Ayers and Obama Together Again

Ayers And Obama, Back In The News

Stanley Kurtz has a piece in the WSJ detailing the association of Bill Ayers and Barack Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. He also offers insights into Bill Ayers' radical education agenda - soccer moms, listen up!

Mr. Kurtz provides a supplement at the NRO.

Let me chime in on this point from the Journal:

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

Unsettled indeed. But do keep in mind - there was a push for education reform in Chicago in 1988. The ABCs Coalition was coordinated by Bill Ayers, whose father was a key member of major philanthropic group that was also part of the ABCs Coalition. Another member of the ABCs - Barack Obama's Developing Communities Project.

So, did Bill and Barack meet back in 1988, just before Obama went off to Harvard? The timing is tricky - per his autobiography, Obama was working with a city-wide coalition on school reform in early 1988. However, he was planning to leave the Developing Communities Project in May of 1988 and go to Harvard that fall. The ABCs Coalition apparently came together in the spring of 1988 - this detailed history dates the ABCs Coalition to March 1988 (page 20), which leaves plenty of time for Obama and Ayers to meet and greet. The ABCs effort had hammered out a proposal and held a big rally by June 6, so a lot of work was done in April and May while Barack would have been involved.

Unless his name was picked from out of a hat in 1995 it is an excellent bet that Obama and Ayers met in 1988, which explains his subsequent recruitment by Ayers (denied by the campaign, of course) for the Annenberg Challenge in 1995.
Supporting info here and here, and let's hat tip Steve Diamond, who was the first person I know to promote this 1988 connection. I'll leave with this clipping from 1991 linking the ABCs Coalition, Obama's the Developing Communities Project, and Bill Ayers.

I wonder if the mainstream media will poke at this prior to November 5. I guess it depends on whether they will have time and resources left after they track down Sarah Palin's second grade teacher to resolve the allegation that she spilled a paste jar and then covered it up.

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From Wikipedia:

Beginnings

The CAC's successful grant application was written in 1993 by William Ayers, co-founder of the militant organization Weatherman and professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.[2][3] After extensive community-based discussions also involving Anne Hallett of the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, and Warren Chapman of the Joyce Foundation.

At its founding, the Annenberg Challenge was made up of three constituent parts:

The Chicago School Reform Collaborative, co-chaired by William C. Ayers;

a Board of Directors initially recruited by the Collaborative, which was chaired from 1995 to 2000 by Barack Obama[4], at the time a practicing attorney.

The Chicago Schools Research Consortium, a research arm of the Challenge.
The Research Consortium was responsible for assessing the impact of the expenditure of the Challenge's grant money.

Ironically, they concluded that the $110 million spent in Chicago over six years had little or no impact on outcomes for students.

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