Monday, December 25, 2017

Ron Kind


Ron Kind is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 3rd district of Wisconsin.
Ron Kind

New Democrat Coalition

The New Democrat Coalition was founded in 1997 by Representatives Cal Dooley (California), James P. Moran (Virginia) and Timothy Roemer (Indiana) as a congressional affiliate of the avowedly centrist Democratic Leadership Council, whose members, including former President Bill Clinton, call themselves "New Democrats." In November 2012, the New Democrat Coalition announced the election of its new leadership team. New Dems elected Rep. Ron Kind (WI-03) as the Chair and re-elected Reps. Jim Himes (CT-04), Rick Larsen (WA-02), and Allyson Schwartz (PA-13) as Vice Chairs and added Rep. Gerry Connolly (VA-11) as a Vice Chair.[1]

National Laotian-American Symposium

The National Laotian-American Symposium on US-Laos Relations, held in Congress on May 22-24, 2002, was the first such event of its kind in Washington. The more than 120 participants included Laotian-Americans from around the US, callingfor open dialogue on US-Laos relations and supporting normal trade relations between the two countries. Additional participants represented several dozen Congressional offices, as well as NGO representatives, American veterans, and media. The keynote speaker was US Ambassador to Laos Douglas Hartwick.
Four members of Congress spoke at the Symposium: two sponsors, Reps. George Miller (D-CA) and Betty McCollum (DMN), plus Reps Anna Eshoo, and Ron Kind.
The Symposium was co-sponsored by five non-profit organizations in addition to Fund for Reconciliation and Development.
National Laotian Americans for Cooperation and Development "Fostering Cooperation with Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba" comprises an emerging network of ethnic Lao, Hmong, Khmu and other groups in the US that support increased dialogue with and assistance to their country of origin. The American Friends Service Committee and Mennonite Central Committee are two of the American NGOs who have worked in Laos in the longest and most committed fashion. The Lao-American Exchange Institute works to develop educational exchange and trade with Laos. Finally, the San Francisco-based Jhai Foundation was begun by an American veteran to carry out self-help.[2]

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 Ron Kind in his successful House of Representatives run as candidate for Wisconsin.[3]

PDA connection

In June 2013 Progressive Democrats of America assigned activists to deliver their material to almost every US Congressman and several Senators. Rob Hansen, and Barbara Tzetzo Gosch were assigned as contact for Rep. Kind.[4]

JStreet endorsement

The socialist infiltrated, anti-Israel "two state solution" JStreet PAC endorsed Ron Kind in his 2014 Congressional race. [5]
JStreet endorsed him again in 2016.
Kind currently serves on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and is the co-vice-chair of the New Democratic Coalition. Kind believes that strong US engagement is needed to help bring about a two-state solution.[6]

ARA endorsement, 2012

The Alliance for Retired Americans endorsed Ron Kind in 2012.[7]

ARA PAF endorsement, 2014

The Alliance for Retired Americans Political Action Fund endorsed Ron Kind in 2014.[8]

Greets Cuba "normalization"

December 18, 2014, members of Congress from Wisconsin welcomed President Barack Obama's announcement that his administration will move toward normalizing relations with the communist country.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin hailed the announcement as a "historic and positive step" that asserts American leadership by charting a new course with Cuba.
Democratic Reps. Ron Kind of La Crosse and Gwen Moore of Milwaukee joined Baldwin in embracing the move.
"It doesn't make sense to have economic relations with a communist nation like China, yet stay closed off to a nation just 90 miles off our coast," said Kind, who called for eliminating the embargo.
Baldwin said that more than 50 years of U.S. policy to isolate Cuba "has not achieved our national security objectives, (has) created hardship for the Cuban people, and failed to weaken the Cuban regime."
At the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations with Cuba, steering committee member Art Heitzer said Badger State residents and companies could benefit from the thaw. He cited Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Johnson Controls air conditioning systems as items that could potentially find a market in Cuba if direct trade is allowed.[9]

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Hillary Rodham Clinton




Hillary Rodham Clinton
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United States Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is currently serving as the 67th Secretary of State in the Obama Administration. She was a Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009, and ran for the Democratic Primaries in 2008. She was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001 as wife of President Bill Clinton whom she married in 1975.

Early Life

Hillary Clinton was born Hillary Diane Rodham to Hugh Ellsworth Rodham and Dorothy Emma Howell in Chicago, Illinois on Oct. 26, 1947. She has two younger brothers, Hugh Rodham and Tony Rodham. Her parents, who were United Methodist's who moved the family to Park Ridge, Illinois when Hillary was three-years-old. Her father operated a small business in the textile industry[1] while her mother was a homemaker.[2]

Early Political Activism

Growing up in a politically conservative household, Hillary began working for the Republican party from the age of thirteen. However during her college years, prompted by events such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, she changed her political views by the late 1960's. She left the Republican Party for good in 1968.

Law School & Career

Hillary majored in political science at Wellesley Collge in 1965 before entering Yale Law School where her research focused on children and the law.

Marriage to Bill Clinton

In late Spring, 1971, Hillary began dating Bill Clinton who was also studying law at Yale. In 1974, following repeated requests from Bill Clinton to marry him, Hillary accepted. They were married on Oct. 11, 1975 in the Rodham's living room. On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea, her only child.

