Barack Obama Test

click here for Barack Obama's father, Barak Obama

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

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.^[1]

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.^[1]

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 ov ovarian cancer in 1995.^[1]

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.^[1] 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.^[2]

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.^[3]

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.^[1]

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.^[4] 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.

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's1992 presidential campaign.

Obama has described himself as a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. 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.

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."^[5]

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.^[6]

In 1988 Obama was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ.^[7]

References

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^[1].

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...^[2]”

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.^[3]

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^[4];

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^[5];

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.

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^[6];

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.^[7]

Presidency

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

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.^[1]

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...^[2].

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.^[1] 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.^[3]

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^[4];

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 organizing^[5]a 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 Lizza^[6]the 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^[7].

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^[8], “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

The following are people affiliated with Obama throughout his life.

Frank Marshall Davis

Barack Obama's relationship to communist poet Frank Marshall Davis, first came to light through a March 2007 speech^[1] 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 mentoredmentored 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^[2].

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^[3].

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

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."^[4]

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^[5].”

Healthcare influence

Barack Obama on Single Payer Healthcare

Quentin Young is a long time friend and supporter of Barack Obama^[6]. He was Obama's personal physician for more than 20 years^[7].

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^[8];

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^[9].

"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^[10];

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.

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^[11].

“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 listed^[12]as 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^[13].

“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^[14].

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^[15]. 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^[16]. “

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^[17].

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^[18].

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^[19].

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

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^[20].”

Ayers book

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

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)^[21].

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^[22];

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^[23].”

References

Barack Obama - Ties to Islam and Islamic radicals.

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.^[1]

"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."^[2]

In 2000 Rashid Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful run for congress.^[3]

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:^[4]

"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

Barack Obama and the Democratic Socialists of America

Barack Obama and the Democratic Socialists of America

"Obama can be linked to Democratic Socialists of America"

Writing in the radical (and Democratic Socialists of America connected) Chicago magazine In These Times, in March 2008, Joel Bleifuss asserted;

In particular, Obama can be linked to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Democratic Party-oriented organization that is a member of the Socialist International

Democratic Socialists of America

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the US. It is one of two official U.S. affiliates of the Socialist International. It was formed in 1982 from a merger of the Michael Harrington led Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the smaller New American Movement.

DSA works inside the Democratic Party and has cross membership with the Communist Party USA, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, Socialist Party USA and the Green Party USA.

DSA has close ties to the radical Institute for Policy Studies, ACORN, Jobs with Justice, Congressional Progressive Caucus and publications including Dissent, The Nation and The American Prospect.

Marxism

While not overtly so, Democratic Socialists of America is essentially a Marxist organization.

In an article in DSA's Democratic Left, Spring 2007, DSA National political Committee member David Green of Detroit wrote in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)-or "card check".^[1]

What distinguishes socialists from other progressives is the theory of surplus value. According to Marx, the secret of surplus value is that workers are a source of more value than they receive in wages. The capitalist is able to capture surplus value through his ownership of the means of production, his right to purchase labor as a commodity, his control over the production process, and his ownership of the final product. Surplus value is the measure of capital’s exploitation of labor

Green went on to write;

Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace...

Socialist Scholars Conferences

Bogdan Denitch

Barack Obama makes an apparent reference to the Socialist Scholars Conference in his 1995 autobiography "Dreams From My Father"^[2].

Discussing his time studying political science at New York's Columbia University, in the early 80s, Obama reveals that he "went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn.”

"Cooper Union" is the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a privately funded college in Downtown Manhattan.

For many years, from the early 1980s until 2004, Cooper Union was the usual venue of the annual Socialist Scholars Conference-almost certainly what Obama was referring to.

Socialist Scholars Conference-now known as Left Forum was for many years the largest socialist gathering in the USA, attracting up to 2,000 participants.

Socialist Scholars Conference was founded by a group of radicals from City University of New York led by sociology professor Bogdan Denitch, as well as chairing the Socialist Scholars Conferences since 1980, Denitch is an Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and has served as DSA's representative to the Socialist International.

Since DSA's formation in 1982 its City University branch has sponsored and organised the Socialist Scholars Conference.

