Posted on 08/07/2016 11:06:05 AM PDT by Fedora
In 1993, the Clinton White House contacted Hillary Rodham’s former thesis adviser Alan H. Schechter, informing him that the Clintons had decided not to release her senior thesis on Marxist organizer Saul Alinsky. When Schechter asked why, he was told that Hillary was working on health care now and she did not want to alienate Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whom Schechter was told she had criticized in the thesis. This puzzled Schechter, since he did not recall Moynihan being mentioned in the thesis. (Actually, the thesis does have a chapter critiquing Moynihan’s War on Poverty legislation.) Schechter argued that they should release the thesis because the more they hid it, the more people would want it. He later criticized Hillary’s decision not to release the thesis as “stupid”.
After Schechter received the call from the White House, Wellesley's president Nannerl Overholser Keohane consulted with attorneys. Her legal counsel concluded that applicable copyright law was ambiguous. Keohane then instituted a new policy of closing access to the thesis of any sitting President or First Lady, a policy affecting only Hillary’s thesis. In 1995, this policy was reiterated in writing by new Wellesley president Diana Chapman Walsh. Keohane and Walsh were both Clinton supporters.
These maneuvers kept the thesis out of circulation until the Clintons left the White House. Even legendary muckraker Jack Anderson could not get his hands on it. The thesis became unsealed when the Clintons left the White House, but access was restricted to on-site researchers, who were not allowed to copy more than a few pages of it at a time on threat of being charged with statutory damages up to $150,000. Internet access to the thesis was accordingly restricted. These restrictions were in effect when news commentators relying on physical access to the thesis commented on it during the 2008 election campaign. However, since then, copies have been posted online.
Born in Chicago in 1909 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Alinsky graduated from the University of Chicago in 1930 with a degree in archaeology before the Great Depression derailed his archaeology plans. Alinsky then entered graduate school in criminology, which led him to become friendly with Al Capone and the Chicago Mafia, whose tactics he studied and emulated. After two years of grad school, he began working as a criminologist for the State of Illinois. Meanwhile he began organizing for the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a Communist-controlled labor union. By 1939, he had drifted out of the labor movement and into community anti-poverty organizing in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, initially motivated by a desire to combat the spread of fascism there, he later told Hillary.
In 1940, Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a national community organizing network, with support from Chicago Auxiliary Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and philanthropist Marshall Field III. Sheil was a social justice activist who founded the Catholic Youth Organization and was a labor supporter, which occasionally led him to support controversial labor strikes. Field was later called before the Congressional Cox Committee to testify regarding his sponsorship of the Communist fronts the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief and the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship; his Field Foundation trustee Channing Tobias’ association with 48 Communist front groups; his foundation committee member Justine Wise Polier’s association with multiple Communist fronts,; and his foundation’s funding of Communist front organizations such as the Open Road, the People’s Institute of Applied Religion, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Institute for Pacific Relations.
The Chicago FBI office opened a file on Alinsky in October 1940. At this time, the Communist Party was under surveillance for supporting the antiwar activity of the Soviets’ Nazi German allies, and the Bureau initiated inquiries into whether Alinsky was a Communist. By 1944, an initial investigation had not turned up any derogatory information on Alinsky himself, but had determined that in 1939 his wife Helen had been a member of the American League for Peace and Democracy, a Communist antiwar front associated with Soviet spy Helen Silvermaster, identified as “Dora” in the Venona decrypts. The League had dissolved after the August 1939 announcement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the USSR and Germany, transforming into the American Peace Mobilization in accord with the new Soviet party line.
Subsequent investigation by the Bureau determined that Alinsky had at one time been a Communist Party ally but that he did not consistently follow the party line. In 1944, San Francisco Communist Party organizer Harry Bridges characterized Alinsky as having been “alright” at one time but as currently not necessarily “alright” all the time, implying he was considered of unknown reliability by party leadership. Other Communist Party members complained that Alinsky was an egoist who thought he was farther left than they were.
