Barack Obama -- Marilyn Katz

Marilyn Katz

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Marilyn Katz -- now

Marilyn Katz -- then

Head of Security for Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.)

Marilyn Katz is a Chicago public relations consultant and political operative, who has known David Axelrod for 30 years. Katz claims it was she who introduced Obama to the "activist network" in Chicago.

Katz met William Ayers through SDS and defended him after his association with Obama surfaced in the 2008 Presidential Campaign. She organized Vietnam War protests through Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Katz is a petite woman who was, improbably, the head of security for S.D.S. at the 1968 Democratic Convention. She led young protesters outside the convention, including throwing nails in the street to thwart police officers.

In Recalling Her 1960’s Activism, Katz Has Said She Was For "Sexual Freedom And A Democratic Socialist Paradise."

Obama's Radical Delegate

Eighty-five thousand cheering fans. Pyrotechnics. A dramatic, temple-style backdrop. Such was the scene in Denver Thursday night as Barack Obama accepted his party’s presidential nomination with "great humility." As his deep voice reverberated throughout the massive venue, thousands of eyes welled up with tears of hope and change. In the sea of faces and waving flags stood a woman by the name of Marilyn Katz. Like several of the other radicals who populate Obama’s sphere, she once advocated guerilla tactics against police officers and participated in violent riots. Unlike some of her more infamous counterparts like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn -- who are in self-imposed exile until November 5, 2008 -- Katz is deeply, and officially, involved in Obama’s presidential campaign.

In 1969, an undercover policeman named William Frapolly took the stand at the infamous "Chicago Seven" trials. Prosecutors asked him to describe his collaboration with organizers of the violent protests that roiled the previous year’s Democratic National Convention. Frapolly testified that on one chaotic night in Lincoln Park, Ms. Katz briefed a group of protesters on a new addition to their arsenal of anarchy: Guerrilla nails. "She had two types," he recounted. "One was a cluster of nails that were sharpened at both ends, and they were fastened in the center. It looked like they were welded or soldered. She said these were good for throwing or putting underneath tires."

Katz wasn’t just an aggrieved foot soldier in the anti-war movement. She was the head of security for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a hardcore leftist cabal from which Ayers’ militant Weathermen organization splintered away. As the SDS security comrade-in-chief, Katz was intimately familiar with the group’s extreme tactics, which were employed repeatedly in clashes with authorities. Four decades later, Katz has traded in her guerilla nails for manicured nails, and is actively working to elect Barack Obama president.

To be clear, Katz never graduated to the bombs and bullets approach of Ayers, Inc. She also seems to have grown up a bit since her SDS glory days and has cultivated a political consulting career in Obama’s hometown. Katz has not, however, abandoned her left-wing ideology. She was one of the principal organizers of a now-famous 2002 antiwar rally at which Barack Obama followed through on the "most gut-wrenching decision" of his entire life by publicly warning against Iraq’s liberation. Katz has since described the event as Obama’s "coming out…as a public speaker." This, of course, is not to be confused with his original political coming out party at the Ayers residence in the mid 1990s.

Ever since Obama decided to run for president, he’s been doing his very best to dismiss, deny, and obfuscate his longtime relationship with Ayers and Dohrn. After all, mainstream politicians don’t often have close working relationships, let alone friendships, with people who once declared war on the United States government. Katz, on the other hand, appears to have been welcomed into the Obama presidential campaign with open arms. She serves on his national finance committee, she is listed as a fundraising "bundler" on his website, she has hosted fundraisers for him, and she has personally donated thousands of dollars to the cause. Katz also traveled to Denver as part of the Illinois delegation last week, serving as a member of the credentials committee.

There are so many objectionable figures in Obama’s social milieu, new revelations about yet another garden variety radical may elicit shrugs at this point. How have we arrived at such a place? His supporters have made it clear that his close ties to unrepentant terrorists -- unrepentant terrorists -- are no big deal. In fact, those who raise concerns about the Obama-Ayers nexus are labeled vicious neo-swiftboaters. So perhaps it follows that someone who preferred lobbing guerilla nails at police over planting pipe bombs in federal buildings would be integrated into Obama’s official campaign apparatus without so much as a second look. Maybe her slot on the national finance committee was a long-delayed reward for her admirable show of restraint.

