[2 articles]
Obama's radical pal plans grassroots assault
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=228805
Activist tied to Ayers presses progressive agenda that will revive
'Yes we can!'
November 15, 2010
By Aaron Klein
NEW YORK A longtime radical associate of President Obama has
proposed the creation of a massive grassroots organization to
petition for a "progressive" agenda, including on health care and the
environment.
Marilyn Katz, an extremist activist in Chicago with close ties to
Weather Underground terrorist group founder William Ayers, urged the
formation of a "national grassroots vehicle" that would not only
articulate a "progressive agenda" and interact with congressional
leaders, "but also be broad and creative enough in their thinking to
involve the ordinary, everyday people who found both meaning and
community in 2008."
Katz, who sat on the finance committee of Obama's 2008 presidential
campaign, was writing at In These Times, a Chicago-based socialist
journal that boasts an editorial board including Ayers and his wife,
co-founder of the Weather Underground, Benardine Dohrn. [see below]
"We must build the national grassroots vehicle that Obama for America
and Organizing for America could have been," writes Katz. "This
organization must be broad enough in scope to develop and promote a
progressive agenda, and it should allow all types of involvement
whether online or in person, occasional or constant."
Continues Katz: "The core of the new organization could be a web of
activists in every state not just blue states and not only
Democratic Party members enfolding the thousands of Americans
engaged each day on issues of neighborhood, health and climatethe
stuff that life is made of.
"Crucially, the organization's members would not only articulate a
progressive agenda and interact with congressional leaders on the
ground but also be broad and creative enough in their thinking to
involve the ordinary, everyday people who found both meaning and
community in 2008. I believe these people yearn for this today, if
for no reason other than to once again feel the sense of 'Yes we
can!' that only comes from the transformative power of collective action."
In her article, Katz lamented how Organizing for America, which
morphed from Obama's 2008 campaign website, failed to get enough
voters to turn out for the recent midterm elections.
She wrote that a "sense of anomie and disconnection" has replaced the
euphoria of 2008, prompting a need for a new grassroots group.
Marxists, socialists helped launch Obama?
A Discover the Networks profile details how Katz, who has known Ayers
since he was 17, provided "security" for the Students for a
Democratic Society, or SDS, the infamous anti-war group from which
Ayers' Weathermen later splintered.
During the infamous Days of Rage riots by the SDS in October 1969,
Katz introduced protesters to a new weapon to deploy against the
police: a cluster of nails sharpened at both ends and fastened in the
center. Police later reported being hit by golf balls with nails
through them, as well as by excrement. Katz would insist years later
that her "guerrilla nails" were merely "a defensive weapon" to
prevent "possible bad behavior by the police."
Katz served on the finance committee of Obama's presidential campaign.
Obama initially met Katz through his first job at a law firm run by
Judd Miner. The New York Times reported Katz "gave [Obama] entry into
another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and
black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s."
After Obama became president, Katz reportedly tried to convince
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to appoint Valerie Jarrett, Obama's top
adviser, to Obama's open U.S. Senate seat. The New York Times
describes Katz as "a friend" of Jarrett's who encouraged her to step
out of Obama's shadow and "be the sun."
Katz was a principal organizer of a 2002 anti-war rally at Chicago's
Federal Plaza which was widely credited with propelling Obama to the
national stage.
That event, meant to protest the impending invasion of Iraq, was
coordinated on behalf of a small group, Chicagoans Against War &
Injustice, run by Katz together with Marxist Carl Davidson and local
radical Bettylu Saltzman.
Davidson is a notorious far-left activist and former radical national
leader in the anti-Vietnam movement. He served as national secretary
for the SDS.
Davidson was a founder of the New Party, a controversial 1990s
political party that sought to elect members to public office with
the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately
form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
WND previously reported newspaper evidence showing Obama was a member
of the New Party.
Davidson recalled in a WND interview that Obama participated in the
New Party. He affirmed that Obama's views overlapped with those of his party.
Katz worked closely with Davidson, founding Chicagoans Against the
War in Iraq. The two also co-authored a 2004 article, "From Protest
to Politics," urging radicals to support Democrat John Kerry for
president. One year later, they collaborated on a book, "Stopping
War, Seeking Justice: Essays in a Time of Empire."
Saltzman, meanwhile, reportedly first met Obama when he was in charge
of Project VOTE's registration drive for the 1992 election.
--------
What We Lost After We Won in 2008
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6629/what_we_lost_after_we_won_in_2008/
An anti-war activist explains what the Democratic establishment fails
to understand.
November 10, 2010
By Marilyn Katz
On a sleepy Sunday in September 2002, I was awakened by a call from
Bettylu Saltzman, a longtime progressive activist and fundraiser in
Chicago, who, disturbed by a dinner conversation the night before,
asked, "What are we going to do about this war that Bush is going to
lead us into in Iraq?" Awakened also from nearly a decade-long
slumber in which there were no mass demonstrations, we realized that
if we didn't do something, it was more than likely that no one would.
