User:Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th President of the United States of America and a former Senator representing Illinois.

[edit]

• Family Background
• Education
• Political Career
• Life Events
• Radical Associates
• Radical Appointments
• Ties to Islam
• Labor Movement
• ACORN and Project Vote
• Other Organizations
• Obama and Kenya
• Presidency
• Statements by Obama

Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and then divorced. Obama's father went to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies and then returned to Kenya. The young Barack Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, seeing his father only once more when he was ten-years-old, before moving to Los Angeles to begin his high-school and tertiary education.

Family Members

Father: Barak Obama

Barak Obama, Sr. was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats in Africa, eventually earning a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of college in Hawaii. While studying at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Obama, Sr. met fellow student, Ann Dunham. They married on February 2, 1961. Barack was born six months later in Honolulu, Hawaii. He received a Masters degree in Economics from Harvard University, then returned to Kenya, where he became a finance minister before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.

Mother: Stanley Ann Dunham

Stanley Ann Dunham was born on November 29, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas. She married Barak Obama, Sr. on February 2, 1961 when she was eighteen-years-old. She gave birth to her first son, Barack Obama at the age of 18, on August 4, 1961. In 1967, following her divorce with her husband, Barak Obama Sr., she married Lolo Soetoro and the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born. Stanley Ann died of ovarian cancer in 1995.

Early Life

Birth in Hawaii

Barack Obama and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in Hawaii

In August, 1961, the two major Honolulu newspaper, the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin published birth notices documenting the birth, in Honolulu, Hawaii, of a son to Mr. and Mrs. Barrack H. Obama" on August 4, 1961. Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barak Obama.

Parents' Divorce

In 1963, Barack's father won a scholarship to study at Harvard, but didn't have the money to take his young family with him. In Jan. 1964 Barack's mother filed for divorce, citing "grievous mental suffering," according to court documents. However Stanley Ann did not speak ill of her ex-husband to her son Barack.

Life in Indonesia

In 1967, he moved with his mother and new stepfather to Jakarta, Indonesia. He attended a Catholic elementary school for two years, followed by an Indonesian public school for two years. At these schools, classes were taught in the Indonesian language. Media scrutiny revealed that the secular public school he attended was not a madrassa, which teaches Islam. On days off in observance of Islamic holidays he spent praying in a Mosque with his stepfather.

Life Back in Hawaii

Barak Obama Sr. with his son, Barack Obama in 1971

Afraid for his safety and his education, Barack's mother sent him back to Hawaii when he was 10 years old, to live with his maternal grandparents Madelyn Dunham and Stanley Dunham. She and Barack's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng later joined them.

In 1971 Barak Obama Sr. sent word from Kenya that he wished to come to Hawaii to visit his son Barack Obama. His father stayed around for one month, speaking to his son's fifth-grade class and taking him to a Dave Brubeck concert, but never quite reestablished himself.

Marriage to Michelle Robinson

In 1989 Obama met Michelle Robinson, an associate at Sidley & Austin law firm in Chicago. She was assigned to be Obama's adviser during a summer internship at the firm, and soon the couple began dating.

On October 3, 1992, Barack and Michelle were married by Reverend Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Family Life

The newly married Barack and Michelle Obama moved to Kenwood, on Chicago's South Side, where they had two daughters: Malia (born July 4, 1998) and Sasha (born June 10, 2001).

Their two daughters currently attend Sidwell Friends School, a Quaker private school located in Washington, D.C. The school has been popular with past presidents and other high-ranking government personnel.

Employment

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer, joining the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

Obama has described himself as a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He held the position of Lecturer, an adjunct position, from 1992 to 1996. He held the position of Senior Lecturer from 1996 until his election to the senate in 2004. From 1991 - 1997 he served alongside professor Elena Kagan.

Obama's advocacy work would later lead him to run for the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat, where he was elected in 1996.

Religion

In his autobiographical book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote that he "was not raised in a religious household".

Speaking of his faith in an article in TIME Magazine in 2006, Obama stated,

"I [am not] sure what happens when we die, any more than I [am] sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang."

During his time working as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens communities, Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama has stated that he became a Christian around 1987, stating in his address to the participants in the annual National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington on Feb. 5, 2009:

"I didn’t become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck – no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God’s spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose – His purpose.

...For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask you to join me in that effort, and I also ask that you pray for me, for my family, and for the continued perfection of our union."

Obama also mentioned at the prayer-meeting that faith had always been a guiding force in his family’s life.

In 1988 Obama was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ.

References

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Tertiary Education

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science.

After returning from Kenya and working as a community organizer in New York City and Chicago, Illinois, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1988. He became a member of the Harvard Law Review, which uses racial quotas, in 1989. He was then elected by popular vote as its first African American president in 1990, a story that was immediately promoted in the New York Times. He graduated magna cum laude with his J.D. in 1991, but did not serve in a clerkship. Federal clerkships are the typical post-graduate position for top law students.

At Occidental College

Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. Dr. John Drew was a classmate of Obama's at Occidental College. He was interviewed in mid-October 2010 week by Paul Kengor on The Glen Meakem Show. What follows is excerpts from the transcript of the interview:

Kengor: "I interviewed you for my book Dupes a year ago and you had contact me a couple of years ago because you read a piece that I wrote for American Thinker and it was called "Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis" and it was on Obama's background and youth. Frank Marshall Davis was an actual Party member and that's something, John, I spent two or three years on investigating, but there's no question about it... the documentation is there, a 1957 Senate report called him "and identified member of the Communist Party", there's an FBI file that's 600 pages, and I took ten or twelve pages from that report and put it in the appendix of my book. It even lists Davis' Communist Party card number, which was 47544, so very clear. Why is all of this relevant? Well, I think it explains, at least to some degree, that -- if he's not a Communist, he's at least very far to the left -- and has some very left-oriented views. But you met Obama when he left Frank Marshall Davis in 1980 coming from Hawaii and went to Occidental College. So tell us about when Obama got there and when you met."

Drew: "I see myself as Barack Obama's missing link from his exposure to Communism through Frank Marshall Davis and his later exposure to Bill Ayers and Alice Palmer in Chicago. So, as far as I can tell, I'm the only one of Obama's extended circle of friends who's spoken out and verified that he was a Marxist-Leninist in his sophomore year of college, from 1980 to 1981.

...Yeah, my sense is because of affirmative action, guys like me were going to Occidental instead of even better schools and guys like Obama were going to Occidental instead of, uh, less challenging schools. A lot of very successful people were there, were part of Obama's social circle at the time."

Kengor: "Now, was Occidental known for radical left politics? Would that have been an attraction for Obama?"

Drew: "Yeah, I'm certain that it was. It was considered sort of the "Moscow" of southern California. There were a lot of Marxist professors, many of whom I got to know pretty well, not just there but also at Williams College in Massachusetts. Two of the same Marxist-Socialist professors were on the staff with me at Williams.

Kengor: "So, that might have been an attraction for him? I'm trying to think, what would have made him go to Hawaii to Occidental? Do you think Frank Marshall Davis could somehow have been an influence in having him choose Occidental?"

Drew: "I don't have any evidence of that..."

Kengor: "Because they won't release his records, I called them --"

Drew: "Yeah, I think that's odd. I don't know, I got straight A's my first year, it sounds weird, but I don't talk about it, Paul, you'd think that if Obama did well he'd release those transcripts."

Kengor: "Now, this is speculation, but do you think those files might hold a letter of recommendation from Frank Marshall Davis? Right? Why not?"

Drew: "Wow."

Kengor: "Davis was a mentor. Davis writes about him in Dreams From My Father very warmly, in fact Obama writes that Davis gave him advice on women, on race, on life, on college. So, he must have recommended Occidental, but it's sad we have to speculate. If they'd just release these records..."

Drew: "Well, this is what I know for sure, and this is why I'd sought you out, to be helpful to the historic record, is to verify that Barack Obama was definitely a Marxist and that, it was very unusual for a sophomore to be as radical, or as ideologically attuned as young Barack Obama was. I think people like David Remnick [a biographer], they make it sound like Frank Marshall Davis had no impact on Obama and that his friend Mohammed Shandu somehow converted him to Marxism at Occidental. And my impression is that Obama was the leader of that group and Obama was already very ardent and committed to Marxism. And Shandu struck me as somewhat more passive. So it doesn't fit the story that I read in Remnick's story The Bridge."

Kengor: "And Remnick did not contact you, did he?"

Drew: "No! No! ...Well, Remnick interviewed my girfriend, Carolyn Bosch -- she's on three or four pages -- and they interviewed a guy named Gary Chapman, a guy who was very active in the Democrat Student [Socialists'] Alliance."

Kengor: "I like David Remnick. I use his book in my Compartive Studies class at Grove City College."

Drew: "He's a sharp guy. And he's got some good facts in there, but he didn't want to hear from little Dr. Drew..."

Kengor: "...You said that Obama was introduced to you at Occidental as a Marxist because you were one at that point."

Drew: "Yeah, that's embarrassing, but I had studied Marxist Economics at Sussex College in England. I had a junior year scholarship over there, and did my senior honor's thesis on Marxist Economics when I was at Occidental College. And I actually founded the Democrat Student Socialists' Alliance, under a different name, in 1976... it was as Marxist as you could get, but they come up with a more general name while I was away in England."

Kengor: "...John, you had told me before, and I'm reading from my book, that "Obama was already an ardent Marxist in the fall of 1980 when I met him. I know it's incendiary to say this, but although he said in Dreams From My Father that he'd 'hung out with Marxist professors', he did not explain in that book or clarify is that he was 100% in total agreement with those professors."

