The Originators of Obama-speak: Public Allies and the ABCD Institute
Our president is known as the community organizer in the family, but little if any attention is paid to the first lady’s relationship to a group in Chicago called Public Allies.
At first glance it has a donor list that includes George Soros, the state of California, HUD, David Geffen, Fannie Mae, Sallie Mae, and the Woods Fund of Chicago. It appears to promote a New-Agey brand of community organizing that presents like a melodramatic Oprah taping. It is, however, considerably more complicated.
In 1993, Michele Obama left Mayor Richard Daley’s administration to become the founding executive director of Public Allies — an offshoot of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University — led by her old friends John McKnight and John “Jody” Kretzmann. McKnight and Kretzman had invented a way of leveraging assets by training community organizers to reframe negatives as positives and then to build congregation-centered coalitions.
The following tenets are central to their program:
– Knowledge is relational.
– There is no immaculate perception.
– Language is a moral choice.
– Affirmative stories can be utilized in order to stretch the collective imagination.
– Learning the ABCD “language” is mandatory before you are allowed to practice it.
So — imagine a local park. Two very different descriptions of that park will lead policy in different directions:
The Need/Deficit Model: The park is a magnet for vandalism. The toilet block is consistently covered with graffiti. Local young people gather at the park on a Friday night and leave rubbish everywhere they go.
The ABCD Model: The park is an important meeting place for local young people. They value the space available there to meet friends. Every afternoon and on the weekends, families with young children, people walking their dogs, and young people come to the park to picnic. The park is a central community asset for a range of groups and individuals.
Barack Obama is also affiliated with Public Allies. Not only did he serve as a founding advisory board member, but John McKnight worked as an organizer with Barack and wrote his Harvard Law School recommendation. Both Kretzman and McKnight have been described by people who know the president as having had a huge intellectual influence on Barack’s thinking.
Ms. Villacorta:
” The Need/Deficit Model: The park is a magnet for vandalism. The toilet block is consistently covered with graffiti. Local young people gather at the park on a Friday night and leave rubbish everywhere they go.
The ABCD Model: The park is an important meeting place for local young people. They value the space available there to meet friends. Every afternoon and on the weekends, families with young children, people walking their dogs, and young people come to the park to picnic. The park is a central community asset for a range of groups and individuals.”
The Need/Deficit Model:
“This car is a rust-bucket dog. It has over 300,000 miles, two of it’s cylinders are misfiring, and it was owned by an old lady who had Alzheimer’s who didn’t take care of it. It’s tires are also bald.”
The ABCD Model:
“This is an eco-friendly,well-seasoned automobile, built with ease of recycling in mind, that uses less fuel than comparable vehicles. It presents an opportunity for investment and was loved by it’s previous owner.”
This ABCD model is easy enough to grasp if you’ve ever dealt with used car dealers or read real estate agent’s copy.
It’s known in the vernacular as “Bull sh!t”.
Learning the ABCD “language” is mandatory before you are allowed to practice it.
Those crazy ‘tenets’ you attribute to the ABCD model go along with the crazy assumptions of postmodernism.
This administration uses focus groups to come up with the language to sell whatever they’re trying to sell, in trying to frame your thinking that the 1000 pound gorilla in the room is not a 1000 pound gorilla.
Thus, healthcare legislation morphs into healthcare insurance reform.
Or, war on terror morphs into overseas contingency operation.
I’m glad the members of the IOC weren’t taken in by the Obamas’ ABCD-ispired vapidity and that there is still hope for the survival of intelligent life in the universe.
(hey, Public Allies, don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining !)
Obamadrama: I think we would do well to think of this entire administration as a con job
Of course. Do your kids have a single teacher who doesn’t sound exactly like this?
This whole mess has been under construction for almost a hundred years now and this is what it looks like in finished form. This is why God invented war: as a purgative. Like forest fires and plagues. Let the lightning strike, and God help us.
Barack seems to have absorbed every deceitful program of the left. Years ago we would have called him a pu$$y.
Has anyone ever translated “Barak” for the world to understand. In Hebrew “Barak” means lightning, glitter, splendor, glare, luster, flash, or gloss.
From an ABCD perspective what could be better! You can take your pick – I will call him “Glare” Obama from now on. Maybe “Gloss” Obama is better. Let’s have a contest!