Moving left

Hillary Clinton grew up as a Goldwater Republican, like her father, in the middle-class Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. By the time she was a freshman at Wellesley, when she was elected president of the College Republicans, her concern with civil rights and the war in Vietnam put her closer to the moderate-liberal wing of the GOP led by Nelson Rockefeller. By her junior year, she had to be talked by her professor into taking an internship with Rep. Gerald R. Ford and the House Republican Caucus. In her senior year, she was campaigning for the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy.
"I sometimes think that I didn't leave the Republican Party," she has written, "as much as it left me."[3]

Schecter connection

Alan H. Schecter, far left Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Wellesley College served as Hillary Clinton's senior thesis advisor, and directed the Wellesley in Washington internship program in which she participated as a student. [4]

Alinsky friendship

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Alinsky Thesis

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The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, was on the work of Chicago radical Saul Alinsky.
The Clintons who asked Wellesley in 1993 to hide Hillary Rodham's senior thesis from the first generation of Clinton biographers, according to her thesis adviser and friend, professor Alan H. Schechter, who describes taking the call from the White House. "A stupid political decision."
Wellesley's president, Nannerl Overholser Keohane, approved a broad rule with a specific application: The senior thesis of every Wellesley alumna is available in the college archives for anyone to read -- except for those written by either a "president or first lady of the United States."
So far, that action has sealed precisely one document: Hillary Rodham’s senior honors thesis in political science, entitled " ‘There Is Only the Fight...’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model."
Rodham took her thesis title — “There Is Only the Fight...” — from T.S. Eliot:
"There is only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again."
She began with a feminist jab at the clichés of male authors: "Although I have no ‘loving wife’ to thank for keeping the children away while I wrote, I do have many friends and teachers who have contributed to the process of thesis-writing.” She thanks particularly “Mr. Alinsky for providing a topic, sharing his time and offering me a job.”[5]

Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein

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Hillary Rodham served a:) clerkship in 1971 at one of America's most radical law firms, San Francisco based Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.
One partner at the firm, Doris Brin Walker, was a lifelong Communist Party USA member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America's most "dangerously subversive" lawyers. The Oakland-based firm was renowned for taking clients others rejected as too controversial, including Communists, draft resisters, and members of the African-American militant group known as the Black Panther Party. The other partner Malcolm Burnstein, maintained a lifetime commitment to radical causes.
The firm was involved in a volatile Black Panthers case the summer Mrs. Clinton worked there: the trial of Huey Newton for the 1967 killing of an Oakland police officer. Treuhaft represented a Newton associate whose role in the trial may have helped Newton win a series of mistrials and, eventually, the dismissal of all charges related to the officer's death.
Partners at the firm said it was likely Mrs. Clinton also worked on politically sensitive cases involving a Berkeley student activist denied admission to the California bar over incendiary rhetoric, Stanford physician interns fighting a loyalty oath at the Veterans Administration, and men claiming conscientious objector status to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Mrs. Clinton's only public recollection of her work at the Treuhaft firm is that she handled a child custody matter.
Mrs. Clinton's most vivid memories from that summer may be personal ones that have nothing to do with the law firm with which she clerked. A fellow Yale law student, President Clinton, shared the Berkeley apartment where she was staying. The pair soon got serious and would move in together when they returned to New Haven that fall.
Mrs. Clinton's decision to work at the Treuhaft firm was rooted in the turbulence, chaos and radicalism that buffeted Yale after she entered law school there in 1969. Most campuses saw their share of foment, but Yale saw more than its share in the spring of 1970 because of the impending criminal trial in New Haven of a Black Panthers' leader, Bobby Seale, and several co-defendants, for kidnapping and murdering another member of the Panthers. Many, including Yale's president at the time, doubted that Seale and other black militants could get a fair trial. As students prepared for a national student strike on May Day 1970, a suspicious fire broke out in the basement of a Yale law library.
Mrs. Clinton has written about joining a "bucket brigade to put out" the library fire and about organizing round-the-clock patrols in the wake of the blaze.
Ultimately, the May Day protest turned Yale into an armed camp, occupied by thousands of soldiers, but the event yielded little of the feared violence. That came three days later at Kent State University in Ohio when National Guard soldiers shot and killed four students protesting the Vietnam War.
The Black Panthers' trial didn't actually begin until the fall. During the lead-up, Seale's attorney, Charles Garry of San Francisco, became a regular presence in the courtyards at Yale Law School.
At some point, Treuhaft and his wife, Jessica Mitford, passed through New Haven and threw a party to raise money for the Panthers' defense. According to Gail Sheehy's biography of Mrs. Clinton, "Hillary's Choice," the future senator attended the Treuhaft-Mitford party. Many have surmised that this event laid the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton's clerkship at Treuhaft's law office.
One of Treuhaft's partners, Malcolm Burnstein, said Mrs. Clinton's internship was arranged by a national student group. "She was sent to us by the Law Students' Civil Rights Research Council," Mr. Burnstein told the Sun. The group also paid Mrs. Clinton during her summer at the firm, he said. It is possible Mrs. Clinton selected the Treuhaft firm and then arranged funding through the council. That's how she set up her first law-school summer internship working with the future founder of the Children's Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman.
Mrs. Clinton's only public recollection of her stint at the Treuhaft firm came in her 2003 memoir, "Living History."
"I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland, California and he announced that he would like to go with me," she wrote. "I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case."
A review of some of Mr. Burnstein's legal files now at the archives of the University of California at Berkeley shows that the Treuhaft firm also handled two major cases in mid-1971 involving political dissent. One involved a protest leader who was elected Berkeley student body president, Daniel Siegel.
Mr. Siegel passed his the bar exam in 1970, but his admission was blocked on grounds that he was morally unfit. He was criminally charged with inciting the 1969 "People's Park" riot, which left one man dead, others injured, and hundreds arrested.
Mr. Siegel was acquitted of that charge, but bar officials said his statements prior to the riot and thereafter indicated he was not suited to be an attorney. They also asked him if he was a Communist, which he denied.
Mr. Burnstein appealed the bar committee's rejection to the California Supreme Court, arguing that Mr. Siegel was being punished for his political beliefs. The court eventually sided with Mr. Siegel, who joined the bar in November 1973.
Two other dissenters whose case was pending during Mrs. Clinton's summer at the Treuhaft firm were Peter Cummings and Peter Rudd. Both were medical students from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio who won internships at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. On arriving at Stanford, they discovered they were required to fill out loyalty oaths to do a required rotation at the nearby Veterans Administration hospital. "It was the typical, 'Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?'" Dr. Cummings recalled in a recent interview. He said he and Dr. Rudd were not Communists, but chafed at signing the oath. "I've always been very annoyed by and not a fan of this kind of loyalty oath," Dr. Cummings said.
Through the American Civil Liberties Union, the pair became clients of Mr. Burnstein. In the ensuing legal challenges, which went before riders of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals at least twice, the government argued that disloyal medical students might try to kill unsuspecting veterans who sought medical treatment. Mr. Burnstein prevailed and the loyalty oath for Veterans Administration doctors soon wound up as a footnote of history.
As Mrs. Clinton left the Treuhaft firm in 1971, one of its partners was gearing up for the defense of a Communist and black revolutionary, Angela Davis, against murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges stemming from a 1970 shootout that left a California judge dead. Ms. Walker became the resident Communist on Ms. Davis's legal team. "I was asked by the Party to participate in Angela's case," the lawyer said. She said no one else at the law firm, including Mrs. Clinton, worked on Ms. Davis's case.
At the trial, held in 1972 at San Jose, the Treuhaft firm's winning record held up again. A jury acquitted the polarizing African-American activist of all charges.
By the time Mrs. Clinton arrived at the Treuhaft firm in 1971, its reputation as a defender of left-wingers and radicals was well established. Indeed, those at the firm assumed that reputation drew the Yale law student in.
"She did want to work for a left-wing movement law firm. Anyone who went to college or law school would have known our law firm was a Communist law firm," Treuhaft told Ms. Sheehy in 1999.
"This was an old-left, radical law firm," a staff attorney there during Mrs. Clinton's summer, David Nawi, said. "Treuhaft was suing the police and doing wonderful work with the black community in East Oakland before anybody else."
A Yale Law student who worked as a clerk at the firm the summer before Mrs. Clinton arrived, Mary Nichols, said Treuhaft was open about his stint in the Communist Party. "Treuhaft, he himself was proud of having been a Communist at one time. This was not something that they hid in any way. They were not people stockpiling dynamite. They were a respectable law firm, but still you knew they had experimented in that kind of way," she said.
Mr. Siegel, the Berkeley protester-turned-lawyer, said committed student leftists in 1971 would have viewed the firm's Communist connections as quaint, perhaps even conservative. "We almost universally thought Communist Party people were sellouts," he said. "People of my generation who were getting involved were Marxists, Maoists, even Trotskyists. The Communist Party was pretty unpopular, unless your parents were in it."
The details of Treuhaft's membership in the Communist Party were not formally disclosed until 1977, when his wife, Jessica Mitford, published a humorous memoir of their years in the Communist ranks. In "A Fine Old Conflict," she reported that her husband signed up in 1943 and that she followed in 1944. Both left the party in 1958, she wrote.
Ms. Walker joined the party in 1942. "I'm still a Marxist, and that's why I stayed in," she said.
While many American Communists quit the party in disgust in 1956 following the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Josef Stalin's crimes, those events do not seem to have been the impetus for the departure of Treuhaft and Mitford, who stayed on for another two years.
A journalist who edited a recently published collection of Mitford's letters, Peter Sussman, said the couple's falling out with the American Communist Party was driven largely by its unyielding bureaucracy.
"She was bored with it," Mr. Sussman said. "It was ineffective. She had worked to reform it and that was unsuccessful, and to give the American party some autonomy from Soviet Communism."
Mr. Sussman said Mitford, who died in 1996, was also "bitterly disappointed" about a decision the party made to cut ties with a group dedicated to resolving racial inequities in America, the Civil Rights Congress.
A collection of Mitford's letters indicates that Republican political operatives knew about Mrs. Clinton's work at Treuhaft's firm months before the 1992 election, but apparently chose not to raise it despite her prominence in her husband's presidential campaign. In a July 4, 1992 letter to a veteran civil rights activist, Virginia Durr, Mitford wrote, "There was a v. long article in Vanity Fair by Gail Sheehy, an interview with Hillary in which every detail of her life from childhood on was explored — no mention of the internship in Bob's law office. Quite right, I thought, as obviously if that came out it would be prime meat for the Bush campaign."
Mr. Burnstein said he, Treuhaft, and Ms. Walker agreed upon learning of Mr. Clinton's presidential bid not to talk publicly about Mrs. Clinton's clerkship because they anticipated it would become fodder for Mr. Clinton's opponents.
"We expected it," Mr. Burnstein said. "We were very carefully not talking to the press back then. ... We did not want her being unfairly tarred with someone else's politics. Hillary's politics were not Bob's politics, which were not Doris's politics, which were not mine."
"For Hillary to pick the most left-wing firm really at that time in the Bay Area, it's still a surprise to me that more hasn't been made of that," Ms. Walker said. "It was such an obvious thing for them to pick up, but they didn't, and I've never understood it."[6]