Drew: "Yeah, you've got that exactly right. Obama believed, at the time I met him, this was probably around Christmas time in 1980. I'd flown out on Christmas break from Cornell, where I was in grad school. And Obama was looking forward to an imminent social revolution, literally a movement where the working classes would overthrow the ruling class and institute a kind of socialist Utopia in the United States. I mean, that's how extreme his views were his sophomore year of college."

...I was a comrade, but I was more... the Frankfort School of Marxism at the time. I was, I felt like I was doing him a favor by pointing out that the Marxist revolution that he and Caroline and Shandu were hoping for was really kind of a pipe-dream. And that there was nothing in European history, or the history of developed nations, that would make that sort of fantasy, that Frank Marshall Davis fantasy of revolution, come true."

Kengor: "So you had a realistic sense that, even though you liked these ideas, that you knew they wouldn't really work?"

Drew: "Right... [There were some] who were puzzled why they didn't see Marx's predictions come true, and weren't interested in the role of psychology or false consciousness in preventing a revolution from happening. I was a card-carrying Marxist, but I was more of an east coast, Cornell University Marxist at that time."

Kengor: "But Obama thought it was practical. He thought it could happen in America?"

Drew: "Oh, yeah! He thought I was a little reactionary... or insensitive to the coming needs of the revolution! He was full-bore, 100% into that very, kind of simple-minded Marxist revolutionary framework."

Kengor: "And, also at this time, this is 1981, Jimmy Carter was President [?] and Ronald Reagan was yet to call the Soviet Union 'the Evil Empire' when he becomes President. Did you have talk about the election, about Reagan. I mean, that must have really upset Obama?"

Drew: "You know, it's so long ago. My clearest recollection was that we were more concerned with more U.S. intervention in Latin America and the repression of Communist and Socialist forces like the Sandanistas and things like that... this sound weird, but there was part of me at the time that was ready to go off and fight with the Sandanistas against the Contras. I was pretty crazy, Paul..."

Kengor: "Now this gets to a critical point and I know Obama supporters want me to ask this... to be fair, look where you were then and where you are today..."

Drew: "Oh, yeah. Now I'm a Ronald Reagan, church-going, Baptist conservative, so..."

Kengor: "So, what about Obama. That's the... trillion dollar question? ...We have to know this stuff about our Presidents, you can't leave this about biographies..."

Drew: "Well, I think that he, I've challenged President Obama to explain how he evolved this Marxist-Leninist viewpoint he had in his sophomore year of college. And he's just never articulated how he changed. In fact, he's buried and, I think, lied about his ideological convictions of his youth. And we can trace it all the way to Alice Palmer, I think, in 1995 [the Illinois state senator who he replaced]... who attended the Communist Party "Politburo" event. Or she was part of a big international Communist convention in Moscow!"

Kengor: "...And Palmer was with Obama in the living room of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn when -- and The New York Times even wrote about this -- there was sort of a political blessing, where Palmer identified Obama as his chosen successor..."

Drew: "...Well, I think I can knock down some doors here but stating that he had a very consistent ideology, I think, probably from the time he was in [Hawaii] to the time he was with Palmer and Ayers in Chicago. I think his current behavior demonstrates that he still has some ideological convictions. When ever he talks about taxing the richest two-percent? I think he knows that will harm the economy. To him, the redistribution of wealth is extremely important. And he never took economics or science like I did. He went straight to law school, never had any business experience, never had a payroll to meet. And I think he's locked in a very dangerous mindset, where if he didn't fight to redistribute the wealth that he'd be violating [his] ideology.

...You see people like Van Jones, who's an admitted Communist, you see Anita Dunn, who's praising Mao Tse-Tung, to me, it's like Obama's Marxist-Socialist ideology is hiding in plain sight! It's frustrating to me. It seems to me like people should be up in arms about this!

...I think whenever he talks about people clinging to their guns and religions due to economic stress, that's just the standard Marxist argument... he's still using the standard Marxist architecture, the way he talks about things. I think he's surrounded by people who share that mental architecture!

...I feel like our nation's life is at stake."

References

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Stand against the War in Iraq

Carl Davidson, Marilyn Katz, James Weinstein, Don Rose and other Chicago area radicals came together as Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in September 2002 to campaign against the war in Iraq.

On October 2 2002 Chicagoans Against War in Iraq organized the famous anti war rally in Federal Plaza Chicago, where Illinois State Senator Barack Obama first made his name as a strong opponent of the war. Some of the people around Davidson, later held a fundraiser for Obama when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004.

He spoke at our first antiwar rally. He spent most of his speech detailing all the wars in history he supported, then finally made a distinction between just wars and 'dumb' wars, and going into Iraq, which was still six months down the road then, was a 'dumb war,' and he flatly opposed it. Good, that put him on our side, and some of us organized a fundraiser for him for his Senate race.

Chicago Socialist Movement

Barack Obama and the Chicago Socialist Movement

Chicago socialist alliance

Barack Obama did not rise to prominence from a political vacuum.

His political career has been supported since its earliest stages by a coalition of Chicago socialists.

This alliance, centered around the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America and the far left of the Democratic Party came into its own in Chicago in the early 1980s.

One of the alliance's major successes was the election of Chicago's first black Mayor, Harold Washington in 1983. A Democratic Party Congressman, Washington bravely and successfully ran for mayor against the remnants of the once invincible Daley machine.

Washington died in office in 1987, but the alliance remained intact, incorporating the Communist Party spin-off Committees of Correspondence and went on to elect Carol Moseley Braun, to the U.S. Senate in 1992.

The same alliance worked to elect Barack Obama, to Moseley Braun's former Senate seat in 2004. In 2008, they worked with their allies nationwide to help put Barack Obama into the White House.

Legacy of Harold Washington

Harold Washington

On February 25, 2008 the the Communist Party USA online journal Political Affairs published an article by Joel Wendland entitled "Harold Washington: The People’s Mayor".

In the article Wendland suggested that Barack Obama's rise was attributable the legacy of Harold Washington;

Another unquantifiable part of Washington’s legacy is his enduring influence on national politics. Just about everyone interviewed for this story eventually came around to talking about another emerging Chicagoan – Barack Obama. Perhaps it is no accident that he too talks in broad, hopeful terms about change, reform, and empowering the people to reclaim democracy.

Indeed, is it mere chance that Obama’s main campaign image is a rising sun over a flag and the words “Obama for America”? Those blue buttons that dotted Chicago’s landscape in those exciting days of 1982 and 1983 showed rays of the sun like hope rising above the words “Washington for Chicago.”

Perhaps Washington’s very greatest legacy is the insurgent challenge to politics as usual Obama represents on a national stage. Perhaps “the peoples’ mayor” will inspire the making of “the peoples’ president.”

Elwood Flowers, former vice president of the Illinois AFL-CIO and was a close friend and political ally of Harold Washington.

In a 2008 interview with Communist Party USA member Pepe Lozano, Flowers asserted that the movement to elect Barack Obama in 2008 was "almost identical to Washington’s, but nationwide". According to Flowers. “Our members wanted to be involved in the political process, similar to people today for Obama,”

“What Obama can do for the country will help all communities including providing jobs and health care. And the number one issue is stopping the Iraq war, which is draining our economic resources. If those things bear fruit, then they will benefit all working-class communities...”

Barack Obama and Harold Washington

Barack Obama was reportedly inspired to move to Chicago by the election of Harold Washington as Mayor in 1983;

When Barack Obama was 22 years old, just out of Columbia University, he took a $10,000-a-year job as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. It was a shrewd move for a young black man with an interest in politics...

The politician who truly set the stage for Obama's rise was also a South Side congressman: Harold Washington, who was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983...In New York, Obama read about Washington's victory and wrote to City Hall, asking for a job. He never heard back, but he made it to Chicago just months after Washington took office...

Washington died of a heart attack in 1987, at the beginning of his second term;

But the confidence he instilled in black leaders became a permanent factor in Chicago politics. His success inspired Jesse Jackson to run for president in 1984, which in turn inspired Obama...Washington also strengthened the community organizations in which Obama was cutting his teeth...Obama's Project Vote, which put him on the local political map, was a successor to the South Side voter registration drive that made Washington's election possible.

Washington/Moseley Braun/Obama

Radical Chicago journalist Don Rose worked for Harold Washington, Carol Moseley Braun and mentored senior Obama adviser David Axelrod.

According to Don Rose, Chicago has two unique advantages.

First, it's in Cook County, which contains nearly half of Illinois' voters. Second, the local Democratic Party is a county wide organization. After Chicago's Carol Moseley Braun beat two white men to win the 1992 Democratic Senate primary, precinct captains in white Chicago neighborhoods and the suburbs whipped up votes for her in the general election.

"They had to go out and sell the black person to demonstrate that the party was still open," says Rose, who sees "direct links" from Harold Washington to Carol Moseley Braun to Barack Obama.

Marilyn Katz "Barack Obama could only have emerged in Chicago"

Marilyn Katz has worked closely with Barack Obama since meeting him through his position at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in the 1990s.

It was through the law firm that Mr. Obama met Marilyn Katz, who gave him entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s.

As a leader of Students for a Democratic Society then, Ms. Katz organized Vietnam War protests, throwing nails in the street to thwart the police. But like many from that era, Ms. Katz had gone on to become a politically active member of the Chicago establishment, playing in a regular poker game with Mr. Miner while working as a consultant to his nemesis, Mayor Daley.

“For better or worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home. “Everyone is connected to everyone.”''

In August 2008 Don Rose and Marilyn Katz gave an interview to the Democratic Socialists of America linked journal In These Times, just before Obama's "coronation" at the Democratic Party Convention in Denver.

ITT 40 years ago this week, Chicago police battled protesters at the DNC. Two ’60s radicals remember the madness, and look to Denver for change...

The ‘68 Democratic National Convention debacle remains a symbol of everything that went wrong with American politics, society and culture in that tumultuous and iconic year. It was five days of mayhem in the Windy City, five days that left the Democratic Party in shambles...

