The groups Obama kept off his résumé
MFOgilvie
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The groups Obama kept off his résumé
Exclusive: Brad O'Leary profiles Chicago foundations with close
financial ties
During the Democratic debate on April 16 in Philadelphia, Barack Obama
explained to the voters that his former boss, mentor and committed
communist, Bill Ayers, was "a guy who lives in my neighborhood. … He's
not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." But the
truth is, "exchanging ideas" is most of what they did during their at
least 15 years of collaboration together.
Below is an in-depth look at three organizations Obama omits from his
official campaign and U.S. Senate biographies: The Woods Fund, The
Joyce Foundation and The Gamaliel Foundation – as well as a look at
how Obama's long-time church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is
inexorably linked to the Obama-Ayers "incestuous money trail."
The Woods Fund
An outgrowth of the Woods Charitable Fund, The Woods Fund of Chicago
focuses its attention on welfare reform, affordable housing, public
schools, race and class disparities in the juvenile justice system,
and tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty. According to
DiscoverTheNetworks.org, "The Fund supported the concept of an
expanding welfare state allocating ever-increasing amounts of money to
the public school system, and the redistribution of wealth via taxes."
Obama served on the Woods Fund Board from 1993 to 2002. During that
time, he worked alongside two people who form part of the Obama
network: Bill Ayers and Howard J. Stanback. Communist Bill Ayers
joined the board in 1999 and served with Obama for three years.
Considering the board met at least a dozen times, Ayers and Obama had
plenty of opportunities to discuss the wealth redistribution goals of
the foundation. Obama also served alongside Woods Fund Board Chairman
Howard J. Stanback. In 2001, Stanback headed New Kenwood LLC, a
limited liability company founded by Obama's close friend and
convicted felon, Tony Rezko, and Obama's former law firm boss, Allison
Davis.
While Obama served on the Woods Fund board, the Fund utilized Northern
Trust's investment services and participated in a Northern Trust
private equity fund. Years later, Obama would be the beneficiary of a
below market rate home loan from Northern Trust, which benefited from
Obama's actions as a member of the Woods Fund Board.
The Obama-Woods Fund story is not just the interpersonal relationships
of its board, but also a revealing look at who benefited from Woods
Fund grants.
As far back as 1987, Obama's Developing Communities Project was the
beneficiary of a $36,000 grant from the Woods Fund for school reform
work. As board members years later, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers would
send money to a number of projects near and dear to both of them,
including:
a combined total of over $1 million to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge
(Obama was its chief executive officer and Ayers the author of the $50
million grant that gave life to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge)
a $6,000 grant to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of
Christ in 2001
a $20,000 grant in 1995 and a $35,000 grant in 2001 for communists
Bill Ayers and Michael Klonsky's Small School Workshops or his Chicago
Forum for Small School Change at the University of Illinois at Chicago
(Ayers was on the Woods Fund Board at the time)
a $75,000 grant to Chicago ACORN in 2001
a $45,000 grant to Chicago ACORN in 2000
a $40,000 grant to Chicago ACORN in 1999
a $55,000 grant in 1998, a $40,000 grant in 2001, a $20,000 grant in
2000 and grants totaling $98,500 grants in 1999 to the Community
Renewal Society (another pet project of Bill Ayers' father, Tom
Ayers)
a $40,000 grant in 2000 and a $25,000 grant in 2001 to the Chicago
Urban League (another Tom Ayers organization)
a $5,000 grant in 2000 to the Chicago Partnership for Economic
Development (the fiscal agent is the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce,
which is yet another organization with which Bill Ayers' father, Tom
Ayers, was involved)
a $25,000 grant in 2001 to Obama's former employer, The Developing
Communities Project
$40,000 grants each in 1998 and 1999 to Project Match run by the
Erickson Institute on whose board sat Tom Ayers
a combined total of $75,000 between 2001 and 2002 to the Arab American
Action Network (AAAN), an anti-Israel outfit run by Mona Khalidi (Mona
is the wife of Rashid Khalidi, founder of the Arab American Action
Network, and both are friends of Obama's from his days at the
University of Chicago).
Between 1998 and 2001, the Obama and Ayers-led Woods Fund also gave
nearly $300,000 to Northwestern University, where Bill Ayers and his
wife, Castro-trained Bernadine Dohrn Ayers, had secured teaching jobs.
Bill Ayers' father, Tom Ayers, also sat on the Board of Trustees for
Northwestern, as did Howard Trienens, who was a partner at the law
firm (Sidley Austin) that hired Obama for an internship when he was
only a first-year law student. Here are the grants in detail:
a $30,000 grant in 1998 to Northwestern University
a $65,000 grant in 2000 to the Northwestern University School of Law
a $96,218 grant to Northwestern University's Institute for Policy
Research in 2001
a $100,000 grant to Northwestern University in 1999
Trinity United Church of Christ
Trinity United Church of Christ's central tenet is to advocate social
justice through the redistribution of wealth in America. Barack Obama
sat and listened to 20 years worth of sermons, many by his former
friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that preached the only way to end the
"victimization" of poor people is enact laws that would punish the
well-to-do and redistribute their wealth evenly across the masses.
