From: Trevor Loudon at http://www.newzeal.blogspot.com
Obama file 82 here
Two big questions hang over President Obama’s radical “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones.
Is he still a communist?
Is he a security threat?
Many have assumed that Van Jones’ committment to communism ended when the organization he helped to lead STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) dissolved in 2002.
Yet a 2004 treatise Reclaiming Revolution: History, Summation, and Lessons from the Work of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement written and endorsed by a majority of former STORM members makes it clear that most ex STORMers are still committed to the revolutionary movement;
From page 49.
When the last sixteen STORM members decided to dissolve, each committed as an individual revolutionary to helping this emerging trend continue to consolidate..
Some are building organizations in working class communities of color…Some are promoting revolutionary ideas. Some are developing revolutionary cadre…
Some are finding other ways to serve the people
Most former STORM members are still active in San Francisco or New York. The STORM created or staffed organisations Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, POWER, SOUL, FIERCE, War Times and Women of Color Resource Center all all going strong and are still receiving mega-bucks from multiple left wing foundations.
All these organizations are still networked with former STORM associates such as Harmony Goldberg, Raquel Lavina, Maria Poblet, Adam Gold, Cindy Wiesner, Jason Negron-Gonzales, Mei-ying Williams or Steve Williams active in one group while serving on the board of another.
Most former Bay Area STORMers are working closely with cadre from the Communist Party USA offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS).
Van Jones himself has long worked with people from the CCDS orbit including Betita Martinez, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, Felicia Gustin and Bob Wing.
In February 2006, just over three years after STORM folded and just over three years before being appointed to his White House position, Van Jones was keynote speaker at a Committees of Correspondence fundraiser in Berkeley.
The second annual CCDS and Kendra Alexander Foundation Banquet will take place on Sunday, February 19 at the Redwood Gardens community room in Berkeley with Van Jones, a pioneering human rights activist known as a steadfast opponent of police brutality and mass incarceration, as keynote speaker.
Jones is now working to create environmentally friendly, “green-collar” jobs for formerly incarcerated persons.
The banquet is titled “Towards Building a Progressive Majority” and benefits the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and the Kendra Alexander Foundation. The Foundation was named in honor of the visionary leader of the Committees of Correspondence.
Maybe Jones didn’t realise he was addressing a Marxist-Leninist function? Maybe he thought it was a Rotary or PTA group?
Of even more concern are the close ties between STORM , the Bay Area CCDS, foreign communists and Cuba.
Venceremos Brigadistas entering US from Canada
According to “Reclaiming Revolution” page 37 several STORM members traveled to Cuba in 1999 as part of the notorious Venceremos Brigades.
One of the most formative “political education sessions” of this period was a group trip to Cuba in the summer of 1999.
Several STORM members participated in the Venceremos Brigade to see and support one of the world’s few surviving socialist states.
Members came back with a heightened understanding of both socialism and capitalism and a stronger commitment to red politics.
As STORM seldom exceeded 20 members, it is very likely that Van Jones, as a leader of the organisation was on that, or another, Cuba trip.
Surely a good question for some enterprising journalist?
Three STORM leaders also travelled to South Africa in 1998 for the South African Communist Party conference.
It is woth remembering that the Venceremos Brigades were founded in 1969 by Students for a Democratic Society radicals Carl Davidson and Tom Hayden.
Davidson and Tom Hayden take credit for having launched in 1969 the “Venceremos Brigades,” which covertly transported hundreds of young Americans to Cuba to help harvest sugar cane and interact with Havana’s communist revolutionary leadership. (The Brigades were organized by Fidel Castro’s Cuban intelligence agency, which trained “brigadistas” in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and explosives.)
Incidentally Hayden and Davidson were two of the five founders of a new organization in 2008-Progressives for Obama. Davidson has a personal history with Obama when they worked together in the Chicago New Party and in anti Iraq War activism.
STORM associate Mei-ying Ho traveled to Cuba with the 2004 Venceremos Brigade. Now married to another STORM associate Steve Williams, Mei-ying Williams is involved with the Women of Color Resource Center where she works with Linda Burnham and well known radical and CCDS leader Angela Davis.
