[Rhodes22-list] Politics and Education - Brother Brad - Remember Sunshine needs open window

Brad Haslett flybrad at gmail.com
Tue Sep 23 09:03:53 EDT 2008


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 7:31 AM, Tootle <ekroposki at charter.net> wrote:
>
> In your hast you copied another article with internet citation so we can
> forward your post as source documents.
>
> Did you ever post this one?
>
> Senator Stealth
> How to advance radical causes when no one's looking
> By Stanley Kurtz
> Posted: Tuesday, September 2, 2008
>
>
> ARTICLE
> National Review Vol. LX, No. 16
> Publication Date: September 1, 2008
>
>
> After hearing about Barack Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill
> Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Fr. Michael Pfleger, and the militant activists of
> ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), it should
> be clear to everyone that his extremist roots run deep. But the presumptive
> Democratic presidential nominee has yet another connection with the world of
> far-Left radicalism. Obama has long been linked -- through foundation
> grants, shared political activism, collaboration on legislation and tactics,
> and mutual praise and support -- with the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation,
> one of the least known yet most influential national umbrella groups for
> church-based "community organizers."
>
> The same separatist, anti-American theology of liberation that was so boldly
> and bitterly proclaimed by Obama's pastor is shared, if more quietly, by
> Obama's Gamaliel colleagues. The operative word here is "quietly." Gamaliel
> specializes in ideological stealth, and Obama, a master student of Gamaliel
> strategy, shows disturbing signs of being a sub rosa radical himself.
> Obama's legislative tactics, as well as his persistent professions of
> non-ideological pragmatism, appear to be inspired by his radical mentors'
> most sophisticated tactics. Not only has Obama studied, taught, and
> apparently absorbed stealth techniques from radical groups like Gamaliel and
> ACORN, but in his position as a board member of Chicago's supposedly
> nonpartisan Woods Fund, he quietly funneled money to his radical allies --
> at the very moment he most needed their support to boost his political
> career. It's high time for these shadowy, perhaps improper, ties to receive
> a dose of sunlight.
>
> The connections are numerous. Gregory Galluzzo, Gamaliel's co-founder and
> executive director, served as a trainer and mentor during Obama's mid-1980s
> organizing days in Chicago. The Developing Communities Project, which first
> hired Obama, is part of the Gamaliel network. Obama became a consultant and
> eventually a trainer of community organizers for Gamaliel. (He also served
> as a trainer for ACORN.) And he has kept up his ties with Gamaliel during
> his time in the U.S. Senate.
>
> The Gamaliel connection appears to supply a solution to the riddle of
> Obama's mysterious political persona. On one hand, he likes to highlight his
> days as a community organizer -- a profession with proudly radical roots in
> the teachings of Chicago's Saul Alinsky, author of the highly influential
> text Rules for Radicals. Obama even goes so far as to make the
> community-organizer image a metaphor for his distinctive conception of
> elective office. On the other hand, Obama presents himself as a
> post-ideological, consensus-minded politician who favors pragmatic,
> common-sense solutions to the issues of the day. How can Obama be radical
> and post-radical at the same time? Perhaps by deploying Gamaliel techniques.
> Gamaliel organizers have discovered a way to fuse their Left-extremist
> political beliefs with a smooth, non-ideological surface of down-to-earth
> pragmatism: the substance of Jeremiah Wright with the appearance of Norman
> Vincent Peale. Could this be Obama's secret?
>
> FROM REVELATION TO REVOLUTION
> Before outlining Gamaliel's techniques of political stealth, we need to
> identify the views that they are camouflaging. These can be found in Dennis
> Jacobsen's book Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing.
