When a candidate of the Democratic or Republican parties is successfully elected President of the United States, it is widely accepted that by virtue of being the highest elected office holder in the party, they are the “leader” of their respective party.
Why would it be any different when it comes to President Obama’s leadership role in his other political party, the Working Families Party?
If the President and his other party are to be held to the same standard as the Republicans, Greens, and Democrats, etc.. then by all rights he should be considered the leading force or figure within the Working Families Party.
In reality, no matter how one chooses to define the President’s relationship to his other party, the relationship itself demands a close examination of its platform, background, and history, all of which the President would appear to have endorsed by accepting their nomination.
As to their platform, that topic will be covered in greater detail in future posts. This entry is going to focus on the historical roots and background of the Working Families Party.
Very briefly, though, on the platform – you can read it here.
One pervasive theme is an attitude of class warfare. For a specific example, see (1:20) in this video produced by the Working Families Party, where the woman on camera exclaims “Tax The Rich And Give It Back To The Poor”.
Another example can be found here [emphasis in original]:
Over the last 25 years, the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers have seen their taxes cut in half. When the rich don’t pay their fair share, everyone else has to pick up the tab – often in the form of higher property taxes.
There are other examples of their class warfare tactics, like this video of WFP members busing around to AIG homes in CT. These are the very same pitchfork brigade the president said he wanted to be angry. Little did anyone know he was simply representing his other party in those remarks.
What motivates such a divisive movement? For that, we need to examine their founding, history, and affiliations of the Working Families Party.
To help illustrate some of the relationships that we will be discussing, I have created what I call the Hexagon of Progress [HOP] pictured above. (Cue scary Star Wars, or CNN Gulf War I theme music)
You will notice that the Democratic Socialists of America is featured at the top of the HOP. An important point needs to be made here. President Barack Obama and the Working Families Party are Democratic Socialists.
This is not meant as a judgment. It is simply a fact which the politicians involved with the Working Families Party group should be made to own.
As I have written previously, this is not some kind of neo “Red Hunt”. Not only is that not the point, there is nothing much to hunt. These relationships are out in the open. The point is that the American people have a right to know about the background of a political party to which the President of the United States belongs, and the so-called mainstream media have completely failed the nation in this simple task.
Caution: This is a lengthy post, but, it’s easy to follow and there’s a delicious party favor at very end.
Let’s simply review the facts:
The following clipping can be found in the Summer 2000 publicaiton of the DSA publication Dem Left.
Back in 2005, the Working Families Party website used to reveal a little bit more about its organizational ties to the DSA than it does now.
The image below is taken from the Working Families Party December 2005 affiliates list.
The image below was taken from the WFP site today. At some point in 2006, the Working Families Party disappeared the Democratic Socialists of America from their website.
There is no indication that DSA ever stopped supporting the WFP, but, given the other two affiliates highlighted in the image above, it could hardly matter.
From the website of the Long Island Progressive Coalition:
The LIPC was born at the initiation of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (since become Democratic Socialists of America) and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, seeking to realize DSOC Chair Michael Harrington’s vision of being “the left-wing of the possible.”
The other organization circled above, Citizen Action, was founded by Heather Booth. The DSA was so proud of her accomplishments in promulgating the Alinsky school of organizing, they honored her with their highest honor, the Eugene V. Debs Award for 1987.
Heather Booth
You have dedicated yourself to enabling people to develop a sense of their own power and alter the relations of power in order to build a more just and humane society.
Through the Midwest Academy, you have inspired and trained thousands of new activists in the Citizen Action movement, the peace movement, and the women’s movement.
You have reached across the generations to connect with and maintain the best traditions of the old radical movement while reaching out to upcoming student activists with a new vision and strategy for a better future.
By work and by deed your energy and commitment inspire us all.
For this, the Norman Thomas – Eugene V. Debs Award is hereby presented to you on this 9th day of May, 1987.
Heather Booth was also the training director for the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. She co-founded the Midwest Academy as a project of Citizen Action. Reportedly SEIU’s Andy Stern is a graduate of the Academy, and Barack Obama trained ACORN organizers there.
The Academy’s other co-founder is Heather’s husband, Paul Booth. Paul was a founder of the radical 1960’s protest group, Student’s for a Democratic Society, (SDS), which spawned the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group led by Bill Ayres.
This is not the first time the media has failed to report on the Democratic Socialist background of a party to which Barack Obama has pledged himself.
Some readers might already be aware that when President Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate back in 1996, he ran as a member of the New Party.
The New Party was ACORN’s party in the 1990s, exactly like the Working Families Party is ACORN’s party. The extent of their connection is evidenced by two letters pulled from the Internet Archive, written about 1 year apart, both authored by the same person.
First, a 1998 letter from New Party Executive Director, Dan Cantor:
SPECIAL APPEAL FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
To: Members and Friends
From: Dan Cantor, Executive Director, New Party
RE: WE REALLY NEED YOUR HELP, AND I DON’T MEAN MONEY
Here’s the deal.
The New Party is deep into an effort to establish a “qualified” new political party in New York State. It’s called the “Working Families Party,” and we’re one of the driving forces behind it .
The state law requirement for a new party is 50,000 votes on our own ballot line in the November election.
It’s safe to say that this is the most serious effort to build a progressive ballot-line party in New York since the demise of the American Labor Party in the 1950s. It is backed by the United Auto Workers, Communications Workers of America, Citizen Action, ACORN, and dozens of other local unions and community groups. Prominent individual supporters include David Dinkins, Ruth Messinger, Sal Albanese, and Nydia Velazquez.
