February 12, 2000: Barack & Michelle Obama Party Down with Radicals Ayers & Klonsky

So, who did “send” Obama? The key I think is his ties not to well connected uber lawyer Newton Minow, as Kaufman suggests, but more likely to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but also Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well...

A 1987 teachers’ strike brought those two sides together to push for a reform act passed by the Illinois legislature in 1988 that created "Local School Councils" (LSC) to be elected by residents in a particular school area.

Active in the local control from below, on the "community" side of this effort, was Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as an assistant professor of education at the University of Illinois' Chicago Circle campus, after surfacing from the underground and earning his Ph.D. at Columbia...

Ayers, of course, had long held what the left once knew, broadly, as “maoist” or "neo-stalinist" politics – a view of the world that was opposed to Russian style bureaucratic communism from above, instead advocates of this approach supported sending revolutionary cadre to “swim among the masses like fish in the sea” or attempting to establish guerilla foco as romantically theorized by Regis Debray and carried out with disastrous results by Che Guevara...

Bill's brother John later got in on the small schools approach also, raising money in part from the Annenberg Challenge program started by Bill and chaired by Obama (see School Leadership in Times of Urban Reform edited by Bizar and Barr).

A leading figure in the Chicago business groups that were lobbying from above for cost cutting and "efficiency" in the Chicago schools in the 1980's was Bill Ayers' father, Thomas Ayers. Tom Ayers, of course, was a very prominent Chicago business man, a retired head of Commonwealth Edison, a lifelong liberal, and a supporter of open housing campaigns (in which my parents participated when I grew up in Chicago in the 60s) as well as Martin Luther King.

When the 1988 Reform Act was passed a group called Leadership for Quality Education (LQE) was formed, according to Shipps, by the elite business lobby that was in part behind the new reforms, to train the newly elected local school council members...

Interestingly, one LSC member was John Ayers, son of Tom and brother of Bill. In 1993, John was made head of the LQE - which, by then, according to Shipps, was caught in the middle of the battle emerging to re-centralize control of the schools in the hands of the mayor.

I can only speculate, but it is possible that Tom Ayers also introduced Obama to Sidley. That might have happened if Obama had met up with Bill and Tom and John Ayers prior to attending law school when Obama's DCP group was one of the only black Chicago organizations supporting the reform act passed in 1988...

Thus, we have one possible answer to the question: Who "sent" Obama? It was the Ayers family, including Tom, John, Bill and Bernardine Dohrn...

...Bill Ayers’ apartment was around the corner and a half a block away from the sorority house. The more time I spent there, the more out of place I felt with my sisters. Sometimes I would stop by just to keep from having to go back to a place I had begun to think of as boring. I guess it was one of those evenings -- maybe on the way back from the library, maybe just to get out of the sorority house, I don’t remember exactly. What I do recall is that when I was getting ready to leave Ayers told me I couldn’t go until I slept with his roommate and his brother. At this point Bill and I had slept together just once. I was sexually inexperienced, having had only one serious boyfriend with whom I had recently broken up.

At first I thought Ayers was joking. I got up; and went to the door. He moved quickly to block me at the doorway. He locked the door and put the chain on it. I went to the couch and sat down and told him that I had no intention of having sex with his roommate and his brother or him. He said that I had no choice but to do as he said if I wanted to get out of there. He claimed that I wouldn’t sleep with his married roommate because he was black -- that I was a bigot. I had gone to school with black kids and had them as friends all my life. I couldn’t believe he was saying that to me

I felt trapped. I had to get out of the situation I was in and because he was so effective a guilt-tripper, I also felt I had to prove to him that I wasn’t a bigot. I got up from the couch and walked over to the black roommate’s bed and put myself on it and he f***ed me. I went totally out of my body. I floated beside myself on the outside and above the bed looking at this black stranger f*** me angrily while I hated myself.

