Congressional candidate Charles Barron praises wealth redistribution, revolution, attacks Thomas Jefferson, claims “MLK was Democratic Socialist”
Charles Barron, current New York City Council member, is running for Congress from NY. He is running against Hakeem Jeffries in the Democratic primary. Since NYC is so heavily democratic, it is likely that the primary will decide the ultimate winner. Barron already has received support from many unions.
A lot has been written about Barron. A lot of reasons to not want to vote for this man- supporter of dictators(like Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez), anti Israel, anti semitic according to pantheon of NYC Democrats who have come out against him, anti capitalist, pro socialist, former Black Panther, pro OWS, etc. Perhaps most of all, not really changing the blight that has had such an effect on his district where he has been city council member since 2001.
Here are a few more reasons:
In this video from 2009, Barron praises MLK as being for “equitable redistribution of wealth”, saying “Dr. King wasn’t just a dreamer, he was a radical, a Democratic Socialist”.
He then goes on to say “we need to get revolutionaries in office, we need to get radicals in office” and talks about the group he belongs to- Operation Power- which is working on that.
The video is uploaded by a socialist organization, Cleveland FIST, and that man introducing Barron in the beginning is Larry Holmes, current first secretary of the Worker’s World Party(communist organization). See more about Larry, his view of the Occupy movement, and recruiting for communism here.
This next video, from a radical conference, Barron talks about how radicals must gain/seize power through the “tactic” of electoral politics to deal with the evils of capitalism. At around 11:56, he talks about how he refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag at city council meetings, because “I cannot pledge to a lie”, calls Thomas Jefferson “a slave holding pedophile”, repeats what he said previously- “I want to slap the first white man I meet for my black mental health” at a reparations rally, at ~38:54 “we should nationalize Con Ed and automobile industry”, “revolution can and will happen in America, capitalism is a failure, it never has worked, can’t work, wouldn’t work and I want to see it in my lifetime”. “If Barack Obama is successful in stabilizing this economy, we are in trouble. Because successful means he’ll be patching up capitalism, trying to fix it.” He says until we are post racism and post capitalism, we should not stop fighting capitalism.
Barron with his support of radicals and redistribution sounds a bit like our friends in Occupy. And it is no coincidence that he has been a supporter. As council member from East New York, he came out in December to support Occupy’s seizure of a foreclosed home in his neighborhood. With huge fan fare, Occupy and Barron announced they were installing a “homeless family” into the house, taking it back from the banks.
Except it was all a lie and Charles Barron knew it.
The house was not foreclosed, it was still owned by single dad Wise Ahadzi who was in negotiations with his bank to try to hold onto the house. See more on the story here. OWS tried to put Ahadzi off, saying we will help you but they never did. Ahadzi said Barron was aware of this, yet went along with this charade on the media.
After all the fanfare, the lie began to unravel. OWS never moved the “homeless family” in, but rather had OWS squatters living in the house. Those squatters basically gutted and destroyed the inside of the house. When this hit the NY Post, OWS had a strategy meeting about what to do approach the PR fallout. The meeting included OWS members who were part of New York Communities for Change and the Working Families Party(both ACORN derivatives) and they talked about how to mitigate the fall out, including getting the “homeless father”, OWS member, into the home. After it became a political hot potato, Barron then turned on OWS, throwing them under the bus in the Post. He talked about how they came from “outside the neighborhood” and the squatters weren’t wanted. He apparently hoped that people forgot his support and knowledge from just a couple of months before.
Apparently Wise Ahadzi wasn’t important enough for OWS or Barron to help. It was okay to “redistribute” his wealth. Now he is left with a destroyed home. Thank you, OWS and Charles Barron.
Single dad Wise Ahadzi with his two daughters.
Occupy: Anti Israel, Anti semitism?
A Facebook post on the Occupy Tampa Facebook page has been burning up the social media lines.