In August 1968, those explosive battles put Chicago at the epicenter of one of the most searing political and social upheavals of the 20th century. In August 2008, a U.S. senator from Chicago will be anointed the first black major-party nominee for the presidency of the United States.

Don Rose...the political wise man has helped elect mayors and senators since then, from Harold Washington to Paul Simon. Now 77, Rose - a mentor to David Axelrod, Obama’s top campaign strategist...

The 1983 election of Harold Washington as Chicago’s first black mayor came courtesy of a progressive coalition of blacks, Latinos and so-called “Lakefront liberals.” Katz and Rose were there, once again, as advisors and operatives.

Katz My straight line goes from ‘66/’68 to the folks who began to work together and formed the core group of the Harold Washington campaign. (Almost) everyone I worked with in 1982 I had met as a kid in ‘68. I believe that Barack Obama could only have emerged in Chicago. Why? Because since ‘68 there was a web of relationships between black civil rights groups, anti-war groups, women’s activities, immigrant rights activities, that has sustained and grown...

ITT The Democratic Party will gather once again later this month. Everybody is expecting a big party in Denver. Will it be an Obama coronation? Is that what we should be looking for?

So how do you resolve Obama’s move to the center? What about holding his feet to the fire? Don’t we need to keep him true to progressive issues?

Katz We have to get him into office so then we can be the left opposition. I think it is a delicate balance between those of us who are progressive, how much you push, how much you don’t want to put him in very difficult positions that would embarrass him or give John McCain some advantage...

Axelrod on the Washington/Obama connection

Obama chief campaign strategist and senior adviser David Axelrod has also commented on the Harold Washington/ Obama connection.

From The Nation February 6th 2007;

Axelrod and Forest Claypool...opened their own consulting shop, handling mostly long-shot candidates until 1987, when Chicago Mayor Harold Washington hired the firm to help with his re-election. Four years earlier, Washington had won a historic victory...As the Tribune's city hall bureau chief, Axelrod had ringside seats. "Nineteen eighty-three, that was a phenomenal election. Harold Washington--extraordinary guy. I mean, he was the most kinetic campaigner and politician that I've ever met. It was inspiring the way the African-American community came alive around the prospect of electing Harold...

Axelrod sees Obama, who was working in Chicago as a community organizer during the Washington years, as a marker of progress, writing the second act of a story that Washington started...

Twenty-one years later, when Barack ran for the U.S. Senate in the primary against six very strong candidates, he carried every ward on the northwest side except one...I was thinking, and I told Barack, that Harold Washington is smiling down on us."

Communist Party on the Washington/Obama connection

In a November 23 2007 report to a Chicago Special District Meeting on African American Equality, Communist Party USA National Board member John Bachtell wrote;

The historic election of {Harold} Washington was the culmination of many years of struggle. It reflected a high degree of unity of the African American community and the alliance with a section of labor, the Latino community and progressive minded whites. This legacy of political independence also endures...

This was also reflected in the historic election of Barack Obama. Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election. Once again Obama’s campaign reflected the electoral voting unity of the African American community, but also the alliances built with several key trade unions, and forces in the Latino and white communities.

It also reflected a breakthrough among white voters. In the primary, Obama won 35% of the white vote and 7 north side wards, in a crowded field. During the general election he won every ward in the city and all the collar counties. This appeal has continued in his presidential run.

2000 House of Congress Campaign

On March 5, 2000, Obama was endorsed by former congressman and White House counsel Abner Mikva; former Chicago Alderman Leon Despres; Dr. Quentin Young, an advocate for universal health care; Michael Shakman, an attorney who led the legal fight to eliminate patronage positions in city government, and Eugene Ford, a former aide to late Mayor Harold Washington, in his bid to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.

Support for "single payer" health care

While an Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama was a strong advocate of "single payer" health care-socialized medicine.

In 2003 Obama stated;

I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare coverage. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent—14 percent—of its gross national product on healthcare, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim’s talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out: a single-payer healthcare plan, universal healthcare plan.

2004 U.S. Senate campaign

While outside the Democratic Party mainstream, Obama was able to win his 2004 U.S. senate race by stitching together a coalition of socialist/communist dominated unions and "community organisations".

Obama has also received the backing of several independent Latino elected officials led by State Sen. Miguel del Valle, Rep. Cynthia Soto and Alderman Ray Colon. Alderman Joe Moore also backed Obama, as did USAction leader William McNary.

From the From the Communist Party USA paper Peoples Weekly World February 28th 2004;

The race for the Democratic nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois has boiled down to a three-person race, according to polls. Millionaire Blair Hull has a slight lead after pouring $18 million of his own money into an advertising blitz. State Sen. Barak Obama and State Controller Dan Hynes trail him, with a large undecided vote remaining. The primary will be held March 16.

At several campaign rallies across this city on Feb. 21, Obama said that after the presidential race, the Senate race in Illinois might be the most important. He noted the historic potential of his campaign, aside from helping break the Republican majority. If successful he would be only the third African American since Reconstruction elected to the U.S. Senate.

Of all the candidates, Obama can boast the most diverse support. While Hynes has the backing of the state AFL-CIO and the bulk of the Democratic machine, Obama has the support of several key unions including the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; Service Employees; Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees; the state American Federation of Teachers; Chicago Teachers Union and Teamsters Local 705, the second largest in the country. Obama has a 90 percent voting record on labor issues in the Illinois Senate.

In addition to widespread support in the African American community, Obama has also received the backing of several independent Latino elected officials led by State Sen. Miguel del Valle, Rep. Cynthia Soto and Alderman Ray Colon. Alderman Joe Moore from the North Side is also backing him.

Many progressive organizations have thrown their support to Obama, including the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters. In its endorsement, Citizen Action/Illinois praised Obama’s 96 percent voting record on consumer issues. President William McNary said Obama “will be a strong voice in Washington on behalf of working families.”

Supported by Council for a Livable World

The Council for a Livable World, founded in 1962 by long-time socialist activist and alleged Soviet agent, Leo Szilard, is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to "reduce the danger of nuclear weapons and increase national security", primarily through supporting progressive, congressional candidates who support their policies. The Council supported Barack Obama in his successful Senate run as candidate for Illinois.

References

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The following are events that transpired during Obama's life that are relevant to his career.

Harvard

When Obama was named president of the Harvard Law Review, in 1990, he was profiled by, among others, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Tribune, Vanity Fair, and the Associated Press.

Move to Chicago

When Barack Obama was 22 years old, just out of Columbia University, he took a $10,000-a-year job as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. "It was a shrewd move for a young black man with an interest in politics..."

The politician who truly set the stage for Obama's rise was also a South Side congressman Harold Washington, who was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983...In New York, Obama read about Washington's victory and wrote to City Hall, asking for a job. He never heard back, but he made it to Chicago just months after Washington took office....

Sidley Austin

Michelle Obama, Obama's wife

In 1988, Obama left for Harvard Law School, returning to Chicago twice for summer stints at élite law firms, including, after his first year, Sidley Austin-where he met Michelle Robinson, later Michelle Obama. He returned to Chicago permanently when he graduated, in 1991.

Saul Mendelson's memorial

Saul Mendelson

On March 29 1998 Barack Obama spoke at a memorial service for long time Chicago Socialist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America member Saul Mendelson.

According to Chicago DSA leader Carl Shier;

At the memorial service held at the 1st Unitarian Church on South Woodlawn, speaker after speaker recounted Saul's contributions. The service was ably MC'd by a retired colleague, Bob Clark. I spoke first and was followed by Saul's friend Deborah Meier, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient who is now starting a new school in Boston. Amy Isaacs, National Director of the ADA, spoke of what Saul had meant on foreign affairs to the ADA.

Other speakers included Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, State Senator Barak Obama, Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie and a good friend from New York, Myra Russell. The concluding remarks were made by an old friend, Harriet Lefley, who is now Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami Medical School.

Deborah Meier was a former Trotksyite and Socialist Party USA comrade of Saul Mendelson's and a leader of Chicago and Boston DSA.

Amy Isaacs was national director of Americans for Democratic Action, which works closely with DSA.

Carol Moseley Braun was then a U.S. Senator with strong links to both DSA and the Communist Party USA. Barack Obama helped get her elected in 1992 and then took over her former Senate seat in 2004.

Alderman Toni Preckwinkle and Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, are both leftist Democrats with ties to Chicago's socialist community. Both endorsed Barack Obama in his successful 2004 bid for the United States Senate.

Harriet Lefley was a Trotskyite in the 1940s with Saul Mendelson.

Eulogies also came from Quinn Brisben, (Socialist Party USA presidential candidate 1976, 1992) and David McReynolds (Socialist Party USA presidential candidate 1980, 2000).

Both Brisben and McReynolds are also members of Democratic Socialists of America.

Obama probably knew Saul Mendelson through their mutual activities in the Independent Voters of Illinois Independent Precinct Organization (IVIIPO), an organization investigated by the FBI for communist infiltration in the 1940s.

Failed congressional run

In 1999, Obama challenged Bobby Rush, who has represented the South Side in Congress since 1992.

Rush had run against Daley in the 1999 mayoral primary, and Obama interpreted Rush’s defeat in that citywide race as a harbinger of his declining popularity in his congressional district.

Obama was financially outmatched. Although he raised about six hundred thousand dollars, sustained television advertising in Chicago cost between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand dollars a week, according to Dan Shomon, Obama’s campaign manager at the time. A series of unusual events defined the race. A few months before the election, Rush’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Huey Rich, was shot and killed, which made the incumbent a figure of sympathy, and in the final weeks of the campaign Rush’s father died. Obama made a serious misstep when, visiting his grandmother in Hawaii, he missed a crucial vote on gun-control legislation in Springfield. Even worse, on the day of the vote a column by Obama about how the gun bill was “sorely needed” appeared in the Hyde Park Herald, under the headline “IDEOLOGUES FRUSTRATE GUN LAW.” Obama protested that his daughter was ill and unable to travel, and that he saw his grandmother, who lived alone, only once a year, but the press treated the trip as a tropical vacation.