Bernard Rapoport connection

As Texas swung from a Democratic stronghold to an increasingly Republican and conservative state, Marxist leaning businessman Bernard Rapoport continued to support liberal Democrats and their causes, both with his money and his extensive national political connections. His contributions to George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign put Mr. Rapoport on one of President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies lists; contributions to the presidential campaigns of both Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton helped nourish a 40-year friendship. Mr. Clinton was scheduled to deliver a eulogy at a memorial service in May 2012, in Washington DC.[7]

Children's Defense Fund

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New World Foundation

Hillary Clinton writes about her involvement with the Children’s Defense Fund, headed by Marian Wright Edelman, but omits any mention of the New World Foundation (NWF). Hillary followed Edelman’s husband, Peter Edelman, as chairman of the NWF. Mrs. Clinton chaired the group during a time, 1982-1988, when it gave grants to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, a front group for the communist terrorists; the National Lawyers Guild, a one-time-identified communist front; and the Christic Institute, an extreme left-wing group of lawyers which practiced “legal terrorism” against citizens, retired military and intelligence officials, and others who were perceived to be supporting the cause of freedom from communism in Central America.
Peter Flaherty writes, “Hillary’s official biography prepared by the ’92 Clinton campaign makes no mention of her stint as NWF chairman, despite the fact that she oversaw some $23 million in foundation assets. A few journalists, like Dan Wattenberg of The American Spectator, did report on the NWF grants during the summer of 1992, but the major media paid almost no attention. There was no need for Hillary to defend herself.”[8]

Bill's radical friends

Hillary Clinton also took advantage of Bill Clinton’s radical connections, many developed in his trips abroad. Strobe Talbott and Bill Clinton had been Rhodes Scholars in England together, for example, and Talbott and his wife, Brooke Shearer, “became friends of mine,” she writes. Brooke’s brother, Derek Shearer, another Yale graduate, became a friend of Bill and pro-Marxist economic advisor to Bill Clinton.[9]

Single-payer Bill

In 1994 Jim McDermott, John Conyers and Paul Wellstone promoted a "single-payer" health care bill (HR1200/S491).[10] Ellen Shaffer, a member of Wellstone's staff told the People's Weekly World that the authors had been "working closely" with Hillary Clinton. "She knows what they are doing" Shaffer said.[11]

Alamoudi connection

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FALN amnesty

Several U.S. lawmakers have championed a domestic terrorist group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (known by its Spanish initials of FALN) that seeks to impose a Marxist-Leninist regime on Puerto Rico and secede from the United States.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the FALN planted more than 130 bombs and killed at least six people. Reps. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), all left-wingers of Puerto Rican ancestry, embraced the cause of 16 convicted FALN members serving time in federal prison. Serrano called them "political prisoners," according to the People's Weekly World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA.
They campaigned to pressure then-president Bill Clinton to issue pardons to free the radicals, even though the terrorists themselves had not requested that their sentences be commuted. When Clinton agreed to grant them clemency in August 1999, Serrano blasted him for requiring them to renounce violence as a precondition of their release.
That presidential action caused problems for then-first lady Hillary Clinton, who was about to begin her campaign to become a U.S. senator. "President Clinton made his decision to release the FALN terrorists at the same time his wife was campaigning for the Senate in New York," the Senate Republican Policy Committee reported in a policy paper.
"Many commentators believe he hoped to win votes for his wife from the large Hispanic population in New York City. However, law-enforcement groups and victims'-rights groups were outraged, and his clemency offer did not poll well in New York state. His wife then opposed the granting of clemency, and the president denied that she was in any way involved in the decision."
The clemency offer did not otherwise fit the pattern of Clinton's behavior, the committee noted: "The president had only granted three out of the more than 4,000 clemency requests during his presidency." The terrorists didn't even ask for clemency, and in granting it Clinton "did not follow the procedures that have been in place since Grover Cleveland was president," granting it "even though the Justice Department did not take an official position as required."
Ninety-five senators condemned Clinton's action, voting in a resolution that "the president's offer of clemency to the FALN terrorists violates long-standing tenets of United States counterterrorism policy, and the release of terrorists is an affront to the rule of law, the victims and their families, and every American who believes that violent acts must be punished to the fullest extent of the law."
A joint congressional resolution declared that "making concessions to terrorists is deplorable," and that "President Clinton should not have granted amnesty to the FALN terrorists."
Hillary Clinton changed her position, but not two of her colleagues-to-be. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) were the minority of two standing on the far left with the amnesty. [12]