Important stuff, but really, there’s nothing here. Let’s move along. I wrote about Saguaro, contrasting the glass-half-full approach of Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell with the glass-half-empty dirge of the Obamas:
“They shall repair the ruined cities and restore what has long lain desolate“
Both Michelle and Barack made full use of the affirmative grading pervading the halls of Harvard University. Public Allies and Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) are organizations created to find some sort of viable employment for such intellectually challenged individuals. It’s time to pull the plug on this nonsense. We need to cut off all government funding.
About the language.
During the campaign, I studied Michelle’s speeches for a blog I was maintaining. I listened to hours of her on YouTube, transcribed many paragraphs. I have more than a casual interest in language — I’ve done graduate work in Linguistics — so I entertained myself with some discourse analysis of her rhetoric.
It is the classic cult-indoctrination style of fiery delivery and breathless leaping from one topic to another without letting the logical implications of one claim sink in before you’re off to the next one. (David Koresh was a master.) She madly mixes metaphors, abuses logical connectors, and charges along on a chain of non-sequiturs. There is no such thing as quoting her “out of context,” because there is no context; there is nothing in any passage of her speeches that sheds light on any other passage. It’s another attack on meaning, the replacement of rigorous argument with beautiful nonsense. Never mind the odiousness of her ideas; not one paragraph of her speeches held a shred of internal logic.
I believe this succeeds largely because of her delivery: florid intonation as well as body language that employs cocked knee joints, elbows, pelvis, fists, lower jaw, and eyebrows.
(The blog: http://www.michelleobamasuicidewatch.blogspot.com/)
When I was in the “Community Betterment” program, we used these descriptions for grant work. It was pretty much grant language. Since it didn’t have to impress anyone but other government hacks, the public rarely saw it. As a previous poster said, “It’s Bullsh*t.”
#5 Jerry – Sorry, guy. I’m no fan of Obama, but this is a bogus translation. “Barack” is the Arab form of the Hebrew “baruch”, which means blessed.
If I’m wrong about this, folks, feel free to correct me. I’m doing this out of memory. It came up during the campaign when he spoke to AIPAC.
As to the article, yes, the Leftists are Deceivers. We know this. Still, it is a good thread to pull on. Who knows? It might lead to further unravelling.
Patti Villacorta’s next project:
What Michelle Obama learned in kindegarten.
Speaking of oratory, can someone please set Krauthammer straight. I’ll bet he woudn’t have the guts to say that to ragnard’s face!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miROUdyjmAo
Disgusting.
like it or not their system of separating money from the people who earn it has been successful. they have a several generation headstart.
30 years ago they would just have been dismissed, now they have the art of deceit down pat and use it as blackmail.
for all their supposed good intentions one never sees any improvement in society …in fact one only sees a worsening of society.
regards
1. Historians who chronicle the Obama phenomenon will have to devote considerable attention to ABCD and Public Allies in order to figure out who and what the current president was. At present, it’s all vague and puzzling; we can see that it is important, and we realize that these influences have shaped the way Obama sees reality, but it does not translate into campaign issues. How valid is it to judge a man’s policies or character in the light of admittedly influential past associations? The answer can always be disputed.
2. I suspect future generations may be utterly puzzled by Obama’s victory. They won’t be able to explain fully why the press immediately fell in love with a censorious bully, and why so many in the political middle voted for a man they literally did not know. Obama may go down in history as a great puzzle, a genuine freak.
3. No matter how many times I read comment 6, I remain shocked. Is this the brass-bound attempt to trivialize Villacorta’s piece (and at the same time redirect everyone to the SISU weblog) that it seems? Willis, are you all sharp elbows and snotty remarks? I took a quick look at your website, and I can’t see that it puts Villacorta’s comments in the shade. So I won’t “move on” in spite of your sneer that “there’s nothing here.” There is something here, and your attitude puts me off. Others may disagree, so I suggest everybody see for themselves how your work holds up.
Oops! I guess that’s an ad hominum attack, eh? And that means that #6 isn’t? OK, I submit to the judgment of the censors here.
Apparently, what ABCD teaches is SPIN.
Teaching Spin is not sin – and it stops at O’Reilly. Conservative teachers of speech and of self-esteem also teach spin. It has been taught for centuries under the coinage of “looking on the bright side”, casting things in positive terms. I find it difficult to take ABCD to task for the park example: would not a sincere group of conservatives see it in the same light – a place that offers an opportunity for improvement for the community?