Obama lost hugely-by thirty-one points. On Election Night, at the Ramada Inn where he had begun his political career, Obama hinted that he might leave politics. “I’ve got to make assessments about where we go from here,” he said. “We need a new style of politics to deal with the issues that are important to the people. What’s not clear to me is whether I should do that as an elected official or by influencing government in ways that actually improve people’s lives.”

Obama had misread the political dynamics of Rush’s unsuccessful mayoral campaign. According to Abner Mikva;

He thought he would get some help from Daley because Rush had run against Daley for mayor...He thought that Daley might use the opportunity to get even. That’s not the way the Daleys work. It’s not the way the machine works. When Barack went in to see the Mayor, whom he knew slightly, Daley said what his old man used to say: ‘Good luck!’ ”

Stand against the Iraq War

Barack Obama

When Chicagoans Against War on Iraq was organized in 2002, it began by organizinga Federal Plaza rally on October 2 that drew a politically significant line up of speakers, including U.S. Representatives and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama.

According to Ryan Lizzathe idea for the rally came from Bettylu Saltzman and some friends, who, over Chinese food, had decided to stage the protest. Saltzman asked John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicagoto speak, but he couldn’t make it. “He was one of the main people we wanted, but he was speaking at the University of Wisconsin that day,” Saltzman said.

Then she called her rabbi and then Barack Obama. Michelle answered the phone and passed the message on to her husband, who was out of town.

Saltzman also called Marilyn Katz, a leading member of Chicagoans Against War on Iraq Katz managed to get Jesse Jackson as a speaker and handled many of the organizing details.

Katz described what she felt the political mood was at the time of the rally. “Professors are being turned in on college campuses, Bush’s ratings are eighty-seven per cent,” she said.

Among my friends, there hasn’t been an antiwar demonstration in twenty years. There’s huge repression, Bush has got all this legislation. They’re talking about lists, they’re denying people entry into the country. . . . Bush’s numbers were tremendously high, but we had no choice. Unless we wanted to live in a country that was fascist.”

In his biography of Obama, David Mendell, noting that Obama’s speech occurred a few months before the official declaration of his U.S. Senate candidacy, suggests that the decision to publicly oppose the war in Iraq was a calculated political move intended to win favor with Saltzman.

But as Saltzman herself has said, “He was a Hyde Park state senator. He had to oppose the war!”

2004 U.S. Senate campaign

While outside the Democratic Party mainstream, Obama was able to win his 2004 U.S. senate race by stitching together a coalition of socialist/communist dominated unions and "community organisations".

Obama has also received the backing of several independent Latino elected officials led by State Sen. Miguel del Valle, Rep. Cynthia Soto and Alderman Ray Colon. Alderman Joe Moore also backed Obama, as did USAction leader William McNary.

From the From the Communist Party USA paper Peoples Weekly World February 28th 2004;

The race for the Democratic nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois has boiled down to a three-person race, according to polls. Millionaire Blair Hull has a slight lead after pouring $18 million of his own money into an advertising blitz. State Sen. Barak Obama and State Controller Dan Hynes trail him, with a large undecided vote remaining. The primary will be held March 16.

At several campaign rallies across this city on Feb. 21, Obama said that after the presidential race, the Senate race in Illinois might be the most important. He noted the historic potential of his campaign, aside from helping break the Republican majority. If successful he would be only the third African American since Reconstruction elected to the U.S. Senate.

Of all the candidates, Obama can boast the most diverse support. While Hynes has the backing of the state AFL-CIO and the bulk of the Democratic machine, Obama has the support of several key unions including the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; Service Employees; Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees; the state American Federation of Teachers; Chicago Teachers Union and Teamsters Local 705, the second largest in the country. Obama has a 90 percent voting record on labor issues in the Illinois Senate.

In addition to widespread support in the African American community, Obama has also received the backing of several independent Latino elected officials led by State Sen. Miguel del Valle, Rep. Cynthia Soto and Alderman Ray Colon. Alderman Joe Moore from the North Side is also backing him.

Many progressive organizations have thrown their support to Obama, including the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters. In its endorsement, Citizen Action/Illinois praised Obama’s 96 percent voting record on consumer issues. President William McNary said Obama “will be a strong voice in Washington on behalf of working families.”

References

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The following are people affiliated with Obama throughout his life.

Frank Marshall Davis

Frank Marshall Davis

Barack Obama's relationship to communist poet Frank Marshall Davis, first came to light through a March 2007 speech at New York University's Tamiment Library by Communist Party USA supporter and historian Gerald Horne.

Commenting on the alleged leftist sympathies of Hawaiians, Horne said;

When these sources are explored, I think scholars of the future will be struck by, for example, the response in Honolulu when tens of thousands of workers went on strike when labor and CP leaders were convicted of Smith Act violations in 1953 – a response totally unlike the response on the mainland. Of course 98% of these workers were of Asian-Pacific ancestry, which suggests that scholars have also been derelict in analyzing why these workers were less anti-communist than their Euro-American counterparts.

In any case, deploring these convictions in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson.

Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.

In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation

At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, "Living the Blues"...

It was soon revealed that Frank Marshall Davis was not merely in the Communist Party's "orbit"-he was a full fledged party member for many years, both in Chicago and Hawaii.

Obama/Frank Marshall Davis relationship

Barack Obama’s 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, included several examples of Obama receiving advice from Frank Marshall Davis;

• Obama’s grandmother (Toot) and Gramps have an argument over whether Gramps should give Toot a ride to work after she had been threatened at a bus stop by a black panhandler. Obama looks to Frank to sort it out in his mind. (p. 89-91)
• When Toot is having difficulty convincing the drug-abusing young Obama to apply for college, it is again Frank who is able to convince Obama that college is necessary. (p. 96-98)
• Frank tells the young Obama “…you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.” (p. 97)

Radical Harvard Mentor, Charles Ogletree

Barack Obama and Charles Ogletree

Radical Harvard law professor Ogletree claims to have mentored both Michelle Obama and Barack Obama during their respective periods at the Ivy League university. Barack Obama participated in Ogletree's Saturday School Program, which were designed to "expose minority students, in particular, to critical issues in the study of law.." According to Ogletree the Obama's have called on him for advice since that time.

Michelle Obama and Charles Ogletree

I met Michelle when she started her legal career here at Harvard in the fall of 1985, and I was able to watch her develop into a very strong and powerful student leader. She was an active member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, where she served as a student attorney for indigent clients who had civil cases and needed legal help...

I met Barack three years later when he arrived at Harvard Law School in fall of 1988. He was quiet and unassuming, but had an incredibly sharp mind and a thirst for knowledge. He was a regular participant in a program that I created called the Saturday School Program, which was a series of workshops and meetings held on Saturday mornings to expose minority students, in particular, to critical issues in the study of law. Even then I saw his ability to quickly grasp the most complicated legal issues and sort them out in a clear, concise fashion.

I was faculty adviser to the Harvard Black Law Student Association. I routinely gave career advice, and often personal advice, to students who would come in with questions about where they should work, how they should use their legal skills and talent, and was it possible to do well and do good...My advice to people like Barack and Michelle was that they could easily navigate the challenges of a corporate career and find a variety of ways to serve their community—through financial support, through volunteer legal services, and through getting involved in community efforts. So this advice started then, and I guess it must have been useful enough. They have not hesitated to call on me over the past 20-plus years as needed.

Black Advisory Council

Cornel West and Charles Ogletree

Barack Obama called on Ogletree and Democratic Socialists of America member Cornel West, during his 2008 Presidential campaign. Ogletree and West both joined Obama's Black Advisory Council.

Ogletree has advised Obama on reforming the criminal-justice system as well on constitutional issues. He is a member of the Obama campaign's black advisory council, which also includes Cornel West, who teaches African-American studies at Princeton University. The group formed after Obama skipped a conference on African-American issues in Hampton, Va., to announce his presidential candidacy in Illinois.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright

Obama on Jeremiah Wright

In the video to the right, Obama states that his pastor, Jeremiah Wright is a "wonderful man".

Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Chicago alderman Toni Preckwinkle has suggested that Obama join the Rev. Jeremiah Wright led Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons, stating:

"It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners. It’s a good place for a politician to be a member."

Quentin Young

Quentin Young's 80th birthday, 2003

Quentin Young is a long time member of Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, at a gathering in the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.” Barack Obama and Alice Palmer “were both there,” he said.

Quentin Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends.”

Healthcare influence

Barack Obama on Single Payer Healthcare

Quentin Young is a long time friend and supporter of Barack Obama. He was Obama's personal physician for more than 20 years.

Quentin Young, perhaps the most well-known single-payer advocate in America. He was the Rev. Martin Luther King’s doctor when he lived in Chicago and a longtime friend and ally of Barack Obama.

In the 1990s Barack Obama and Quentin Young were both supporters of "single payer" health care..

As a state Senator, Obama and another leftist colleague and state representative Willie Delgado presented the The Health Care Justice Act to the Illinois House and Senate.

According to blog Thomas Paine's Corner;

Barack Obama is quite familiar with the concepts and the specific merits of single payer. Back in the late 1990s, when he was an Illinois State Senator representing a mostly black district on the south side of Chicago, he took pains to consistently identify himself publicly with his neighbor Dr. Quentin Young.

He signed on as co-sponsor of the Bernardin Amendment, named after Chicago's late Catholic Archbishop, who championed the public policy idea that medical care was a human right, not a commodity. At that time, when it was to his political advantage, Obama didn't mind at all being perceived as an advocate of single payer.