FMLN

San Salvador, June 1 -- Nearly two decades after the end of a U.S.-backed war against El Salvador's rebels, a representative of the former guerrilla movement took power on Monday -- with a top American official applauding.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the inauguration dressed in bright red, the color of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front. It was an image that would have been unthinkable in the 1980s, when the United States poured $6 billion into El Salvador to fight the rebel group backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union.
The FMLN laid down its arms in 1992 and joined the political system. But some U.S. lawmakers still worry about the party, fearing it could propel El Salvador into the orbit of anti-American countries such as Venezuela. Forty-five House Republicans wrote Clinton in March warning about "potential threats to our security interests" if the FMLN candidate, Mauricio Funes, won.
Clinton, however, told reporters here that she expects "a positive relationship" with Funes, who is considered by many Latin Americans to be a moderate. Her visit signaled the Obama administration's effort to reach out to a more assertive Latin America altered by a "pink tide" of socialist victories in recent years.
After meeting with Funes , Clinton told him: "The United States stands ready to assist you and your new government. This is a commitment President Obama and I share."
"The secretary wants to engage Funes, because we don't want him moving all the way to the left," said Rep. Elio Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, who was with the U.S. delegation.
El Salvador has been one of the staunchest U.S. allies in Latin America, maintaining troops in Iraq until this year. Funes immediately signaled a departure from his predecessors, announcing the resumption of diplomatic ties with Cuba. Still, the new government is expected to maintain a strong relationship with the United States. El Salvador receives $4 billion a year from immigrants in Washington and other U.S. cities, and it sells half its exports to the U.S. market.
In his inaugural speech at an amphitheater packed with men in red ties and women in red jackets, Funes hailed his two political heroes: President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, a moderate leftist, and President Obama.
The men, he said, were "proof that progressive leaders, instead of being a threat, represent a new and secure road for their countries."
He also singled out Clinton, saying: "This woman honors America."
Some opponents of Funes had predicted he would cozy up to populist leaders in Venezuela and Nicaragua and introduce socialism. But the only revolution promised by the 49-year-old former broadcast journalist was one against corruption and poverty.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega had been expected to attend, but did not.
Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said the FMLN has a democratic track record, holding many mayor's offices and congressional seats in recent years. "The FMLN has been part of the architecture of representative democracy in El Salvador. El Salvador's resemblance to other countries in Latin America governed by the populist left are quite minimal," she said.
Funes, however, will likely face pressure to shift further to the left from others in the FMLN, including his vice president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, analysts said.
Funes's inauguration was deeply emotional for many Salvadorans who suffered through the 12-year civil war, which left 75,000 dead. "We fought the battle so we could have this change," said Cecilia Hermin Navarro, 68, a tiny woman in a red shirt who said she was tortured by police during the conflict.
"So many people died so this day could come," said Fernando Aguilar, a 28-year-old government employee. Clinton's presence, he said, "breaks the paradigm that the United States had in the past, that if the left wins, the U.S. closes the door."[13]

Terrorist pardon

Joseph Connor, an author and anti-terrorism advocate, spoke to The Daily Wire about how his father was murdered by a Puerto Rican terrorist group, and how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was directly involved in pardoning the terrorists.
"When Hillary Clinton was looking to run for senator of New York, she had no connection to New York at all. She was from Chicago to Arkansas," Connor said. "And she got approached by various pro-terrorist politicians."
These included Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), and New York City councilman Jose Rivera, who gave Clinton "a packet on clemency" and requested that she "speak to the president and ask him to consider executive clemency" for the FALN. A couple of weeks later, clemency was granted to the terrorists and Clinton's Senate campaign expressed support for the move so long as the terrorists renounced violence.
"She was up to her ears in this," Connor said.[14]

2000 WFP Convention

The New York Working Families Party 2000 Convention was held at the Desmond Hotel, March 26.
Attendees included;
There were sizable delegations from ACORN and Citizen Action.[15]