> Jacobsen is the pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Milwaukee and
> director of the Gamaliel National Clergy Caucus. Jacobsen's book, which is
> part of the first-year reading list for new Gamaliel organizers, lays out
> the underlying theology of Gamaliel's activities. While Jacobsen's book was
> published in 2001, it is based on presentations Jacobsen has been making at
> Gamaliel's clergy-training center since 1992 and clearly has Galluzzo's
> endorsement. So while we cannot be sure that Obama has read or taught Doing
> Justice, the book certainly embodies a political perspective to which
> Obama's more than 20 years of friendship with Galluzzo, and his stint as a
> Gamaliel instructor, would surely have exposed him.
>
> In Jacobsen's conception, America is a sinful and fallen nation whose
> pervasive classism, racism, and militarism authentic Christians must
> constantly resist. Drawing on the Book of Revelation, Jacobsen exhorts,
> "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! . . . Come out of her, my people, so
> that you do not take part in her sins." The United States, Jacobsen
> maintains, employs nationalism, propaganda, racism, bogus "civil religion,"
> and class enmity to bolster its entrenched and oppressive corporate system.
> Authentic Christians forced to live in such a nation can "come out of
> Babylon," says Jacobsen, only by entering into "a perpetual state of
> internal exile."
>
> Of course, many believers do feel at home in the United States, but
> according to Jacobsen, these inauthentic and misguided Christians have been
> lulled into the false belief that the United States is somehow different
> from other countries -- that it stands as a genuine defender of freedom and
> democracy. According to Jacobsen, the desire of most Americans to create a
> safe, secure life for themselves and their families constitutes an
> unacceptable emotional distancing from the sufferings of the urban poor.
> Jacobsen says that whenever he feels himself seduced by the American dream
> of personal security -- this "unconscionable removal from the lives of those
> who suffer" -- he rejects its pull as the deplorable "encroachment of
> America on my soul." To "feel at home in the United States," maintains
> Jacobsen, is not only to fall victim to a scarcely disguised form of
> political despotism; it is to betray Christianity itself.
>
> Although Jacobsen acknowledges that the sufferings of the poor in America do
> not quite rise to the level of the Nazi Holocaust, he nonetheless finds a
> similarity: "The accommodation and silence of the church amidst Nazi
> atrocities are paralleled by the accommodation and silence of the church in
> this country amidst a calculated war against the poor." He recounts being
> present at the Pentagon "to fast and vigil with a group of religious
> resisters against the madness of nuclear build-up and militarism generated
> in that place" and is horrified when he sees that many in the American
> military actually think of themselves as Christians. For Jacobsen, this
> means that the church has "aligned itself with oppressive forces and
> crucified its Lord anew."
>
> Jacobsen has a low opinion of the food pantries, homeless shelters, and
> walk-a-thons that make up so much religious charitable activity in the
> United States. All that charity, says Jacobsen, tends to suppress the truth
> that the system itself is designed to benefit the prosperous and keep the
> poor down. He complains: "The Christians who are so generous with food
> baskets at Thanksgiving or with presents for the poor at Christmas often
> vote into office politicians whose policies ignore or crush those living in
> poverty." "Most churches do not operate on the basis of healthy agitation,"
> he says, but instead "on the basis of manipulation, authoritarianism, or
> guilt-tripping."
>
> The solution, says Jacobsen, is community organizing: "Metropolitan
> organizing offers a chance to end the warfare against the poor and to heal
> the divisions of class and race that separate this sick society." "Militant
> mass action . . . fueled by righteous anger," he maintains, offers authentic
> community, and therefore "the possibility of fulfillment in a vacuous
> society." He continues: "If the pain and human degradation all around us
> doesn't stir up within us sufficient anger to want to shake the foundations
> of this society, then it's probably best for us to go back to playing
> church."
>
> Other than the sense of community that is generated by militant struggle,
> what does Jacobsen offer as the cure for America's ills? He is short on
> detail here, but there are tantalizing hints. Jacobsen invokes the communal
> property and absence of private ownership that prevailed among early
> Christians as a possible model. Despite his initial skepticism regarding
> such selflessness, says Jacobsen, he has seen this sort of "radical sharing
> of limited resources" on a trip to a poor African church in Tanzania.
