Another case against Obama> The Woods Fund
repo
Obama and the Woods Fund, September 13, 2008
As a board member, Obama helped scratch a lot of backs with grants to
politically connected groups.
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The mainstream media is not much interested in probing Barack Obama’s
record before he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2004. For example, they
have studiously ignored the eminently well-researched book by David
Freddoso, The Case Against Barack Obama. There is no shortage of
material or information which might be relevant to voters. One aspect
of Obama’s past in particular provides insight into Obama’s modus
operandi in the world of Chicago politics: his service on the board of
the Woods Fund.
The Woods Fund is a non-profit foundation which declares its goal to
“increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities by
giving money primarily to not-for-profit groups involved in housing,
the arts and other areas.” Obama joined the board of the Woods Fund in
1993 and remained until 2002. But Obama didn’t merely use the Woods
Fund to help his fellow man — he used it to further his career.
According to a November 29, 2007 report from the Chicago Sun-Times,
“Sen. Barack Obama was on the board of a Chicago charity when his
former boss, Allison S. Davis, came looking for money. At the time,
Davis was a developer represented by the law firm where Obama worked,
as well as a small contributor to Obama’s political campaign funds. He
wanted the charity to help fund his plans to build housing for low-
income Chicagoans.”
When Davis approached the Woods Fund, he was building another
apartment building with now convicted felon and Obama friend/
fundraiser Tony Rezko. The Chicago Sun-Times recounts: “Obama agreed.
He voted with other directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago to invest
$1 million with Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners L.P., a $17-million
partnership that Davis still operates.” To date the Obama campaign has
refused to comment on whether Obama disclosed his ties to Davis when
he voted on the project. Another Woods Board Fund member with ties to
Davis did abstain on the vote.
Perhaps the most notorious of the Woods Fund recipients was the Arab
American Action Network (AAAN). AAAN was established in 1995 as non-
profit group supposedly dedicated to improving the conditions of Arab
immigrants in the Chicago area.
But its activities were hardly benign. For example, AAAN sponsored a
Palestinian art exhibit on the “Nakba” — that is, the “catastrophe” of
Israel’s establishment in 1948. AAAN’s officials routinely have made
statements vilifying Israel. AAAN Board member Ali Abunimah in 2002
declared: “‘By deliberately denying food, water and medical aid, and
wantonly destroying public and private property, and deliberately
destroying the economy in the occupied territories, Israel is in
flagrant breach of this [Geneva] Convention. … Unfortunately, we are
seeing the world turn a blind eye to atrocities being committed under
its nose.” (Abunimah co-founded and operates the Electronic Intifada,
a website replete with anti-Israel slurs and which declares Israel to
be an apartheid state.)
On the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, Hatem Abudayyeh, executive
director of AAAN, announced: “Arafat was a great man. Yes, Arafat was
an icon. … We’re saddened by his death, but we don’t ignore the fact
that this is not an issue of individuals, it’s an issue of a people
who have been oppressed and occupied for 55 years.”
Also serving on the Woods Fund at the time was Palestinian activist
and now professor at Columbia University Rashid Khalidi, whose wife
headed AAAN. The Woods Fund granted AAAN $40,000 in 2001 and $70,000
in 2002. As Salon magazine wrote, this was “nepotism, Chicago style.”
Khalidi, a former spokesman for Yasser Arafat, held a fundraiser for
Obama in 2000 during his unsuccessful bid for Congress. In 2003,
during a dinner honoring Khalidi for becoming the Edward Said
Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, Obama warmly praised his
friend, reminiscing about the many meals cooked for him by Khalidi’s
wife Mona and of the discussions he and Khalidi held that were
“consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. …
It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we
continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just
around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire
world.”
The pattern of funneling money to political allies and their allies is
evident throughout Obama’s tenure at the Woods Fund. Tens and tens of
thousands of dollars were granted to organizations including the
Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Business and Professional People
for the Public Interest (BPPPI), the Center for Neighborhood
Technology, Centers for New Horizons, the Chicago Jobs Council, the
Chicago Education Fund, the Chicago Institute on Urban Poverty, the
Chicago Urban League, The Gamaliel Foundation. Dozens of the board
members and officials from these organizations in turn would donate
money, in many instances up to the legal limit, for Obama’s Senate and
Presidential races between 2004 and 2008.
For example the Woods Fund between 1999 and 2002 granted $60,000 to
BPPPI. Board member and executives donated at least $16,950 to Obama’s
political campaigns. The Woods Fund granted the Center of Neighborhood
Technology $150,000 between 1999 and 2002. Obama received over $24,000
in campaign donations from its officials. And in turn Obama made sure
to seek earmarks on their behalf once he reached the U.S. Senate.
A similar pattern of mutual financial help existed with regard to many
of these organizations. While there is no evidence of an explicit quid
pro quo, what is apparent is that the seeds of long term relationships
and a network of financial support were sewn while Obama was a Woods
board member.