The bulk of SSC's organising committees were have been DSA members, as were many conference speakers.

Other speakers came from the Communist Party USA and its offshoot, the Committees of Correspondence, the International Socialists and Freedom Road Socialist Organization as well as independent Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites, black radicals, gay activists and radical feminists.

Barack Obama wrote of "conferences" plural, indicating his attendance was not the result of accident or youthful curiosity.

First known link to Chicago DSA

Lou Pardo

Barack Obama's first known contact with Chicago Democratic Socialists of America occurred in 1992, shortly after he returned to Chicago, from his studies at Harvard.

Chicago City Clerk Miguel Del Valle, a long time DSA associate, told the 2008 Democratic Party convention of his first meeting with Barack Obama;

I first heard of Barack back in 1992. The year 1992 was a little like 2008. Then, as now, we needed to save the country from the misguided policies of a president named Bush. I was working with my old friend, Lou Pardo, a retired machinist, on an effort to register Latino voters in Chicago. One day, we were talking about how we could reach more voters and cover more ground, but we needed more resources. Lou told me we should go see Barack Obama, who was directing a voter-registration drive called Project Vote. So Lou met with Barack and, without missing a beat, Barack Obama helped us out. Barack Obama made sure that the thousands of Latinos in Chicago were registered to vote. He helped empower the Latino community and ensure that we were full participants in our democracy.

Lou Pardo was a confirmed member of Democratic Socialists of America

An article in Chicago DSA's New Ground November 1994 says^[3];

Lou Pardo, a volunteer with Senator del Valle, DSA member and activist with the Midwest-Northeast Voter Registration Education Project, emphasized how important it was to support independent progressive democrats.

DSA forum

Barack Obama spoke at a Democratic Socialists of America organized forum at the University of Chicago in early 1996.^[4]

Over three hundred people attended the first of two Town Meetings on Economic Insecurity on February 25 in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago. Entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America", the meeting was sponsored by the UofC DSA Youth Section, Chicago DSA and University Democrats.

The panelists were Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman of Chicago's 4th Ward, Barack Obama, candidate for the 13th Illinois Senate District, Professor William Julius Wilson, Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago, Professor Michael Dawson, University of Chicago and Professor Joseph Schwartz, Temple University and a member of DSA's National Political Committee^[5].

Barack Obama observed that Martin Luther King's March on Washington in the 1960s wasn't simply about civil rights but "demanded jobs as well".

One of the themes that has emerged in Barack Obama's campaign is "what does it take to create productive communities", not just consumptive communities. It is an issue that joins some of the best instincts of the conservatives with the better instincts of the left."

Obama felt the state government has three constructive roles to play.

The first is "human capital development". By this he meant public education, welfare reform, and a "workforce preparation strategy". Public education requires equality in funding. It's not that "money is the only solution to public education's problems but it's a start toward a solution... A true welfare system would provide for medical care, child care and job training. While Barack Obama did not use this term, it sounded very much like the "social wage" approach used by many social democratic labor parties."

The state government "can also play a role in redistribution, the allocation of wages and jobs. As Barack Obama noted, when someone gets paid $10 million to eliminate 4,000 jobs, the voters in his district know this is an issue of power not economics. The government can use as tools labor law reform, public works and contracts."

Finally, Illinois "needs an industrial strategy. How do we create more jobs for everyone? Illinois has no strategy for encouraging high wage, high productivity jobs".

DSA endorsement

Chicago Democratic Socialists of America endorsements in the March 19th 1995 Primary Election went to Danny K. Davis, Patricia Martin, Willie Delgado and Barack Obama^[6].

In Chicago DSA's New Ground, Danny Davis was described only as...^[7].

...certainly not foreign to Chicago DSA. From the very beginning, he has always been willing to help: appearing as a speaker with Michael Harrington, serving as a Master of Ceremonies without peer at the annual Debs - Thomas - Harrington Dinner.

...not as the full fledged Democratic Socialists of America member he actually was.

Barack Obama was given an extensive profile that covered his work with Project Vote, Developing Communities Project and Annenberg Challenge Grant, his education, community activities, education and work for Judson Miner.