When Ayers first became a political liability for Obama, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a story entitled, "Who is Bill Ayers?" In case any readers were foolish enough to think the Ayers connection was a big deal, a voice of reason was quoted to set them straight. "What Bill Ayers…did forty years ago has nothing to do with" Obama’s presidential run. The source went on to detail Ayers’ wonderful work in the field of public education. Who was this great moral authority? Why, Marilyn Katz, of course -- identified as a "political strategist" and a former member of the "peaceful" Students for a Democratic Society. Leave it to the mainstream media to quote Ms. Guerilla Nails declaring that Mr. Wish-I-had-done-more’s bombings should be irrelevant, while adding that he’s really a swell guy these days. How reassuring!

During a break in the cheering on Thursday, Obama chided his opponents for making a "big election" about "small things." This was a clear reference to the mini-scandals (Ayers, Rezko, etc.) that continue to nip at his ankles and threaten to become larger headaches. If only those right-wing hatchet men -- to borrow an attack line from Team Obama -- would quit mentioning that he’s abided some of America’s most subversive domestic detractors for much of his adult life, he could get on with the people’s business of caring for the sick, slowing the rise of the oceans, and healing America’s soul.

One can only assume that Marilyn Katz applauded this line from Obama heartily. If the "small things" like Obama’s alarming associates and hard left voting record can be taken off the table, his path to the White House will be a cakewalk. There, he and his longtime allies could begin to do some truly big things.

More On Marilyn

All of Obama’s radical revolutionary friends seem to be coming out into the light. Just weeks ago, former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers endorsed Jon Stewart’s "Rally to Restore Sanity." Then his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, told cameras, "The American government is the real terrorist." Now Marilyn Katz -- a lifelong "revolutionary" and longtime, intimate friend of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Barack’s alter ego Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod -- has written an article in the socialist magazine In These Times calling for the creation of a new "progressive" organization to motivate his hard-Left base. Katz has spent decades attempting to create socialist-oriented groups dominated by Marxists that included enough deluded liberals to give the appearance of a mainstream political venture. Her article, and the re-emergence of Obama’s Marxist supporters, may signal the beginning of just such a renewed effort.

Unlike Ayers, Dohrn, or Jeremiah Wright, the name Marilyn Katz is not well known, even among conservative observers of the radical Left. This author wrote the most detailed account of Katz’s involvement with the Obamas last year. In an article posted on WorldNetDaily today, Aaron Klein cites a DiscoverTheNetworks profile, which is largely cannibalized from an article I wrote last September. As anyone who reads my article will see, her close ties to the White House should send up (no pun intended) red flags.

To briefly summarize, Katz provided "security" for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the "Days of Rage" protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where she invented "guerrilla nails" -- several sharp nails fasted in the center, which SDS members could throw at police. In 1971-2, Katz would lead a remnant of the imploding SDS to form the New American Movement (NAM), a combined Old Left-New Left organization that included Communist Party USA members from the Stalinist era. A few years later, Katz founded the Reproductive Rights National Network, which intended to enroll pro-abortion activists in a larger crusade for "child care, national health-care, high-quality education, and guaranteed income." In 1983, NAM merged with Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

As the website of the Freedom Socialist Party notes, "Social democrats, such as the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM), long ago disappeared into the Democratic Party."

Katz started a public relations firm and led the charge for the election of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, a major triumph of the socialist Left. That is where she met Michelle Robinson and her fiancee, Barack Obama.

Katz and Chicago limousine liberal Bettylu Saltzman organized the 2002 antiwar demonstration featuring a speech from State Senator Barack Hussein Obama, which he used to burnish his antiwar credentials en route to capturing the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Katz continued to encourage socialists to radicalize the Democratic Party. In a 2004 article entitled "From Protest to Politics," she and co-author Carl Davidson encouraged revolutionaries to vote for John Kerry. Although they insisted the United States "will still be an imperialist power" under Kerry, at least under a Democrat the United States would be "not quite as dangerous to peace abroad."

