Thread: NEW YORK MAYOR'S SECRET PAST COMES TO LIGHT - ACORN

NEW YORK MAYOR'S SECRET PAST COMES TO LIGHT

De Blasio's unreported history stirring racial protests

Published: 15 hours ago
AARON KLEIN



Largely unreported in the news coverage of the recent race-related demonstrations is that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has a history of working with extremist activist groups to stir protests.

Further, de Blasio has a largely unreported history with the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

ACORN’s renamed group, the New York Communities for Change, is one of the organizations helping to lead the protests over the death of Eric Garner, who was killed by police in July.

De Blasio has been accused by critics, including New York police officers, of helping to fuel racial tension between police and protesters.

One of the major anti-police protests in New York that received media attention was an attempt to shut down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue shopping district before Christmas.

The protest was led by the group Act Now To End War & Stop Racism Coalition, or ANSWER, together with Occupy Wall Street and at least 10 other so-called economic justice and pro-Palestinian groups.

ANSWER has worked with ACORN and has led protests in the past with MoveOn.org, a group with which de Blasio previously worked.

De Blasio, Soros, MoveOn.org and protests

During the mayoral race last year, New York City media reported billionaire George Soros had endorsed de Blasio. But the reports failed to disclose the billionaire’s major financial donation to de Blasio’s nonprofit as well as the candidate’s cozy working relationship with Soros-funded activist groups. De Blasio worked with some of those groups to stir protests.
In 2011, using his position of public advocate, de Blasio launched a nonprofit called the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending, or CAPS. The group received its primary launch donation of $400,000 from Soros’ Open Society Institute. De Blasio used his group and his public office to organize with other Soros-funded groups.

In 2011, Chris Bragg at CityAndStateNY.com reported de Blasio pursued a case against the Minnesota-based Target Corporation after it contributed $150,000 to an organization that promoted a local politician, Tom Emmer, for governor. Emmer had drawn controversy for reportedly opposing a law that sought to combat the bullying of homosexual youth.

De Blasio’s office responded by organizing a protest with MoveOn.org, which is funded directly by Soros as well as by the Soros-funded Tides Foundation.

De Blasio also worked with other Soros-funded groups, noted Bragg, including Common Cause, the advocacy group Public Citizen and the D.C.-based Center for Political Accountability.

According to Braggs, de Blasio first became more familiar with Soros after the politician was invited to speak in 2011 at an intimate panel discussion at the billionaire’s Fifth Avenue apartment.

“I really didn’t know Soros before this,” de Blasio later stated. “At the end of it, I talked to him a bit, and he expressed some appreciation for the notion of finding a constructive way to address this. He said, ‘Stay in touch,’ and we did.”

He added, “Then we went to his staff and said, ‘Look, we’re trying to build this out nationally, and here’s an idea how to do it.’”

De Blasio the ACORN mayor?

In September 2013, WND was first to report de Blasio has a long history with the controversial ACORN, once even steering public funds to an ACORN front group.

De Blasio previously served several terms on the city council and as New York City public advocate from 2010 to the present.

He was endorsed by ACORN for his 2010 public advocate race.

De Blasio spent $43,000 to hire N.Y. Citizens Services Inc., an affiliate of ACORN, to run canvassing, consulting and field work for his public advocate campaign.

As a councilman, de Blasio steered $115,000 in taxpayer dollars directly to ACORN as well as to the organization’s affiliate, the New York Agency for Community Affairs.

De Blasio’s 2010 public advocate campaign was also endorsed by the ACORN-founded Working Families Party, with which the politician demonstrates a larger working relationship.

As a councilman, de Blasio was hired as a consulate by a group called the Progressive America Foundation, which reportedly paid him $33,000 to lobby for election regulations that would ease restrictions on third parties such as the Working Families Party, or WFP. The foundation is closely tied to WFP.

De Blasio turned around and spent $67,740 to hire WFP’s for-profit branch, Data and Field Services, for canvassing and election consulting. The organization was run from the same office as New York ACORN.

WFP was founded by progressive activist Dan Cantor, who also was a founder of the socialist-oriented New Party.
De Blasio reportedly served as executive director of the New York branch of the New Party.

WND previously exposed that President Obama himself was listed in New Party literature as a member.
De Blasio is clearly still supported by the ACORN nexus.

Bertha Lewis, the former executive director of ACORN, spoke for de Blasio at numerous events during the mayoral election.
“I’ve known Bill for decades, and we’ve fought on the front lines together. We’ve organized together,” Lewis said, according to EAG News.

“[He's] proud to say he’s liberal. [He's] proud to say he is severely progressive and was proud to stand with me, to back me, to back ACORN, and said, ‘We will march down the street together and I dare you, I dare you, to say something against my friend!’” Lewis continued.

