Communist Party USA and Obama ("Change", "Fundamental Transformation", etc, etc)

"This president can be a transformative leader (he has that potential in my view), but only if he embraces and fights for a transformative agenda."--Sam Webb, Chairman Communist Party USA

"We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America"
--B.H.Obama, 2008

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek"-- BARACK OBAMA
_____________________________________________________

"The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction.

The record turnout in the Democratic Presidential primary races shows that millions of voters, including millions of new voters, are using this election to bring about real change. We wholeheartedly agree with them."

A breakthrough election
Congratulations on an extraordinary history making election!

We can think back with pride to decades of hard work toward our strategic goal of a big enough, broad enough and united enough labor and all-people’s movement that could overcome the ultra-right blockage to all progress. That all people’s movement has come to life, it is dynamic and it has the potential to keep growing.

The election of Barack Obama and a strengthened Congress creates new conditions in our country. There is now the possibility to shift gears and move forward. This new day requires us to further develop our tactics in order to continue to deepen and broaden labor and people’s unity.

There are thousands of experiences that we all have had in these momentous days, some large, some small, all of which express the enormity of change in thinking and readiness for involvement that is underway and that steels us for the battles ahead.

The tears of joy we all shared as crowds gathered to watch the election results here and throughout the world dramatize the new moment we are in.

Let me begin with a simple observation: If the last 30 years were an era of reaction, then the coming decade could turn into an era of reform, even radical reform. Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.

In this legislative session, we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead.

We can visualize passing tough regulatory reforms on the financial industry, which brought the economy to ruin.

We can imagine the troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan while U.S. representatives participate in a regional process that brings peace and stability to the entire region.

In the current political climate, the expansion of union rights becomes a real possibility.

Much the same can be said about winning a second stimulus bill, and we sure need one, given the still-rising rate, and likely long term persistence, of unemployment.

Isn’t it possible in the Obama era to create millions of green jobs in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy in tandem with an attack on global warming?

Can’t we envision taking new strides in the long journey for racial and gender equality in this new era, marked at its beginning by the election of the first African American to the presidency?

And isn’t the overhaul of the criminal justice and prison system – a system steeped in racism – no longer pie-in-the sky, but something that can be done in the foreseeable future?

"Barack Obama told supporters that
'change has come to America' as he
claimed victory in a historic presidential election."

Thanks. It's meant more as a reference thread rather than a commentary one.

Obama's linkage to Communist Party USA, btw, goes back to his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis...

Barack Obama's Marxist Mentor [Frank Marshall Davis]
By Trevor Loudon, NewZeal.Blogspot.com, March 29, 2007
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2007/03/barack-obamas-marxist-mentor.html

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Barack Obama, from Dreams from My Father, Three Rivers Press, New York, Revised Edition, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-8277-3, p. 76-7:
"But by the time I met Frank [Frank Marshall Davis] he must have been pushing eighty, with a big, dewlapped face and an ill-kempt gray Afro that made him look like an old, shaggy-maned lion. He would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with Gramps out of an emptied jelly jar."

___________________________________________________________

Frank Marshall Davis

From Accuracy In Media | AIM.ORG

Obama’s Red Mentor Praised Red Army
AIM Report | By Cliff Kincaid | April 30, 2008

Barack Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA), wrote a poem dedicated to the Soviet Red Army. “Smash on, victory-eating Red Army,” he declared. He also wrote poems attacking traditional Christianity and the work of Christian missionaries.

The “Red Army” poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:

Show the marveling multitudes
Americans, British, all your allied brothers
How strong you are
How great you are
How your young tree of new unity
Planted twenty-five years ago
Bears today the golden fruit of victory!

http://www.aim.org/aim-report/obamas-red-mentor-praised-red-army/

____________________________________

Obama’s Communist Mentor
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | February 18, 2008

excerpt...

"through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his 'poetry' and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just 'Frank.'

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations."

Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator's victory in the Iowa caucuses:

"Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary 'mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through."
-People's Weekly World (PWW), official newspaper of the Communist Party, USA
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12302/1/405
(Note: article has since been pulled from the Communist Party USA/Peoples Weekly World/PWW website)

AIM article: Obama’s Communist Mentor
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/

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Barack Obama, Frank Marshall Davis, Vernon Jarrett - One Degree of Seperation
New Zeal blog ^ | Oct 17, 2008 | Trevor Loudon
"Why did Barack Obama move to Chicago? Why did he choose a city famous for its corruption and distrust of outsiders as a launching pad for his political career? Did Obama's boyhood mentor, life long communist Frank Marshall Davis influence that choice?"
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-file-38-barack-obama-frank.html

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From the Traditional Values Coalition, March 13, 2008:

"At some point in the 1970s when Barack was attending school in Hawaii, he became acquainted with Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party, USA. Davis had moved to Hawaii in 1948 from Chicago where he had been involved in Marxist-related activities.

In Hawaii, he became a mentor to Barack Obama, the man who seeks the Presidency of the United States.

Kathryn Waddell Takara, Ph.D., a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii, has written at least two lengthy analysis of Frank M. Davis’s political activities both in Hawaii and while he was living in Chicago. Takara created the first Black Studies department at the U of H in 1971 and is an associate of such notable leftists as Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael.

Takara’s paper, 'Frank Marshall Davis: Black Labor Activist and Outsider Journalist: Social Movements In Hawaii,' describes Davis’ radical activities in Hawaii as both a writer and labor organizer.

How this committed Communist became a mentor to Barack Obama remains a mystery, but it is likely that his mother was somehow involved in far left activities in Hawaii and met Davis through her left-wing network on the University of Hawaii campus. Perhaps an enterprising reporter could ask Senator Obama how he met Davis and what sort of influence he may have had on him. Likewise, one can only speculate on the influence his rebellious, left-wing mother had on his political beliefs and aspirations.

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s Mother Profiled By 'Chicago Tribune' In 2007:
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/print.php?sid=3282

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