Obama’s tenure with the Woods Fund is perhaps most noteworthy for his
association with former terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers served on the
Woods board for three years of Obama’s tenure and remained on the
board after Obama departed. Hillary Clinton raised this issue earlier
this year at the Philadelphia debate when Obama, as he has done
throughout the campaign, tried to minimize his relationship with
Ayers.
That exchange was set off with a question asking Obama to explain his
relationship with Ayers:
OBAMA: This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor
of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some
official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from
on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody
who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old,
somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George.
The fact is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most
conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who, during his
campaign, once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death
penalty to those who carried out abortions.
Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements? Because I
certainly don’t agree with those, either.
So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how
flimsy the relationship is, that somehow their ideas could be
attributed to me, I think the American people are smarter than that.
They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my
views, because it obviously isn’t.
CLINTON: Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also
believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a
period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship
position.
And, if I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this
board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were
deeply hurtful to people in New York and, I would hope, to every
American, because they were published on 9/11, and he said that he was
just sorry they hadn’t done more.
And what they did was set bombs. And in some instances, people died.
So it is — I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking
about.
And I have no doubt — I know Senator Obama’s a good man and I respect
him greatly, but I think that this is an issue that certainly the
Republicans will be raising.
Clinton was right, of course. Ayers also headed the Chicago Annenberg
Challenge, an educational foundation dedicated to school reform that
was funded by an initial $49 million grant from the Annenberg family
foundation. (Annenberg recently was in the news when the University of
Chicago first sealed the records and then agreed to open them to
National Review’s Stanley Kurtz and other reporters seeking to explore
that organization’s records.)
The Woods Fund in 1999 granted $50,000 to the Annenberg Challenge —
that is one organization on which Obama and Ayers served giving funds
to another headed by Ayers and on which Obama also served as chairman
for three years beginning in 1995 and then as a board member until
2001.
The Annenberg Challenge has since come under scrutiny — and Obama’s
involvement therewith as well — because of criticism that the
Annenberg Challenge failed to improve student achievement. The Los
Angeles Times termed it a “bust.” A USA Today column in 1998 noted,
“Expectations, in fact, may prove to be the biggest stumbling block to
the legacy of the Annenberg gift. In some circles, conservatives see
snail’s pace-progress among schools benefiting from Annenberg’s
largesse and use it as a public school parable: Give big money to
public schools and it will be absorbed into the bureaucracy with
little benefit.” As Education Week put it, “It was ultimately
unsuccessful in raising student achievement, according to evaluations
of the project.”
Another recipient of the Woods Fund largesse was the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an organization
infamous for its left wing agenda. Stanley Kurtz who has researched
ACORN’s far-left agenda described its “in your face tactics”:
Just think of Code Pink’s well-known operations (threatening to occupy
congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David
Petraeus) and you’ll get the idea. Acorn protesters have disrupted
Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics
locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and Acorn
has burst into a closed city council meeting there. Acorn protestors
in Baltimore disrupted a bankers’ dinner and sent four busloads of
profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor’s home, terrifying
his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally
supports Acorn said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line.
During Obama’s time on the Woods Funds ACORN received grants of
$45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), and
$40,000 (2002) from the Woods Fund. (Obama in the early 1990’s helped
train ACORN organizers and later served as counsel in 1995 for ACORN
in a “motor voter” registration lawsuit.) And ACORN certainly
appreciated whatever assistance Obama afforded the radical
organization over the years.
Founder Toni Foulkes enthusiastically backed Obama’s U.S. Senate run
in 2004, declaring: “ACORN is active in experimenting with methods of
increasing voter participation in our low and moderate income
communities to virtually every election. But in some elections we get
to have our cake and eat it too: work on nonpartisan voter
registration and GOTV, which also turns out to benefit the candidate
we hold dear [Obama].”
In short, no less than six years ago Obama served along side Ayers as
a board member on an organization happy to pass out funds to radical
left wing and anti-Israel groups. Moreover, the monies doled out
through the Woods Fund to these groups, including Ayers own Annenberg
Challenge, helped cement Obama’s political relationships and bond with
key players in Chicago. None of this matches his current self-portrait
of a politically moderate reformer. But like so much of Obama, that
was then and this is now.
repo
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> Obama and the Woods Fund, September 13, 2008
> As a board member, Obama helped scratch a lot of backs with grants to
> politically connected groups.
http://www.jewishpress.com/content.cfm?contentid=30283
Obama Served On Board That Funded Pro-Palestinian Group
Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a
paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted
funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of
Israel as a "catastrophe." (Obama has also reportedly spoken at
fundraisers for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms
refugee camps.)
The co-founder of the Arab group, Columbia University professor Rashid
Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who reportedly worked on behalf
of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was labeled a terror
group by the State Department.
