Was Obama’s socialist party racialist?

The socialist-leaning New Party required that 40 percent of its own leadership groups must consist of “people of color,” according to correspondence uncovered by WND from an early New Party leader.

The New Party was a 1990s party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.

In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign denied the president was ever a member amid reports, including from WND, citing the New Party’s own literature listing Obama as a member. Information uncovered in recent weeks, including Obama’s signed contract with the New Party, further establishes the president’s membership with the controversial organization.

Manning Marable, a socialist Columbia University professor listed as a New Party builder, boasted in 1996 that the party had a ruling requiring a racial quota for the party.

WND unearthed a 1996 essay by Marable from the Westview Press titled “Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance, and Radicalism.”

“Fortunately, some leftists are trying to learn from the errors of the past. A majority of the national executive of the Committees of Correspondence consists of people of color," Marable writes.

“The New Party, which has initiated organizing efforts in nearly 20 states, has a rule insisting that 40 percent of all leadership groups be people of color," he said.

As WND reported last week, a July 20, 1992, article in The Nation magazine by New Party founder Joel Rogers laid out the case for the establishment of the party and listed several of the group’s early founders and activists, including Marable.

Marable was also listed as a New Party leader in the group’s own newsletter, the New Party News.

Socialist goals

The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral “fusion,” which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party disbanded in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.

ACORN and the SEIU union formed the backbone alliance of the New Party.

The socialist-oriented goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.

Among the New Party’s stated objectives were “full employment, a shorter work week and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth; and like programs to ensure gender equity.”

The New Party stated it also sought “the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets [and] community-controlled alternative financial institutions.”

Many of the New Party’s founding members were Democratic Socialists of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA.

Last month, WND reported on a 1996 print advertisement in a local Chicago newspaper that shows Obama was the speaker at an event sponsored and presented by the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA.

WND first reported on the event in 2010.

Obama listed as New Party member

In 2009, WND reported on newspaper evidence from the New Party’s own literature listing several new members of the New Party, including Obama.

Last week, Stanley Kurtz, writing at National Review Online, reported Obama signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.

In 2008, Obama’s Fight the Smears campaign website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois Senate, as stating: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.”

Fight the Smears conceded the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott