Penetrating Insights into the Obvious
1. Chicago Annenberg Challenge Program Report May 8, 1996
(http://sonatabio.com/CAC/CAC-1996-first-opt-OCR.pdf)
CHICAGO ANNENBERG CHALLENGE: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Barrack Obama Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland 14 West Erie Street Chicago, IL 60610 Phone:312-751-1170 Fax: 312-751-9490 (Page 2)
Bill Ayers, Associate Professor Univ. of Illinois-Chicago College of Education M/C 147 1040 W. Harrison Street Chicago, IL 60680-7133 312 996-9689/Fax 996-6400 (Page 3)
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2. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years by Dorothy Shipps Teachers College, Columbia University March 1999
(http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/p0b06.pdf)
Early History of the Challenge:
In December 1993, Ambassador Walter Annenberg announced a gift of $500 million from the Annenberg Foundation to America’s public schools. The money was offered as a “challenge” to schools to bolster existing reform efforts and encourage new ones. Responding to this opportunity, a 73-member Working Group of local community activists and representatives of national school reform organizations drafted a proposal to bring some of the grant money to Chicago. In January 1995, the group was awarded nearly $50 million, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was born.
Founding members:
Anne Hallett, Warren Chapman, and Bill Ayers, all founding members of the Chicago Challenge, each took the time to carefully review early drafts and correct on our mistakes and misconceptions. (Page 5)
William Ayers, a political organizer who became a local professor of education, and Warren Chapman, a state school reformer who is now a local foundation program officer—seized the opportunity. Ayers captured their enthusiasm. (Page 11)
Obama Letter of Appointment : Vartan Gregorian, Letter to Barack Obama, Chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Board. Brown University, May 28, 1996. (Page 54)
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oH GOODIE!
WND reporter halted in Kenya today
too bad this never got anywhere , I suppose the pres of kenya wants to let sleeping dogs lie
UNKNOWNS ARE NOT ACCEPTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s give this Ayers thing another little bit of perspective.
The only reason that Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn did not kill people in the numbers of say, the Oklahoma City bombing, is because they lacked the technical expertise. They clearly had the will and they apparently still do.
So let’s replay the OKC scenario a bit. Let’s assume that Tim McVeigh managed to get off on a technicality the way the Ayers did. Then let’s assume that McVeigh went on to get an education and wound up as a college professor.
Then let’s assume that some politician who was, say, “eight years old” when the OKC bombing occurred, managed to develop an ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship with McVeigh.
Do we really think that ANYONE [except our enemies (foreign and domestic) and those who are completely duped and blinded by their idealism] would take that politician seriously as a candidate for mayor, much less the presidency?
Of course not. And yet, that is almost exactly the same as the current scenario with Obama and Ayers.
These are indeed perilous times.
It was mentioned on Rush Limbaugh today that Obama did Ayers’ book review in 1997.
Alice Palmer
Alice J. Palmer is a former Democratic state senator who represented the 13th Voting District in Illinois in the early 1990s. Prior to her stint in politics, she had worked for the Black Press Institute and was editor of the Black Press Review. During the Cold War, Palmer supported the Soviet Union and spoke against the United States. In the 1980s she served as an executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council, which the FBI identified as a Communist front group (and which was an affiliate of the World Peace Council, an international Soviet front). Palmer participated in the World Peace Council’s Prague assembly in 1983 -- just as the USSR was launching its “nuclear freeze” movement, a scheme that would have frozen Soviet nuclear and military superiority in place.
In the mid-1990s, Palmer attended a number of political meetings at the Chicago-area home of her friends and ideological allies, former Weatherman terrorists Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. At those gatherings, Palmer developed a friendly relationship with another attendee, a young aspiring politician named Barack Obama.
In 1995, state senator Palmer decided to pursue an opportunity to run for a higher office when Mel Reynolds, the congressman from Illinois’ 2nd District, resigned from the House of Representatives amid a sexual scandal involving him and an underage campaign volunteer.
As Palmer prepared to leave the state senate, she hand-picked Barack Obama as the person she most wanted to fill her newly vacated senate seat. Toward that end, she introduced Obama to party elders and donors as her preferred successor, and helped him gather the signatures required for getting his name placed on the ballot.
But in November 1995, Jesse Jackson, Jr. defeated Palmer in a special election for Reynolds’ empty congressional seat. At that point, Palmer filed to retain the Democratic nomination for the state senate seat she had encouraged Obama to pursue; that seat would be up for grabs in the November 1996 elections. She asked Obama to politely withdraw from the race and offered to help him find an alternative position elsewhere.
But Obama refused to withdraw, so Palmer resolved to run against him (and two other opponents who also had declared their candidacy) in the 1996 Democratic primary. To get her name placed on the ballot, Palmer hastily gathered the minimum number of signatures required. Obama promptly challenged the legitimacy of those signatures and charged Palmer with fraud. A subsequent investigation found that a number of the names on Palmer’s signature list were invalid, thus she was knocked off the ballot. Obama also successfully challenged the signatures gathered by his other two opponents, and both were likewise disqualified. As a result, Obama ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and won by default.
“I liked Alice Palmer a lot,” Obama would later reflect. “I thought she was a good public servant. It [the process by which Obama got Palmer's name removed from the ballot] was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently.”
To view a comprehensive profile and some supplemental resources about Alice Palmer, click here.
Thank you for posting this information!
In 1987 in the wake of a controversial strike by the Chicago Teachers' Union, the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs, was formed to lobby for a new Illinois law that would mandate the establishment of a new power center in Chicago public schools. Local school councils would be established to watchdog union teachers and their principals and they would have the power to fire principals at will.sourceBill Ayers helped organize the ABCs group, was its contact person and later its chair. Barack Obama worked on school reform efforts for the DCP at that time, the DCP played a leading role in the school reform effort and the DCP was a member of the ABCs. Chicago United, a business group established by Tom Ayers, Bill's father, was also a member of the ABCs.
The Woods Fund also provided additional financial support to the DCP in 1988 to support its school reform efforts. A program officer of the Woods Fund at the time was Ken Rolling who would later be hired by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama as Executive Director of the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
Oh no, Barack Hussein only knows him because their kids go to school together. Of course, it remains to be seen how that could be when Ayers’ “kids” are in their 30s and the Hussein kids are 6 and 9.
BTW - the amount of money contributed by the Annenberg Foundation was $50 million, not $500 million.
One thing that charitable foundations expect is that a board dispensing money attempt to solicit matching funds from government and corporate sources.
IIRC - the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) ended up with almost $150 million to disburse, in an effort to “improve the Chicago schools.”
The money went primarily to fund activist who would preach social activism in the schools. After some period of time, the Annenberg Foundation had a review conducted - and the results showed no benefit, so the CAC was shutdown.