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/new-york-...tZRd3g5ajBL.99

NEWSPAPER SHOWS OBAMA BELONGED TO SOCIALIST PARTY

Democrat's campaign denied allegations, but new evidence indicates membership

Published: 10/24/2008 at 12:50 AM
AARON KLEIN



JERUSALEM – Evidence has emerged that Sen. Barack Obama belonged to a socialist political party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.

Several blogs, including Powerline, previously documented that while running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the socialist-oriented New Party, with some blogs claiming Obama was a member of the controversial party.

The New Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists for America and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party’s aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its policies.

Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.

Obama’s campaign has responded to the allegations, denying the presidential candidate was ever a member of the New Party.

But the New Zeal blog dug up print copies of the New Party News, the party’s official newspaper, which show Obama posing with New Party leaders, list him as a New Party member and include quotes from him.
The party’s Spring 1996 newspaper boasted: “New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).

The paper quoted Obama saying “these victories prove that small ‘d’ democracy can work.”
The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.


Barack Obama pictured in New Party publication (Courtesy New Zeal blog)


New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago’s Democratic Socialists for America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed his gratitude for the group’s support and “encouraged NPers (New Party members) to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.”
Becoming a New Party member requires some effort on behalf of the politician. Candidates must be approved by the party’s political committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they will have a “visible and active relationship” with the party.

The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral “fusion,” which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party went defunct in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.

Following the initial reports of Obama’s purported membership in the New Party, Obama associate and former Chicago New Party activist Carl Davidson posted a statement on several blogs claiming his former party was not socialist, but he admitted it worked with ACORN.

“[The New Party] was a pragmatic party of ‘small d democracy’ mainly promoting economic reforms like the living wage and testing the fusion tactic, common in many countries but only operational in New York in the U.S. The main trend within it was ACORN, an Alinskyist outfit, which is hardly Marxist,” wrote Davidson.

But the socialist goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.

Among the New Party’s stated objectives were “full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity.”
The New Party stated it also sought “the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions.”

Many of the New Party’s founding members were Democratic Socialists for America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA. Obama attended several DSA events and meetings, including a DSA-sponsored town hall meeting Feb. 25, 1996, entitled “Employment and Survival in Urban America.” He sought and received an endorsement from the DSA.

According to DSA documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive, nationwide voter fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the presidential candidate’s ties to the group.
In 1995, the DSA’s New Ground newsletter stated, “In Chicago, the New Party’s biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.

“Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it’s easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics – until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party.”


Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2008/10/78945/#Mg8JoVmwpgVbhded.99

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZERS PLAYING PROTESTER ROLES

Leftist activists portrayed as voice of ordinary citizens

Published: 12/04/2014 at 2:13 PM
AARON KLEIN

Protests in New York City’s Times Square in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white NYPD officer.


Professional leftist organizers apparently are attempting to pass themselves off as ordinary protesters angry over a grand jury decision not to indict a white New York City police officer for killing an unarmed black male in Staten Island.

An article by FoxNews.com quotes by name two alleged citizen protesters involved in the various demonstrations that have gripped New York City over the past few days. In turns out both “protesters,” the only participants quoted by name in the article, are members of the professional organizing left.

The protests center on the death of Eric Garner, who died when a police officer put him in a neck hold while resisting arrest.
The FoxNews.com article quotes Ashley Coneys, 25, a self-described “person of color” who said she lives several neighborhoods from where Garner was killed.

“If officers never have to account for killing people of color, where’s the justice?” she told FoxNews.com. “Police are supposed to make us feel safe, but we don’t have a relationship where we feel safe.”

Coneys apparently did not mention to FoxNews.com that she is not simply an ordinary protester who lived near Garner.

WND found a LinkedIn.com resume for an Ashley Coneys of Staten Island that describes her as the program organizer at the Police Reform Organizing Project and a program associate at the Urban Justice Center in New York.

The Urban Justice Center is funded by numerous lefitist nonprofits, including George Soros’ Open Society, the JEHT Foundation and the Public Welfare Foundation.

Meanwhile, the second “protester” quoted in the FoxNews.com article is Nadya Stevens.

Reads the article: “Another Times Square protester, Nadya Stevens, 31, said she was skeptical that a NYPD pilot program to have police officers wear body cameras would prevent deaths at the hands of cops.”

Stevens told FoxNews.com: “If there was a camera on Eric Garner as he was being killed, I don’t know what body cameras are going to do.”

Like Coney, Stevens is not simply a “protester.”

WND identified a Nadya Stevens of the same age as being the assistant to the president of CWA Local 1180 union.

On her Twitter profile, Stevens has pictures of the Garner protests and images of a separate protest in May led by the 1180 union.
A New York labor union news website quoted Stevens in May defending a fellow union organizer who was being “unjustly prosecuted” for taking part in the Occupy protests.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/media-fai...1W6jtkkVOze.99