Clinton and communists helped Kucinich

During Dennis Kucinich's 1996 Congressional run, there was considerable controversy over his ties to Communist Party USA member Rick Nagin. Writing in the Communist Party USA paper People's Weekly World Ohio Communist Party chairman, Rick Nagin, detailed the campaign which led to Kucinich's election to Congress:[16]
"The election of Dennis Kucinich in Ohio's 10th Congressional District was a ground-breaking event demonstrating the powerful political potential of a mass, grassroots coalition led by Labor.
Trade unionists and seniors provided the largest numbers of some 5,000 volunteers but many others came from Hispanic, environmental, peace and other organizations.
According to the campaign staff, the volunteers canvassed at least 600 of the district's 750 precincts, some as many as four times. They turned the western half of Cuyahoga County and especially the west side of Cleveland into a sea of 15,000 bright yellow yard signs reading "Light Up Congress! Elect Dennis Kucinich" -[16]
Many organizations also issued their own literature and did their own mailings including the AFL-CIO's Labor '96, the UAW CAP Council, the Sierra Club, Peace Voter '96, gay rights and senior groups. The United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers did plantgate distributions. The Ohio Council of Senior Citizens distributed 12,000 pieces with the positions of Kucinich and his opponent, incumbent Martin Hoke, on senior issues to senior buildings, nutrition sites and bingo games.
Then First Lady Clinton, Congressmen Louis Stokes, Joseph Kennedy and Barney Frank also helped out.
"The coalition embraced many political viewpoints: Democrats, independents, Greens, socialists, Communists, members of the Labor Party, even some disgruntled Republicans. Democratic Party figures, including First Lady Hillary Clinton, Congressmen Louis Stokes, Joseph Kennedy and Barney Frank visited Cleveland to help in the effort."[17]

Take Back America Conferences

Hillary Clinton was on the list of 114 speakers (which included George Soros) at the 2004 Take Back America conference, which was organized by the Institute for Policy Studies, and Democratic Socialists of America dominated Campaign for America's Future.[18]
She was back in 2006, 2007.

Arafat connection

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Admiration for Cesar Chavez

On April 1, 2008 Evelina Alarcon, Executive Director of Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday welcomed the backing for a Cesar Chavez national holiday from Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama who issued a statement on Cesar Chavez’s birthday Monday, March 31, 2008. "We at Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday appreciate the backing of a national holiday for Cesar Chavez from presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. That support is crucial because it takes the signature of a President to establish the holiday along with the Congress’s approval,” stated Evelina Alarcon. “It is also encouraging that Senator Hillary Clinton who is a great admirer of Cesar Chavez acknowledged him on his birthday. We hope that she too will soon state her support for a Cesar Chavez national holiday."
Alarcon’s remarks were part of a statement made at a press conference at our nation’s Capitol on April 1st called by Chair of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) in support of HR 76, a resolution he authored with 62 Co-Sponsors that encourages the establishment of a Cesar Chavez national holiday by the Congress[19]

China connection

Less than a week after a Chinese Feng Yun rocket littered space with the remnants of their weather satellite, Hillary Clinton announced her intention to seek the Democrats' presidential nomination in 2008. She forgot to mention that when husband Bill was seeking the presidency, she ran with him, as an unofficial partner-president. "Two for the price of one!" was the slogan.
The Clinton administration and his Democratic Party accepted massive campaign contributions from Loral Space & Communications, Hughes Electronics and other firms. Between 1993 and 1996, the administration allowed the export of ballistic- missile technology to Beijing. In 1996, Bill Clinton personally approved the launch of four communications satellites on Chinese rockets.
Once Hillary captured her U.S. Senate seat, she received, in 2003, $10,000 from the New York state company, Corning Inc., which manufactures fiber optics. A month later, the senator announced legislation related to reducing diesel pollution that would benefit Corning with millions of federal dollars.
Corning increased its donations and, by 2004, Hillary was attempting to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning's products.
To get what she wanted, she involved the Chinese ambassador and President George W. Bush. As a result, Corning, a staunchly Republican company, held a fundraiser for her, resulting in thousands of dollars for her campaign.
As Hillary Clinton campaigns, she will expect the usual adulation from union members who have forgotten that from 1986 until 1992 "their Hillary" served on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, the union-busting behemoth that does more business with China than all but four countries in the world.
Then there is Hillary's good friend and relative-by-marriage, Sen. Barbara Boxer, whose husband Stewart is a board member of the China Ocean Shipping Organization. Barbara's colleague, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is married to the owner of Newbridge Capital Corp., Richard C. Blum, who has made many millions in very lucrative deals with the Chinese government.[20]

Vietnam visit

July 2010's visit to Vietnam by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be a great opportunity to renew and expand the US government's response to addressing the legacy of Agent Orange, said a senior official from the Aspen Institute, a Washington DC-based non-profit organization.
At a news briefing on Agent Orange in Vietnam , which was held in Washington DC on July 15 by the Agent Orange in Vietnam Information Initiative, David Devlin-Foltz said that Clinton had been briefed on the declaration and plan of action for period 2010 to 2019 released by the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group.
The plan calls upon the US government and other countries, foundations and non- governmental organizations, to provide an estimated 300 million USD over 10 years to clean the dioxin-contaminated soil and restore damaged ecosystems, as well as expanding services to people with disabilities and their families that are linked to the dioxin.
Devlin-Foltz said he expected that the US officials will discuss the Agent Orange issue in private meetings with Vietnamese government officials.
He said he hoped that the Secretary of State would encourage more involvement from the US government to see a more dramatic response to the Agent Orange problem as the relationship between both countries is improving.
According to him, the Agent Orange issue has been an irritant to the country's relationship with Vietnam for many years, but the time has come to remedy this as it
He added that members of the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group know there are real opportunities to work to contain the spread of the dioxin; opportunities to stop the dioxin entering the local food chain; ways of restoring damaged agricultural land and ways of providing effective rehabilitation services to people with disabilities, regardless of the cost.
Also at the news briefing, Bob Edgar, a former congressman and currently head of the Common Cause organization in the US, said that he believed it was important to recognise that several senators, including Senator Tom Harkin, who was just in Vietnam last week, Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others have stated that they recognise that wars do not end just when the last soldier leaves the battlefield.
Edgar said that this is not only an opportunity for the US to both work to expand its partnership with the Vietnamese government, but also to work to address issues relating to Agent Orange in Vietnam.[21]