> Unfortunately, says Jacobsen, "the church in the United States lacks
> community. The American church by and large is privatistic, insular, and
> individualistic. It reflects American culture."
>
> These, then, are the beliefs at the spiritual heart of the Gamaliel
> Foundation's community-organizing efforts. They show clear echoes of
> Jeremiah Wright's and James Cone's black-liberation theology, and it's
> evident that Obama has an affinity for organizations that embody this point
> of view. But a question arises. Gamaliel's goal is to build church-based
> coalitions capable of wielding power on behalf of the poor. These
> congregation-based organizations are supposed to counterbalance and undercut
> America's oppressive power structures. Yet if most American Christians are
> deluded servants of a sinful and oppressive system, how can they be molded
> into a majority coalition for change? Given the privatistic, insular, and
> individualistic character of American culture, theological frankness might
> backfire and drive away potential allies, exactly as happened with Reverend
> Wright. Thus arises the need for stealth.
>
> FAKE RIGHT, GO LEFT
> It might have been all but impossible to penetrate the strategic thinking of
> Obama's cohorts if not for the fortuitous 2008 publication of Organizing
> Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements, by Rutgers
> political scientist Heidi Swarts. This is the first book-length study of the
> organizing tactics and political ideologies of Gamaliel and ACORN, the two
> groups to which Obama's community-organizing ties are closest. Swarts's
> study focuses on Gamaliel and ACORN in St. Louis, but given the degree of
> national coordination by both groups, the carry-over of her findings to
> Chicago is bound to be substantial. Because Swarts is highly sympathetic to
> the community-organizing groups she studies, she was granted an unusual
> degree of access to strategic discussions during her period of fieldwork.
>
> Swarts calls groups like ACORN and (especially) Gamaliel "invisible actors,"
> hidden from public view because they often prefer to downplay their efforts,
> because they work locally, and because scholars and journalists pay greater
> attention to movements with national profiles (like the Sierra Club or the
> Christian Coalition). Congregation-based community organizations like
> Gamaliel, by contrast, are often invisible even at the local level. A
> newspaper might report on a demonstration led by a local minister or priest,
> for example, without noticing that the clergyman in question is part of the
> Gamaliel network. "Though often hidden from view," says Swarts, "leaders
> have intentionally and strategically organized these movements that appear
> to well up and erupt from below."
>
> Although Gamaliel and ACORN have significantly different tactics and styles,
> Swarts notes that their political goals and ideologies are broadly similar.
> Both groups press the state for economic redistribution. The tactics of
> Gamaliel and ACORN have been shaped in a "post-Alinsky" era of welfare
> reform and conservative resurgence, posing a severe challenge to those who
> wish to expand the welfare state. The answer these activists have hit upon,
> says Swarts, is to work incrementally in urban areas, while deliberately
> downplaying the far-Left ideology that stands behind their carefully
> targeted campaigns.
>
> While ACORN's membership is fairly homogeneous, consisting chiefly of
> inner-city blacks and Hispanics, congregation-based community organizations
> like the Gamaliel Foundation tend to have more racially, culturally, and
> politically mixed constituencies. The need to overcome these divisions and
> gather a broad coalition behind its hard-Left agenda has pushed Gamaliel to
> develop what Swarts calls an "innovative cultural strategy." Because of the
> suspicions that blue-collar members might harbor toward its elite, liberal
> leaders, Gamaliel's main "ideological tactic," says Swarts, is to present
> its organizers as the opposite of radical, elite, or ideological. As Swarts
> explains, they deliberately refrain from using leftist jargon like "racism,"
> "sexism," "classism," "homophobia," "oppression," or "multiple oppressions"
> in front of ordinary members -- even though, amongst themselves, Gamaliel's
> organizers toss around this sort of lingo with abandon, just as Jacobsen
> does in his book.