Though political expediency may have recently forced Obama to distance
himself from Trinity and Wright, Obama's long-standing relationship
with the church speaks volumes.
Much ink has already been spilled on the extremist anti-American
beliefs of former Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Wright.
As Stanley Kurtz detailed in The National Review, Wright's close
associates were two such extremists, Jacob Carruthers and the late Asa
Hilliard. Both were invited to speak at Rev. Wright and Obama's
church. According to Kurtz, Carruthers wrote in his wildly anti-
American book, "Intellectual Warfare," that no black person can be
American in any authentic sense. Carruthers wrote that "submission to
Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American
civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy."
Asa Hilliard was a pioneer of African-centered curricula and addressed
a teacher training session funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
She also helped formulate the curriculum for the South Shore African
Village Collaborative funded by the Joyce Foundation and the Annenberg
Challenge.
The Community Renewal Society was another pet project of Bill Ayers'
father, former Commonwealth Edison CEO Tom Ayers, who created the
organization to push Chicago-area black churches to advance a radical
concept of "social justice" through wealth redistribution. Funding
figures for the Society are scant given the organization's "church"
status, which exempts them from having to file an IRS tax return, but
the connections are clear.
The 2003 annual report for the Society shows that Trinity United
Church of Christ gave between $5,000 and $10,000 to the Society while
the Woods Fund gave between $100,000 and $200,000.
On full display is yet another way in which the Ayers family helped
Obama further his career. Obama sat on the Board of the Joyce
Foundation that gave grant money to the Community Renewal Society.
Rev. Wright and Obama were close friends, and Wright's church supports
the Community Renewal Society, which is a Tom Ayers project.
In addition, on Feb. 12, 2000, the Community Renewal Society hosted a
10th Anniversary Prom in honor of one of its projects, CATALYST (also
funded by the Joyce Foundation). Among the names on the Anniversary
Planning Committee are none other than Bill Ayers' brother, John
Ayers, Michelle Obama and Susan Klonksy, former radical leftist and
Students for a Democratic Society member, and wife of communist and
Obama and Ayers buddy Michael Klonsky. Susan Klonsky is also active
with "Progressives for Obama."
The Joyce Foundation
Obama joined the Board of Directors of the Chicago-based Joyce
Foundation in 1994 and served on its board until 2002. The Joyce
Foundation targets its grants toward organizations with agendas of
social justice, prison reform, increased government spending for
social services and radical environmentalism, with many of those
recipient groups hostile to the capitalist model.
Notable Joyce Foundation grants include:
an $80,000 grant to Bill Ayers' Chicago School Reform Collaborative
(part of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge)
a $429,112 grant in 1998 (a 28 month project) to the Bank Street
College of Education to evaluate whether small schools operating
within the Chicago Public Schools led to improved student performance
(Bill Ayers received his masters from Bank Street College of Education
and administered the Small Schools project.)
a $70,000 grant to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in 1996, 1997 and
1998 for a total of $210,000
a total of $300,000 to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge beginning in
1999 (after Obama joined the Foundation's board)
$755,261 in grants to Bill Ayers' Small School Workshop and Chicago
Forum for School Change (according to Bill Ayers' curriculum vitae);
totals dispensed include $74,500 from 1992-1993; $79,761 from
1993-1994; $264,000 from 1995-1997 and $337,000 from 1998-1999 (the
later two grants being made while Obama served on the boards of the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Joyce Foundation (the Chicago
Annenberg Challenge, in turn, provided $175,000 to the Small Schools
Workshop)
a contribution valued at between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Chicago
Public Education Fund (on whose board sat Obama, Tom and John Ayers)
a $151,930 grant in 1998 to Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law to monitor federal, state and local compliance with
Federal Title 1 requirements for assessing the educational progress of
Chicago's low-income public school students and providing assistance
to improve performance (Obama was chairman of the Board for this
organization beginning in 1994)
an $88,195 grant in 1996 (over two years) to the Chicago Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law to help Chicago schools make
better use of their federal Title I funds
A $313,000 grant in 1998 to the Community Renewal Society to expand
its Catalyst: Voices of Chicago School Reform publication (Tom Ayers
was active with the Community Renewal Society)
Grants total $392,850 in 1999 to the Community Renewal Society
A $78,000 grant in 1998 to Northwestern University's Department of
African American Studies to identify, describe and publicize the
factors affecting student performance at 20 Chicago elementary
schools
a $70,000 grant in 1999 to the Center for Improved Education in South
Shore that was one of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's "external
partners," part of the network of Chicago Schools known as the "South
Shore African Village Collaborative" that was thoroughly Afro centric
in orientation – the Collaborative worldview was the same as that of
Rev. Jeremiah Wright – see Stanley Kurtz's brilliant article, "Wright
101" (Oct. 14, 2008) at National Review Online for additional
background
a $150,000 grant in 1996 (2 year grant) to the Center for Improved
Education in South Shore
a $400,000 grant to the Erikson Institute for research into welfare
(Tom Ayers and Bill Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, served on the
Erikson Board)
If the funding and the relationships sound all too cozy, that's
because they are. Joyce Foundation President Deborah Leff and Barack
Obama served together on the Foundation's Board as late as 1999, and
they also served together on the board of the Chicago Annenberg
Challenge. Close Obama friend and presidential campaign adviser
Valerie Jarrett would later join the Joyce Foundation board in 2003.
