It is quite appropriate at this time to remind Americans of what the son of Saul Alinsky (left) wrote about Barack Obama back in August 2008 when he received the Democratic nomination for the presidency. It should help explain why Obama acted in such a hostile, ill-mannered way toward Republican Paul Ryan and his plan to reduce the federal debt. As an Alinsky disciple, Obama learned to behave in a manner befitting a socialist revolutionary confronting the pro-capitalist enemy. Obama?s scathing attack was a brilliant Alinsky event.
The comments of L. David Alinsky, praising the Democratic National Convention as a perfect example of the organizational methods his father taught radicals, were made in the form of a letter to the Boston Globe, published on August 31, 2008. He wrote:
All the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.
Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.
I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.
L. DAVID ALINSKY, Medfield
Do we need any further proof that Barack Obama is a radical revolutionary who became a Community Organizer in order to learn how to destroy by stealth our capitalist economic system and replace it with a form of socialism? We have the word of Alinskys own son as proof of the strategy our stealth socialist president has been using to destroy Americas free way of life.
It has also been recently revealed that Alinsky offered Hillary Rodham a job as a community organizer after she interviewed him for her Senior Thesis at Wellesley College. The father of community organizing was so impressed with her radical fervor, that he sent her a letter, dated October 25, 1968, in which he tried to persuade her to undergo training for the job. The offer was written on the letterhead of the Industrial Areas Foundation of Chicago, which had announced the establishment of a Training Institute for organizers. He wrote:
There is no lack of money for organization but what is undeniably clear is the major obstacle of the absence of trained sophisticated personnel who have highly developed organizational skills and talents for the purpose of building mass-based organizations.
Keeping in mind that three-fourths of America is middle class, a new and long overdue emphasis of the Institute will be placed on the development of organizers for middle class society. Organizers will be trained for black and Mexican American ghetto work as well as for poor white sections.
The attached fact sheet and preliminary application answers most f your questions. Additional questions should be communicated in writing and will receive a response.
It was signed by Saul D. Alinsky. At the bottom of the letter is a list of the members of the Board of Trustees, which included Stringfellow Barr of Princeton, New Jersey; Dr. Leona Baumgartner of New York; Stimson Bullitt of Seattle, Robert W. Craig of Aspen, Colorado; Ralph Helstein of Chicago; Charles Merrill of Boston; Seniel Ostrow of Los Angeles; David Ramage, Jr. of New York; and Marian E. Wright of Jackson, Mississippi. George N. Shuster was president.
Is it not interesting that the two leading contenders for the Democratic Party nomination at that convention in 2008 were two admirers of Saul Alinsky. Hillary turned down his offer and went on to Yale to get a law degree. That is where she met Bill Clinton, and the rest is history.
But what about Alinskys interesting board of trustees? Stringfellow Barr, a college professor, established the Foundation for World Government in 1948 and was its president for ten years. Arthur Schlesinger Jr, in a New York Post column, mocked Barr as belonging to the “solve-the-Russian-problem-by-giving-them-money school,” and said, of him and two others, “None of these gentlemen is a Communist, but none of them objects very much to Communism. They are the Typhoid Marys of the left, bearing the germs of the infection even if not suffering obviously from the disease.”
Dr. Leona Baumgartner was Commissioner of New York Citys Board of Health and an advocate of family planning, i.e., abortion. Stimson Bullitt was active in the Democratic Party and owned a TV station. Robert W. Craig was Executive Director, Vice President, and Chief Operating Officer of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies from 1953 to 1965.
Ralph Helstein, lawyer and labor leader, was president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America from 1946 to 1968. Charles Merrill, the son of one of the founders of Merrill-Lynch, was an educator, author, and philanthropist, best-known for supporting historically black colleges and founding the Commonwealth School in Boston.
Seniel Ostrow was a Southern California labor leader. David Ramage, Jr.was ordained by the Presbytery of Chicago in 1957. He then served in Chicago as director of a youth gang action project, as a social worker in settlement houses and as pastor of the Emerald Avenue Presbyterian Church. During this time he teamed up with Saul Alinsky and served on the Board of Alinskys Industrial Areas Foundation.
Marian E. Wright became Marian Wright Edelman in 1968. She started the Washington Research Project of the Southern Center for Policy Research. It was created to assist children in poverty. In 1971 the Edelmans moved to Boston, where Peter Edelman served two years as vice-president of the University of Massachusetts. She directed the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and founded the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973.
George N. Shuster (1894-1977) was managing editor of the liberal Catholic magazine, Commonweal, taught at the University of Notre Dame, became president of Hunter College (1945-1960) and took a leading role in founding UNESCO.
Quite a Board of Trustees for Alinskys training institute for radical revolutionaries. What it reveals is that many of the prominent people who backed Barack Obama are individuals in prestigious positions in the American left. Many of them obviously got there because of their left-wing credentials.
When Hillary saw the names at the bottom of Alinskys letter, she probably decided that shed rather be among them than a lowly community organizer rounding up welfare folk in the smelly halls of Chicagos projects. Thats why she chose Yale where she met Bill Clinton whom she sized up as a future political leader. He was a Rhodes Scholar, and when he fell in love, he followed her around like a sick puppy. And it didnt take long before the two of them were living in the governors mansion in Little Rock and finally the White House. She discovered that in America you can be a radical revolutionary and still live like a queen at taxpayer expense. And apparently, Barack and Michele discovered the same thing.
Photo: Saul Alinsky is pictured on a street on Chicago’s south side in 1966: AP Images