Barack Obama is running to gain the Democratic ballot line for Illinois Senate 13th District. The 13th District is Alice Palmer's old district, encompassing parts of Hyde Park and South Shore.

Mr. Obama graduated from Columbia University and promptly went into community organizing for the Developing Communities Project in Roseland and Altgeld Gardens on the far south side of Chicago. He went on to Harvard University, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated with a law degree. In 1992, he was Director of Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration campaign that made Carol Moseley Braun's election to the U.S. Senate much easier than it would have been. At present, he practices law in Judson Miner's law firm and is President of the board of the Annenberg Challenge Grant which is distributing some $50 million in grants to public school reform efforts.

What best characterizes Barack Obama is a quote from an article in Illinois Issues, a retrospective look at his experience as a community organizer while he was completing his degree at Harvard:

"... community organizations and organizers are hampered by their own dogmas about the style and substance of organizing. Most practice ... a 'consumer advocacy' approach, with a focus on wrestling services and resources from outside powers that be. Few are thinking of harnessing the internal productive capacities, both in terms of money and people, that already exist in communities." (Illinois issues, September, 1988)

Luckily, Mr. Obama does not have any opposition in the primary. His opponents have all dropped out or were ruled off the ballot. But if you would like to contribute to his campaign, make the check payable to Friends of Barack Obama, 2154 E. 71st, Chicago, IL 60649.

Saul Mendelson's funeral

Saul Mendelson

The Memorial Service for Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Saul Mendelson was held on Sunday, March 29, 1998, at the First Unitarian Church, Chicago^[8].

The service was MC'd by a retired colleague, Bob Clark. Carl Shier of DSA, 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 Americans for Democratic Action, spoke of what "Saul had meant on foreign affairs to the ADA".

Other speakers included Communist Party USA aligned Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, State SenatorBarack 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, a former Trotskyist with Saul Mendelson in the 1940s, who was then Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami Medical School.

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.

Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights

Founded in 1961 and still active, the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights is one of the Communist Party USA's most successful and enduring creations-playing a major role in the near elimination of police spying against radical organizations.

In the early years Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights' personnel were virtually, all proven members or sympathisers of the Communist Party USA. In later years, supporters of the New American Movement, Democratic Socialists of America and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism were more prominent.

In the 1970s, prominent members of the organization included Quentin Young, Timuel Black and Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf.

All three went on to join Democratic Socialists of America. All three went on to become friends and supporters of Barack Obama.

Quentin Young

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^[9].”

Healthcare influence

Quentin Young is a long time friend and supporter of Barack Obama^[10]. He was Obama's personal physician for more than 20 years^[11].

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.

Quentin Young's 80th birthday, 2003

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^[12];

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^[13].

"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^[14];

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.

Timuel Black

Timuel Black is an historian, activist and nonogenarian icon of the Chicago left. Black is a veteran of the Socialist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America. For several years he has also served on the Committees of Correspondence advisory board.

Timuel Black's relationship to Barack Obama stretches back until at least the early 1990s^[15];

So it’s no surprise that in 1991, when a community organizer named Barack Obama returned to Chicago with a Harvard law degree, he sought advice from Black. Seventeen years later, on November 4, 2008, Black and his wife, Zenobia, watched the election coverage in their home with friends. “When we learned that he had made it, that there was no turning back, the house just went wild

In 1995 Timuel Black attempted to mediate a dispute between Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer and her chosen successor Barack Obama.

Alice Palmer had allegedly promised Obama her State Senate seat if she was successful in a run for the U.S. Congress.

She wasn't successful, but Obama refused to stand aside and went on to win the seat unopposed-after getting all his opponents (including Palmer) disqualified on voting technicalities.

"I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant," Obama said. "It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently."

His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.

"There was friction about the decision he made," said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer's behalf. "There were deep disagreements."

Despite the mess, Timuel Black became and remains an admirer of the ambitious young politician.

"My first impression was this was a very, very brilliant young man," Black says.

Black said Obama's biggest obstacle would not be from whites, but from blacks.

"The biggest thing he has to face is the accusations by some blacks that he is not black enough...He has to overcome that without being so black that he alienates potential white supporters."