According to Haaretz:
The cartoon, shown below, depicted a Jewish man with a big nose and large beard driving a car with the symbol of the United Nations as the wheel and U.S. President Barack Obama’s head as the stick shift.
On Holocaust Remembrance day, this cartoon was particularly offensive and engendered 400 comments in protest. ”Putting this on Holocaust day just makes it even more sickening than it already is,” one user said. ”This is an outrage. All OWS sympathizers must be disgusted by this vile act of hatred,” said another user. Despite the fact that most of the commentors were furious over the cartoon, 54 people “liked” the image.
Haaretz noted users who claimed the Occupy Tampa page was “not affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement”, that the movement has no official leadership so anyone can post under the “occupy” name. However, the Occupy Tampa Facebook page has more than 25,000 followers, and has been active since September 25, the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
All the occupations are technically “autonomous”, so each could disavow the other. Invariably, when there is a crime or something unpleasant done by an Occupier, the “official” word is that the actor is “not really an Occupier” or one cannot ascribe his actions to everyone else.
Much has been said about anti semitism in OWS already; it is usually met with “we cannot control what individual people say” or as with Occupy Tampa, it is not “official” part of OWS.
It is however important to understand there is a large anti-Israel component to OWS. For example, some of the founding boots on the ground for OWS – Code Pink, Worker’s World Party and Anonymous-all have made pro Palestinian, anti Israel pronouncements. While there is certainly a distinction that one can make between objecting to actions of a country-Israel-and being anti-semitic, these statements have sometimes crossed the line, and make one wonder.
In October in Melbourne, Occupy had a large protest, part of which marched on a mall against a chocolate shop owned by Jews, which Occupy said had somehow supported Israel. In the process of the march, one member ripped an Israeli flag out of the hands of a man silently protesting them on the side of the road.
In November, Occupy Boston, led by Code Pink and Communications Workers of America VP Dennis Trainor, led an “invasion” of the Israeli consulate in Boston. While short, the invasion chanted slogans such as, “Viva la Intifadah” and waved Palestinian flags.
Occupy DC protested the alleged influence of Israel by “Occupying AIPAC” during the AIPAC conference in March. This was posted in support by @Anon_Central, an anonymous twitter account that has also declared war on the US:
See this cartoon and think about it. Just think this time. Is it true?
#USA#Zionist#Israel#AIPAChttp://pic.twitter.com/PxwjJSgg
https://twitter.com/#!/Anon_Central/status/176365514011066368/photo/1
Historically, of course, pogroms against Jews would begin with cries against the evil “bankers” and their ability to control the world (translation: Jews controlling the world). So when the rhetoric is of the “evil banksters” controlling the world, it understandably makes some nervous.
Anonymous has actually declared war on Israel in the following video in quite virulent terms, vowing to destroy Israel in three steps:
When we asked @OccupyWallSt (as much of an “official” twitter account as you probably will get) about the above cartoon, they denounced it as hate speech, but did not respond when we asked if they would denounce Anonymous for declaring war in such terms on Israel. This declaration has taken the very real shape of online hacks against the Israeli government as well as hitting a variety of other Israeli websites, some with no relation to the government. However, that is just the “first step”. Anonymous promises two more steps, ”suprises” for Israel.
Anonymous has also computer attacked various law enforcement agencies in defense of Occupy for alleged police brutality against them. The FBI has arrested several Anonymous members recently for some of these actions.
When you demonize a group of people, to the point of making up names about them-the 1%, “banksters”, “vampire squids”-you create an environment in which such sentiments can flourish. Why do you not succeed? Nazis told the people it was the evil money grubbing Jews, Occupy Wall Street tells you it’s the evil “banksters”.
Occupy appears to believe in collective guilt of the imagined evil 1%, yet not in collective responsiblity of their members who commit offensive acts. In so doing they engage in dangerous, divisive and harmful rhetoric. People need to call it out for what it is, to put a stop to it.
