Video: Community organizers pray to their new deity, or something; Update: Or do they? Update: Poll added

batterup on September 29, 2009 at 11:21 AM

You are correct about the long term Obama connection to the Gamaliel Foundation — they are part of the old Obama-led radical Chicago crowd, including Ayers, Klonsky et al.

In his work during the run-up to the 2008 election, Stanley Kurtz at NRO connected the dots to Obama, ACORN, and perhaps most importantly, the education community radicals, like Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky, all supported by the network of the the Gamaliel Foundation and ACORN.

Kurtz further pointed out that really the ONLY executive position Barack Obama ever held before being elected President — running the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) — resulted in self-admitted failure.

Kurtz, at NRO here, (links in original):

The Obama camp denies CAC’s radicalism by pointing to the fact that this foundation was funded by Nixon Ambassador and Reagan friend, Walter Annenberg. Moderates and Republicans often support Annenberg activities, it’s true. Yet the story of modern philanthropy is largely the story of moderate and conservative donors finding their funds “captured” by far more liberal, often radical, beneficiaries. CAC’s story is a classic of the genre. Ayers and Obama guided CAC money to community organizers, like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and the Developing Communities Project (Part of the Gamaliel Foundation network), groups self-consciously working in the radical tradition of Saul Alinsky. Walter Annenberg’s personal politics don’t change that one iota.

The fact that Ayers and other tenured radicals hold power at our universities is in no way negated by the presence of Republican appointees on university boards of trustees. Ayers’s radicalism is undeniable. He remains unapologetic for his bombings of the 1960s. Even now, he refuses to rule out violence as a resort. His education writings are deeply politicized and filled with exhortations to “resist” America’s racist and oppressive social system. In 2006 — along with his wife and fellow former-terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeff Jones — Ayers released, Sing A Battle Song, a collection of intensely radical writings from the Weather Underground. Ayers makes it clear in that book that, while he is embarrassed by some of the Weather Underground’s rhetoric, he still adheres to the same ideas. Beyond its strictly historical interest, Ayers and his co-editors make a point of hoping that their old writings would be “of use to new generations of militant activists and organizers.” By directing CAC funds to groups like ACORN and the Developing Communities Project of the Gamaliel Foundation, Ayers was supporting just such militant activists and organizers.

The one indisputable fact about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, after all the radicals got their cut of the money, and Obama moved on, was that it was a failure. They admitted so themselves.

As we posted in more detail at the time, with quotations from their final report:

[T]hese were their specific conclusions regarding student academic achievement, and student engagement:

(Re: Student Academic Achievement) . . . “There were no statistically significant differences between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain.”
. . .

(Re: Student Academic Engagement) . . . “Like student academic achievement, there were no statistically significant differences in these outcomes between Annenberg schools and non-Annenberg schools.”

In other words, the Annenberg evaluators themselves conceded in their own final study that any educational improvements for Chicago school children occurred across the board and, therefore, had nothing to do with the CAC — the Annenberg project.

The fact that we now witness tapes of actual Obama-worshiping dupes from Gamaliel, only suggests that we may be in a lot bigger trouble than any of us has ever imagined.

Trochilus on September 29, 2009 at 1:08 PM