Gleaning names from our phone books, we called together a small
meeting of about 15 people from various former alliancesBusiness and
Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS) and the Harold Washington coalition.
It was only a year after the terrorist attacks on Washington and New
York, and the repression in the country was palpable. John
Poindexter, director of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness
project, was rumored to be compiling a list of subversives. It was a
scary timeand even among these long-tested activists, there was
apprehension: What would be the repercussions of our acts? One year
after 9/11, would people really speak out? What if no one came?
Drawing on lessons from my activist past, I argued that we had to
take a public stand. The first demonstrations during the '60s drew
only 50 people before there were 1 million; and the one thing I knew
for sure was that if we did not claim the public space for dissent
now, there would no longer be any space for dissent later. Even if we
had to stand alone, we had to stand.
With a sense of urgency we agreed to call for a demonstration at the
city's Federal Plaza. Each of us turned to our email lists, our
contacts from far and wide. We reached out to various groups, scraped
together the money for an ad, created posters and fliers. And we
called every public official we knew, inviting them to join us. We
didn't know who would come and stand with us, either on the
half-donated stage or in the massive plaza, but we were ready for
whatever was to come.
Ten days later, on October 2, to our great pleasure and somewhat to
our surprise, nearly 3,000 people joined us at the plaza. They were
young, old, friends and strangers, and in stark contrast to 1966,
1967 and 1968, the response from the surrounding crowd was really
great. The highest-ranking public official who showed up was a
little-known politician from the south side of Chicago, a friend of
mine and a better friend of Bettylu'sState Senator Barack Obama. He
made a speech that had heads turning and asking, "Who is this guy?"
From that first crowd of 3,000, opposition to the war followed a
much quicker trajectory than did opposition to the war in Vietnam. By
March 2003, millions of people across the United States had taken to
the streets to say no to the war. For a moment we felt powerful.
But despite the fastest-growing anti-war movement in the nation's
history, despite the opposition of more than 121 city councils across
the nation, Bush invaded. People were outraged over and over again,
yet by 2005, the protest movement had stopped growing; the
demonstrations were getting smaller and smaller. There were several
contributing factors.
First, the generation of young people that had populated those
demonstrations was different from the one in the '60s. They were not
threatened by a draft; rather they were burdened by college loans and
job insecurity; and they lacked any real counterculture. There was
none of the playful space that my friends and I had growing up in,
none of the feeling that if you didn't get a job this year, you would
just get a job next year.
Second, unlike the Vietnam years, there was no palpable response to
our protests from the federal government. The movement got little
serious attention from the news media and partly as a result (or
perhaps learning from the '60s) George W. Bush refused to take us seriously.
On top of that there was a complete lack of leadership from the
Democratic Party. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), at that point the
party's standard-bearer, had supported the resolution that enabled
Bush to go forward with the war. And so Republicans were able to
frame the issue as one of "supporting the troops," while the
Democratic leadership failed to frame the issue at all.
As a consequence, people became discouraged and drifted away from the
demonstrations, convinced they had no chance of making an impact.
Hope on the horizon
In 2007, as Barack Obama's campaign for president began to take
shape, peopleyoung people in particularfelt that since they weren't
going to influence power, they might as well take power. Activists,
many of whom had become disengaged from the protest movement, now
shifted their focus onto the election to the presidency of someone
they believed reflected their own politics, someone they thought
would end the war and would be a force for peace.
To correctly understand the 2008 election, it is important to
recognize that rather than creating a movement, the Obama campaign
created a structure to which the anti-war movementyouth in
particular but also otherscould attach. Obama, as he would be the
first to admit, did not organize the movement; the movement organized
to attach itself to the structure of his campaign. This is a vital
distinction that nobody quite gets, whether they are media pundits,
political consultants and polling gurus, or staffers in the White
House and at the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The months leading up to the election were heady times, as not only
anti-war activists but activists in every realmenvironment,
community development, women's issues and moreattached themselves to
the structure of the campaign, invigorating the same old Democratic
base with new constituencies, who for the most part didn't really
give "electoral politics" a thought. After the election, perhaps from
never really understanding the process nor understanding the
empowering and progressive impact of collective action, the Obama
administration and the DNC let that grassroots structure wither. The
White House was prohibited from using any of the campaign support
lists for political purposes, and the DNC used the lists almost
exclusively for fundraising purposes, too often targeting those who
gave dollars rather than time.
Ultimately, the DNC and White House political operatives missed the
point: that when people are acting together they feel empowered. By
failing to maintain group activities and infrastructure, the
Democrats left people feeling atomized, disempowered and ultimately paralyzed.
Consequently, when the president needed grassroots support he had no
way to hook into, educate or activate any of the non-Democratic Party
activists or issue groups, except for those that lived in Washington.