Quentin Young has suported Obama politically for since at least 1995.

"I knew him before he was political, I supported him when he ran for state Senate. When he was a state Senator he did say that he supported single payer. Now, he hedges. Now he says, if we were starting from scratch, he would support single payer.”

“Barack’s a smart man, He probably calculated the political cost for being for single payer – the shower of opposition from the big boys – the drug companies and the health insurance companies. And so, like the rest of them, he fashioned a hodge podge of a health insurance plan.”

From a March 2009 Democracy Now! interview with Amy Goodman;

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been a longtime friend of Barack Obama.

DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: How has he changed over the years?

DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, Barack Obama, as we know, was a community organizer, a very lofty calling, in my book, and he made the decision, when the opportunity came, that he could get more done politically, and he accepted the nomination for the seat in the State Senate. It’s not that long ago, really. It’s about a six, eight years ago.

Barack Obama, in those early days—influenced, I hope, by me and others—categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion, and it represented the very high-grade intelligence we all know Barack has....

AMY GOODMAN: This brouhaha over the last week with the White House healthcare summit, 120 people, there were going to be no single-payer advocates. Congressman Conyers asked to go. At first, he was told no. He directly asked President Obama at a Congressional Black Caucus hearing. He asked to bring you and Marcia Angell—

DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. You weren’t allowed to go. Do you have President Obama’s ear anymore? You have been an ally of his for years, for decades.

DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, it’s mixed. I think we’re friends, certainly. At this gala that you mentioned, which was embarrassing, he did send a very complimentary letter. And I appreciate that, but I’d much rather have him enact single payer, to tell the truth. And we did—it’s fair to say, after a good deal of protest, I think we were told there was a—phones rang off the hook. They did allow our national president, Dr. Oliver Fein, to attend with Dr. Conyers—Congressman Conyers. That’s fine, but we need many more people representative of the American people at large to get this thing through the Congress, and Baucus, notwithstanding, be overruled.

Abner Mikva

On March 5, 2000, Obama was endorsed by former congressman and White House counsel Abner Mikva; former Chicago Alderman Leon Despres; Dr. Quentin Young, an advocate for universal health care; Michael Shakman, an attorney who led the legal fight to eliminate patronage positions in city government, and Eugene Ford, a former aide to late Mayor Harold Washington, in his bid to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.

Mikva stated of Obama, ""I can't think of any candidate I've had more enthusiasm for." Obama is "bright, thoughtful and articulate." He also stated that he admired Obama's efforts on campaign finance reform.

Supporting Alice Palmer

Friends of Alice Palmer list

In 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, Toni Preckwinkle,after South Side Chicago politics was upset by scandal. Local Congressman Mel Reynolds, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer-eventually resigning his seat.) The looming vacancy interested several politicians, including state senator Alice Palmer, who prepared to enter the congressional race.

Palmer represented Hyde Park—Obama’s neighborhood—and, if she ran for Congress, she would need a replacement in Springfield, the state capital. The Palmer seat was what Barack Obama had in mind when he visited Alderman Preckwinkle.

“Barack came to me and said, ‘If Alice decides she wants to run, I want to run for her State Senate seat,’ ”

Barack Obama was an early supporter of Alice Palmer in her 1994 bid for U.S. Congress.

In the mid 1990s Barack Obama was listedas a member of Friends of Alice Palmer (in formation),

Others listed included at least three activists later proven to be members of Democratic Socialists of America Timuel Black, Danny Davis and Betty Willhoite several DSA associates including David Orr, Miguel del Valle and Toni Preckwinkle and controversial property developer and political donor Tony Rezko.

On n September 19th 1995, Obama invited two hundred supporters to a lakefront Ramada Inn to announce his candidacy for the State Senate, telling the crowd;

“Politicians are not held to highest esteem these days...They fall somewhere lower than lawyers. . . . I want to inspire a renewal of morality in politics. I will work as hard as I can, as long as I can, on your behalf.”

Alice Palmer introduced Obama, comparing him to Harold Washington.

“In this room, Harold Washington announced for mayor...Barack Obama carries on the tradition of independence in this district. . . . His candidacy is a passing of the torch.”

Obama had lined up support from Toni Preckwinkle, his alderman, and Ivory Mitchell, the local ward chairman. Alice Palmer’s endorsement brought with it local operators and local activists. The operators helped Obama get on the ballot and handled the mechanics of his election. Two key operators were Alan Dobry and his wife, Lois Dobry, then in their late sixties and leaders of the Independent movement.

Alice Palmer asked several people to hold fund-raising coffees for Obama. At her suggestion, Sam Ackerman and Martha Ackerman, who were leaders of Independent Voters of Illinois, hosted a coffee at their home. Unlike the Dobrys, they insisted on a meeting with Obama before backing him, and their support was important enough for him to spend an hour with them in their dining room, submitting to an interview. Their reaction to him was a common one. “I don’t think he said he wanted to run for President, but he indicated that he was into public service for the long haul,” said Martha Ackerman. “I remember very clearly I said to Sam, ‘If this guy is for real, he could be the first African-American President of the United States.’ ”

Defeating Alice Palmer

In October 1995, Obama traveled to Washington DC for the Million Man March. By December, 1995, his South Side coalition had begun to fall apart. Alice Palmer’s congressional campaign was outshone by her Democratic-primary opponents—Jesse Jackson, Jr, and Emil Jones, a longtime leader in the State Senate.

Several weeks before the primary, a group of her supporters realized that Palmer was destined for defeat and summoned Obama to a meeting. The Chicago Defender reported that Obama was asked “to step aside like other African Americans have done in other races for the sake of unity and to release Palmer from her commitment”—so that she could reclaim her State Senate seat. Obama left the meeting making no commitment.

Palmer was soundly defeated by Jackson and there were more demands that Obama withdraw. He refused, which angered Palmer and her husband, Buzz Palmer. Alice Palmer, announced that she would run against Obama.

The South Side left was split. The Ackermans went with Palmer, the Dobrys with Obama. Emil Jones announced his support for Palmer. Toni Preckwinkle stayed with Obama. “

I had given him my word I would support him...Alice didn’t forgive me, and she’s never going to forgive me.”

The Dobrys went to the Chicago board of elections and reviewed her Alice Palmer's electoral petitions. They found them full of irregularities.

One skill that the Independents had mastered in the years of fighting the first Mayor Daley was the machine’s tactic of challenging ballot petitions, and the Dobrys were experts at this Chicago ritual. Publicly, Obama was conciliatory about the awkward political situation, telling the Hyde Park Herald that he understood that some people were upset about the “conflict between old loyalties and new enthusiasms.” Privately, however, he unleashed his operators. With the help of the Dobrys, he was able to remove not just Palmer’s name from the ballot but the name of every other opponent as well. “

Barack Obama went into his first election unopposed.

Tony Rezko

Barack Obama became involved with Tony Rezko at least as early as the Alice Palmer Congressional campaign.

Rezko’s rise in Illinois was intertwined with Obama’s. Like Abner Mikva and Judson Miner, he had tried to recruit Obama to work for him. Chicago had been at the forefront of an urban policy to lure developers into low-income neighborhoods with tax credits, and Rezko was an early beneficiary of the program. Miner’s law firm was eager to do the legal work on the tax-credit deals, which seemed consistent with the firm’s over-all civil-rights mission. A residual benefit was that the new developers became major donors to aldermen, state senators, and other South Side politicians who represented the poor neighborhoods in which Rezko and others operated.

“Our relationship deepened when I started my first political campaign for the State Senate,” Obama said in 2008, in an interview with Chicago reporters.

Rezko was one of the people Obama consulted when he considered running to replace Alice Palmer. Rezko also raised about ten per cent of Obama’s funds for that first campaign.

As a state senator, Obama became an advocate of the tax-credit program. “That’s an example of a smart policy,” he told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin in 1997. “The developers were thinking in market terms and operating under the rules of the marketplace; but at the same time, we had government supporting and subsidizing those efforts.”

Obama and Rezko’s friendship blossomed.

They dined together regularly and even, on at least one occasion, retreated to Rezko’s vacation home, in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Deals with Rezko

Several of Obama's official acts while a State Senator in Illinois benefited Rezko, who in turn raised some $250,000 for Obama's campaigns.

Tony Rezko's company claimed that it lacked the funds to heat one of its 11 buildings in Obama's state Senate district from December 1996 to February 1997. But Rezko still managed to write a $1,000 check to Obama's campaign fund on Jan. 14. That month, his tenants shivered as 19 inches of snow fell on northern Illinois.

In 2003, Obama voted for the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act, which required Illinois municipalities to make 10 percent of their housing units "affordable" (by definition, this included subsidized housing). This forced 46 communities just outside of Chicago to create more than 7,000 new "affordable" units - a huge boost in demand for area developers. The bill also provided loopholes for developers to circumvent local ordinances and regulations. After voting for this measure (it passed narrowly), Obama then cosponsored a new bill that moved up its implementation by more than a year.

These and the other Obama-backed bills helped make millionaires of Rezko and other slum developers at taxpayers' expense. The developers - including Allison Davis, his former law boss and an adviser to his current campaign - reciprocated, together giving and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama's campaigns.

On June 15, 2005, Barack Obama bought a gorgeous house in Hyde Park for $1.65 million - $300,000 below the list price. Tony Rezko bought the empty but attractive lot next door from the same seller at the same time; Obama would later buy part of Rezko's lot, overpaying him. The transaction was shady, but not obviously corrupt.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn

Career launching

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, at a gathering in the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”

Barack Obama and Alice Palmer “were both there,” he said.

Quentin Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends.”

