deborah Leff
President,The Joyce Foundation

Barack Obama
Attorney, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland
Chicago, IL

Paula Wolff
President, Governors State University
University Park, IL

For Joyce Foundation President Deborah Leff, Sisterhood has been Powerful

Deborah Leff has long been a political activist. The fourty-four year old, five-foot two, never-married brunette is a protege of Michael Pertschuk, head of the Federal Trade Commission in the Carter Administration (she listed him as a reference when she applied for the Joyce job). Pertschuck says Leff was in his inner circle because “she was both a lawyer and a journalist.” Pertschuk now heads the Advocacy Institute, which provides “strategic planning” to “those who advocate social and economic justice.” From 1980 to 1981, she was director of the FTC’s office of public affairs. She had helped design and implement Ralph Nader’s consumer complaint study in 1974 while working at the Center for Responsive Law. Among her FTC projects was a ban on advertising to children (dropped when Ronald Reagan won in 1980). Joyce gave Pertschuk’s group $150,000 over two years shortly after Leff became president.

Leff’s other cause has been the feminist movement. She entered Princeton on scholarship in 1969 at the recommendation of a family friend, the first year the University accepted women. There she displayed a knack for cultivating powerful protectors. Leff was on University committees with then-president William Bowen, now president of the Mellon Foundation (see Foundation Watch vol.1, no.2, “How they took the Stars and Stripes off the American Center in Paris”). Chosen University Scholar and Mademoiselle college guest editor, Leff rapidly became drawn into the feminist movement, joining the National Women’s Political Caucus _ despite opposition from her mother (a National Institutes of Health researcher). “To her, women’s movement people were a bunch of bra-burners,” Leff told an interviewer. “She had made it on her own...and she just didn’t see a need for it.”

At the National Women’s Political Committee, Leff came under the protection of Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird Johnson’s confidant.Within a year, she was NWPC political director and receiving course credit for her activity. Her senior thesis was study of media and the women’s movement She was “stunned” when she interviewed Walter Cronkite and he referred to feminist “nuts in the movement.” Leff did not inform him she was politicial director for the NWPC. She did not obtain permission to sell her interviews. And she failed to find a publisher for her thesis, chapters of which remain sealed to this day.

After Princeton, Leff went to work for Nader (a Princeton alum) and then studied law at the University of Chicago. There, Leff joined the “women’s caucus” which filed a sex discrimination complaint against the school. Her attempted transfer to Yale Law School failed when she was rejected. Leff graduated in 1977, went to work for the Carter administration, and the university later settled the case.

Leff joined Nightline as a field producer in 1983 on the recommendation of a feminst already at ABC News. She joined the “ABC News women’s advisory board” with Carole Simpson to protest sex discrimination at the network. Leff was promoted to senior producer on Nightline, World News Tonight, and 20/20 but never got the job she wanted: executive producer for Peter Jennings.

Through American Council of Learnerd Societies president Stanley Katz (whom she had known at the University of Chicago Law School), Leff contacted Adele Simmons, president of the MacArthur Foundation (and dean of students when she attended Princeton). Simmons passed her name on to Jan Piercy, a MacArthur consultant and First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Wellesley roomate, who then recommended Leff to Joyce.

Interesting, for what it's worth,

The Saguaro Seminar

participants

Stephen Goldsmith
Amy Gutmann
Henry Izumizaki
Vanessa Kirsch
Carol Lamm
Liz Lerman
Glenn Loury
John P. Mascotte
Martha Minow
Mark Moore
Barack Obama
Peter Pierce, III
Robert D. Putnam
Paul Resnick
Juan Sepulveda
Robert Sexton
George Stephanopoulos
Dorothy Stoneman
Lisa Sullivan
James Wallis
Vin Weber
William Julius Wilson
Staff

Glad you’re out of lurk mode.

I’m unable to get to the link, but perhaps someone techno-saavy will be able to help.

Go to this link and search Obama...what does it mean? from Africa?

http://web.archive.org/web/20010121110500/www.hawaii.edu/speccoll/arch/univphoto/txtlist.htm

Nevermind, probably his father.

Please ping your list...

On a board (Chicago Public Education Fund) with Tom Ayers (dad) and John Ayers (brother)

http://web.archive.org/web/20011207043716/www.cpef.org/cgi-bin/leadership.asp

Saguaro Seminar

INTRODUCTION
Barack Obama
State Senator
Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C.
Chicago, IL

Barack Obama received his B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University. He spent five years working as a community organizer, first in Harlem, then in Chicago.