Khalidi held a fundraiser in 2000 for Obama's failed bid for a seat in
the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes
itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant
to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, at which Khalidi's wife,
Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to AAAN
for $35,000 in 2002.
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11,
2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama
received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and
2000.
The $40,000 grant from the Woods Fund to AAAN constituted about a
fifth of the group's reported grants for 2001, also according to tax
filings. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 made up about one-fifth
of AAAN's reported grants for that year as well.
Headquartered in the heart of Chicago's Palestinian immigrant
community, AAAN describes itself as working to "empower Chicago-area
Arab immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of
community organizing, advocacy, education and social services,
leadership development, and forging productive relationships with
other communities."
Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-
Israel line. The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled
"The Subject of Palestine," that featured works related to what
Palestinians call the "nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in
1948.
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The theme of AAAN's Nakba art exhibit, held at DePaul University in
2005, was "the compelling and continuing tragedy of Palestinian
life ... under [Israeli] occupation ... home demolition ...
statelessness ... bereavement ... martyrdom, and ... the heroic
struggle for life, for safety, and for freedom."
Another AAAN initiative, "Al Nakba 1948 As Experienced by Chicago
Palestinians," seeks documents related to the "catastrophe" of
Israel's founding.
Although AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi has at times denied working
directly for the PLO, he reportedly served as director of the official
PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, a period during
which the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled
by the U.S. as a terror group. Khalidi's wife, Mona Khalidi,
reportedly was WAFA's English translator during that period.
Khalidi also advised the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid
Conference in 1991. During documented speeches and public events,
Khalidi has called Israel an "apartheid system in creation" and a
"racist" state. Critics have accused him of excusing Palestinian
terrorism, a charge he denies.
He dedicated his 1986 book, Under Siege, to "those who gave their
lives ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of
Lebanon."
While the Woods Fund's contribution to Khalidi's AAAN might be
perceived as a one-time contact with Obama, there is evidence of a
deeper relationship between the presidential hopeful and Khalidi.
According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has
known Obama for 12 years, the senator first befriended Khalidi when
the two worked together at the university. The professor spoke on
condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of Chicago
until 2003; Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the
Senate in 2004.
Asked during a radio interview with this reporter on WABC's John
Batchelor program about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama, Khalidi said he
"was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local
politician."
Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only
candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."
Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran. If
the U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is
no reason it can't talk with the Iranians."
Concerning Obama's role in funding AAAN, Khalidi claimed he "never
heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few
months ago." He terminated the interview when pressed further about
his links with Obama.
Contacted by phone, Mona Khalidi refused to answer questions about
AAAN's involvement with Obama.
The Obama campaign did not reply to a list of questions sent by e-mail
to the senator's press office.
In addition to questions about his relationship with Khalidi, Obama
may face increased scrutiny over his ties to William C. Ayers, a
member of the Weather Underground terrorist group that sought to
overthrow the U.S. government and took responsibility for a string of
bombings in the early 1970's.
Obama served on the Woods Fund board alongside Ayers (who is still on
the board). Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, has written about his involvement with the Weather
Underground's bombing of U.S. governmental buildings including the
Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.
Although charges against him were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial
misconduct, Ayers told a newspaper reporter several years ago that he
had no second thoughts about his violent past. "I don't regret setting
bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers told The New York Times in
an interview published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001.
In his memoir, Fugitive Days, Ayers wrote: "Everything was absolutely
ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon" - though he continued with a
disclaimer that he didn't personally set the bombs but his group
placed the explosives and planned the attack.
Besides serving with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, Ayers
contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on
panels with Obama at several public speaking engagements.
repo
Obama’s tenure with the Woods Fund is perhaps most noteworthy for his
association with former terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers served on the
Woods board for three years of Obama’s tenure and remained on the
board after Obama departed. Hillary Clinton raised this issue earlier
this year at the Philadelphia debate when Obama, as he has done
throughout the campaign, tried to minimize his relationship with Ayers
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
>
> - Show quoted text -
So -- tell us about George Bush and convicted terrorist fund-raiser
Sami Al-Amin.
repo
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.immigration/msg/3a370a53bb4a05f7
Obama’connections on the “Woods Fund” to pro Terrorist PLO grp
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.immigration/msg/465d49c137105015
Obama & his terrorist friend Bill Ayers served together on “Woods
Fund” board
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.immigration/msg/fe52617114edce7f
FACE
<kcaj...@yahoo.com> in glistered weave wrote large for all to see:
The idiot demoncrats, socialists, communists, traitors and general
ne'er-do-wells -- the basic constituency of obama the horrible -- are trying
very hard not to recognize their hero's close relationships with people like
Ayers.
I don't know if they are really that fucking stupid and dumbly mesmerized by
obama or if they are just nihilistic fuckers for fun. I hear that some
people are evil for a reason and that some people are evil just because they
want to see the world burn.....................
FACE
br...@pobox.com
How about if YOU tell us, since you're the one spewing the bullshit?