Steve Williams, who has been to South Africa, Cuba and Venezuela, now runs POWER-People Organized to Win Employment Rights. He worked on the organizing committee of anti Iraq War magazine War Times with Van Jones, Betita Martinez, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, Felicia Gustin, Bob Wing and Adam Gold in the early 2000s.
In July 2009 Steve Williams represented POWER at the CCDS National Convention in San Francisco.
According to Carl Davidson-elected as one of CCDS’s four new co-leaders at the conference;
The panel featured responses to the “Democracy Charter” by Bill Fletcher, Jr., editor of Black Commentator, Michael Eisenscher of US Labor Against the War, Jacqueline Cabasso from Western States Legal Foundation, Frank del Campo from the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Steve Williams of People Organized to Win Employment Rights. Bill Fletcher, Jr. cast the Charter as a political and social guide for mass struggle.“
Jacqueline Cabasso is a Communist Party USA supporter, Bill Fletcher Jr is with Democratic Socialists of America and was with Davidson and Tom Hayden one of the five key founders of Progressives for Obama.
The conference attracted several international guests;
Helmut Scholz of Die Linke, Germany; Chris Matlhako of the Communist Party of South Africa, and Angela Davis of CCDS.
International guests included Chris Matlhako from the South African Communist Party and Marcos Garcia from the Venezuelan Embassy in DC gave a picture of protracted battles against neo-liberalism and their efforts to build and maintain unity on the left in their countries.
Helmut Scholz, a leader of Die Linke (The Left Party) of Germany, described the unity efforts between groups in East and West Germany that brought together its forerunner, the Party of Democratic Socialism, made up of the former East German Communists, and groupings of Left Social Democrats from the West. Their common task now, he explained, was making sure the burden of the capitalist crisis was not placed on the working class.
Jackeline Rivera, an FMLN deputy to the legislature of El Salvador, was warmly received. She revealed how, in their recent electoral victory, the FMLN saw two left groups break away, and the national unity efforts that followed.
Solidarity messages to CCDS were read ot from Cuba and Vietnam and “The Internationale” was sung.
Carl Davidson is of course also a big fan and promoter of Van Jones’ work.
Van Jones associates Linda Burnham, Bob Wing ,Betita Martinez, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, and Bob Wing are all veterans of the Venceremos Brigades or multiple trips to former East Bloc countries.
Jones’ friend and ally Betita Martinez was an early Cuban visitor;
In 1959, three months after the Cuban Revolution claimed victory, Martinez went to Cuba to witness a successful anti-colonial, socialist struggle. This trip to Cuba had a profound impact on her.”
In addition to Cuba, Martinez later traveled to the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Vietnam (during the war) and China to witness and observe how people were implementing socialism.
Another close ally, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz , worked in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigades and with other revolutionaries including the Students for a Democratic Society and its terrorist offshoot the Weather Underground. She also worked in London in the 1960s with the South African Communist Party controlled African National Congress.
Not to mention over a hundred trips to Nicaragua, mainly in Sandinista times.
There is also another Cuban connection that is possibly even more concerning.
When Van Jones ran the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the organization was very close to another Bay Area institution-DataCenter.
Founded by Jon Frappier, a former supporter of the Weather Underground Organization, Datacenter is essentially the intelligence hub of the US left.
The Oakland California based organisation provides strategic information & research training to communities advocating for dignity, justice & civil rights.”
According to a history published on DataCenter’s website;
1977
DataCenter—an activist library and publication center—is founded in affiliation with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) by Jon Frappier, Fred Goff, Loretta & Harry Strharsky and 40 dedicated volunteers.
Further DataCenter activities included;
1979
Establish Corporate Profile Project for clients such as United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations & customized research service for immigration attorneys representing Central Americans seeking political asylum.
1980
Publish press profiles, The Reagan File, on Ronald Reagan and his policies on labor, El Salvador, foreign policy, and military policy in Asia.