Despite this strained relationship with the Communist Party hierarchy over his independent streak, Alinsky’s poverty organizing activity continued to involve him in activity with Communists, Communist front groups, and extremists from the 1940s through the 1960s. For instance, a 1947 memo in Alinsky’s file mentions that his book Reveille for Radicals was being promoted by the Chicago representative of The Daily Worker, the official Communist Party newspaper. Alinsky’s various associations over the years included the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael, and The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), “which employed youth-gang leaders who were involved in violence.” (Barack Obama would later organize for the Woodlawn Organization, and during his administration, Woodlawn properties linked to Obama associates Valerie Jarrett and Tony Rezko would receive millions of dollars in HUD grants, with support from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel.)
As racial tensions grew during the 1960s, the FBI began tracking Alinsky’s activity in relation to its Racial Matters files, which encompassed investigations of both Communist elements within the civil rights movement as well as racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and their Black nationalist counterparts. Alinsky’s file notes that in December 1963, a Nation of Islam magazine promoted one of his speeches. In September 1964, the Chicago FBI field office flagged a memo about Alinsky’s organizing activity for church groups in Kansas City with the conclusion, “This matter will be followed as to any developments which may indicate a potential for race tensions and violence”. The Kansas City field office subsequently kept ongoing track of Alinsky’s activity.
The December 1965 issue of Counterattack noted that Alinsky had sent advance agents into Los Angeles that May, prior to the Watts race riots that August. In February 1966, Alinsky met with farm workers organizer Cesar Chavez, who had originally been trained by a member of Alinsky’s organization and was now receiving Communist support. In October 1966, the Buffalo field office was monitoring potential racial violence stemming from Alinsky’s organizing activity in Rochester and Buffalo. In January 1967, the FBI flagged an item about Alinsky joining a Detroit public speaking event with SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael, who was by now working with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to promote antiwar activity. That July, a source who later spoke to the FBI was approached by three individuals identifying themselves as Black nationalists who stated that Alinsky was a Communist and that he was working “hand in glove” with Carmichael.
In August 1967, the Chicago FBI office recommended that Alinsky be placed on its Rabble Rouser Index, later known as the Agitator Index. This index collected background information on individuals who had demonstrated a propensity for fomenting racial disorder and violence by appealing to prejudices and emotions in a demagogic manner. FBI headquarters approved this request and began a name check review of all files related to Alinsky. On December 14, 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover instructed the Chicago field office to immediately prepare a succinct summary of Alinsky’s background for dissemination to other field offices.
On January 23, 1968, the Chicago Daily News reported that Alinsky was staying in Chicago over the spring and summer in preparation for the August Democratic National Convention in order to organize plans “to blow this town apart”. Alinsky predicted that Mayor Daley’s threats to get tough on protestors would backfire, saying, “He’s just asking for it. His blunderings have put Chicago on top of the powder keg that could blow so high Detroit will look like a sideshow.” After this was published, Alinsky claimed he had been “misrepresented” and that “he did not ‘plan to blow this town apart’ but rather to organize the Negroes so that their voice could be heard through elected representatives, as is the democratic way”. An FBI file accompanying the article noted, “He is quoted as having made statements advocating racial violence.”
In March 1968, the FBI forwarded Alinsky’s file to the Secret Service following Alinsky publicly indicating knowledge of a threat to President Lyndon Johnson when Johnson attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that August. Speaking to the Medical Center of the YMCA on March 7, Alinsky had said that despite strict security measures, “The President would be safer to take a sub through the sewer system.”
Racial violence soon ensued around the country following the assassination of Martin Luther King that April. Johnson then announced he would not seek reelection, so he did not appear at the Democratic National Convention. As the convention approached, Alinsky announced in early August that he would be opening a school in Chicago to train organizers in anti-government pressure tactics, with funding from the Midas International Foundation headed by Gordon B. Sherman, a former member of a Communist Party front group and currently head of Chicago Business Executives for Vietnam Peace. Subsequent violence at the convention in late August resulted in the trial of the Chicago Seven for inciting a riot. The Chicago Seven case, which attracted national attention, lasted from September 1968 to March 1969.
It was during Alinsky’s involvement in organizing the Chicago Seven riots that Hillary Rodham became actively involved with Alinsky. Rodham first became aware of Alinsky in April 1962 at the age of 14. At that time, her Park Ridge, Illinois youth minister Don Jones had introduced her to a version of Methodism which drew parallels between Marxist utopianism and liberal Christianity. Jones took Rodham’s class to Chicago for activities such as visiting South Side slums and hearing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak. Rodham first learned of Alinsky when she Jones arranged for her class to hear King speak at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall on April 15, 1962. Rodham remained in contact with Jones after he left Park Ridge and she left for Wellesley, which she began attending in 1965.
