The Independent View

Edited and updated at 8:50 p.m. ET.

Did you know that Barack Obama was affil­i­ated with a lead­ing national social­ist party? Barack Obama didn’t include in his 2008 resume that he entered pol­i­tics endorsed by Chicago’s lead­ing social­ists. This just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter. Barack Obama was an active par­tic­i­pant in the 1990s, and a direct polit­i­cal ben­e­fi­ciary, of the Chicago New Party and, impor­tantly, the Chicago DSA, a group of social­ists affil­i­ated with the Demo­c­ra­tic Social­ists of Amer­ica.

1. Barack Obama attended and par­tic­i­pated in meet­ings of the Chicago New Party and the Chicago DSA, the local affil­i­ate of the Demo­c­ra­tic Social­ists of America.
2. Barack Obama sought the endorse­ment of the Chicago DSA which required rig­or­ous scrutiny by the party’s Polit­i­cal Com­mit­tee as well as Mr. Obama’s sig­na­ture on a con­tract promis­ing “a vis­i­ble and active rela­tion­ship with the NP.”
3. Barack Obama actively used the endorse­ment from the Chicago DSA.
4. Barack Obama won his DSA-​endorsed and –backed cam­paign to secure his seat in the Illi­nois State Senate.
5. Barack Obama con­tin­ued his involve­ment with the Chicago DSA — includ­ing directly ask­ing the group to join “his task forces on Voter Edu­ca­tion and Voter Reg­is­tra­tion” — and received their endorse­ments in sub­se­quent campaigns.

Obama’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in and endorse­ment from the Chicago New Party and Chicago DSA, the local affil­i­ate of the Demo­c­ra­tic Social­ists of Amer­ica (which is the U.S. affil­i­ate of the Social­ist Inter­na­tional) is quite clear:

1. Accord­ing to the write-​up on the July 1995 meet­ing of Chicago DSA and New Party mem­ber­ship, Barack Obama was one of about 50 peo­ple attend­ing out of their then-​300 mem­ber local group. Other doc­u­ments below will demon­strate Barack Obama attended and par­tic­i­pated in sub­se­quent meetings.
2. The New Party rig­or­ously eval­u­ated its can­di­date endorse­ments and claimed “a win­ning ratio of 77 of 110 elec­tions.” This was no pas­sive endorsement.

Can­di­dates must be approved via a NP polit­i­cal com­mit­tee. Once approved, can­di­dates must sign a con­tract with the NP. The con­tract man­dates that they must have a vis­i­ble and active rela­tion­ship with the NP.—New Ground

3. Can­di­date Barack Obama par­tic­i­pated as a pan­elist at the DSA-​sponsored Town Meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 25, 1996, enti­tled “Employ­ment and Sur­vival in Urban Amer­ica”. As reported in New Ground,
   

   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. Now the issue is again com­ing to the front, but he wished the issue was on the Demo­c­ra­tic agenda not just on Buchanan’s.

   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. He 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. The cur­rent pro­pos­als for wel­fare reform are intended to elim­i­nate wel­fare but it’s also true that the sta­tus quo is not ten­able. 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. By “work­force prepa­ra­tion strat­egy”, Barack Obama sim­ply meant a coör­di­nated, pur­pose­ful pro­gram of job train­ing instead of the ad hoc, frag­mented approach used by the State of Illi­nois today.

   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.

4. Obama sub­se­quently secured his endorse­ment from the Chicago DSA
   The local Demo­c­ra­tic Social­ists of Amer­ica affil­i­ate issued their Chicago DSA Endorse­ments in the March 19th Pri­mary Elec­tion:

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.

5. Barack Obama Con­tin­ued Attend­ing Mem­ber­ship Meet­ings of the Chicago DSA New Party
   Obama attended mem­ber­ship meet­ing on April 11, 1996 where he expressed his grat­i­tude for their sup­port. The report shared that “Barack Obama, vic­tor in the 13th State Sen­ate Dis­trict, encour­aged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Edu­ca­tion and Voter Registration.”
6. Obama won his elec­tion with the help of the Chicago DSA’s New Party.
7. Chicago DSA notes in 1998 that Barack Obama eulo­gized Saul Mendel­son, co-​founder of the Debs Dinner.
8. In the fall of 1998, Chicago DSA’s New Ground’s edi­tor offered nom­i­na­tion of Barack Obama for reelection.
9. When Barack Obama chal­lenged Bobby Rush for the 1st Con­gres­sional Dis­trict in 2000, the Chicago DSA opted to rec­om­mend both:

For Con­gress­man of the 1st Con­gres­sional Dis­trict, the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee was faced with two very good can­di­dates. As we are not mak­ing endorse­ments but merely rec­om­men­da­tions, we felt no con­flict in rec­om­mend­ing both Bobby Rush and Barack Obama.

Bobby Rush was the incum­bent Con­gress­man. He was also a can­di­date for Mayor of Chicago in the last munic­i­pal elec­tions, endorsed by Chicago DSA. While he hasn’t always been the ideal Con­gress­man from a left per­spec­tive (being a cospon­sor of the “NAFTA for Africa” bill, for exam­ple), he’s gen­er­ally been quite good. To vol­un­teer, call 773 264 7874. Con­tri­bu­tions may be made to Cit­i­zens for Rush, 514 E. 95th St., Chicago, IL 60619.

Barak Obama is serv­ing only his sec­ond term in the Illi­nois State Sen­ate so he might be fairly charged with ambi­tion, but the same might have be said of Bobby Rush when he ran against Con­gress­man Charles Hayes. Obama also has put in time at the grass roots, work­ing for five years as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer in Harlem and in Chicago. When Obama par­tic­i­pated in a 1996 UofC YDS Town­hall Meet­ing on Eco­nomic Inse­cu­rity, much of what he had to say was well within the main­stream of Euro­pean social democracy.

Con­clu­sion
Barack Obama has a long-​term and sus­tained rela­tion­ship with the Chicago DSA, an affil­i­ate of the Demo­c­ra­tic Social­ists of Amer­ica, and with the Chicago New Party. He par­tic­i­pated in mul­ti­ple mem­ber­ship meet­ings and in DSA-​sponsored events, repeat­edly sought their endorse­ment. This does not answer all ques­tions about Barack Obama’s past rela­tion­ships with mul­ti­ple social­ist groups. What the media need to find out is this: Has Barack Obama bro­ken his ties with them> If so, when and why?

Cross-​posted at NoQuar­terUSA.

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