Timuel Black addressed a largely black audience at the Woodson Regional Library auditorium on Feb. 11, 2007^[16].

Speaking of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign he said;

“Obama is the test of how deep racism is in this country...Barack is the recipient of the struggle of other generations...That means that you feel proud of your ancestors, your successes...(Obama), based on the opportunities that were opened to him by others, is in the position to prove to the world whether the United States of America is a true democracy, or is a continuing hypocrisy.”

Timuel Black was involved in Obama's campaign committee during his successful 2004 U.S. Senate race.

In December 2008 Barack Obama sent a note to Timuel Black's 90th birthday celebrations, which read in part^[17];

For forty years, he shaped our young men and women into those citizens. And though he may have retired from the teaching profession nearly two decades ago, he never stopped being a teacher. We are all his students in a classroom that never closes.

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf

In 2000, Rabbi Wolf was named as a member of Democratic Socialists of America in the DSA publication Religious Socialism^[18].

In April 2008 Rabbi Wolf sent a "Shalom" to Chicago DSA's 50th annual Eugene V. Debs - Norman Thomas -Michael Harrington Dinner^[19].

The famous 1995 meeting In the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, that launched Obama's political career was apparently one of several functions designed to introduce Obama to the Hyde Park set^[20].

Around this time, Obama started to attend a series of coffees in the Hyde Park community where he lived, standard operating procedure for political rookies running in the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Chicago.

"I was certainly (hosting) one of the first," said Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, rabbi emeritus at Chicago's KAM Isaiah Israel

"There were several every week," he recalled... "I remember what I said to him: 'Someday you are going to be vice president of the United States.' He laughed and said, 'Why not president?'

In 2008, Rabbi Wolf was a member of Rabbis for Obama, he has held Obama fundraisers in his home and was a big fan of the then Senator from Illinois^[21].

Wolf came to Hyde Park before urban renewal. For 25 years he led the congregation at KAM Isaiah Israel, a synagogue across the street from Obama's mansion^[22].

"Barack is perfect for the neighborhood!...You can't say Barack's a product of Hyde Park. He's not really from here. But everybody saw the potential early on. We had a party for him at our house when he was just starting, back in the Nineties. I said right away: 'Here's a guy who could sell our product, and sell it with splendor!' "

On "the product" Obama could sell?^[23]

"The thing is, it's not what you might think...It's not radical. It's not extreme. It's a rational, progressive philosophy based on experience. You see it here. This neighborhood is genuinely integrated. We did it here, we really did it! Not just talk about it. Look around. And Barack and his family fit right in. This is their neighborhood."

In March 2008 Wolf told Jewish Week^[24];

But it's not neighborly instinct that's led me to support the Obama candidacy: I support Barack Obama because he stands for what I believe, what our tradition demands.

I've worked with Obama for more than a decade, as has my son, a lawyer...

I am very proud to be his neighbor. I hope someday to visit him in the White House.

Danny K.Davis

Davis introduces Obama to Teamsters, Chicago, 2004

Danny K. Davis is the only Democrat remaining in Congress who is open about his membership of Democratic Socialists of America.

Davis' friendship with Barack Obama goes back at least to their days in the DSA influenced New Party in the mid 1990s.

Danny K. Davis joined the Chicago New Party (along with Barack Obama ) during his successful Congressional 1996 campaign on the Democratic Party ticket.

New Party News Spring 1996 page 1, celebrated the Davis’ Congressional victory and went on to say;

"New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)..."these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work' said Obama".

Most DSA members actively supported^[25]Barack Obama in the November 2008 Presidential election;

DSA believes that the possible election of Senator Obama to the presidency in November represents a potential opening for social and labor movements to generate the critical political momentum necessary to implement a progressive political agenda...

An Obama presidency will not on its own force legislation facilitating single-payer health care (at least at the federal level) or truly progressive taxation and major cuts in wasteful and unneeded defense spending. But if DSA and other democratic forces can work in the fall elections to increase the ranks of the Congressional Progressive and Black and La-tino caucuses, progressive legislation (backed by strong social movement mobilization) might well pass the next Congress.