After that I had to go lie down on Bill Ayer’s bed for his brother to screw me. Rick Ayers was a decent person, unlike his brother, and couldn’t go through with it He started and stopped and let me go. I also thought I had to let Bill screw me but at that point he unbolted the door and I left.

I remember going back to the sorority house and talking to my best girlfriend and telling her what had happened. But there were no words yet to describe it. There was no term “date rape” yet in our political vocabulary. The notion of a psychological rape was not on the table.

I was a mess and felt it was my fault for letting it happen. I was ashamed. Back home at the end of the semester, I got my parents to send me to a psychiatrist. What had happened affected my ability to trust in a relationship with a man and I didn’t have a close relationship again for a long time...

...As I have argued elsewhere on this blog, I do not think that the link made here between the LSC’s and “democracy” is, in fact, accurate. I think that such “councils” look eerily similar to efforts by regimes like those in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Venezuela under Chavez to impose control over teachers and their independent unions by an authoritarian regime. Thus, it is not a surprise to me that Bill Ayers has traveled several times in recent years to Venezuela where he has spoken in front of Hugo Chavez and has enthusiastically applauded that regime’s efforts to link education policy to the Chavez “revolution.”

As Ayers stated in a speech there in November 2006 “La educacion es Revolucion!” He applauded “the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez” and he said he “share[d] the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution”...

One of the first grants awarded in 1995 was a $175,000 Implementation Grant to the Small Schools Workshop. The Workshop had been founded by Bill Ayers in 1992 and was headed up by his former SDS comrade and hardcore Maoist, Mike Klonsky. Klonsky actually visited China and met with its stalinist leaders in the early 1970s. Klonsky still heads up the Small Schools Workshop and, until it was summarily removed, hosted a blog on "social justice" and education issues on the official Barack Obama Presidential campaign website. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more would be forthcoming from the CAC for the Klonsky group...

...Bill raised money to start the Small Schools Workshop in the early 90s and eventually hired another former maoist from the 60s (and actually someone who was a bitter opponent of Ayers as SDS disintegrated) named Mike Klonsky first as research director and then to head it up. Klonsky was a PhD student at UIC studying under Ayers. Obama would approved grants of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Workshop from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge...

Thanks! Will pass on! Here what I posted earlier in another thread: Time line of Obama’s involvement with radical groups.

Here’s excerpts from it:

1988- The ABCs Coalition was coordinated by Bill Ayers, whose father was a key member of ABC. Another member of the ABCs was Obama’s Developing Communities Project.. The two must have crossed paths again.

1989 Tom Ayers (father) and William Ayers got Obama a summer job at Sidley & Austin (where he meets Michelle Obama); Ayers’ wife Dohrn also worked there the same time.
April, 1992- Obama, Ayers & Dohrn had their documented public gathering sponsored by the U. of Illinois, Chicago
1992 - Obama graduates from Harvard and returns to Chicago
1992, Obama became director of Project Vote, Illinois.
1992-New Party was founded- a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist officials — mostly Democrats. They want to move the Democratic Party leftward..

1993 Ayers places Obama on Woods Foundation, which gave sizable grants to ACORN, Rev. Wright’s church , etc.

1995 -publishes “Dreams From my father”1995 Ayers made Obama Chairman of Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC)

1995-1999- Obama served as President of CAC

1999-2001- Obama served as Board of Director, CAC
After CAC closed down, Obama served on a successor group called the Leadership Council of the Chicago Public Schools Education Fund. Ayers’ brother John and their father Thomas served with Obama. By now, news all over about Ayer’s boasts of his terrorist acts.

