Posted by
Marie-Jacqueline on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 2:41:42 PM
. Obama Has Links to ANOTHER '60s Radical
Barack Obama has consistently sought to distance himself from former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. But it’s a different story with another student radical from the 1960s — Marilyn Katz — who is actually on Obama’s fundraising team.
Katz, a public relations executive in Chicago, serves on Obama’s national finance committee. She is listed as a fundraising “bundler” on his Web site, has hosted fundraisers for the candidate, and attended the Democratic Convention as part of the Illinois delegation.
But during the violent protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Katz was the security chief for the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which spawned Ayers and the Weather Underground.
During those protests, Katz advocated throwing studded nails in front of police cars, the Chicago Tribune reported.
In 1969, an undercover policeman named William Frapolly testified at the “Chicago Seven” trials, and prosecutors asked him to describe his collaboration with organizers of the protest the previous year.
He testified that one night in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Katz briefed a group of protesters on the use of “guerilla nails.”
“She had two types,” he told the court.
“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.
“She showed another set that was the same type of nails sharpened at both ends, but they were put through a Styrofoam cylinder.”
A prosecutor asked, “To whom was she showing these objects?”
Frapolly answered, “Everyone in the group.”
Katz was a principal organizer of the October 2002 anti-war demonstration in Chicago where Obama first expressed his opposition to the looming Iraq war.
In 2005, she co-authored the book “Stopping War, Seeking Justice” along with longtime Marxist and Obama supporter Carl Davidson.
Now she is co-chair of Chicagoans Against War & Injustice, and her public relations firm is working on contracts with the city of Chicago worth millions of dollars. She lists as her clients the city’s housing authority, law department, and departments of housing, human services, streets and sanitation, and public health, among others.
As for her relationship with Ayers, who admitted helping to bomb the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon in the 1970s, the Tribune reported that she has said, “Bill and I were in different parts of SDS. We disagreed on tactics.”
Guy Benson wrote on Townhall.com about Obama’s Katz connection: “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 . . .
“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.”