DSA concentrated its forces on where it could serve^[26]the Obama cause best;

For the past year, especially following the nomination of Barack Obama, many DSA members worked energetically on the presidential campaign, especially in swing states

DSA and Progressives for Obama

Formed in early 2008 Progressives for Obama was desined to unite the main sectors of the U.S. left behind the Obama presidential campaign.

Of the four main founders, two Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Barbara Ehrenreich are senior members of Democratic Socialists of America.

Of the website's endorsersPaul Buhle, Duane Campbell, Peter Dreier, Adam Hochschild, Jay Mazur, Frances Fox Piven, Christine Riddiough, Stanley Sheinbaum, Cornel West and Betty Willhoite have been Democratic Socialists of America members^[27].

Supporting Obama in '08

Most Democratic SA locals committed themselves fully^[28] to the Obama campaign in 2008.

Sacramento DSA worked intensely on the Obama campaign through Super Tuesday and continues electoral work with the Sacramento Progressive Alliance.

New York DSA members were especially^[29]active;

Some got up “at the crack of dawn,” says Jeff Gold, to take buses to support Obama in various locations in Pennsylvania, sometimes side by side with experienced trade unionists from Working America and at other times with first-time campaign volunteers...Another member traveled all the way to south Florida to help turn out Jewish voters for Obama...

"Progressive" Democrats such as Mary Jo Kilroy also benefitted;

In Columbus, Ohio, DSA members campaigned for both Obama and congressional candidate Mary Jo Kilroy, who, after a suspenseful count of provisional ballots was declared the winner in December, raising the Democrats’ majority in the House to 257.

DSA campaign appointments

During Obama's 2008 presidential cycle at least three DSA connected activists were appointed to important campaign posts.

Harry Boyte Co-chairof the Civic Engagement Group of Barack Obama’s U.S. presidential campaign.
Eliseo Medina Served on Obama's Latino Advisory Council.
Cornel West Served on Obama's National Black Advisory Council.
Jose LaLuz also served as president of Latinos for Obama.

Obama appointments-DSA connected

The Obama administration has appointed several people with Democratic Socialists of America connections to key government positions.

Ron Bloom Manufacturing Czar.
David Bonior Member of the Obama Economic Transition Team-now delegated by president Obama to negotiate the unification of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations.
Rosa Brooks Senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy.
Carol Browner Energy Czar/Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.
Heather Higginbottom Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, formerly with the Obama for America campaign
Samantha Power National Security Council, as director for multilateral affairs.
Hilda Solis Secretary of Labor.

Barack Obama and the New Party

Barack Obama and the Communist Party

Barack Obama and Committees of Correspondence

Barack Obama and the Labor Movement

Barack Obama - ACORN and Project Vote

Other Organizations

External links

[biography.com-1] {Jump up to: 1.0} ^1.1 ^1.2 ^1.3 ^1.4 Barack Obama on Biography.com

[2] NewsMax.com: Obama 'Lying' About Muslim Past, Expert Says, Oct. 9, 2008

[washingtonpost-3] Washington Post: The Ghost of a Father, Dec. 14, 2007

[4] New York Times: First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review

[5] TIME Magazine: Barack Obama: My Spiritual Journey, Oct 16, 2006

[6] Times Live: Obama’s remarks at the annual prayer meeting, Feb. 5, 2009

[7] New York Times: Barack Obama's search for faith, April 30, 2007

[8] ttp://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w03/msg00182.htm

[9] ttp://communistpartyillinois.blogspot.com/2008/02/harold-washington-wore-union-label.html

[10] ttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/us/politics/11chicago.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

[11] ttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20070219/hayes

[12] ttp://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/858/1/39/

[13] ttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and

[since1962-14] CLW website: Who We've Helped Elect

[makingit-15] {Jump up to: 1.0} ^1.1 MAKING IT: How Chicago shaped Obama, New Yorker, July 21, 2008

[16] ttp://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/01/14/obama/index.html

[17] New Ground 58, May - June, 1998

[18] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[19] ttp://www.chicagodsa.org/ngarchive/ng86.html

