Loudon: Toxic Trio! Ayers, Davidson, Klonsky Linked to Pro-Obama Organisation

The Obama File 32 Toxic Trio! Ayers, Davidson, Klonsky Linked to Pro-Obama Organisation by Trevor Loudon, posted September 27, 2008, on his blog, The New Zeal, is cross-posted at RBO with the author’s permission. Loudon’s first Obama File was posted January 12, 2008.

Barack Obama has tried to minimise his relationship to former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activist and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Meanwhile Obama’s political opponents have been racing the clock to uncover the Senator’s links to his radical friend and colleague.

I thought I’d try a different tack. Are there any current links between Ayers and organisations supportive of Obama?

In this post, I revealed that Ayers’s wife and fellow former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn (Ayers and Dohrn, 1980, right) was a board member of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS)–an alliance of former SDS members and several Marxist organisations. I proved that Ayers also had ties to MDS and that there was a huge membership overlap between MDS and Progressives for Obama.

This post will confirm Ayers’s ties to MDS and his long term and ongoing links to two key pro-Obama activists and former SDS members, Carl Davidson and Mike Klonsky.

Carl Davidson has occasionally commented on this blog, criticising my findings on Obama and his radical ties.

On this post from February this year, another commentor “Spitfire”, called Davidson out:

Gee, Carl, why don’t you talk a little about your background? … Make sure you mention your recent relationships with Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky.

Carl Davidson replied…

Bill and Mike and I have been friends since the SDS days of the 1960s–although Mike and I bitterly opposed the Weatherunderground nonsense back then when it counted… What’s silly is the notion that any of us shape the politics of Barack Obama…

Now that that relationship is established, who are Carl Davidson and Mike Klonsky?

Carl Davidson

Carl Davidson served on the MDS board after its founding in August 2006. He serves as webmaster of Progressives for Obama which he helped found with three fellow MDS board members Bill Fletcher Jr., Tom Hayden and Barbara Ehrenreich.

According to his Discover the Networks profile:

Davidson is an American Marxist who serves as a national steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice, a field organizer for the Solidarity Economy Network, and co-chair of Chicagoans Against War & Injustice. The latter organization has formed alliances with such groups as the League of Women Voters, Rainbow/PUSH, Citizen Action, People for the American Way, the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Aiming ultimately to transform the United States into a socialist nation, Davidson advocates the mobilization of “new grassroots majorities required for progressive, systemic change.”

In 1960s, Davidson was a national secretary of SDS and a key leader of the anti-Vietnam War campaign. With Tom Hayden, Davidson helped launch, in 1969, the “Venceremos Brigades,” which according to Discover the Networks “

…covertly transported hundreds of young Americans to Cuba to help harvest sugar cane and interact with Havana’s communist revolutionary leadership. (The Brigades were organized by Fidel Castro’s Cuban intelligence agency, which trained “brigadistas” in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and explosives.)

After the SDS broke up Davidson became involved in Maoist politics until 1992 when he became a leader of the newly formed Committees of Correspondence (CoC), a Marxist-Leninist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and former Communist Party USA (CPUSA) members. The organization has since changed its name to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Davidson remains a prominent figure in CCDS alongside several MDS board members including Noam Chomsky and Manning Marable.

In the mid-1990s Davidson was a leader of the Chicago branch of the New Party, a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials. Most New Party members were also involved in the COC, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), or the militant leftist “community” organization ACORN.

Other leaders of the New Party included later MDS board members Bill Fletcher Jr. and Barbara Ehrenreich (both DSA leaders and Progressives for Obama founders) and Noam Chomsky and Manning Marable.

Obama joined the New Party in 1995, before his Illinois State Senate run, where he met Davidson. The New Party publicly endorsed Obama, while Davidson and other Party members helped Obama’s campaign.

Wrote Davidson in 2007:

I’m from Chicago … and [I've] known Obama from the time he came to the New Party to get our endorsement for his first race ever…. He said all the right things to the ACORN and New Party folks, and we endorsed him…

In 2002 Davidson and fellow former SDS member (now Obama fundraiser and Progressives for Obama endorser) Marilyn Katz, organised a large Chicago antiwar rally where Obama first came out strongly against the Iraq War.

Michael Klonsky

Mike Klonsky joined the MDS board in 2006. Klonsky’s father Robert, was a leading activist in the CPUSA. In 1968 Mike Klonsky was the national secretary of SDS and in May 1969 was one of five SDS members arrested when police raided SDS offices in Chicago.

In late 1969, Klonsky founded the October League, a pro-Mao communist organisation which in 1977 became the Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist (CP-ML). Klonsky chaired the CP-ML which was recognised by the Chinese Communist Party as their US fraternal party. Klonsky made several trips to China beginning in July 1977, where he was feted by Communist Chinese officials.

^{1978 CP-ML poster, Klonsky’s name bottom left}

In 1991, Klonsky co-founded the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago with Bill Ayers

The Workshop was given at least $175,000 by Chicago’s Annenberg Challenge. This organisation was chaired by Barack Obama, who had been recruited for the job by a group which included Bill Ayers.

Until June this year Klonsky ran a Blog on Obama’s campaign website. It was pulled at very short notice after adverse publicity began surfacing on the blogosphere.

Unlike several MDS board members, Mike Klonsky DID NOT endorse the Progressives for Obama campaign. However his wife Susan and his brother Fred (both former SDS members) did.

In November 2007 MDS held a “Convergence” in Chicago.

Speakers included Manning Marable (MDS chairman, Obama supporter, CCDS, DSA), Mark Rudd (MDS board and Progressives for Obama, former SDS/Weather Underground), Marilyn Katz, Mike James (MDS board, Progressives for Obama, former SDS), Paul Buhle (DSA, Progressives for Obama, former SDS), Al Haber (founder of SDS), Franklin Rosemont (former SDS), Tom Good (MDS board, Progressives for Obama) and Muhammad Ahmad aka Max Stanford, a former leader of the SDS aligned black militant organisation–Revolutionary Action Movement.

Of course Davidson, Klonsky and Ayers were also present.

^{Mike James left, Franklin Rosemont, Mike Klonsky, Muhammad Ahmad}

Bill Ayers as usual was a star, one of the few speakers whose thoughts were committed to video.

Part 1

In part 1 (above) note Ayers’s reference to MDS as “our work”. Note his enthusiasm for building alliances and using the US elections to enlist “hundreds of thousands” of young people to his cause. Also note reference to Rashid Khalidi, an MDS linked, pro-Palestinian activist, a close friend of Barack Obama.

Part 2

In Part 2 (above) note Ayers’s chiding of Obama for adopting centrist positions. Note reference to Progressives for Obama founder Tom Hayden’s call for Obama to stay true to his anti-Iraq War position.

All of this is completely in line with MDS and Progressives for Obama strategy.

It is clear that the movement behind both organisations is not new. It has roots in the SDS of the ’60s, the New Party of the ’90s and leading strands of the American Marxist movement. Davidson, Klonsky and Ayers have all played significant roles-sometimes seemingly in concert.

The Davidson, Klonsky, Ayers “Toxic Trio” have all put their lives into the communist movement. They have all paved the way for Obama’s political advancement.

What do these committed activists expect from Obama in return for their considerable investment?

Also see:

• An update on the Movement for a Democratic Socieity and the “new” SDS, 09.25.08.
• More on the Movement for a Democratic Society and the “new” Students for a Democratic Society, 09.22.08.
• Has Trevor Loudon found the Ayers-Dohrn-Obama “smoking gun”? Meet the Movement for a Democratic Society, 09.21.08.