Ayers book

Obama wrote an endorsement for Bill Ayers book "A Kind and Just Parent:Children of Juvenile Court"

Juvenile justice event

On Nov. 20th, 1997, Michelle Obama, who was then Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Service Center, invited William Ayers to speak on juvenile justice. Ayers was joined by Barack Obama who also spoke during the event on working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system.

Chicago seminar

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama spoke together at a public gathering sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals & the University of Illinois-Chicago, April 19th-20th, 2002, at the Chicago Illini Union;

"Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?

IV. Intellectuals in Times of Crisis

Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations.

• Bill Ayers, UIC, College of Education; author of Fugitive Days
• Douglass Cassel, Northwestern University, Center for International Human Rights
• Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago, Political Science
• Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune; In These Times
• Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator
• Barbara Ransby, UIC, African-American Studies (moderator).

Backed socialist Bernie Sanders

Obama campaigning for Bernie Sanders

Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy traveled to Vermont to campaign for Bernie Sanders during the Congressman's successful 2006 U.S. Senate race.

According to Democratic Socialists of America's Democratic Left, Spring 2006, page 4;

The Democratic Party is not mounting a serious challenge, although a candidate may occupy the Democratic line. A number of prominent Democrats, including Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, already have campaigned with Sanders.

Meeting AlQazwini

Barack Obama and Sayed Hassan AlQazwini

Then Presidential candidate Barack Obama met with Iraq born, Iran educated, Michigan Muslim leader Sayed Hassan AlQazwini in May 2008, reportedly arranged through Qazwini's American Rights at Work colleague and Obama Transition Team memberDavid Bonior.

According to Michigan journalist Debbie Schlussel;

Imam Hassan Qazwini, head of the Islamic Center of America, said in an email that he met with Obama at Macomb Community College. A mosque spokesman, Eide Alawan, confirmed that the meeting took place. During the meeting, the two discussed the Presidential election, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Iraq war, according to Qazwini.

At the end of the meeting, Qazwini said he gave Obama a copy of new book, "American Crescent," and invited Obama to visit his center.

The meeting with Obama came about after Qazwini had asked David Bonior, the former U.S. Rep. from Michigan, if he could meet with Obama during his visit. Qazwini was not selected to be part of a group of 20 people who met with Obama, but Qazwini later got a private meeting with Obama, Alawan said.

"They gave him an opportunity for a one-on-one," Alawan said. . . .

David Axelrod

Barack Obama and David Axelrod

David Axelrod is an American political consultant based in Chicago, Illinois and is a Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama.

Helping Blagojevich

In 2002 Obama helped advise then-victorious gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich. According to Rahm Emanuel, Blagojevich, Obama, David Wilhelm (Blagojevich’s campaign co-chair), and another Blagojevich aide were the top strategists of Blagojevich’s victory. He and Obama "participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor,” Emanuel said. “We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two." A spokesman for Blagojevich has confirmed Emanuel’s account, although David Wilhelm, who now works for Obama, said that Emanuel had overstated Obama’s role. “There was an advisory council that was inclusive of Rahm and Barack but not limited to them,” Wilhelm said, and he disputed the notion that Obama was “an architect or one of the principal strategists.”

References

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Radical and Controversial Appointments made by the Obama administration.

David Bonior

David Bonior has connections to the radical Washington D.C. "think tank" Institute for Policy Studies. He has also been involved in the Democratic Socialists of America.

Bonior was touted as a likely Obama Labor Secretary but withdrew his name from contention. Obama then delegated Bonior, a member of his Transition Economic Advisory Board, to broker a re-unification of the U.S. labor movement, bringing the Change To Win grouping and the AFL-CIO back together under one banner.

According to the RBO blog;

The NYT’s David Greenhouse reported that, on January 7, the union presidents first met with Bonior, a member of Obama’s economic transition team...Bonior helped “arrange and oversee” the meeting.

The union presidents issued their joint call after the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama signaled that it would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices.

Rosa Brooks

Rosa Brooks is a senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. Until her appointment to the Obama administration she served on the Georgetown Law full-time faculty. Brooks, who wrote a weekly opinion column for the Los Angeles Times, holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale Law School.

Van Jones

Van Jones and Barack Obama

Van Jones was appointed on March 10, 2009 as Green Jobs adviser to the Obama administration - or officially, Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Jones was one of 100 "prominent Americans" who signed an October 26 2004 statement circulated by 911Truth.org calling on the U.S. Government to investigate 9/11 as a possible "inside job". In 2008 Van Jones was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Carol Browner

In 2005 Carol Browner served on the board of Center for American Progress as the Principal of the The Albright Group.

Carol Browner is President Barack Obama's "Global Warming Czar". Browner ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton. Until she was tapped for the Obama administration, she was on the board of directors for the National Audubon Society, the League of Conservation Voters, the Center for American Progress and former Vice President Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

Heather Higginbottom

Heather Higginbottom was appointed as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy on November 24, 2008. she was formerly with the Obama for America campaign. On October 30, 2001, while working for Senator Kerry, she addressed a Boston Democratic Socialists of America organized forum entitled "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform".

Patrick Gaspard

Patrick Gaspard is a Brooklyn-based, 41-year-old Democratic operative who became, in June 2009, a White House director of the office of political affairs. In 1995 Patrick Gaspard was an organizer for the New Jersey chapter of the New Party.

Kevin Jennings

Kevin Jennings was appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education by the Obama administration.

Jennings has come under fire for a number of controversies during his time as a teacher, and then as the founder and director of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. In 1988 a student told him that he had met an older man in a bus station bathroom, and gone home with him. Jennings understood that the boy was fifteen-years-old, however instead of reporting the incident as required under law, he said to the boy, "You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.". Jennings has used a pornography and pedophilia publisher to publish three text-books he has written. Jennings' admiration for Harry Hay, an outspoken supporter of the North American Man/Boy Love Association has also come under question. In his work for GLSEN, Jennings has railed against what he terms as the "promotion of heterosexuality" in schools. He was also involved in two notorious "Teach-Out" Conferences, during which student participants were given explicit instructions on a number of sexual techniques, and where Planned Parenthood distributed "fisting kits".

Mark Lloyd

Mark Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

Mark Lloyd is the associate general counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission of the United States. He has been a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on communications policy issues, including universal service, advanced telecommunications deployment, media concentration and diversity.

At a conference on media reform and racial justice in 2008, Lloyd made the following comment:

"In Venezuela, with Chavez, really an incredible revolution, a democratic revolution to begin to put in place things that were going to have an impact on the people in Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media in Venezuela rebelled, worked, frankly, with the folks here in the U.S. government, worked to oust him. But he came back in another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country."

Samantha Power

In January 2009 President Obama appointed Samantha Power to the National Security Council, as director for multilateral affairs. Before this she had served as a senior advisor to Barack Obama in his Presidential campaign. However she resigned in March 2008 under controversy over her remarks about Hillary Clinton.

In 2003 Power signed the Statement on Cuba, initiated and circulated by prominent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Leo Casey, calling for the lifting of trade sanctions against Cuba. Power has also been criticized for her hostility towards the state of Israel.

Ron Bloom

from left: Barack Obama, Ron Bloom and Lawrence Summers

When President Obama came into office, Ron Bloom became an aide to Rattner at the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry. When Rattner resigned after just five months, Bloom took over as car czar.

In September 2009 Bloom accepted a new position overseeing manufacturing policy for the Obama administration.

Bloom said his decision to join the administration was, in part, the product of a broader sense of engagement and desire to improve the world, which he developed in his Habonim years.

“That’s part of what I try to do in my work life...That’s one of the things that made me want to work for Obama.”

Hilda Solis

In January 2009, Hilda Solis who has claimed to be inspired by Cesar Chavez was nominated by the Obama administration for the position of Secretary in the Department of Labor and confirmed in February 2009. She enjoyed support from the Communist Party USA in her run for U.S. Congress in 2000. She also has indirect ties to the Socialist International. Solis was a keynote speaker at the 2005 Democratic Socialists of America national conference "Twenty-First Century Socialism" in Los Angeles, with DSA leaders Peter Dreier and Harold Meyerson.

Cass Sunstein

In April 2009, Cass Sunstein was nominated by the Obama administration for the position of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Antonio Villaraigosa

Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa

Shortly after winning the November 2008 election President-Elect Barack Obama appointed Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa to his Transition Economic Advisory Board. In 2009, Antonio Vilaraigosa was listed as an Endorsor of the Communist Party USA initiated Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday organization As of March 2009, Antonio Villaraigosa was serving on the board of Institute for Americas Future.Template:Cite

References

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Barack Obama - Ties to Islam and Islamic radicals.

“I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope", page 261.

Obama hiding pro-Palestinian views?

In a March 2007 post on his website The Electronic Intifada, Chicago activist Ali Abuminah criticized Barack Obama, for an apparent reversal of his previous pro-Palestinian views.

"I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.'

On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.

Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."

Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians."

Abunimah then went on to give, a different perspective on Obama's views and told of the Obamas dining with radical Arab academic Edward Said.

Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech.

"Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of U.S. policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and U.S. policy, "Keep up the good work!"

If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico."

Friendship with Rashid Khalidi

In 2003, then-Illinois state Senator Barack Obama spoke at a farewell event for Rashid Khalidi who was leaving Chicago for a professor job at Columbia University in New York. Obama was a friend of Khalidi and his frequent dinner companion. He had many in-depth conversations over meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona at their home in Chicago.

Khalidi also stated that while he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and has often disagreed with him during their talks over the years, he thinks that Obama would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians due to his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia. He commented,

"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that."

In 2000 Rashid Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful run for congress.