This is going to take some real and sustained work.. We’ve got our usual small amount of money, and need to spend it on organizers, targeted mail pieces, and African-American radio buys.
But we also think there’s a very cheap, very powerful way to reach a large number of good people in New York — namely, e-mail. THERE HAVE GOT TO BE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WOULD BE VERY HAPPY TO VOTE ON THE WORKING FAMILIES PARTY LINE, IF THEY HEAR ABOUT IT.
Here’s where you come in – whether or not you live in New York.
We’d like you to send us the e-mail addresses of ANYONE and EVERYONE you know who lives in New York State who considers themselves a Democrat, a progressive, a leftist, an independent or even a bored and disgusted non-voter. We will send them a polite, totally non-obnoxious message describing the Working Families Party and its values. And we’ll ask them to make their vote REALLY count this November by casting it for our Gubernatorial candidate — a fusion candidacy with the Democrat, so not a spoiler run — in November. Send two names or two hundred, it doesn’t matter.
Our message to your friends will be straightforward. Vote for Vallone and McCall (the Democrats), but vote for them on the Working Families Party line so that we can send the Democrats (and the Republicans) a message.
It will NOT be a PERMANENT list, and it will NOT be cluttered up with lots of messages. You have my word on this.
This will take you a few minutes, but only that. PLEASE — look through your e-mail list or address books right now, and PLEASE send us the e-mail addresses of your favorite New Yorkers. If that’s too much hassle, send us your entire e-mail list and we’ll make it “For New Yorkers Only” in the subject line.
Please send your lists to Adam Glickman or call us at 800-200-1294.
+++ If you actually live in New York, you can also help a bit more by joining the WFP “COMMITTEE OF 1000” – a core group of citizen activists who will contact 5-20 other voters and urge them to vote on the Working Families Party line on November 3.
But no matter where you live, we KNOW that you probably know someone who lives in New York — friends, relatives, colleagues, admirers, you name it — who you think might support a political party that stands for living wage jobs, universal access to health care, better public schools, and real campaign finance reform.
With your help, we can make history this fall!
Second, just over a year later, this communication from Working Families Party Executive Director, Dan Cantor:
January 3, 2000
To: WFP Members, Sustainers and Supporters
Fr: Dan Cantor, Executive Director
The Working Families Party is now officially a year old. And like a toddler taking those first wobbly but wonderful steps, the party’s first year has been shaky and exhilarating and full of promise.
The WFP has three basic activities. We build chapters. We run election campaigns. We promote our issues. All of these build and depend on each other, of course, so separating them out is a little artificial. But I thought it would be helpful to offer just a few words on each, as it will give you a pretty good sense of the remarkable growth accomplished by the party over the last year.
ELECTIONS…
On November 2nd, 226 candidates ran on the WF line in our first state-wide election since achieving official ballot status in 1998. Slightly MORE than half won their races. County legislators, town supervisors, city councilmembers, sheriffs, county executives, town clerks, you name it.
There were some terrific outcomes, a few tough defeats, but most important the general sense among everyone – and by everyone I mean our leadership, membership, the press, friendly Democrats, not-so-friendly Democrats, downright hostile Republicans, intellectual allies and others -is that we took another step on the road to becoming a legitimate and creative player in state politics.
Perhaps the most amazing outcome in November was in Nassau County on Long Island. 100 years of uninterrupted Republican rule came to an end as the candidates backed by the local Democratic and Working Families Parties rode of tidal wave of voter discontent. It would be misleading to say that either the Democrats or the WFP was primarily responsible. This was an anti-Republican vote, pure and simple. But it opens the door and the WFP activists in Nassau are determined to take advantage of it.
If you want a full set of returns on a race-by-race basis, just say the word. On the assumption that you have better ways to spend your time than poring over election returns, here’s the most important (and heartening) data on the electoral front.
In 1998, the party “qualified” by getting just over 50,000 votes. Of that vote, we got 60% in New York City, 9% in Erie County, 5.5% in Nassau, 4% in Suffolk and Westchester, and 1-2% of our total vote in each of Albany, Monroe, Onondaga, Rockland and Tompkins counties.
In 1999, we got 53,000 votes (in a year when many fewer votes were cast). But the geography of our support changed dramatically. Because there was almost nothing on the ballot in New York City, overall turnout was very light. The WFP got just 14% of its total (7000 votes) in NYC. The remaining 86% of WFP votes – 46,000 levers pulled – were pulled outside NYC.
In other words, we not only got more votes this year than in 1998, we also got them from new people. That bodes very well for the races in 2000.
…..
WFP
88 Third Avenue
4th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Man, that Dan Cantor gets around! In a previous era, Dan organized labor for the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign.
By the way, that WFP address is the same as SEIU and ACORN.
And just as a total aside, one of the instrumental early supporters of the New Party was DSA co-chair Frances Cloward Piven, co-author of the infamous Cloward-Piven Strategy. What a co-inkydinky.
Democratic Socialists.
P.S. You’ll notice that in the center of the Hexagon of Progress™ is the Tides Foundation. We’ll poke that hornet’s nest in another post, but suffice to say, they fund many of the components of the HOP.
And now that promised party favor: A couple of days ago we posted two robo-calls from the Working Families Party archive, of John Edwards espousing their shared Progressive values. Today we bring another installment from the way back archive.
It turns out the Working Families Party and Eliot Spitzer have been in love for a very long time. You see, they also share the same Working Families Progressive values.
From 2006
[youtube Jmt5Hqy6sa4 nolink]
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.