Support from Individuals

Hilda Solis & Dolores Huerta

In 2007 Hilda Solis, current Secretary of Labor, endorsed Sen. Clinton for president and signed on to co-chair of the Clinton campaign’s Environmental and Energy Task Force and co-chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Council.
Solis was joined by her friend and Democratic Socialists of America honorary chair, Dolores Huerta. Solis and Huerta had the honor of formally nominating Clinton for the Democratic primary.
Together Huerta and Solis campaigned for Clinton through California and Nevada on a tour themed "Juntos Con Hillary, Una Vida Mejor" (Together with Hillary, A Better Life).

Megan Hull

Between Feb. 2, 2008 and August 28, 2008, Megan Hull contributed $6,900 to Hillary Clinton's 2008 Presidential Nomination race.[22]

Sheinbaum

Stanley Sheinbaum has many influential friends on the U.S. left.
His walls are adorned with framed photos with Fidel Castro, King Hussein, Barbra Streisand and other world leaders and A-list celebrities.[23]
Key political players such as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Queen Noor of Jordan and former Sen. Gary Hart, have made the pilgrimage to his Westside salons in search of intellectual stimulation and money for their pet causes -- sometimes their own political campaigns.
"Sheinbaum keeps the New Deal torch alive in an age when it's not fashionable to do so," said former senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, a longtime friend. "He's a voice of conscience."
For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton is the woman she met 35 years ago (2016) , a young mother cradling her infant daughter at a dinner party at the home of Hollywood activist Stanley Sheinbaum.
“I was expecting to meet this formidable, firm woman,” she said in an interview. “When the door opened ... there was Hillary Clinton off to the side holding Chelsea in her arms. There she was as a mom.”[24]

George Soros

By 2008, Barack Obama was one of only a handful of candidates to get a personal contribution from George Soros. The others include Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.[25]

Huma Abedin relationship

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Support from Organizations

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 Hillary Rodham Clinton in her successful Senate run as candidate for New York.[26]

Planned Parenthood

Clinton received $1837 in lobbying funds from Planned Parenthood in 2008.[27]

EMILY's List

Clinton has been supported by EMILY's List during her campaigning.

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

The 700,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, one of the nation’s largest and most politically active trade unions, endorsed New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton for President. They also took the unusual step of endorsing a Republican candidate for the primaries, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

The OIC connection

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The Istanbul Process

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Obama appointment

In January 2009, Clinton was nominated by the Obama administration for the position of Secretary in the Department of State and confirmed in January 2009.[28]

Iran lobby

Kirsten Gillibrand had also picked up money from the Iran Lobby’s Hassan Nemazee. Namazee was Hillary Clinton’s national campaign finance director who had raised a fortune for both her and John Kerry before pleading guilty to a fraud scheme encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars. Nemazee had been an Iranian American Political Action Committee trustee and had helped set up the organization.
Bill Clinton had nominated Hassan Nemazee as the US ambassador to Argentina when he had only been a citizen for two years. A "spoilsport Senate" didn’t allow Clinton to make a member of the Iran Lobby into a US ambassador, but Nemazee remained a steady presence on the Democrat fundraising circuit.
Nemazee had donated to Gillibrand and had also kicked in money to help the Al Franken Recount Fund "scour all the cemeteries for freshly dead votes", as well as to Barbara Boxer, who also came out for the Iran nuke deal. Boxer had also received money more directly from IAPAC. [29]

Meeting McAllister

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with convicted Irish terrorist Malachy McAllister at the Clinton rally in New York April 2016.
After the meeting McAllister stated, “She was shocked to hear that my case is still going on, that it hasn’t been settled,” McAllister told the on Irish Voice newspaper.
“She remembered me from my speaking at a Brehon Law Society event in 2004. She was very surprised that I’m facing deportation.”
She is one of many US influential figures to call for justice in the McAllister case. Irish American organizations are increasingly angry over the enforced deportation of a good and decent man who has been a valued member of the Irish community for over two decades.[30]

Meeting Wing

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October 30, 2015, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Caesar Mitchell, Butch Wing.

Barack Obama and 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 organized 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

Hyde Park Herald, February 1996
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.

From The Activist
Chicago activist Adrian Bleifuss Prados, of Democratic Socialists of America youth wing, the Young Democratic Socialists wrote on their blog The Activist January 29, 2008, on the relationship between Obama, and Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. Prados describes Schakowsky as "DSA friendly", but she has in fact been a paid up member of the organization.
Barack has some real left-wing street cred in Chicago. He is probably the only person running for president who could identify, say, Antonio Gramsci, and that should count for something shouldn’t it?
He has often attacked for being less outspoken than the Senior Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, but Obama actually takes his cues from Durbin who, along with DSA-friendly Jan Schakowsky, has been his main political sponsor.