The Woods Fund of Chicago made grants totaling $75,000 to Khalidi's Arab American Action Network in 2001 and 2002, while Obama served as the Director of the Fund.Template:Cite

Meeting AlQazwini

Obama and Sayed Hassan AlQazwini

Then Presidential candidate Barack Obama met with Iraq born, Iran educated, Michigan Muslim leader Sayed Hassan AlQazwini in May 2008, reportedly arranged through Qazwini's American Rights at Work colleague and Obama Transition Team member David Bonior.

According to Michigan journalist Debbie Schlussel:

"Imam Hassan Qazwini, head of the Islamic Center of America, said in an email that he met with Obama at Macomb Community College. A mosque spokesman, Eide Alawan, confirmed that the meeting took place. During the meeting, the two discussed the Presidential election, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Iraq war, according to Qazwini.

At the end of the meeting, Qazwini said he gave Obama a copy of new book, "American Crescent," and invited Obama to visit his center.

The meeting with Obama came about after Qazwini had asked David Bonior, the former U.S. Rep. from Michigan, if he could meet with Obama during his visit. Qazwini was not selected to be part of a group of 20 people who met with Obama, but Qazwini later got a private meeting with Obama, Alawan said.

They gave him an opportunity for a one-on-one."

References

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"Labor Movement is the Solution"

The Communist Party USA's Peoples Weekly World January 31st 2009 quoted President Barack Obama as saying;

"I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution."

Obama and the SEIU

According to SEIU president Andy Stern;

"There has never been a fight in Illinois or a fight in the nation where our members have not asked Barack Obama for assistance and he has not done everything he could to help us,"

On February 15 2008 SEIU announced its endorsement of Barack Obama for president.

A press statement by the union stated;

Nurses, childcare workers, janitors and other service workers endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president today, calling him the candidate with the best vision, best plan and best strategy to lead the country to a new American Dream....

SEIU members are supporting Obama with an aggressive political effort. With more than 150,000 members in the upcoming primary states, including Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas, SEIU will mobilize thousands to go door-to-door, work the phones, and will send mail about their support for Obama. SEIU also will have a substantial presence on television and radio in every critical state.

Andy Stern stated, "Barack Obama is creating the broadest and deepest coalition of voters we’ve ever seen."

Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of SEIU and chair of the Change to Win federation of unions that includes SEIU, said;

“This is one of the most important presidential elections workers have faced. Families are struggling, we’re fighting two wars, and a majority of Americans are now worried that their children will be worse off than they are. Obama is the right person at the right time to lead the change we so desperately need in our country.”

References

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President Barack Obama's involvement with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and its voter regestration arm, Project Vote and allied organization Demos.

ACORN

Obama's affiliation with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in the early 1990s.

In 1995, former Illinois Republican Governor Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal "Motor Voter" law, which Republicans argued could invite fraud and which some Republicans feared could swell the ranks of Democratic voters.

The law mandated people be allowed to register to vote in government offices such as driver's license renewal centers.

Obama sued on behalf of ACORN, the League of Women Voters and other public-interest groups joined in.

"He and his client were the ones who filed the original case -- they blazed the trail," said Paul Mollica, who represented the League.

Transcripts show that at court hearings, Obama identified himself, then let Mollica begin speaking. Maria Valdez of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund sometimes spoke. The U.S. Justice Department joined in.

Obama's side won, even without him talking.

"Obama was involved to some extent in the legal work, but he was not the leader in actually litigating the thing -- Paul [Mollica] probably was the leader of the coalition and did most of the legal work," said David Melton, who represented Cook County Clerk David Orr. "Obama did have some expertise in certain constitutional aspects of the case."

In the video below left, Deepak Bhargava opens the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum December 10 2007 - a forum exclusively for thousands of "community organizers" including ACORN personnel.

Obama promises to invite community organizers to the White House even before his inauguration, to contribute to setting his "agenda for change".

Project Vote

Project Vote was and still is, the voter registration arm of ACORN.

Article in Chicago Magazine January 1993, focused on Barack Obama's work with project vote and specualed he he might go on to higher things.

A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape-and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama...

The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization. "It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama...In 1984, after Columbia but before Harvard, Obama moved to Chicago. "I came because of Harold Washington," he says. "I wanted to do community organizing, and I couldn't think of a better city than one as energized and hopeful as Chicago was then."

Obama at Heartland Forum December 10 2007

By 1991, when Obama, law degree in hand, returned to Chicago...black voter registration and turnout in the city were at their lowest points since record keeping began.

Six months after he took the helm of Chicago's Project Vote!, those conditions had been reversed...Within a few months, Obama, a tall, affable workaholic, had recruited staff and volunteers from black churches, community groups, and politicians.

He helped train 700 deputy registrars, out of a total of 11,000 citywide. And he began a saturation media campaign with the help of black-owned Brainstorm Communications...The group's slogan-"It's a Power Thing"-was ubiquitous in African-American neighborhoods. "It was overwhelming," says Joseph Gardner, a commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and the director of the steering committee for Project Vote! "The black community in this city had not been so energized and so single-minded since Harold died."

"I think it's fair to say we reinvigorated a slumbering constituency," says Obama. "We got people to take notice."

As for Project Vote! itself, its operations in Chicago have officially closed down. Barack Obama has returned to work on his book, which he plans to complete this month..."We won't let the momentum die," he says. "I'll take personal responsibility for that. We plan to hold politicians' feet to the flames in 1993, to remind them that we can produce a bloc of voters large enough that it cannot be ignored."

Nor can Obama himself be ignored. The success of the voter-registration drive has marked him as the political star the Mayor should perhaps be watching for. "The sky's the limit for Barack," says Burrell.

Some of Daley's closest advisers are similarly impressed. "In its technical demands, a voter-registration drive is not unlike a mini-political campaign," says John Schmidt, chairman of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and a fundraiser for Project Vote! "Barack ran this superbly. I have no doubt he could run an equally good political campaign if that's what he decided to do next."

Obama shrugs off the possibility of running for office. "Who knows?" he says. "But probably not immediately." He smiles.

Project Vote political connections

During Project Vote, Obama met many of Chicago’s liberal fund-raisers. According to David Axelrod:

“He met people not just in the African-American community but in the progressive white community...The folks who funded Project Vote were some of the key progressive leaders.”

Obama met Axelrod through one of Project Vote’s supporters, Bettylu Saltzman, whose father, Philip Klutznick, was a Chicago shopping-mall tycoon, a part owner of the Bulls, and a former Commerce Secretary in the Carter Administration. Saltzman, a soft-spoken activist who worked for Senators Adlai Stevenson III andPaul Simon, took a strong interest in Obama.

“I honestly don’t remember what it was about him, but I was absolutely blown away...I said to several people that this guy, who is now thirty years old, is someday going to be President. He will be our first black President.”

Demos, Barack Obama connection

Washington DC based "think tank" Demos was founded in 1999 by "social entrepeneur" Charles Halpern. Most of Halpern's recruits to Demos were well known politicians or activist such David Callahan, Rob Fersh, Stephen Heintz, Sara Horowitz, Arnie Miller, David Skaggs, Linda Tarr-Whelan. Why did Halpern recruit a then obscure State Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama to help him.

By 1999, Halpern had assembled a talented working group to develop Demos. Among them were David Callahan, a fellow at the Century Foundation; Rob Fersh, a long-time policy advocate; Stephen Heintz, Vice-President of the East-West Institute; Sara Horowitz, founder of Working Today; Arnie Miller, a leading executive recruiter; Barack Obama, then a state senator from Illinois; David Skaggs, a congressman from Colorado; and Linda Tarr-Whelan, an internationally recognized expert on women and economic development. This working group would eventually form the core of Demos' staff and Board of Trustees.

Demos/ACORN/Project Vote

Rapoport defending ACORN, October 14, 2008

2005 report on Demos/ACORN/Project Vote motor registration project

Demos has worked extremely closely with ACORN and its voter registration wing Project Vote on several projects.

In 2008 Demos Fellow Lorraine Minnite served on the Project Vote board of directors.

Demos President Miles Rapoport was one of ACORN's most ardent defenders when the organization was accused of widespread voter registration fraud during the 2008 election.

References

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Organizing in Chicago

As a community organizer, Obama tried to turn a partnership of churches into a political force on the South Side. But he accomplished little.

“When I started organizing, I understood the idea of social change in a very abstract way...It was to some extent informed by my years in Indonesia, seeing extreme poverty and disparities of wealth and understanding sort of in a dim way that life wasn’t fair and government had something to do with it. I understood the role that issues like race played and took inspiration from the civil-rights movement and what the student sit-ins had accomplished and the freedom rides.

But I didn’t come out of a political family, didn’t have a history of activism in my family. So I understood these things in the abstract. When I went to Chicago, it was the first time that I had the opportunity to test out my ideas. And for the most part I would say I wasn’t wildly successful. The victories that we achieved were extraordinarily modest: you know, getting a job-training site set up or getting an after-school program for young people put in place.

Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland

In 1993, after finishing work with Project Vote, Obama took a job at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a boutique civil-rights firm led by Judson Miner, formerly counsel to Harold Washington.

Miner had perfect anti-Daley credentials, routinely filing lawsuits against the city, and was a founding member of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, which was to Chicago’s legal élite what the Independents were to the Democratic machine.

Working at Davis, Miner enhanced Obama’s profile. “When you go work for Judd Miner’s law firm, that’s another kind of political statement,” says Don Rose, a longtime Chicago political consultant.

Obama was cautious about joining his law firm. According to Miner it took “a series of lunches” and hours of discussion before Obama made his decision.

Annenberg Challenge

In 1995 Obama was the founding President of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and served as Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1995–1999. According to CNS news, during that time;

As chairman, Obama oversaw the disbursement of $49.2 million in Annenberg grants, most of which went to non-profit groups with the stated intent of improving Chicago’s public schools.