Gamaliel Foundation
According to Discover the Networks, "the stated mission of the
Gamaliel Foundation is 'to be a powerful network of grassroots,
interfaith, interracial, multi-issue organizations working together to
create a more just and more democratic society.'" Predicated on the
belief that America is a land rife with injustice, Gamaliel agitates
for social change by supporting the efforts of a network of
organizations whose goal is to allow individuals to "effectively
participate" in the political, environmental, social and economic
arenas. Gamaliel utilizes Saul Alinsky's socialist methods to achieve
their goal.
The Gamaliel Foundation receives its funding from a number of large
foundations, including George Soro's Open Society Institute. Barack
Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project during the mid-to-
late 1980s and is part of the Gamaliel network. The Foundation's story
is less about the money trail and more about the people with whom
Obama worked. Gamaliel founder Greg Galluzo mentored Obama in Alinsky
tactics, as did another Gamaliel employee, Mike Kruglik, who later
helped school Obama campaign workers in Alinsky tactics. Obama later
served as a consultant and Alinsky trainer of community organizers for
Gamaliel. Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight sat on
the Gamaliel Board. McKnight, a student of Alinsky tactics, was
another of Obama's mentors who later wrote a letter of recommendation
for Obama to Harvard Law School.
The Obama secret
Obama's official U.S. Senate and campaign biographies omit any
detailed discussion of his work for the Woods Fund, Joyce Foundation
or the Gamaliel Foundation – and the Developing Communities Project –
and with good reason. Their inclusion would have invited a close look
at his involvement with these groups that would, in turn, reveal the
leftist goals of these organizations and pull back the curtain on
Obama's ultimate agenda for America.
The incestuous and long money trail to organizations on whose board
Obama sat to other organizations on whose board Obama also served
clearly demonstrate that Obama is committed to a socialist agenda. His
stealth political strategy is to talk a soft game but have a hard-left
social agenda. Just this past week, Obama was seen on network
television promising that, "[B]efore I even get inaugurated, during
the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in to help us
shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the
country with community organizations so that you have input into the
agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America."
What will be discussed at these "meetings"? Perhaps Obama's proposal
for "tax reform," which would accomplish the goals of his former
foundations, church and mentor Bill Ayers, by enacting a socialist
wealth redistribution scheme. And not just on a national scale – but a
global scale. I cover this in detail in "The Audacity of Deceit." Not
only would Obama send nearly $1 trillion of taxpayer dollars to the
United Nations to redistribute wealth worldwide, but only 5 percent of
the jobs created by this massive program would be manned by U.S.
citizens. The other 95 percent would be filled by citizens from
countries that are communist, socialist, Hindu, Muslim and atheist –
in other words, countries that harbor an extreme dislike, or even
hatred, for America.
As Obama told a concerned, tax-burdened plumber just days ago: "It's
not that I want to punish your success. … I think when you spread the
wealth around, it's good for everybody." Everybody, of course, except
those being punished.
In "The Audacity of Deceit," I also write about how Obama's tax plan
would increase the percentage of non-taxpayers in America from 30
percent to 44 percent. These figures were recently confirmed by pieces
in the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily.
Under an Obama presidency, leftist, Alinsky-inspired organizations
will have a seat at the table helping to shape the agenda of America.
Socialism and wealth redistribution is not the change most Americans
want.
cmdr buzz corey
> Under an Obama presidency, leftist, Alinsky-inspired organizations
> will have a seat at the table helping to shape the agenda of America.
> Socialism and wealth redistribution is not the change most Americans
> want.
Usama bin Hussein Obama, the Marxist, has had associations and
alliances with an anti-American, anti-white, racist pastor, radical
terrorists and crooks all his adult and political life. He sought out
Marxist professors in college. He would not have had those
associations unless he thinks like they do and agrees with their
policies. Usama bin Hussein Obama has refused to even salute the
American flag during the playing of the National Anthem. As President
Usama bin Hussein Obama will convert the United States of America into
the un-United States of Marxism and socialism.
http://www.geocities.com/nbcchimes/obmamsalute.jpg
"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully.
The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The
Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and structural feminists and punk-
rock performance poets." pg 100...Usama bin Hussein Obama.