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
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

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In 2000, Rabbi Arnold Jacob 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

Wishing Tim Carpenter well

Around December 2013, while coping with his cancer, long time DSAer Tim Carpenter's daughter ran up to him with an envelope from the White House that had arrived in the mailbox of the family's Florence, Massachusetts, home. When they opened it, there was a note from President Barack Obama, wishing Tim well while celebrating his resilience.[27]

Take Back America Conferences

Senator Barack Obama, founder New American Agenda Project, was on the list of 129 speakers at the 2005 Take Back America conference, which was organized by the Institute for Policy Studies, and Democratic Socialists of America dominated Campaign for America's Future.[28]
Obama spoke again in 2006,2007.

21st Century Democrats support

21st Century Democrats is a Political Action Committee that has stood for Progressive causes for over 20 years. Founded in 1986 by Institute for Policy Studies affiliate, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, Democratic Socialists of America affiliates, former Texas Agriculture Secretary Jim Hightower, and former Illinois Congressman Lane Evans. Its three main goals are to help elect progressive candidates, train young people about grassroots organizing, and lastly, to continue to support our elected officials after Election Day "through our comprehensive progressive network".
Long time Board chair was Democratic Socialists of America member Jim Scheibel, a former Mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The mission of 21st Century Democrats is to build a "farm team" of progressive populists who will be the future leaders of the Democratic Party.
In each election cycle, we endorse a diverse array of candidates who exemplify our values and show unusual promise to advance our progressive goals. We invest in some of the most competitive races as well as in some of the most challenging – those in which the candidates are outstanding but the traditional Democratic supporters are most reticent. We back candidates in primaries as well as general election races, and we focus the bulk of our resources on electing challengers and protecting vulnerable incumbents.[29]
Barack was endorsed by 21st Century Democrats in the 2004 election cycle. [30]

Save Our Security Illinois Coalition

In 2005, left opposition to Social Security privatization was organized in Illinois around the Save Our Security Illinois Coalition, which included Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. The Coalition’s first action in Illinois was a 90-person picket line outside the downtown Chicago offices of the Charles Schwab brokerage, a major advocate of privatization. A town hall meeting, with an overflow crowd of 400, on February 28 at Loyola University’s Water Tower campus featured Senators Richard Durbin and Barack Obama and Representative Jan Schakowsky. There was also a major rally in April.[31]

Consulting Eliseo Medina on Immigration

Obama addresses SEIU members, September 17, 2007
On September 17, 2007, Obama spoke at the SEIU Member Political Action Conference which was held from September 16 - 18, 2007. At the conference he stated (video to the right),
"Before debating health care, I talked to Andy Stern and SEIU members. Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I talked with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members."
Medina serves as an honorary chair of Democratic Socialists of America.

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[32].

Supporting Obama in '08

Most Democratic SA locals committed themselves fully[33] 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[34]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.

Obama appointments-DSA connected

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

Supporting hunger strikers

Obama, with Eliseo Medina
President Barack Obama told about 20 hunger strikers on the National Mall on Nov. 29 2013, that he supported their effort to pressure House Republicans to overhaul immigration laws but was concerned about their health.
Three of the protesters, including labor leader and Democratic Socialists of America member Eliseo Medina, 67, have not eaten for 18 days and are drinking only water. Obama and his wife, Michelle, met with the group for about 30 minutes in a heated tent near the steps of the Capitol to discuss the immigration bill that has stalled in the House.
"He was really concerned about our health," said Christian Avila, 23, a student from Arizona who stopped eating on Nov. 12. "He said we might think about handing the torch over ... and taking a break."
Avila — who wore a brown hooded sweat shirt that read "Act. Fast." — said he planned to avoid eating as long as he could. Obama told the group that he had instructed his staff to figure out what else they can do to get an immigration bill to his desk. He said he believes Congress eventually will change the law to allow people in the country without documentation to work and live legally in the U.S.
"It's not a mater of if, but when," the president said, according to Avila.
The hunger strikers also have been visited by Vice President Joe Biden, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. Two House Republicans from California, Jeff Denham and David Valadao, who support passing an immigration bill in the House, also have stopped by.
Shortly after the Obamas' visit, one time DSA member Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, stopped by to sit with the fasters. In 1968, shortly before he was assassinated, her father visited Cesar Chavez in Delano, Calif., where the labor leader was fasting to bring attention to the working conditions of farmworkers.
"There is a moral quality to what kind of country we are," Townsend said after meeting with the protesters. "That is what my father believed.... This is about real people and their lives."[35]

European Socialist ties

The Party of European Socialists dialogue with the US Democrats and the Transatlantic partnership "was a priority over the last years" (written in 2009).
Delegations, meetings and exchanges of information were held on a regular basis.
PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen attended Inauguration Day, on 20 January 2009 in Washington D.C., with the Oaths of Office to President-elect Barack Obama and to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.[36]