I don’t believe any thinking person in America is unaware that the Obamas put forth their doctrinaire radical socialism with a positive spin to conceal their true intent, and have close associations with groups promoting collectivism. I don’t see the ABCD affiliation casting as dark a lightl as, say, ACO RN. But is certainly one more piece in the audacity jigsaw.
@8. arhooley:
I was always confused by Michelle’s speeches . . .. ah, propaganda spiels. Thanks for the masterful explanation.
well, this explains a lot. thanks for the article–very interesting.
to the poster above about the meaning of “Barack” in Hebrew, you are correct, sir: it means ” blessing.”
10. Marc Malone:
#5 Jerry – Sorry, guy. I’m no fan of Obama, but this is a bogus translation. “Barack” is the Arab form of the Hebrew “baruch”, which means blessed.
If I’m wrong about this, folks, feel free to correct me. I’m doing this out of memory. It came up during the campaign when he spoke to AIPAC.
The problem stems from the fact that we are using English. Both “Lightning” and “Blessing” are valid meanings of the English word “Barak.” However, they are from two different Hebrew roots.
Since Obama is of Islamic origin, the probability is that the root for “blessed” is more accurate. This also is an interesting word. The Hebrew is a pictorial language. The word literally means, “Bending the knee.” This can mean kneeling to be blessed by God, blessed by a superior (i.e. the king), to kneel before an idol, or even to praise one’s self! I will leave it to you to decide which best fits the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
More Commie Funders of Public Allies:
Cisco Systems
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Microsoft Corporation
Procter & Gamble Corporation
Rockefeller Brothers
ABC/Capital Cities
ABN/Amro (LaSalle Bank)
Bank of America
Deutsche Bank
DeWitt Wallace
Discover Bank
Duke Power
Duke University
DuPont Company [so socialist even Soros stays away]
First 5 California Public Education Team [teaching your children things! Commies!]
Fund for the City of New York [Ahhh Giuliani, that cross-dressing commie!]
The list goes on and on and on, there are about four hundred names on it.
As far as ABCD, here’s the actual mission statement from the website:
http://www.abcdinstitute.org/about/
We are currently involved in four broad types of community building work:
* Building community capacity is at the heart of ABCD’s work. ABCD engages directly with community groups to support their asset-based community development efforts. The Institute and its affiliated faculty also participate in an array of local, regional, and international conferences and workshops as keynote speakers, workshop and training facilitators, technical support providers, and learning participants.
* Using a community-based participatory research approach, ABCD partners with community residents and other local entities to conduct research that helps prepare them to achieve their own community building objectives. ABCD also works with community groups, non-profits, and an array of other institutions to evaluate asset-based community development projects.
* Working directly with students, Northwestern faculty, and other organizations, ABCD contributes to the development of the next generation of engaged civic leaders and community builders.
* Producing community building publications and other resources for practitioners and scholars in the community development field, ABCD contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the effectiveness of the asset-based approach to strengthening communities.
ABCD and its affiliated faculty have created a library of community building workbooks, published scholarly articles, books, and chapters oriented to an array of audiences, and developed training curricula and other materials associated with the asset-based community development approach. Additionally, ABCD has gathered community stories from many of its partners and feature them on this website as a resource from which other communities can learn. Finally, ABCD provides examples of asset-mapping tools so that community groups and organizations can borrow from the experiences of others doing asset-based community development work.
Please visit us in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois.
Granted, the buffoons who frequent this place will believe anything you put in front of them. Just know that there are others also reading this, and that they know that Patti Villacorta is either an exceptionally stupid person, or an incredibly ballsy liar.
arhooy,
What books can I get to learn about how you do your analysis?
Now and Then @ 13 said:
Epic fail. And is Ragnar stupid. Google it – Ragnar Danneskjold. Charles did not call the protesters teabaggers as your skanky a$$ has. Out of context, dip$hit. Listening comprehension was not a strong skill for you was it?
This ABCD is just NewSpeak in other clothes. Nothing new here. BS, indeed.
“Patti Villacorta has been a proud conservative for eight years and two weeks.”
Well, if that’s also her age, it certainly explains the depth of her blog.