Yes, the DNC has lists of people who donate to Democrats, who are
Democratic activistsit always had such lists. What was unique about
the Obama campaign was that people who were not self-identified
Democratic activists found a momentary home with the Obama campaign.
Remember 2008? In Chicago everyone you knew was spending their
weekends going door to door in nearby Wisconsin or Indiana. That's
not what happened this year, because the Democrats made four critical
mistakes during the run-up to the midterms.
First, they left people alone in their isolation. People who feel
connected to a center of activity and to each other feel empowered
and hopeful. People left to suffer the vicissitudes of life alone feel scared.
Second, they relied on 2008 vote counts to organize and predict
outcomes for today. Their strategy has been to simply "round up those
who voted in 2008"misunderstanding that the margin of victory did
not come from "regular Democrats" but from those "independents who
saw a reflection of and hope for themselves in Obama."
Voting is an action that comes from a motivation. It is stirred by
something that you want. If you leave people disorganized and not
inspired by an agenda or issues, or not understanding of what the
strategy is, they are not going to vote.
Third, they mistook technology for the thing itself. TV is a tool.
The Internet is a tooland most effective when it allows people to
take an action in response to it. The best method to do that is
providing people with a response that requires collective action. The
most interesting thing about Obama's use of the Internetand the
campaign didn't recognize thisis not just that it allowed them to
raise a ton of money. Rather, through its connectivity it allowed
people to accelerate the process of organizing groups on the ground.
So the impact was translated from the Internet to the ground. And
that's been totally absent in the past two years. Voting is a
function of people's activity and enthusiasm. It doesn't exist in the
middle of nowhere. It doesn't float in the sky.
The Obama administration's fourth critical mistake was its bad
political positioningputting Obama in the role of mediator rather
than champion. Right after the Democrats lost the Massachusetts
Senate seat long held by the late Ted Kennedy, I was at a dinner in
New York with about 25 policy people, mayors, chiefs of police and
experts from the Kennedy School at Harvard. I asked: "How many of you
can name five things in the healthcare platform?" One person could
name three and he was a doctor from Chicago who was also a social activist.
The point is that even among the most concerned, ardent, thoughtful
activists, there was no clear understanding of a message from Obama.
I believe that came not out of incompetence, though it might have
appeared so, but out of the decision to take one part of Obama's
political persona during the campaign, i.e. The Great Mediator, and
make that the cutting edge of his presidency rather than advancing a
progressive agenda.
During the 2008 campaign people weren't organizing to elect a
mediator. They were organizing to elect a leadersomeone whom they
trusted, someone whose answers to the immediate situation came from a
wellspring of principles applied to current realities and issues. The
choice of the mediator as Obama's persona was a big mistake.
And because nobody in the country can tell you what's in the
healthcare package, people are having a hard time fighting for what
they don't know.
Toward a better future
Two years after an election that saw record voter turnout and engaged
huge numbers of people who showed up at the polls for the first time,
a sense of anomie and disconnection has replaced the euphoria of November 2008.
I see two critical actions that would reverse the situation.
First, there needs to be a recalibration of the presidency and
message from the White House. People need to know what Obama thinks,
why he does what he does, and how they can help. This is not possible
by using only "mediated sources" (i.e. the major media). He/they need
to speak directly to people about what the administration is doing,
why they are doing what they do, and how all of us can be of use. The
administrationin each department of government, as well as through
the DNCneeds to motivate as well as activate us.
Second, the road to change runs not through any street in Washington
but through the streets of our communities. There needs to be a
re-organization on the ground by people. We must understand that
Obama can't do it for us; like all leaders, the president needs a sea
in which to swim. We must build the national grassroots vehicle that
Obama for America and Organizing for America could have been. This
organization must be broad enough in scope to develop and promote a
progressive agenda, and it should allow all types of
involvementwhether online or in person, occasional or constant.
The core of the new organization could be a web of activists in every
statenot just blue states and not only Democratic Party
membersenfolding the thousands of Americans engaged each day on
issues of neighborhood, health and climatethe stuff that life is made of.
Crucially, the organization's members would not only articulate a
progressive agenda and interact with congressional leaders on the
ground but also be broad and creative enough in their thinking to
involve the ordinary, everyday people who found both meaning and
community in 2008. I believe these people yearn for this today, if
for no reason other than to once again feel the sense of "Yes we
can!" that only comes from the transformative power of collective action.
In 2008 the American people elected a great leader who had an agenda
that was not necessarily theirs or mine, but it was a progressive
agenda, one that would frame the debate for the next four years. In
the campaign they felt the power of collective actiona sense that
they could be a part of and make history. It is that senseboth of
agenda and of the power of collective action, not of dependency on a
great man but on the interdependency of man and movementthat has
foundered. If the movement and the man are to prevail, that
collective purpose must be found again.
--
Marilyn Katz is the founder and president of Chicago-based MK
Communications. An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the
Vietnam War, she served with Lee Weiner (one of the Chicago 7) as
co-head of security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic
National Convention.
.
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