[20] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[21] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[22] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[23] ttp://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5047/1/32/

[24] ttp://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/charles_ogletree_obama_

[25] ttp://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/080331nj1.htm

[26] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[27] ttp://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8630.html

[28] ttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and

[29] ttp://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=105544909634&share_id=12004239303

[30] ttp://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/02/barack-obama-hypocrisy-on-health-care.html

[31] ttp://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/obama012808.htm

[32] ttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and

[33] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[34] Undated Friends of Alice Palmer membership list. Harold Washington papers

[35] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[36] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[37] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[38] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[39] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[40] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[41] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[42] ttp://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8630.html

[43] ttp://www.uic.edu/classes/las/las400/conferencealt.htm

[44] ttp://www.debbieschlussel.com/3770/the-company-he-keeps-obama-hangs-with-hezbollahs-iranian-agent-imam/

[45] ttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

[46] ttp://www.farmworkers.org/let-mofi.html

[47] ttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/us/politics/20web-bonior.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

[48] ttp://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/labor-reunification/

[49] 911 Truth statement

[50] ttp://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/10/green_collar_economy.html/#2

[51] 2004-2005 Annual Report of the Center for American Progress

[52] ttp://www.dsaboston.org/2001Wilson.htm

[53] "Jersey Man Hopes to Create Third Political Party," National Public Radio, "Morning Edition, " September 28, 1995

[article-54] Fox News, Critics Assail Obama's 'Safe Schools' Czar, Say He's Wrong Man for the Job, September 23, 2009

[55] KeyWiki: Kevin Jennings

[56] ttp://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2009/01/30_power.html

[57] ttp://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/000912.shtml

[58] Keywiki: Samantha Power

[59] ttp://money.cnn.com/2009/02/25/autos/Obama_car_czar.fortune/index.htm

[60] Nominations and appointments

[peoplesweekly-61] People's Weekly World June 20 1996

[62] ttp://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=1924&ArticlePageID=1252&ModuleID=18

[63] ttp://www.dsausa.org/dl/Winter_2006.pdf

[64] Nominations and appointments

[65] ttp://www.cesarchavezholiday.org/index.html

[66] ttp://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml

[latimes-67] LA Times: Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama, April 10, 2008

[68] World Net Daily: Obama worked with terrorist, Feb. 24, 2008

[69] ttp://www.debbieschlussel.com/3770/the-company-he-keeps-obama-hangs-with-hezbollahs-iranian-agent-imam/

[70] Democratic Left magazine, Spring 2007

[71] Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama, 1995, page 122

[72] ttp://www.chicagodsa.org/ngarchive/ng37.html

[73] New Ground 45, March - April, 1996

[ng45-74] New Ground 45, March - April, 1996

[75] New Ground 45, March - April, 1996

[76] ttp://www.chicagodsa.org/ngarchive/ng45.html

[77] Memorial Service program

[78] ttp://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8630.html

[79] ttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and

[80] ttp://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=105544909634&share_id=12004239303

[81] ttp://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/02/barack-obama-hypocrisy-on-health-care.html

[82] ttp://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/obama012808.htm

[83] ttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and

[84] ttp://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2009/Bright-Knights/Timuel-Black/

[85] ttp://www.windycitizen.com/2007/02/21/bronzeville-oral-history-engages-new-generation

[86] ttp://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/tim-black-barack-obama-and-all-that.html

[87] ttp://www.religioussocialism.com/pdf/2000.sum.pdf

[88] ttp://www.chicagodsa.org/d2008/2008book.pdf

[89] ttp://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/10/ayers_alone_did_not_launch_oba.html

[90] ttp://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1076922,CST-NWS-rabbi27.article

[91] ttp://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/197wxqsf.asp?pg=2

[92] ttp://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/197wxqsf.asp?pg=2

[93] ttp://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c55_a5420/Editorial__Opinion/Opinion.html

[94] Democratic Left magazine, Summer 2008

[95] Democratic Left magazine, Winter 2009

[96] Progressives for Obama blog

[97] Democratic Left magazine, Summer 2008

[98] Democratic Left magazine, Winter 2009

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Barack Obama Test

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