5. Jerry: ‘Has anyone ever translated “Barak” for the world to understand. In Hebrew “Barak” means lightning, glitter, splendor, glare, luster, flash, or gloss. …. I will call him “Glare” Obama from now on.’
Wasn’t “Jerry” a name the British applied to the Nazis in WWII? From now on, let’s call him… Ah, forget it. Who cares?
All this talk about what the name ‘Barrack’ means is completely superfluous and irrelevant what is relevant is what this man DOES and that is what is destroying America.
Its not because he is Black its because he is RED.
Its not his pigmentation its his POLICIES.
These are the reasons to get rid of the Obamantion not his name or his colour or his preposterous Marie Antoinette like wife or his Czars or the sychophantic MSM.
Typical troll postings-ignore the subject and try to lead everyone done a rabbit trail. Wake up trolls!!! Your”o” and co. are corrupt pieces of excrement.You know it, but you can’t/won’t admit it. Back on subject- if soros is involved, it can’t be good for America. Kinda makes you wonder how long he has been controlling barry and meeshelll, don’t it?
Benson; You misunderstood my sarcasm. I am totally with Villacorta’s argument!
The ABCD Model also holds the tenet that it is absolutely possible to pick up a turd from the “clean” end. Most Pajamas Media posters know you can’t polish one. (Although some still try with swirl free, ultra-fine rhetoric.)
I am surprised to find people who can argue cogently about Hebrew roots with me. Everyone is right. It depends upon which letter finishes the three-letter root.
If we choose “blessed” as the root, then it also fits Barak Obama. To bless means to bend the knee, as in camels kneeling. The equivalent is genuflection. Barak’s blessing of the Saudi king was accompanied by his bowing or kneeling. So I can go with that. Thanks for the intelligent discussion.
From Public Allies to public lies, a seamless transition.
#20 Anonymous:
“Granted, the buffoons who frequent this place will believe anything you put in front of them.”
Uh-huh. So they have a 5 paragraph, roughly 300 word Mission Statement that basically tries very hard to NOT say that they’re doing sales and marketing.
Obfuscatory mission statements are not mission statements at all…they’re bullsh!t.
“Building community capacity is at the heart of ABCD’s work.”
And nowhere is it explained exactly what “building community capacity” actually IS.
“The Institute and its affiliated faculty also participate in an array of local, regional, and international conferences and workshops as keynote speakers, workshop and training facilitators, technical support providers, and learning participants.”
I’m supposed to hire them to give speeches and pay their employees to hit the open bar at conventions and seminars?
Puh-leeze!
“Using a community-based participatory research approach, ABCD partners with community residents and other local entities to conduct research that helps prepare them to achieve their own community building objectives”
Ahhh, I pay ABCD, and then ABCD “partners” with MY people who will actually be doing, like, the actual WORK…while someone from ABCD goes to Las Vegas for the Community Organizers’ Convention.
Right, Frank!
“ABCD also works with community groups, non-profits, and an array of other institutions to evaluate asset-based community development projects.”
When I hire ABCD, they’ll try to “break the rice bowl” of other organizations,(like the Salvation Army f’rinstance?), who won’t “play ball” with ABCD. That way I’ll have more money to pay for more of ABCD’s services.
I gots THAT.
“* Working directly with students, Northwestern faculty, and other organizations, ABCD contributes to the development of the next generation of engaged civic leaders and community builders.”
“And here’s a picture of our “ABCD Little Lebowski Urban Achievers”…and we’re so VERY proud of them all”.
So I’ll be subsidizing the training of the next crop of ABCD flacks so as to enrich ABCD from tapeworming on OTHER communities.
“* Producing community building publications and other resources for practitioners and scholars in the community development field, ABCD contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the effectiveness of the asset-based approach to strengthening communities.”
So you’ll mention how great ABCD is, and how wise and kind I am for hiring you in your ABCD Newsletter, and OTHER rubes will want to join up and carry sleepers and hammer the spikes into the rails for your Great Big ABCD Railroad on our “Express Excursion to Community Strengthening!”.
(And so that WXYZ Neighborhood Enhancement Academy…those LOSERS… will be just so DAMNED jealous of our success).
“Finally, ABCD provides examples of asset-mapping tools so that community groups and organizations can borrow from the experiences of others doing asset-based community development work”
If other outfits “play ball” with ABCD, you’ll be willing to cut them in on a piece of my action.