1983
Expand Search Service to include corporate accountability research to support community, labor, and corporate campaigns and political asylees from all over the world.
Incredibly DataCenter also admits to being an “information” gatherer for Cuban “institutions”.
1991
Launch the Cuba Project/Conexiones to respond to information needs of institutions in Cuba & facilitates information exchange between U.S. and Cuban colleagues for the next ten years
DataCenter’s ties to Jones’ Ella Baker Center are close. Diana Frappier who helped Jones establish and run the Center is believed to be a relative of Jon Frappier.
Celina Ramirez worked as a Policy Director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, 2006 and in 2006-2007 served on the DataCenter board.
In 2002 DataCenter celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a gala celebration honoring;
Youth United for Community Action, Southwest Organizing Project, and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Youth Force Coalition for their Books Not Bars campaign
This is the environment Van Jones sprang from. These are his “roots”.
Has Jones abandoned the values he held and the people he worked with up until a few months ago just because he now has more power, money and influence?
Working in the White House is (or should be) a high security job.
Van Jones now has access to all sorts of high level information and gossip.
He has President Obama’s ear on economic and social matters that could dramatically effect the US economy and eventually US military power and security.
Let’s just hope Van Jones has abandoned his core convictions and past associations in last 6 months shall we?
After all the Obama White House claims to have extensively vetted all appointments-so he must be OK.
End notes:
Glenn Beck is the ONLY MSM that is sending out this information weekdays at 5 PM on the Fox News channel.
WHERE ARE THE JOURNALISTS and the other MSM’s? Bought off? Intimidated? Threatened?
Extensive work has been done by Trevor Loudon; a New Zealander that observed something was “wrong” and started investigating Obama long ago.
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You mention Bill Fletcher, Jr. as editor of Black Commentator and with Democratic Socialists of America. He works at a much deeper level within the extreme left in the US. He’s perhaps the most public member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization – freedomroad.org (try searching his name on their website). FRSO is Maoist and supports violent revolution and a separate independent homeland for blacks within the boundaries of the current US. FRSO has worked quietly within the larger ‘progressive’ movement by infiltrating left leaning organizations. They try to control the direction of the movement behind the scenes. Fletcher was one of the founders of Progressives for Obama.
GOOD JOB! I am a former democratic activist now focused on building a business. Indeed, after 35 years of service, I have no more margin of time but that related to making a living.
Nevertheless, I write because your work is very important in documenting the growing concern by many Americans about the still repressed totalitarian nature of the Obama phenomenon.
I am copying a message I sent to my friends last October 2008 in connection with the presidential elections. I do so in case it is helpful in some way.
THE RECORDING BELOW WAS SENT TO MY ATTENTION BY MR. PEDRO DE CESPEDES. IT ADDRESSES BARACK OBAMA’S LINKS TO BILL AYERS AND OTHER EXTREMISTS.
BEFORE I AM ACCUSED OF PARANOIC TENDENCIES, PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT I SPENT MY PRODUCTIVE YEARS COMBATING COMMUNIST EXTREMISTS AND LEARNING ABOUT THEIR COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONAL TECHNIQUES.
IN FACT, I STARTED MY PROFESSIONAL CAREER WITH THE JOB TITLE OF “COMMUNITY ECONOMIC INDUSTRIAL PLANNER” INVOLVED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL ENTERPRISES IN BLACK AND HISPANIC NEIGHBORHOODS IN WASHINGTON, DC, AND BEFORE THAT, WHILE ALL MY PEERS WHERE COMPLETING THEIR POST GRADUATE STUDIES AND LAUNCHING CAREERS IN CORPORATE AMERICA, I SPENT FIVE YEARS AS A VOLUNTEER GRASS ROOTS ORGANIZER OF DEMOCRATIC YOUTH WORLDWIDE, IN CONNECTION WITH BRINGING FREEDOM TO CUBA.
MY POINT IS THAT I RELATE TO “COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS”, AND CAN UNDERSTAND THE SPIRIT, STRATEGIES, METHODOLOGIES, PROGRAMATIC INITIATIVES, SENSE OF MISSION AND TOTAL COMMITMENT IN WORKING FOR CHANGE. INDEED, TRANSFORMATIONAL SOCIETAL CHANGE IS BROUGHT FORTH BY ACTIVIST / ORGANIZERS. TO DISMISS WHAT A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER DOES, IS DISINGENUOUS.
THEREFORE, WHEN LISTENING TO THE PROGRAM RECORDING BELOW, I CANNOT HELP BUT TO RESTATE THAT I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THE POSSIBLE CONTAMINATION OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS BY EXTREMIST IDEOLOGUES UNDER A BARACK ADMINISTRATION.
SHOULD THAT HAPPEN, WE WOULD HAVE LAID THE FOUNDATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF WHAT COULD SUCCEED AS A TOTALITARIAN MOVEMENT, ONE THAT WOULD EMERGE DECADES LATER, AND MR. OBAMA, UNLESS GROUNDED IN DEMOCRATIC ETHICS – ABLE TO WITHSTAND THE PRESSURES UPON HIM FROM HIS PAST AND HIS SOCIAL CONTEXT – WOULD BE THE MEDIUM.
UP TO NOW, MR. OBAMA EXEMPLIFIES MODERATION AND GRACE IN PUBLIC. YET, IN HIS PRIVATE LIFE HE IMMERSED HIMSELF IN THE WORLD OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS WHO BELIEVE IN LIBERATION THEOLOGY, RACISM TOWARD WHITES AND THE AUTHORITARIAN IMPOSITION OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION ON THE NATION. WHETHER HE WAS FINDING HIMSELF AS A BLACK MAN; AS A CURIOUS YOUNG INTELECTUAL ONLOOKER; OR WHETHER HE TRULY SYMPATHIZED WITH THE SAME RADICAL IDEAS, THE FACT IS THAT HE HAS NOT COME CLEAN, AND FULLY DISOWNED THOSE ASSOCIATIONS – UNLESS EXPOSED AS IN THE CASE OF REVEREND WRIGHT.
WHY IS OBAMA SO COMPELLING A CANDIDATE TO MANY MATURE INDIVIDUALS? CHARISMA FOR ONE; THE PROMISE OF A MORE JUST DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH TO OTHERS; AND A PROMISE TO ERADICATE THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION IN WASHINGTON TO MANY.
I HAD THE PRIVILEGE TO HAVE LIVED IN THE NATION’S CAPITAL FOR A PERIOD OF 27 YEARS WHEN PUBLIC SERVICE WAS A MISSION OF THE HIGHEST CALLING. YET THE LEVEL OF CIVIC VIRTUES I KNEW ARE BEING ERODED BY A SELF SERVING MENTALITY PREVALENT AMONG MANY OF THOSE WHO ARE CHOSEN FOR POLITICAL SERVICE; AND BY THOSE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR WHOSE PRINCIPAL EMPLOYMENT IS TO PROFITEER FROM THE PUBLIC TREASURY.
I COULD WRITE VOLUMES ABOUT WHY THIS HAS HAPPENED AND HOW TO FIX IT, BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THE NATION AS A WHOLE APPEARS TO RECOGNIZE THE NEED FOR REFORM. AND THAT WE HAVE A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN JOHN MCCAIN THAT HAS PLEDGED TO IMPLEMENT THE REFORMS WITHOUT ENDANGERING OUR DEMOCRATIC FORM OF GOVERNMENT AND THE HARD FOUGHT FREEDOMS WE ENJOY.
THEREFORE, I URGE THOSE WHO HAVE NOT DECIDED ON A CANDIDATE TO AVOID A MAJOR GAMBLE WITH AN UNPROVEN TALENT THAT COULD DO A LOT OF GOOD, BUT COULD DO A LOT OF HARM TO OUR NATION.
REGARDS,
Jose Antonio Font
PS – NEED TO ENDURE SOME 10 MINUTES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE RECORDING OF NOT MUCH IMPORTANCE.
http://wgnradio.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44075&Itemid=467
OTHER THOUGHTS OF POSSIBLE INTEREST THAT I URGE YOU TO READ:
In short, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.
Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle. We keep offering them cuts in their federal personal income taxes–even though two-thirds of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes, and even though a majority of Americans now describe their federal income tax burden as reasonable.
What the middle class needs most is not lower income taxes but a slowdown in the soaring inflation of health-care costs. If health-insurance costs had risen 50 percent rather than 100 percent over the Bush years, middle-income voters would have enjoyed a pay raise instead of enduring wage stagnation. John McCain’s health plan, which emphasizes tax changes to encourage employees to buy their own insurance rather than rely on employers, is a start–but only the very beginning of a start. Some Republicans have brought great energy to this problem. In the Senate, Robert Bennett of Utah has written a bill with the Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden that would require employers to “cash out” employer-provided health care–and then midwife a national insurance marketplace in which employees would join plans that offered more price control and price transparency. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts put an end to the tax disadvantage that hammers consumers who buy health care directly rather than through their employers. Rudy Giuliani proposed a federal law to enable low-cost insurers in states like Kentucky to sell their products across state lines in high-cost states like New Jersey. But it remains unfortunately true that the Republican Party as a whole regards health care as “not our issue”–and certainly less exciting than another round of tax reductions.
Unlike liberals, conservatives are not bothered by the accumulation of wealth as such. We should be more troubled that the poor remain so poor. With all due respect to the needs of employers, Republicans need to recognize that the large-scale import of unskilled labor is part of the problem.
Meanwhile, the argument over same-sex marriage has become worse than a distraction from the challenge of developing policies to ensure that as many children as possible grow up with both a father and a mother in the home. Over the past 30 years, governments have effectively worked to change attitudes about smoking, seat-belt use and teenage pregnancy. Changing attitudes about unmarried childbirth may prove more difficult. Yet it is a fact that the only way to escape poverty is to work consistently–and that even after welfare reform, low-skilled single parents work less consistently than the main breadwinner in a low-skilled dual-parent household.
At the same time, conservatives need to ask ourselves some hard questions about the trend toward the Democrats among America’s affluent and well educated. Leaving aside the District of Columbia, 7 of America’s 10 best-educated states are strongly “blue” in national politics, and the others (Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia) have been trending blue. Of the 10 least-educated, only one (Nevada) is not reliably Republican. And so we arrive at a weird situation in which the party that identifies itself with markets, with business and with technology cannot win the votes of those who have prospered most from markets, from business and from technology. Republicans have been badly hurt in upper America by the collapse of their onetime reputation for integrity and competence. Upper Americans live in a world in which things work. The packages arrive overnight. The car doors clink seamlessly shut. The prevailing Republican view–”of course government always fails, what do you expect it to do?”–is not what this slice of America expects to hear from the people asking to be entrusted with the government.
It is probable that the trend to inequality will grow even stronger in the years ahead, if new genetic techniques offer those with sufficient resources the possibility of enhancing the intelligence, health, beauty and strength of children in the womb. How should conservatives respond to such new technologies? The anti-abortion instincts of many conservatives naturally incline them to look at such techniques with suspicion–and indeed it is certainly easy to imagine how they might be abused. Yet in an important address delivered as long ago as 1983, Pope John Paul II argued that genetic enhancement was permissible–indeed, laudable–even from a Catholic point of view, as long as it met certain basic moral rules. Among those rules: that these therapies be available to all. Ensuring equality of care may become inseparable from ensuring equality of opportunity.
Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal. But inequality taken to extremes can overwhelm conservative ideals of self-reliance, limited government and national unity. It can delegitimize commerce and business and invite destructive protectionism and overregulation. Inequality, in short, is a conservative issue too. We must develop a positive agenda that integrates the right kind of egalitarianism with our conservative principles of liberty. If we neglect this task and this opportunity, we won’t lose just the northern Virginia suburbs. We will lose America.
David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.
Interesting comment.
The link to the audio is broken or has been taken down.