Since the start of his political career, Obama has received a total of $331,528 in campaign contributions from people who served as staff and board members of non-profit groups that received grants from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).

In 2005 and 2006, board members and staff of non-profit groups that had received grants from CAC gave another $34,500 to the Hope Fund, Obama’s federal political action committee.

A review of publicly available IRS 990 forms for the years 1998 through 2002, shows that Annenberg grants went to 94 different projects during that period. The CAC grants required a 2-1 match, with the other two parts coming from other public and private sources, so a total of $147 million in grants were made as consequence of the CAC program over its 6-year lifespan, although only $49.2 million was issued directly by the CAC to grant recipients.

Through the course of Obama’s political career, 91 people who served at some time as staff or a board member for one of the groups that received CAC money also contributed money at some time to one of Obama’s political campaigns, which include his runs for the state Senate, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

COFI

Community Organizing and Family Issues is a Chicago based non-profit. COFI Sponsoring Committee -1994-95 members included Pastor Alvin Bergh, Lina Cramer, Barbara Engel, Jacky Grimshaw, Anne Hallett, Judy Hertz, Maria Mangual, Della Mitchell, Barack Obama, Elce Redmond, Amanda Rivera, Mary Scott-Boria, John Schmidt, Coretta McFerron, Kaye Wilson, Ellen Schumer, Founding Director and President, Nancy Aardema, Founding Vice-President, Sandra O’Donnell, Founding Vice-President.

IVI-IPO

In 2003, both Michelle Obama and Barack Obama were members of Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization;

The organisation endorsed Obama during his 2004 U.S. Senate race

Independent Voters of Illinois was set up to campaign for endorsed candidates-especially "progressive" candidates. w

The government took an interest in IVI as far back as 1944, over quite justified allegations of communist infiltration.

In 1944 the FBI prepared a more extensive intelligence report on an active political group, the Independent Voters of Illinois, apparently because it was the target of Communist "infiltration." The Independent Voters group was reported to have been formed;

"...for the purpose of developing neighborhood political units to help in the re-election of President Roosevelt and the election of progressive congressmen. Apparently, IVI endorsed or aided Democrats for the most part, although it was stated to be "independent."

Prominent IVI and later IVI-IPO activists included Communist Party USA member Milton Cohen, and Socialist Party USA members Timuel Black Saul Mendelson.

In July 2004 IVI-IPO celebrated its 60th anniversary. Members of the event committee included;

Democratic Socialists of America and Committees of Correspondence member Timuel Black, Socialist Party USA veteran Leon Despres DSA and Progressives for Obama member Betty Willhoite, David Orr, Carol Moseley Braun, one time Communist Party USA member David Canter and Barack Obama.

Hamilton Project

According to Democratic Socialists of America member and sociologist Robert Fitch, in 2006, Robert Rubin organized a fundraiser with a couple of dozen leaders of the shadow banking industry. Each threw in a little over $100,000 – "basically parking space money". His recruits included Howard Berkowitz of BlackRock, which handled the disposal of bad Bear Stearns assets; Quadrangle’s Steve Rattner, later now under investigation for bribery; and Roger Altman of Evergreen Partners, who served as Undersecretary of the Treasury under Clinton.

It was Altman who brought then- Sen. Barack Obama into the Hamilton Project. At Hamilton’s inaugural event, in the spring of 2006, Obama was the featured speaker. His remarks were brief, but not ceremonial or superficial. He showed recognition of Rubinesque parameters about entitlements and deficits. And perhaps most important, he presented himself to the assembled hedge fund hotshots as a man of the Left who recognized the futility of the Left’s adherence to New Deal programs, which he admitted had long ago lost their justification – “as they were written.”

The Hamilton Project has since had several top staff joining Obama’s circle. Peter Orszag, the first director of the Hamilton Project, later headed the Office of Management and Budget. He was replaced by Jason Furman, who was then pressed into service as the Obama campaign’s chief economic spokesperson. Furman was later the No. 2 official on the National Economic Council. Jason Bordoff, Hamilton’s policy director, served as an Obama campaign surrogate. Doug Elmendorf, who replaced Furman, went on to serve as head of the Congressional Budget Office.

References

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New Kenyan Constitution

President Barack Obama instructed his ambassador Michael Ranneberger to support the referendum process so that the proposed constitution was passed on August 4. Obama wanted the new constitution passed because it is one of the key reforms under the Agenda Four package that the coalition government agreed to implement when it came to power. Other key reforms were land reform, the creation of a new electoral commission, the establishment of new electoral boundaries and the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission.

References

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Controversies

Rod Blagojevich Scandal

In 2010, Obama was caught in a lie over what he knew about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s scheme to sell the president’s vacated Senate seat. Blagojevich’s former Chief of Staff John Harris testified that Obama had personal knowledge of Blago’s plot to obtain a presidential cabinet position in exchange for appointing a candidate handpicked by the President. In fact, according to Harris’s court testimony, Obama sent Blagojevich a list of “acceptable” Senate candidates to fill his old seat. Obama was interviewed by the FBI even before he was sworn into office. He claimed he and his staff had no contact with Blagojevich’s office. Unfortunately federal prosecutors never called the President or his staff to testify under oath.

"Buying Healthcare"

The President broke his famous pledge to televise healthcare negotiations. In what is now known as the “Cornhusker Kickback” scheme, Obama and the Democrats in the Senate “purchased” the vote of one of the last Democrat hold-outs, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who opposed Obamacare over the issue of covering abortions with taxpayer funds. Nelson abandoned his opposition to Obamacare after receiving millions of dollars in federal aid for his home-state, helping to give the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. The same goes for Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who received a $100 million payoff in what has been called “The Louisiana Purchase.” (The Kickback was so corrupt that Democrats stripped it out at the last minute. The Louisiana Purchase, on the other hand, became law of the land.)

Executive Orders

Number	Title/Description	Date Signed
EO 13489	Presidential Records	2009-01-21
EO 13490	Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel	2009-01-21
EO 13491	Ensuring Lawful Interrogations	2009-01-22
EO 13492	Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities	2009-01-22
EO 13493	Review of Detention Policy Options	2009-01-26
EO 13494	Economy in Government Contracting	2009-01-30
EO 13495	Nondisplacement of Qualified Workers Under Service	2009-01-30
EO 13496	Notification of Employee Rights Under Federal Labor Law	2009-01-30
EO 13497	Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Regulatory Planning and Review	2009-01-30
EO 13498	Amendments to Executive Order 13199 and Establishment of the President's Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships	2009-02-05
EO 13499	Further Amendments to Executive Order 12835, Establishment of the National Economic Council	2009-02-05
EO 13500	Further Amendments to Executive Order 12859, Establishment of the Domestic Policy Council	2009-02-05
EO 13501	Establishment of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board	2009-02-06
EO 13502	Use of Project Labor Agreements for Federal Construction Projects	2009-02-06
EO 13503	Establishment of the White House Office of Urban Affairs	2009-02-19
EO 13504	Amending Executive Order 13390	2009-02-20
EO 13505	Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells	2009-03-09
EO 13506	Establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls	2009-03-11
EO 13507	Establishment of the White House Office of Health Reform	2009-04-08
EO 13508	Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration	2009-05-12
EO 13509	Establishing a White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers	2009-06-23
EO 13510	Waiver Under the Trade Act of 1974 With Respect to the Republic of Belarus	2009-07-10
EO 13511	Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees	2009-09-29
EO 13512	Amending Executive Order 13390	2009-09-29
EO 13513	Federal Leadership on Reducing Text Messaging While Driving	2009-10-01
EO 13514	Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance	2009-10-05
EO 13515	Increasing Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal Programs	2009-10-14
EO 13516	Amending Executive Order 13462	2009-10-28
EO 13517	Amendments to Executive Orders 13183 and 13494	2009-10-30
EO 13518	Employment of Veterans in the Federal Government	2009-11-09
EO 13519	Establishment of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force	2009-11-17
EO 13520	Reducing Improper Payments	2009-11-20
EO 13521	Establishing the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues	2009-11-24
EO 13522	Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services	2009-12-11
EO 13523	Half-Day Closing of Executive Departments and Agencies on Thursday, December 24, 2009	2009-12-11
EO 13524	Amending Executive Order 12425 Designating Interpol as a Public International Organization Entitled to Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities	2009-12-16
EO 13525	Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay	2009-12-23
EO 13526	Classified National Security Information	2009-12-29
EO 13527	Establishing Federal Capability for the Timely Provision of Medical Countermeasures Following a Biological Attack	2009-12-30
EO 13528	Establishment of the Council of Governors	2010-01-11
EO 13529	Ordering the Selected Reserve and Certain Individual Ready Reserve Members of the Armed Forces to Active Duty	2010-01-16
EO 13530	President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability	2010-01-29
EO 13531	National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform	2010-02-18
EO 13532	Promoting Excellence, Innovation, and Sustainability at Historically Black Colleges and Universities	2010-02-26
EO 13533	Providing an Order of Succession within the Department of Defense	2010-03-01
EO 13534	National Export Initiative	2010-03-11
EO 13535	Ensuring Enforcement and Implementation of Abortion Restrictions in the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act	2010-03-24
EO 13536	Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in Somalia	2010-04-12
EO 13537	Interagency Group on Insular Areas	2010-04-14
EO 13538	Establishing the President's Management Advisory Board	2010-04-19
EO 13539	President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology	2010-04-21
EO 13540	Interagency Task Force on Veterans Small Business Development	2010-04-26

Sources

• Disposition Tables of Executive Orders Signed by President Barack Obama U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
• Executive Orders The White House

References

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On April 16, 2008, Obama attempted to explain what he meant when he suggested earlier this month that small-town people of modest means "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them" out of frustration with their place in a changing American economy. He acknowledged that his wording had offended some voters.

External links

• Barack Obama official website
• White House website