>
> Swarts supplies a chart listing "common working-class perceptions of liberal
> social movements" on one side, while displaying on the other side Gamaliel
> organizers' tricky tactics for getting around them. To avoid seeming like
> radicals or "hippies left over from the sixties," Gamaliel organizers are
> careful to wear conventional clothing and conduct themselves with dignity,
> even formality. Since liberal social movements tend to come off as naïve and
> idealistic, Gamaliel organizers make a point of presenting their ideas as
> practical, pragmatic, and down-to-earth. When no one else is listening,
> Gamaliel organizers may rail at "racism," "sexism," and "oppressive
> corporate systems," but when speaking to their blue-collar followers, they
> describe their plans as "common sense solutions for working families."
>
> Although the Gamaliel agenda is deeply collectivist and redistributionist,
> organizers are schooled to frame their program in traditional American,
> individualist terms. As Swarts puts it:
>
> What makes [Gamaliel's] ideology liberal rather than conservative is that it
> advocates not private or voluntary solutions but collective public programs.
> They seek action from the state: social welfare programs, redistribution, or
> regulation. . . . But publicly [Gamaliel and other congregation-based
> groups] usually emphasize individual responsibility on the part of
> authorities.
>
> What Gamaliel really wants, in other words, is for the public as a whole to
> fork over funds to the government, but they're careful to frame this demand
> as a call for "personal responsibility" by particular government officials.
>
> The relative homogeneity of ACORN's membership allows it to display its
> radicalism more openly. According to Swarts, ACORN members think of
> themselves as "oppositional outlaws" and "militants unafraid to confront the
> powers that be." Yet even ACORN has a deeper, hidden ideological dimension.
> "Long-term ACORN organizers . . . tend to see the organization as a solitary
> vanguard of principled leftists," says Swarts, while ordinary members rarely
> think in these overtly ideological terms; for them, it's more about
> attacking specific problems. In general, ACORN avoids programmatic
> statements. During a 1980 effort to purge conservatives from its ranks,
> however, the organization did release a detailed political platform -- which
> Swarts calls "a veritable laundry list of progressive positions."
>
> Although ACORN's radicalism is somewhat more frank than Gamaliel's, ACORN
> has an "innovative cultural strategy" of its own. ACORN's radicalism is
> incremental; it's happy to work toward ambitious long-term goals through a
> series of baby steps. For example, although ACORN has fought for "living
> wage" laws in several American cities, these affect only the small fraction
> of the workforce employed directly by city governments. The real purpose of
> ACORN's urban living-wage campaigns, says Swarts, is not economic but
> political. ACORN's long-term goal is an across-the-board minimum-wage
> increase at the state and federal levels. The public debate spurred by local
> campaigns is meant to prepare the political ground for ACORN's more
> ambitious political goals, and to build up membership in the meantime.
>
> WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
> Throughout his career, Obama has drawn on all of these strategies. In
> Illinois's Republican-controlled state senate, Obama specialized in
> incremental legislation, often drawn up in collaboration with groups like
> Gamaliel and ACORN. His tiny, targeted expansions of government-financed
> health care, for example, were designed to build political momentum for
> universal health care. And his claim to be a "common-sense pragmatist,"
> rather than a leftist ideologue, comes straight out of the Gamaliel
> playbook.
>
> New evidence now ties Obama still more closely to both organizations. Not
> only was Obama a trainer for Gamaliel and ACORN, he appears to have used his
> influence to secure a major increase in funding for both groups -- arguably
> stretching the bounds of propriety in the process.
>
> In 2005, the year after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, the
> Washington, D.C.–based Center for Community Change released a report titled
> "Promising Practices in Revenue Generation for Community Organizing." One of
> the report's authors was Jean Rudd, Obama's friend and the president of the
> Woods Fund during Obama's years on that foundation's board. Buried deep
> within the report lies the story of Obama's role in expanding the Woods
> Fund's financial support for groups like Gamaliel and ACORN.
