152 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyfact nearly 3,000 people assembled in Federal Plaza on that day responding to the flurry of emails (a
new organizing technology for us) that seemingly liberated people from their sense of isolation and
offered them the opportunity of collective action - of community. Black, Latino, White, veterans of
the peace and women’s movements, the 60s, high school and college youth, community activist—a
mosaic of the City. Long-time leaders like Jesse Jackson, Juan Andrade and Julie Hamos and a new
voice.... not yet known to the crowd, to the media or to the nation.... the voice of State Senator
Barack Obama.”^50
Katz was joined in the organizing by former SDS president Carl Davidson, like Klonsky
reputedly once upon a time close to the Communist Party USA line, so that Obama was getting help
from “two perennially engaged ‘60s veterans and ex-SDS members,” Jeff Epton wrote December
15, 2003, for In These Times. Katz and Davidson were “key organizers” of the October 2, 2002,
anti-war demonstration. Originating as Chicagoans Against War with Iraq (CAWI), by December
2003 CAWI had shifted into Chicagoans Against War and Injustice. Davidson later commented, “as
the war transformed from invasion to occupation, CAWI activists managed to avoid splits over
sectarian and strategic differences, and committed to stay together and move from ‘protest to
politics.’” In 2005, Katz and Davidson co-wrote a documented entitled “Stopping War, Seeking
Justice.” Davidson is “now a figure in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism, an offshoot of the old Moscow-controlled CPUSA,” Cliff Kincaid wrote on February 18,
2008, for Accuracy in Media.
Davidson is also an Obama supporter, now leading Progressives for Obama. On his blog Keep
On Keepin’ On, Davidson recently endorsed Obama’s comments about small town people being
bitter. Katz is attempting to minimize her role in the old SDS. On April 18, 2008, the Chicago Sun-
Times quoted Katz as saying that she “met Ayers when he was 17 and they were members of
Students for a Democratic Society, a peaceful group from which the Weather Underground
splintered.” Katz also demanded that Obama’s relationship with former domestic terrorist William
Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn—with whom Obama launched his political career in 1995 at
the Ayers-Dohrn Hyde Park home— “should not be a campaign issue.” Katz is now the head of MK
Communications and a registered lobbyist with the City of Chicago; she has personally contributed
$1,000 to Obama for America, Obama’s presidential campaign fund. Marilyn Katz and her husband
Allan J. Katz, a shareholder and chairman of the Policy Practice Group at Akerman Senterfitt of
Tallahassee, Florida and a Tallahassee City Commissioner, as well as a Member of the Florida
Democratic Committee and Democratic National Committee, are joint bundlers committed to
raising a minimum of $200,000 for Obama’s campaign.’^51
MIKE KLONSKY, FOUNDATION STALINIST
Another Katz and Ayers associate—and Obama supporter—is Mike Klonsky. In 1968, he was
the last pre-Weatherman SDS national chairman and a “demonstration organizer.” Klonsky ‘“would
go on in post-SDS years to form the October League (Marxist-Leninist) and Communist Party
(Marxist-Leninist), part of the new communist movement that emerged [born dead] in the 1970s.”
Klonsky was named by Ayers in the 1990s to head the Small Schools Workshop. In 1996, Klonsky,
like William Ayers, was a consultant for Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “agenda for public schools.”
Until June 25, 2008, when he was jettisoned for purposes of damage control and window dressing
in the course of Obama’s hard right turn after the primaries, Klonsky maintained a community blog
subtitled Freedom Teachers at MyBarackObama.com.