When Rodham was considering topics for her senior thesis during the 1968-1969 school year, her adviser Alan Schechter suggested that she should leverage her relationship with Alinsky by writing her thesis on him. Rodham interviewed Alinsky for her thesis in Boston in October 1969. Hearing him speak in Boston prompted her to organize a demonstration at Wellesley. She also invited Alinsky to speak to a private dinner of two dozen students at Wellesley in January 1969, when she interviewed him again. Rodham’s meetings with Alinsky occurred during the period when he was organizing riots for the upcoming Democratic National Convention and the FBI and Secret Service were monitoring him as a security threat.
Rodham turned in her thesis with a completion date of May 2, 1969, a day after the annual Marxist celebration of May Day. In the opening acknowledgments for her thesis, Rodham thanked Alinsky for offering her a job. She interviewed for Alinsky twice, but ultimately declined his job offer because, according to Schechter’s interpretation of her thesis, she felt Alinsky’s local organizing tactics would not be effective on a national scale, and she envisioned changing the system nationally. So instead, she decided to attend Yale and work through the legal system to achieve her goals, as she told the Chicago Daily News in an interview in summer 1969.
At Yale, Rodham became affiliated with the radical Yale Law Review of Law and Social Action, cofounded by Robert Borosage of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a Communist think tank linked to domestic terrorist groups such as the Weathermen and Venceremos Brigade and to Soviet, East German, and Cuban intelligence agents. In 1970, through her work for the Review, Rodham became involved in defending Black Panther members on trial for murdering a police officer. She met the Panthers’ attorney Charles Garry, who had defended the Chicago Seven, and Garry’s assistant Robert Treuhaft, former attorney for the California Communist Party.
In 1971, Rodham interned for Treuhaft and his wife Jessica Mitford at their law firm in Oakland, which represented radical clients such as the Oakland-based Black Panthers. She was joined in San Francisco that summer by her boyfriend Bill Clinton. Rodham had met Clinton in spring 1970 following his return from Oxford. While at Oxford from 1969 to 1970, he had lived with Strobe Talbott, then translating the memoirs of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which were being leaked to him by Victor Louis, a KGB disinformation agent and talent spotter. He had also organized American participation in the activities of antiwar organization Group 68, cofounded by Heinz Norden, who had been dismissed from a sensitive US Army position after US intelligence discovered he had a background with Communist Party union and antiwar activity. After organizing for Group 68 in fall 1969, Clinton had traveled to the Soviet Union, where in Moscow he met Anik “Nikki” Alexis, a daughter of a French diplomat who was now studying at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University, a KGB training ground famed for turning out alumni such as the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Clinton then returned to America and began attending Yale, where he met Rodham.
During the time Clinton and Rodham were at Yale and in Oakland, Rodham remained in correspondence with Alinsky. On July 8, 1971, Rodham wrote Alinsky. She updated him on her living and work situation, saying that she was living in Berkeley at 267 Derby #2 and working in Oakland. She asked him about his forthcoming book Rules for Radicals. She then said “I miss our biennial conversations” and invited him to meet if he ever got out to California. She asked him about his travel plans to organize in Asia. In her conclusion she said, “I hope you are still well and fighting.”
On July 13, Alinsky’s secretary Mrs. Georgia Harper wrote Rodham back. She explained that she was replying because the letter had arrived while Alinsky was traveling in Asia for the next ten days and, “Since I know his feelings about you I took the liberty of opening your letter because I didn’t want something urgent to wait for two weeks.” She promised, “You will hear from him on his return.”
It is unknown what further contact Rodham and Alinsky may have had before he died the next June.
In a 1993 interview with the Washington Post, Rodham summed up her thesis by saying, “I basically argued that [Alinsky] was right.” Following her acknowledgments to Alinsky, she opened up her thesis with a biographical portrait of him, leading into an analysis of his organizing philosophy and tactics. Her analysis of his philosophy focused on what Alinsky meant by being “radical”, which she interpreted as seeking radical equality for all people, administered from the bottom up by the masses rather than imposed from the government down. To achieve this, he advocated a strategy centered around achieving enough power to negotiate and compel negotiations, rather than negotiating on the assumption of the other party’s good will. For Alinsky, this implied being prepared for conflict in order to gain power. For groups lacking financial or political power, this meant organizing superior numbers, Alinsky taught. Alinsky therefore focused on the role of the community organizer, whose job he saw as to agitate hostilities to the point of provoking conflict. Alinsky criticized those who wanted to effect change without conflict, comparing them to contemporaries of the American Revolution who said “America should be free but not through bloodshed.” Rodham noted that this type of inflammatory language had drawn criticism from critics who saw Alinsky’s tactics as comparable to those of hate groups and lynch mobs. She conceded that Alinsky sounded bad, but argued for a positive underlying intent, saying, “Unfortunately, the war-like rhetoric can obscure the constructiveness of the conflict Alinsky orchestrates.”
Rodham then went on to consider three case studies of Alinsky’s organizing tactics in action: the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council; the Woodlawn Organization; and Alinsky’s Rochester-based FIGHT organization, created to pressure Kodak. She used these case studies to illustrate Alinsky’s protest tactics as well as his method of building organizations.
Rodham then discussed Alinsky’s relationship to the War on Poverty. Here she followed Alinsky in critiquing Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s anti-poverty legislation, which was based on the opportunity theory of sociologists Lloyd Ohlin and Richard Cloward, the latter famous as an architect of the Cloward-Piven strategy of deliberating overloading the welfare system in order to force a replacement of the national welfare system with a guaranteed national income. Rodham argued that Moynihan’s approach was an undemocratic imposition of legislation on the masses rather than the type of community-based empowerment Alinsky advocated. Rodham also criticized Sargent Shriver, who had taken issue with Alinsky over the War on Poverty.
After defending Alinsky against his critics, Rodham then moved into a critique of Alinsky himself. Drawing from critics of Alinsky such as Philip W. Hauser, Harold Fey, and Frank Riessman, as well as conflict theorist Lewis Cosor, Rodham argued that Alinsky’s approach had not succeeded beyond the local level because it had become bogged down in local organizing for the sake of protesting without a specific goal. She further contended that Alinsky himself had changed his methods over time because he had recognized the limitations of his own community-based approach. She argued that a community-based approach was obsolete in 1969 due to the fact that the community neighborhood was no longer a workable societal unit, and also because power had become centralized in the federal government since the New Deal era when Alinsky started organizing.
Rodham’s final chapter softened her criticism of Alinsky by calling it a “’perspective’ rather than a ‘critique’”. She managed this by contending that Alinsky’s own philosophy was still evolving, implying that it was actually moving in the direction she was advocating. She argued that Alinsky’s basic premises were sound but that his philosophy was still developing in its understanding of community and of the role of national central planning in effecting social change. She explored how Alinsky’s radical community reorganization approach might be expanded to apply to the city and national levels. “If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized,” she concluded, “the result would be social revolution. . .Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared--just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths--democracy.”
Rodham’s appendices to her thesis include an October 25, 1968 letter from Alinsky’s IAF, responding to a previous inquiry from her by sending her an application for Alinsky’s new Chicago training school, the IAF Training Institute. The letterhead footer lists the IAF’s board of trustees as including “Miss Marian E. Wright, Jackson, Mississippi”. This is evidently Mississippi civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman, who had recently married Kennedy family associate Peter Edelman on July 14, 1968. Rodham and Edelman would meet at Yale in 1970, leading Rodham to join the staff of Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund, an association that would continue after Hillary Clinton moved to Arkansas. In December 1992, following Bill Clinton’s election to the Presidency, Edelman would join Bill and Hillary Clinton at an economic summit in Little Rock. Peter Edelman served the Clinton administration in the Department of Health and Human Services before resigning in 1996 to protest the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The Clintons’ relationship to the Edelmans has been strained since then, but they have lent their support to her 2016 Presidential campaign.
The bibliography to the thesis mentions, “Alinsky and I met twice during October in Boston and during January at Wellesley. Both times he was generous with ideas and interest. His offer of a place in the new Institute was tempting but after spending a year trying to make sense out of his inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor.”
In addition to Alinsky, Clinton also acknowledges his organization members John Haffner, Nicholas von Hoffman (currently of the Huffington Post), and Phyllis Ryan, along with Wellesley sociology professor Annemarie Shimony, whom she credits for criticizing Alinsky and focusing her thoughts.
Clinton’s thesis reveals several important things that are relevant to the current election campaign. First, it documents that in her student days, she was a fellow traveler with Communists considered by the Johnson administration to be national security risks because of their role in promoting racial violence, a foreshadowing of the Democratic Party’s current deployment of Black Lives Matter. Second, it shows that Clinton equates democracy with a Marxist vision of a classless society, a philosophically fallacious view that founders on the fact of human diversity, and one hardly consistent with the bicameral premise of the United States Constitution that she is purportedly running to uphold. Third, it shows that Clinton’s ideology values power above rational negotiation and is willing to use violence to attain power. Finally, its reference to Marian Wright illustrates how Clinton has continued to associate with descendants of Alinsky’s radical network since her student days. Hillary was and is a dangerous radical, and like her mentor Alinsky, she is a rabble-rousing agitator of racial violence and a threat to national security.
Hillary Rodham, “There Is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model”,http://www.hillaryclintonquarterly.com/documents/HillaryClintonThesis.pdf
Frank Marafiote, “Hillary’s Senior Thesis about Activist Saul Alinsky”,Hillary Clinton Quarterly, http://www.hillaryclintonquarterly.com/hillary-clintons-senior-thesis-about-activist-saul-alinsky/
Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Alinsky, Saul David”, HQ 100-3731, https://archive.org/details/nsia-fbi-alinsky
Christopher Neefus, “FBI Sent 'Agitator' Saul Alinsky’s File to the Secret Service After He Warned of Threat to LBJ”, CNSNews.com, May 10, 2011, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/fbi-sent-agitator-saul-alinsky-s-file-secret-service-after-he-warned-threat-lbj
Jack Anderson and Jan Moller, “Hillary’s college thesis off limits”, The Hour, March 8, 1999, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1916&dat=19990308&id=6XchAAAAIBAJ&sjid=n4kFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1831,1025065&hl=en
David Brock, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, New York: The Free Press, 1996.
Alana Goodman, “The Hillary Letters: Hillary Clinton, Saul Alinsky correspondence revealed”, The Washington Free Beacon, September 21, 2014, http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-letters/
Fedora, “Road to Moscow: Bill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow”, FreeRepublic.com, August 22, 2007, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884984/posts
Bill Dedman, “Reading Hillary Rodham’s Hidden Thesis: Clinton White House asked Wellesley College to Close off Access”, MSNBC.com, May 9, 2007, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17388372/#.V6bo1K2VZPY
Bill Dedman, “How the Clintons wrapped up Hillary’s thesis: ‘A stupid political decision,’ says her former Wellesley poly-sci professor”, MSNBC.com, September 6, 2007, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17388394/#.V6brtq2VZPY
Peter Slevion, “For Clinton and Obama, a Common Ideological Touchstone”, Washington Post, March 25, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.html
Frances Stead Sellers, “The story of Hillary Clinton’s ‘totally confusing’ relationship with her liberal mentor”, Washington Post, June 3, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-hillary-clintons-long-tense-relationship-with-her-liberal-mentor/2016/06/02/b204f6de-22af-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html
well, that BEAOOOOTCH !!
It is the first item in the bibliography
ping
That’s an excellent presentation, Fedora.
I find these parts especially interesting:
“When Schechter asked why, he was told that Hillary was working on health care now and she did not want to alienate Daniel Patrick Moynihan...”
“Rodham argued that Moynihan’s approach was an undemocratic imposition of legislation on the masses rather than the type of community-based empowerment Alinsky advocated.”
Seems to me that she wished to avoid exposure as a gross hypocrit, since her health care “solution” was nothing if not “undemocratic imposition of legislation on the masses”.
Her thesis and (arbitrary) conclusions also reveal the self-contradiction implicit in rejection of the “Alinsky model” in favor of making change through taking over government. Hillary’s model boils down to undemocratic imposition; she fine with that so long as she’s the imposer.
That’s an excellent presentation, Fedora.
I find these parts especially interesting:
“When Schechter asked why, he was told that Hillary was working on health care now and she did not want to alienate Daniel Patrick Moynihan...”
“Rodham argued that Moynihan’s approach was an undemocratic imposition of legislation on the masses rather than the type of community-based empowerment Alinsky advocated.”
Seems to me that she wished to avoid exposure as a gross hypocrite, since her health care “solution” was nothing if not “undemocratic imposition of legislation on the masses”.
The thesis also reveals the self-contradiction implicit in her rejection of the “Alinsky model” in favor of making change through taking over government. Hillary’s model boils down to undemocratic imposition; she just wants to be the imposer.
Thank you for the post. Bookmark.
The Alinsky discussion is not just theoretical. Hillary and her followers actually implement the Rules for Radicals. Here’s an example. They use “shame” and “embarrassment” to induce guilt in order to make people do things they otherwise would not. Try saying something pro-Trump on Twitter. The next thing you know, 13,000 people start screaming “SHAME!” because the idea is that you can SHAME Trump supporters for not supporting Hillary and therefore make them support Hillary. This worked well for Obama, because of the race issue, and now they are using it for Hillary, re:gender. Here’s what works in opposition to the “SHAME!” tactic: RIDICULE. Try it, you’ll like it.
LOL, I was looking for a link to Clinton’s er...ahem...”paper”. If it is anything like the pap written by Barack Obama like this below when he was in college, well...
BREAKING THE WAR MENTALITY
By Barack Obama
March 10, 1983
The Sundial
Most students at Columbia do not have firsthand knowledge of war. Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds to television, film, and print.
The more sensitive among us struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves to our parents war time memories, or incorporating into our framework of reality as depicted by a Mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war-the sounds and chill, the dead bodies-are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experience down into our hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task. Two groups on campus, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Through the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.
“Most people my age remember well the air raid drills in school, under the desk with our heads tucked between our legs. Older people, they remember the Cuban missile crisis. I think those kinds of things left an indelible mark on our souls, so we are more apt to be concerned” says Don Kent, assistant director of programs and student activities at Earl Hall center. Along with the community Volunteer Service Center, ARA has been Don’s primary concern, coordinating various working groups of faculty, students, and staff members, while simultaneously seeking the ever elusive funding for programs.
“When I first came here two years ago, Earl Hall had been a holding tank for five years. Paul Martin (director of Earl Hall) and I discussed our interests, and decided that ARA would be one of the programs we pushed.” Initially, most of the work was done by non-student volunteers and staff. “Hot issues, particularly El Salvador, were occupying students at the time. Consequently, we cosponsored a lot of activities with community organizations like SANE (Students Against Nuclear Energy).”
With the flowering of the nuclear freeze movement, and particularly the June 12 rally in Central Park, however, student participation has expanded. One wonders whether this upsurge stems from young people’s penchant for the latest ‘happenings’ or from growing awareness of the consequences of nuclear holocaust. ARA Maintains a mailing list of 500 persons and Don Kent estimates that approximately half of the active members are students. Although he feels the continuity is provided by the faculty and staff members, student attendance at ARA sponsored events-in particular in November 11 convocation on the nuclear threat-reveals a deep reservoir of concern. “I think students on this campus like to think of themselves as sophisticated, and don’t appreciate small vision. So they tend to come out more for the events; they do not want to just fold leaflets.”
Mark Bigelow, a graduate intern from Union theological seminary who works with Don to keep ARA running smoothly, agrees. “It seems the students here are fairly aware of the nuclear problem, and it makes for an underlying frustration. We try to talk to that frustration.” Consequently, the thrust of ARA is towards generating dialogue which will give people a rational handle on this controversial subject. This includes bringing speakers like Daniel Ellsberg to campus, publishing fact sheets compiled by interested faculty, and investigating the possible development of an interdisciplinary program in the Columbia curriculum dealing with peace, disarmament, and world order.
Tied in with such a thrust is the absence of what Don calls “a party line.” By taking an almost apolitical approach to the problem, ARA hopes to get the university to take nuclear arms issues seriously. “People don’t like having their intelligence insulted,” says Don, “so we try to disseminate information and allow the individual to make his or her own decision.”
Generally, the narrow focus of the freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets. When Peter Tosh sings that “everybody’s asking for peace, but nobody’s asking for justice,” one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself. Mark Bigelow does not think so. “We do focus primarily on catastrophic weapons. Look, we say, here’s the worst part let’s work on that. You’re not going to get rid of the military in the near future, so lets at least work on this.”
Mark Bigelow does feel that the links are there, and points to fruitful work being done by other organizations involved with disarmament. “The freeze is one part of a whole disarmament movement. The lowest common denominator, so to speak. For instance, April 10-16 is Jobs for Peace week, With a bunch of things going on around the city. Also, the New York City Council may pass a resolution April calling for greater social as opposed to military spending. Things like this may dispel the idea that disarmament is a white issue, because how the government spends its revenue affects everyone.”
The very real advantages of concentrating on a single issue is leading the national freeze movement to challenge individual missile systems, while continuing the broader campaign. This year, Mark Bigelow sees the checking of Pershing II and Cruise missile deployment as crucial. “Because of their small size and mobility, their deployment will make possible arms control verification far more difficult, and will cut down warning time for the Soviets to less than 10 minutes. That can only be a destabilizing factor.” Additionally, he sees the initiation by the US of the Test Ban Treaty as a powerful first step towards a nuclear free world.
ARA encourages members to join buses to Washington and participate in a March 7-8 rally intended to push through the Freeze resolution which is making its second trip through the house. ARA will also ask United Campuses to Prevent Nuclear War (UCAM), an information lobbying network-based and universities, nationwide, to serve as its advisory board in the near future. Because of its autonomy from Columbia (which does not fund political organizations) UCAM could conceivably become a more active arm of disarmament campaigns on campus, though the ARA will continue to function solely as a vehicle for information and discussion.
Also operating out of Earl Hall Center, Students Against Militarism was formed in response to the passage of registration laws in 1980. An entirely student run organization, SAM casts a wider net than ARA, although for the purposes of effectiveness, they have tried to lock in on one issue at a time.
“At the heart of our organization is an anti-war focus”, says junior Robert Kahn, one of SAM’s fifteen or so active members. “From there, a lot of issues shoot forth-nukes, racism, the draft, and South Africa. We’ve been better organized when taking one issue at a time, but we are always cognizant of other things going on and collaborate frequently with other campus organizations like CISPES and REELPOLITIK.”
At this time, the current major issue is the Solomon Bill, the latest legislation from Congress to obtain compliance to registration, the law requires that all male students applying for federal financial aid submit proof of registration, or else the government coffers will close. Yale, Wesleyan, and Swarthmore have refused to comply, and plan to offer non-registrants other forms of financial aid. SAM hopes to press Columbia into following suit, though so far President Sovern and company seem prepared to acquiesce to the bill.
Robert believes students tacitly support non-registrants, though the majority did not comply. “Several students have come up to our tables and said that had they known of the ineffectiveness of prosecution, they would not have registered.” A measure of such underlying support is the 400 signatures on a petition protesting the Solomon Bill, which SAM collected the first four hours it appeared. Robert also points out that prior to registration, there were four separate bills circulating in the House proposing a return to the draft, but none ever got out of committees, and there have not been renewed efforts. An estimated half million non-registrants can definitely be a powerful signal.
Prodding students into participating beyond name signing and attending events is tricky, but SAM members seem undaunted. “A lot of the problem comes not from people’s ignorance of the facts, but because the news and statistics are lifeless. That’s why we search for campus issues like the Solomon Bill that have a direct impact on the student body, and effectively link the campus to broader issues.” By organizing and educating the Columbia community, such activities lay the foundation for future mobilization against the relentless, often silent spread of militarism in the country. “The time is right to tie together social and military issues,” Robert continues, “and the more strident the Administration becomes, the more aware people are of their real interests.
The belief that moribund institutions, rather than individuals are at the root of the problem, keep SAM’s energies alive. “A prerequisite for members of an organization like ours is the faith that people are fundamentally good, but you need to show them. and when you look at the work people are doing across the country, it makes you optimistic.”
Perhaps the essential goodness of humanity is an arguable proposition, but by observing the SAM meeting last Thursday night, with its solid turnout and enthusiasm, one might be persuaded that manifestations of our better instincts can at least match the bad ones. Regarding Columbia’s possible compliance, one comment in particular hit upon an important point with the Solomon Bill, “The thing that we need to do is expose how Columbia is talking out of two sides of its mouth.”
Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience-that of war. But then, there are some things we shouldn’t have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience.
Fedora, you have contributed a huge good in the publishing of your terrific piece on der Hildebeast. I will pass it along to my friends.
The bottom line: Der Hildebeast deserves her nickname. She is a radical Communist.
MSM?
One of the major influences of Alinsky groups was involve the news media in the planning and coverage of staged events.
It was new and the news media was not unified in how to deal with it. Alinsky activists were also ambivalent on how to use it. 60 minutes producers were at the avante garde of the planning of staged news events. 60 minutes had no respect or concern for the victims they portrayed. They also had a sophmoric sick sense of humor.
In the mid 70s in Chicago a 60 minutes producer had Bill Kurtis do an arson for profit story. Bill Kurtis is the model for Ted Baxter on Mary Tyler Moore, of course.
The real arson for profit story was Congressman Rostenkowski’s precinct captain Isadore Ganzer was responsible for 113 arsons in 93 of 97 buildings in a 2 block tract of land he was acquiring for the #2 Chicago boss Tom Keane.
But 60 minutes didn’t want to touch the real story. So they put a loose associate of the Latin Kings on camera against a white wall to tell how he set fire to a tavern at the request of the tavern owner.
All that despite the crowd of 500 screaming people at the meeting knowing nothing of that and screaming anti-Democrat Machine.
Then they edited the film to place Latin Disciples graffitti behind the shot of the Latin King. That, of course, created big friction between the two gangs that were both going political against the Democrat Machine.
This was typical of the Alinsky sympathetic media. They’d give the Alinsky group the media coverage. But change the story to keep the Democrat Machine happy also.
A couple years later, the friends of the Kings and Disciples who observed the way they were treated by the media and Democrat Machine united against the Machine and got Jane Byrne elected out of no where.
The Current Relevance of Hillary’s Thesis
Clinton’s thesis reveals several important things that are relevant to the current election campaign. First, it documents that in her student days, she was a fellow traveler with Communists considered by the Johnson administration to be national security risks because of their role in promoting racial violence, a foreshadowing of the Democratic Party’s current deployment of Black Lives Matter. Second, it shows that Clinton equates democracy with a Marxist vision of a classless society, a philosophically fallacious view that founders on the fact of human diversity, and one hardly consistent with the bicameral premise of the United States Constitution that she is purportedly running to uphold. Third, it shows that Clinton’s ideology values power above rational negotiation and is willing to use violence to attain power. Finally, its reference to Marian Wright illustrates how Clinton has continued to associate with descendants of Alinsky’s radical network since her student days. Hillary was and is a dangerous radical, and like her mentor Alinsky, she is a rabble-rousing agitator of racial violence and a threat to national security.
Don’t just bookmark it. Put it in a word document and send it to your friends. It is time to out der Hildebeast for the communist she is. Like Alinsky, who worked for the Chicago mob, she is also a crook.
I would imagine the average freeper lauds the freedom riders who invaded my southern homeland in the 50s and 60s from such lovely spots like Oberlin and Wellesley and Bard
See that acronym in the article
The STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE which we called the SNVCC back then
They along with other commies were a big part of it
Yet the myths persist
Excellent! Thank you for a very informative post.
meh....communists never change their tactics or stripes
To understand Alinskyites, it is helpful to understand the RESCUE TRIANGLE in which they operate. Transactional Analysis Psychology (Im OK, Youre OK and Games People Play) describes the Rescue Triangle of the
Opressor . . . . . . Rescuer
. . . . . .Victim
The traditional non-Alinsky social worker is the rescuer. The slumlord, the banker, the corporate titan is the Opressor.
The PEOPLE are the victims. The Alinsky goal is for the Victims to flip the game and oppress the former oppressors and make them the victims. The Rescuers don’t do traditional rescuing like social workers. The Alinsky organizers play the 3rd hand in the games people play of
LETS YOU AND HIM FIGHT and LETS PLAY A FAST ONE ON JOEY.
What is amazing is the people the Alinksy organizers designate the oppressor aka the personalized enemy have no clue that they are in the middle of a game that is going to get flipped. They see the game and think that only the others are in the game. The Ferguson Rescue Triangle is a good example of this.
Bookmarked. Thanks for posting!
ping
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