Like I said: Bullsh!t. I’ve read the mission statements for what I KNEW to be CIA front companies that were less opaque and obfuscatory than this.
“Just know that there are others also reading this, and that they know that Patti Villacorta is either an exceptionally stupid person, or an incredibly ballsy liar.”
Yeah well, I’m a community learning-participant doing multimedia research work, (aka: student), of Bullsh!t…and brother, that mission statement there is so fine an example that I’m looking around for a shovel.
Note from author:
Here is John Mcknight on why he wrote the reccommendation to Harvard. He also sits on the Gamaliel Foundation Board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buTGLg_c304
If you are having a difficult time understanding the Obamas, looking deeper into the activities and teachings of Public Allies will help.”
What is there to understand?? Succinctly and simply stated, they are unrepentant crooks.
No one needs my praise on this blog, but I cannot help but say that this posting and (many)of the comments that relate to ABCD have been exceedingly educational for me. I have watched such group intertwining sessions on CNN, but came away feeling quite ignorant. I now would feel more comfortable in understanding the machinations of panel members, should the program be repeated or another similar one was aired. My gut feeling, aside from the information I acquired, is “scary business.”
In particular – Language is relational. Three-year olds know that when they begin to appreciate “knock-knock” jokes. What is the scary part is that ABCD practitioners mean that is that re-framing the language changes the actual contents of the issue at hand. Straight Marxism. There is no attempt to meet different conceptualizations, but rather imposing one’s particularistic meaning on the same set of facts. Truth is a goner. Reconciliation is for the opposition to consider. ABCD’ers have a goal which must be met by all means necessary. Do I have that right?
So they have a 5 paragraph, roughly 300 word Mission Statement that basically tries very hard to NOT say that they’re doing sales and marketing.
No, they have a mission statement that’s completely different from the one the author ascribes to them. Dumba**
30. Bilgeman
agreed, excellent post.
#33, Jerry. Right on. Straight-up Marxism is right. Obama must pray to Allah several times a day thanking him for America’s Boob media.
LOL George S….why don’t you describe what was excellent about it. And you all call me a troll…
I posted this comment on another piece …but it doesn’t matter it is always the same thing with this administration.
it doesn’t seem to matter what the topic is ….there is always one answer. …well maybe two
1) this administration is pushing a social justice/marxist socialist program. so everything reflects that goal.
2) the obama administration (and much of the democrat party) is a criminal organisation.
but it doesn’t matter it is always the same thing with this administration.
it doesn’t seem to matter what the topic is ….there is always one answer. …well maybe two
Well, lucky you. Its obvious thinking isn’t your strong suit. So its good that someone else has told you how to respond. And they kept it brief, so even you can’t screw it up.
the trolls/useful idiots have their marching orders. they didn’t get ideology overnight and they wont leave it easily so there really is NOOOOO point trying to debate or educate them.
they will be the jailers in your future. they are shrilling for the results of YOUR labour.
THEY WANT YOU TO PAY THEIR WAY.
if you haven’t seen the link below it is worth visiting. You will probably want to see the whole interview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzdYLyhwGLc
the next link explains the other problem (not the troll infestation).
http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html
this last link is just pure fun.
http://www.pbase.com/opinion/maniacal
21. jsulman:
arhooy,
What books can I get to learn about how you do your analysis?
Believe it or not, all you need are some basic Composition textbooks, especially books written for college-level students studying English as a Second Language. Go down to the paragraph level and notice how to construct a sustained argument with a topic sentence, supporting details, exceptions, etc. You’ve probably learned it all before, but go back and re-learn it. Even take a class where you critique your fellow students’ work. Once you go through one of those courses, go back and read one of Michelle’s speeches.
More advanced ways to develop your analytical skills are to study the Reading Comprehension sections in LSAT and GRE prep courses.
Honestly, those are the best ways to start, and probably all you’ll need. I say this because despite Michelle’s passionate style, her success with her audiences, and her seemingly great rhetoric — despite all this — her mistakes are actually very elementary.
JamesJust is claiming that Hussein Obama never graduated from Harvard law school- keep this in mind because in due time JamesJust will be proven right that he predicted that Hussein Obama never accumulated the required coursework credits to have graduated from Harvard law School.