1995 Ayers hosts a coffee fundraiser for Obama’s political debut (Obama falsely claims this is when he first met Ayers when he has met him AT LEAST 8 years earlier!) -Chicago Times interview: 10-7-08 Lynn Sweet
Obama’s advisor, Axelrod , claim that Obama did not know Ayers’ history when he went to his home (Fox interviews, Oct. 08). The big problem is Ayers’ associations were frequently reported on, especially in Chicago where he and his wife had been active. During the 1990s, when Obama lived in Chicago, dozens of stories on Ayers and his wife ran in newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, a database search reveals.(Oct. 13, 2008 John Lott, Fox)

1996-Ayers began to contribute money to Obama’s campaign.
How is it possible that Obama in writing two autobiographies could ignore his 13 year-long association with Ayers if he were not purposely trying to hide it?

1996, Ayers played a significant role within the Democratic party in Chicago. Democrats were proud to be allied with him. ( Chicago Tribune, Aug 27, 1996)

David Lytel, who set up President Clinton’s Web site said,” There is a lot of room for different ideas in progressive politics, and we’re proud to be associated with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers,”

Ayers & , Henry DeZutter consider themselves “The Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party hasn’t gone underground. . . . We’re on the Internet!”

1995- Obama, along with Rev.Wright, helped organize the Farrakhan’s famous Million Man March in DC. Farrakhan is a longtime friend of Wright and comrade of Michael Pfleger. Yeah, birds of the feathers flock together! It’s evident that the liberationist preachers were also Obama’s valued political allies.

1995- he sued, on behalf of ACORN, for the implementation of the Motor Voter law in Illinois. ACORN later invited Obama to help train its staff on how to shake down banks.
1995- Obama sought the New Party’s (socialistic) endorsement for his 1996 state senate run. Democratic Socialists of America founded the “New Party” He got it and he used New Party volunteers as campaign workers. The New Party rigorously evaluated its candidate endorsements & Obama HAD to sign a contract that he agrees with its goals! The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP

1997-Ayers published his radical book, A Kind and Just Parent, in which he brags of his terrorist acts
Dec 97, Obama wrote a positive review of Ayers’s book in the Chicago Tribune the following month. He did not know Ayer’s past?

1997- another joint appearance with Ayer

1990’s-Obama was a card carrying documented active member, participant and a direct political beneficiary of the Chicago New Party and, importantly, the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Newsletter said Obama “walked the walk & talked the talk” ( Newsletter , New Ground 45, March-April , 96.)

Democratic Socialists of America - as “the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International,” DSA is the largest socialist organization in US. Weatherman Underground splintered from SDA in 1969

1996-when Obama ran with the blessings of the Marxist New Party and Chicago Democratic Socialist Party
April 11, 1996- Obama attended membership meeting where he expressed his gratitude for their support.

1996-Obama was speaker at meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America (Sponsored by: University of Chicago Democratic Socialists of America )

1998- Connie Chung ABC interviewed Ayers & wife & they said,” We were young, idealistic, and We would do it (bomb) again. I wish we have done more!” This was HUGE news! Obama must have watched news!

2000- Obama was supported by leftist catholic priest, Rev. Michael Pfleger of Saint Sabina Catholic Church, in his House of Rep. race. He was another Obama’s spiritual adviser . 1995- 2001, Pfleger contributed $1,500 to his campaigns. Obama later sponsored a $100,000 earmark to help finance Pfleger’s youth center

2001- Ayers was photographed stepping on American flag and I guess Obama missed the news again? In his “Fugitive Days”, Ayers boasts that he “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970…” All told, responsible for some 30 bombings. Ayvers bragged, “I don’t regret setting bombs”, “I feel we didn’t do enough.” Was Obama blind, deaf, incredibly naive?

2001-2002, Woods Fund with directors Ayers and Obama, made grants of $40,000 and $35,000 to the Arab American Action Network, founded by radical Kashid Khalidi . Rashid is a professor at Columbia. he was strongly identified with PLO. Khalidi hosted a fundraiser for Obama in 2000.
April-2002, Obama & Ayers spoke at another panel.
2002 through 2005, the two regularly exchanged emails and phone calls.

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Here’s to You

CATALYST’s
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Saturday, February 12, 2000

Grand Ballroom, Navy Pier

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