In 1988, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School. There he served as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review and was a member of the Executive Board of the Black Law Students Association. He graduated Magna Cum Laude.

In 1992, Obama served as Illinois Executive Director of Project Vote!, an effort that added over 100,000 newly registered voters.

In 1993, Obama was named by Crain’s Chicago Business as one of “40 under 40” outstanding young leaders in the city of Chicago. He is the recipient of the 1995 Legal Eagle Award from IVI-IPO for his work in bringing Illinois into compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (Motor Vote). His commentaries have been heard on National Public Radio and his memoir, “Dreams of My Father,” was published by Random House in August, 1995.

Obama works as a civil rights attorney with the firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. He specializes in employment discrimination, fair housing and voting rights litigation. He also lectures at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches civil rights law and related subjects.

In addition, Obama serves on the boards of several organizations: including the Chicago Annenberg Center Challenge (Chairman), the Joyce Foundation, the Woods Fund of Chicago, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law and Public Allies. He is a member of the Cook County Bar Association.

Chicago Public Education Fund

“Leadership Council”

http://www.cpef.org/cgi-bin/leadership.asp

Mr. John Ayers [my note: Bill Ayers’ brother]
Executive Director
Leadership for Quality Education

Mr. Thomas Ayers [my note: Bill Ayers’ father]
Retired President & CEO
Commonwealth Edison

Mr. Barack Obama
State Senator
13th Legislative District

wayback link for above post
http://web.archive.org/web/20011207043716/www.cpef.org/cgi-bin/leadership.asp

Thank you, 1COUNTER-MORTER-68. This afternoon I read Yahoo is scrubbing 0bama articles, too. Can’t provide a link.

I’ve saved a few articles by FRmailing them to myself.

Ping.

Article here; a working link may be found at #5:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2099873/posts

Chicago New Party Update

by Bruce Bentley

About 50 activists attended the Chicago New Party membership meeting in July. The purpose of the meeting was to update members on local activities and to hear appeals for NP support from four potential political candidates. The NP is being very active in organization building and politics. There are 300 members in Chicago. In order to build an organizational and financial base the NP is sponsoring house parties. Locally it has been successful both fiscally and in building a grassroots base. Nationwide it has resulted in 1000 people committed to monthly contributions. The NP’s political strategy is to support progressive candidates in elections only if they have a concrete chance to “win”. This has resulted in a winning ratio of 77 of 110 elections. Candidates must be approved via a NP political committee. Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP. The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.

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.

Michael Chandler thanked the NP for its support in his electoral victory. His achievements to date included obtaining an increase of 30 police in the 24th Ward, citizen involvement in street clean-up and establishment of a 24th Ward Organization. William Delgado is exploring whether to run for State Rep in the 3rd District. He is a former social worker and spoke with compassion and dynamism. He considers himself a community activist who wants to be an advocate for change in the community. His presence in political office would be a benefit to the democratic left.

Indeed it was an exciting evening because the NP has two crucial components. First, the NP is a true “Rainbow Coalition” consisting of both young and aged African-Americans, Hispanics and Caucasians. Although ACORN and SEIU Local 880 were the harbingers of the NP there was a strong presence of CoC and DSA (15% DSA). Moreover a good 8% were younger Generation X’ers who are critically needed. A more diverse representation of Labor is missing. Secondly, the NP is taking “action.” Four political candidates were “there” seeking NP support. The NP is strategically organizing via house parties and tactically entering only elections that they can win. Furthermore they are organizing a campaign on the “Living Wage Ordinance” in the Chicago City Council.

The NP has the following working committees: political, membership/fund-raising, public relations, and legal/finance. If you would be interested in participating in one of these committees or in helping out with any other New Party activities, contact Jeff Caveney at (312) 939-7490.

October 1996 Update :

Running to Win : The Key Races
New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races:

Arkansas: The Little Rock New Party has a full slate of candidates up for election in November. LRNP steering committee member Michael Booker is running unopposed for re-election to the Arkansas State House. Two NP members - Paul Kelly and Genevieve Stewart - are running for at-large (city-wide) city council positions. And in a head-to-head battle between the New Party and the conservative right, NP member Jayne Cia faces the Arkansas state chair of Empower America (Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett’s organization) for a Justice of the Peace (county board) position.

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).

Maryland: Two New Party members are up for school board seats this fall: Doyle Niemann in Prince George’s County and Dan Parr in Montgomery County.

Minnesota: Despite the successful effort by conservative Democratic Party forces to deny Progressive Minnesota the opportunity to use fusion this fall, the state legislative candidates that sought our nomination still see themselves as Progressive Minnesota candidates, and we’re still backing them in the general election. PM/NP endorsed candidates include Ellen Anderson, Karen Clark, Andy Dawkins, Linda Higgins, and Sandy Pappas. Progressive Minnesota has also endorsed Green Party State Assembly candidate Cam Gordon.

New York: The New Party of Long Island is backing three candidates for office this Fall: State Assembly candidate Tom DiNapoli and Congressional candidates Carolyn McCarthy and Nora Bredes. NP members collected the necessary signatures to nominate progressive Democratic Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli on the New Party line, making this the first Democratic Party/New Party fusion effort. The chapter is supporting a major voter registration drive in African-American and Hispanic communities in McCarthy’s district.

Washington, DC: DC New Democracy/NP is backing ten candidates for Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (Almedith Bass-Williams, John Jordan, Laine McRaney, Henry Fernandez, Todd Mosley, Daniel Rosenberg, Gerry Lorentz, Will Hill, Dennis Dolinger, Violet Hewlett), neighborhood-based councils that represent community concerns to the mayor and city council. In addition, DCND is recruiting candidates to run write-in campaigns in some of the 80-odd ANC races with no candidate.

Wisconsin: In addition to the four Progressive Milwaukee-backed candidates running for state office (Spencer Coggs, Dale Dulberger, Gwendolynne Moore, Johnnie Morris-Tatum, see Sept Update), two New Party members in Fox Valley are running for the state assembly. Progressive Fox Valley founder and chair Tony Palmeri is in a surprisingly close race against an four-term incumbent conservative Republican in Oshkosh. New Party and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) member Corky Van Handel is also running for the state assembly in a nearby district. Both are running as Democrats.
Membership Growth
September was the New Party’s all-time high month for membership recruitment - more than 1000 new members joined! Welcome aboard.

As always, onward and upward...

http://web.archive.org/web/20010306031216/www.newparty.org/up9610.html

Chicago Democratic Socialists of America
http://www.chicagodsa.org/index.html
Our mission is to establish democratic socialism as a political force in the United States and around the world by training and mobilizing socialist activists to participate in a vibrant and diverse socialist organization at both the local and the national level. DSA both educates the public about democratic socialist values and policies and builds progressive coalitions to win victories that move the U.S. and the world toward social democracy. In the near term, democratic socialists struggle for reforms that shift power and resources away from corporate elites and put them in the hands of ordinary citizens. In the long term, democratic socialists fight for a world in which all people share equally in the governing of the economic, political and cultural institutions and relationships that shape their lives. ----------------------------------------------------------

Letters
Dear Editor:
I would like to urge DSA members and other progressives to support the candidacy of William "Willie" Delgato, Democratic Nominee for State Representative, 3rd District. Willie, who is New Party member and supporter, won a close race with critical New Party help in the 35th Ward. He is a progressive independent candidate whom I think we should all support. In Solidarity, Ron Baiman Editor's Note: I confess! I asked Ron to email this letter to the editor when he expressed dismay at Willie Delgato's absence from the Executive Committee's "recommended" candidates. I agree it was a significant omission. In the Executive Committee's defense, I'd add that the main reason we felt compelled to say anything at all was because, at the time, it looked like DSA member Marc Loveless might make it on the ballot. The list was never meant to be comprehensive. There are a number of other very good candidates that were not mentioned. For my part, I would nominate State Senator Barak Obama (13th District) and County Clerk David Orr. Outside of Chicago DSA's area is Congressman Lane Evans, who is actually facing a tough reelection fight. But this is just my opinion; I'm sure our readers can think of others as deserving, or disagree.

Chicago New Party Update

by Bruce Bentley

About 50 activists attended the Chicago New Party membership meeting in July. The purpose of the meeting was to update members on local activities and to hear appeals for NP support from four potential political candidates. The NP is being very active in organization building and politics. There are 300 members in Chicago. In order to build an organizational and financial base the NP is sponsoring house parties. Locally it has been successful both fiscally and in building a grassroots base. Nationwide it has resulted in 1000 people committed to monthly contributions. The NP’s political strategy is to support progressive candidates in elections only if they have a concrete chance to “win”. This has resulted in a winning ratio of 77 of 110 elections. Candidates must be approved via a NP political committee. Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP. The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.

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 Barach Obama, chief of staff for State Sen. Alice Palmer. Obama is running for Palmer’s vacant seat.

,