Chicago’s School of Socialism—Midwest Academy

By Al Benson Jr.

Somehow, given the type of city it is, it only seems fitting that Chicago should have a school dedicated to the promotion of “progressive” agitation and propaganda supposedly to enable the poor and downtrodden to help them straighten their lives out—at the expense of everyone else and to the benefit of the political far left. Hence we have Midwest Academy—the Alinskyite paradise of the mid-continent.

Most who will read this have probably never heard of this school and that’s not by accident. An “educational” institution with an agenda like this one has is not to be advertised to the masses, lest they begin to ask questions.

Stanley Kurtz’s book Radical-In-Chief—Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism has an entire section dedicated to exposing this organization to the public, starting on page 131. Mr. Kurtz presents information and documentation that the public ought to be aware of so that we might begin to grasp the enormity of the socialist problem in our midst—from the White House on down. Mr. Kurtz, on page 131 of his book notes: “On Labor Day 1969, a group that included past SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) national secretary Paul Booth, his activist wife, Heather Booth, onetime SDS field secretary Steve Max and radical community organizer Harry Boyte published a pamphlet titled Socialism and the Coming Decade. Clustered several years later around an institute called the Midwest Academy, this group would go on to create a new way of blending socialism, community organizing, and electoral politics. In many ways, the Midwest Academy is the hidden key to Barack Obama’s political career. Obama’s organizing mentors had ties to it; Obama’s early funding was indirectly controlled by it; evidence strongly suggests that Obama himself received training there; both Barack and Michelle Obama ran a project called ‘Public Allies’ that was effectively an extension of the Midwest Academy; Obama’s first run for public office was sponsored by Academy veteran Alice Palmer;…Perhaps more important, Barack Obama’s approach to politics is clearly inspired by that of the Midwest Academy. Therefore, it is of no small interest that the Midwest Academy is a socialist ‘front group,’…The story of the Midwest Academy’s transformation from a stealthy nest of radical sixties socialists into a force at the center of the Democratic Party offers unparalleled insight into Barack Obama’s hidden political world.” How much of this did our investigative “news” media ever bring out? Our prestigious “presstitutes” of the fifth column are taught to bury this kind of information. This is “off limits” for the average American.

Mr. Kurtz is to be commended for the research he did for his book and for his attempt to alert the public as to the president’s deep socialist background. Others have also been trying to do the same thing, but thanks to an almost total media blackout, very little of this information makes it to the public at large. The “news” media and those that pay their tab want to make sure none of this sort of thing arises to disturb the public’s concentration on the nightly “reality” shows trotted out there to bemuse them and keep their minds off anything of real importance.

For all of that, some information does manage to seep through. On November 29, 2011, an article appeared on http://www.frontpagemag.com written by Matthew Vadum and entitled Union Gangsters: Heather Booth. Mr. Vadum writes, near the beginning of his article: “A disciple of Saul Alinsky, the socialist-feminist Booth co-founded the Chicago-based Midwest Academy, a training institute for community organizers…The Midwest Academy is funded in part by radical left-wing philanthropies such as George Soros’s Open Society Instutute, Tides Foundation, and the Woods Fund of Chicago. (Barack Obama and Bill Ayres served together on the Woods Fund board.)” Booth has embraced what is now called “stealth socialism” in that it advances the socialist agenda without appearing to do so. Earlier in her career, Booth was a bit more candid about her objectives. She said: “Truly reaching socialism or feminism will likely take a revolution that is in fact violent, a rupture with the old ways in which the current ruling class and elites are wiped out.” Today she is a bit less candid but the objectives are the same—depending on how you define “ruling elites.” She has no problem taking funding from George Soros and he has got to be one of the rulingest elites there is.

So we must conclude that outfits like Midwest Academy and those that run it are not really against our ruling elite as the ruling elite, in many cases, funds them. What they are really after is ordinary folks who have made good through hard work and dedication because these are some of the folks that will resist their socialist agenda. People like Soros will support it and promote it. The “super-rich” and the socialists have a lot in common. Us rubes in flyover country, however, are not supposed to be able to figure that out.

And another article on http://www.wnd.com written by Aaron Klein on 3/18/10 commented on the Woods Fund which has funded the Midwest Academy. Klein observed: “The Woods Fund, a nonprofit on which Obama served as paid director from 1999 to December 2002, provided startup funding and later capital to the Midwest Academy…Obama sat on the Woods Fund board alongside William Ayres, founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization.” Do you get the impression that many of these 60s socialists never really got rid of their socialist spots? All they did was cut their hair and put on business suits and proceeded to insert themselves into the “establishment” they professed to hate so much. And the “establishment” seems to have had no problem accepting them. Does this begin to tell you something about the “establishment?” All this may be a bit new to some of you, but think about it for awhile before rejecting it out of hand.

Probably lots of folks will not want to be bothered. As long as Big Brother lets them watch Monday night football and go fishing on Saturday morning they won’t complain too much, but I’ll tell you something folks, the end of those days may be coming. For that handful of you that wants to find out what’s going on you need to read Gary Allen’s None Dare Call it Conspiracy and The Rockefeller File. And while you’re at it, try to locate W. Cleon Skousen’s book The Naked Capitalist. You will find from reading these that the agendas of the ruling elite from above and the socialists from below are very similar, with the rest of us caught in the middle and being squeezed from both sides. And then, if you go back in our history 150 years and read Donnie Kennedy’s and my book Lincoln’s Marxists you will find that the socialists were the establishment. Actually, very little has changed since then, except that the destruction of the folks in the middle, the middle class, is becoming more apparent with each passing year, and the middle class, many of them Christians, sleep on unaware and unconcerned.

I have had occasion to wonder—where is the Christian alternative so something like the Midwest Academy? Unfortunately, I am afraid it doesn’t exist.

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