>
> Since the start of his organizing career, Obama was recognized by the Woods
> Fund as "a great analyst and interpreter of organizing," according to the
> 2005 report. Initially an adviser, Obama became a Woods Fund board member,
> and finally board chairman, serving as a key advocate of increased funding
> for organizing during that period. In 1995, the Woods Fund commissioned a
> special evaluation of its funding for community organizing -- a report that
> eventually recommended a major expansion of financial support. Obama chaired
> a committee of organizers that advised the Woods Fund on this important
> shift.
>
> The committee's report, "Evaluation of the Fund's Community Organizing Grant
> Program," is based on interviews with all the big names in Obama's personal
> organizer network. Greg Galluzzo and other Gamaliel Foundation officials
> were consulted, as were several ACORN organizers, including Madeline
> Talbott, Obama's key ACORN contact. Talbott, an expert on ACORN's tactics of
> confrontation and disruption, is quoted more often than any other organizer
> in the report, sometimes with additional comments from Obama himself. The
> report holds up Gamaliel and ACORN as models for other groups and supports
> Talbott's call for "'a massive infusion of resources' to make organizing a
> truly mass-based movement."
>
> Support from the Woods Fund had importance for these groups that went way
> beyond the money itself. Since community organizers often use confrontation,
> intimidation, and "civil disobedience" in the service of their political
> goals, even liberal foundations sometimes find it difficult to fund them
> without risking public criticism. As the report puts it: "Some funders . . .
> are averse to confrontational tactics, and are loathe [sic] to support
> organizing for that reason. They essentially equate organizing with the
> embarrassment of their business and government associates." The Woods Fund
> is both highly respected and one of the few foundations to consistently
> support community organizing, so its money acts as a kind of Good
> Housekeeping Seal of Approval, providing political cover for other
> foundations interested in funding the hard Left. Obama apparently sought to
> capitalize on this effect, not only by expanding the Woods Fund's
> involvement in organizing, but by distributing the Woods report to a
> national network of potential funders.
>
> Formally, the Woods Fund claims to be "non-ideological." According to the
> report: "This stance has enabled the Trustees to make grants to
> organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and
> government 'establishments,' without undue risk of being criticized for
> partisanship." Yet ACORN received substantial funding from Woods, apparently
> aided by Obama's internal advocacy, and we now know that ACORN members have
> played key roles as volunteer ground troops in Obama's various political
> campaigns. That would seem to raise the specter of partisanship.
>
> A 2004 article in Social Policy by Chicago ACORN leader Toni Foulkes, titled
> "Case Study: Chicago -- The Barack Obama Campaign," explains that, given
> Obama's long and close relationship to ACORN, "it was natural for many of us
> to be active volunteers" in Obama's campaigns. Perhaps ACORN volunteers
> observed the technical legalities and helped Obama merely in their capacity
> as private citizens. Even so, it seems at least possible that Obama used his
> position at a supposedly nonpartisan foundation to direct money to an
> allegedly nonpartisan group, in pursuit of what were in fact nakedly
> partisan ends.
>
> Given Obama's political aspirations, it's notable that the focus of his
> Woods Fund report is its call for "improving the tie between organizing and
> policy making" and shifting organizing's focus from local battles to
> "citywide or statewide coalitions." The report boldly criticizes Saul
> Alinsky himself for being excessively focused on local issues, complaining
> that "he did not seek to fundamentally upset the distribution of power in
> the wider society."
>
> The ultimate goal of all these efforts -- fundamental disruption of
> America's power structure, and economic redistribution along race, poverty,
> and gender lines -- is entirely compatible with the program outlined by
> Dennis Jacobsen in Doing Justice. Obama could hardly have been unfamiliar
> with the general drift of Gamaliel ideology, especially given his reputation
> as an analyst of community organizing and his supervision of a comprehensive
> review of the field.
>
> Even after becoming a U.S. senator, Obama has maintained his ties to the
> Gamaliel Foundation. According to an October 2007 report for the University
> of California by Todd Swanstrom and Brian Banks, "it is almost unheard of
> for a U.S. Senator to attend a public meeting of a community organization,
> but Senator Obama attended a Gamaliel affiliate public meeting in Chicago."