Continuing her efforts to radicalize the mainstream, Katz bundled at least $50,000 for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, as did Code Pink activist (and Jerry Brown advisor) Jodie Evans.

After Obama’s election, she reportedly offered a barely concealed bribe to Governor Rod Blagojevich in exchange for naming Valerie Jarrett to Obama’s vacant senate seat. Blago wrote in his book that, after Katz failed to schedule lunch with his wife Patti, Katz contacted him and "indicated that if I appointed Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate, the Obama people would help me raise money from their network of contributors across the country."

Despite her pose as a simple Democrat, her goals and ideology have remained unchanged. On the 40th anniversary of the Days of Rage, an interviewer from In These Times asked "In this age of terrorism" if she regretted her role in the riots. She replied, "I regret nothing." However, she ventured, "I would probably reject violence as a useful form of revolution."

Probably???

She told ITT, "What is really interesting to me" is that Ayers and Dohrn had figured "out a way to not only join the system but make changes" to it. One of the ways they effected "change" was by supporting Barack Obama.

In the same interview, Katz exposed to her socialist audience the Left’s collusion with Barack Obama. She said she and her fellow fringers had to elect Obama and continually push him in the direction of Fabian socialism -- but without going so far as to tip off ignorant patriotic Americans:

We have to get him into office so then we can be the Left opposition. I think it is a delicate balance between those of us who are progressive, how much you push, how much you don’t want to put him in very difficult positions that would embarrass him or give John McCain some advantage.

In her new article "What We Lost After We Won in 2008," Katz purrs the reason Obama’s party lost a blowout midterm election is because he failed to motivate the far-Left. To remedy this, she proposes:

We must build the national grassroots vehicle that Obama for America and Organizing for America could have been. This organization must be broad enough in scope to develop and promote a progressive agenda, and it should allow all types of involvement--whether online or in person, occasional or constant.

The article’s centerpiece is this: "Crucially, the organization’s members would not only articulate a progressive agenda and interact with congressional leaders on the ground but also be broad and creative enough in their thinking to involve the ordinary, everyday people who found both meaning and community in 2008." (Emphases added.)

Anyone familiar with Katz and the history of the Left of which she is a creature, knows she is calling for a new Popular Front. In the 1930s, the Communist Party USA made common cause with as many liberal organizations (especially unions) as possible to push America further into a command economy and draw the nation into World War II as an ally of Josef Stalin. The CPUSA hoped not only to drive the public Left but to use "useful idiots" as cover to make themselves appear mainstream.

Katz’s article seems the modern complement. Barack Obama’s heart is with the far-Left, and he desperately seeks popular cover to implement an agenda it knows the American people reject. That is why he finances covert propaganda, such as blogger Tracy Russo anonymously attacking conservative websites that disagree with his positions. That is why he hosts "cultural policy summits" with conspiracy theorists from the Universal Zulu Nation. Left-wing activist Sally Kohn exposed the weekly "Common Purpose meetings" Obama called to convince like-minded extremists to support his administration. That is why Education Secretary Arne Duncan "invited" 4,000 federal employees to attend Al Sharpton’s "Reclaim the Dream" rally, scheduled to compete with Glenn Beck‘s Restoring Honor rally on 8/28. And that is why he submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Commission that proclaimed socialism a "human right," while criticizing Arizona’s immigration law (and earning a UN condemnation of Jan Brewer’s law).

Katz now is opening another front on Obama’s behalf, while strategically nudging him to the Left.

Glenn Beck has speculated that once these efforts gain enough ground, the socialists will begin exposing themselves. The rapid-fire emergence of Ayers, Dohrn, and Katz lend support to his conclusion. Some of us have known Obama’s ideological extremism since before the 2008 election. Unlike the mainstream media -- and some "conservatives" -- he made little secret of it.

The question remains: After all the damage he has inflicted, will Americans fall for the PR smokescreen or insist that the newly elected Republicans pry Obama and his radical minions’ hands off the levers of power? Or do we even have the character to reject socialism, anymore?