> Given this ongoing contact, given the radicalism of Gamaliel's core
> ideology, given Obama's close association with Gamaliel's co-founder,
> Gregory Galluzzo, given Obama's role as a Gamaliel consultant and trainer,
> and given Obama's outsized role in channeling allegedly "nonpartisan"
> funding to Gamaliel affiliates (and to his political ground troops at
> ACORN), some questions are in order. Obama needs to detail the nature of his
> ties to both Gamaliel and ACORN, and should discuss the extent of his
> knowledge of Gamaliel's guiding ideology. Ultimately, we need to know if
> Obama is the post-ideological pragmatist he sometimes claims to be, or in
> fact a stealth radical.
>
> -- Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
>
>
>
> Brad Haslett-2 wrote:
>>
>> You may recall, Mr. Kurtz had some difficulty getting the University
>> of Illinois-Chicago to release the archives of the Chicago Annenberg
>> Challenge (CAC).  This is his first analysis after waiting a week for
>> the records to be released.  There's nothing new here for anyone who's
>> been paying attention.  Now you now why The One doesn't tout his great
>> executive experience and soon you will understand why he doesn't brag
>> about his accomplishments in the field of education. The CAC was a
>> colossal flop unless you think "educational reparation payments" over
>> teaching math and science is a good idea.
>>
>> Brad
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>>
>>     * SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
>>
>> Obama and Ayers
>> Pushed Radicalism
>> On Schools
>> By STANLEY KURTZ
>>
>>     * Article
>>
>> more in Opinion »
>>
>>     * Email
>>     * Printer Friendly
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>>     * smaller Text Size larger
>>     *
>>
>> Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never
>> written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to
>> 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg
>> Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group
>> poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers
>> and radical education activists.
>> [Obama and Ayers] AP
>>
>> Bill Ayers.
>>
>> The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather
>> Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts
>> bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his
>> actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was
>> launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
>>
>> The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last
>> April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my
>> neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a
>> regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr.
>> Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are
>> housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois
>> at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.
>>
>> The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve
>> Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education
>> initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama
>> was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal
>> matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the
>> "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
>>
>> The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual
>> reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley
>> archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes,
>> and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The
>> Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to
>> advance the CAC agenda.
>>
>> One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer
>> fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation?
>> In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement
>> saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to
>> the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham
>> (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show
>> that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a
>> working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr.
>> Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been
>> appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
>>
>> The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which
>> called for infusing students and their parents with a radical
>> political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor
>> of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical
>> alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's
>> ghetto.
>>
>> In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal
>> and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community
>> organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and
>> oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small
>> 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's,
>> "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
>>
>> CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of
>> funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with
>> "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from
>> groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead
>> CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers,
>> such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or
>> Acorn).
>>
>> Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn,
>> and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early
>> campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village
>> Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political
>> consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional
>> education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the
>> effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school
>> students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.
>>
>> CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among
>> parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf
>> of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr.
>> Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit
>> parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board
>> member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by
>> community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political
>> threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth
>> out Mr. Weber's objections.
>>
>> The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of
>> the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served
>> on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with
>> him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board
>> meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative
>> before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board
>> at meetings of the Collaborative.
>>
>> The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board
>> meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational
>> role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted
>> to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since
>> the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own
>> evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the
>> board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So
>> even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered
>> to the grant program he had put in place.
>>
>> Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with
>> public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you
>> understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke
>> resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that
>> he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board
>> sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides
>> of the same coin.
>>
>> Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily
>> funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific
>> political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war,
>> and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as
>> "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training
>> programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his
>> "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against
>> America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social
>> transformation.
>>
>> The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming
>> "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association;
>> it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending
>> moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That
>> is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years
>> ago.
>>
>> Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
>>
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