Despite being profiled early on in Glenn Beck’s czar series, Jeff Jones — who helped author the ObamaCare bill — has received far less scrutiny than Van Jones and some others. By now, though the barrage of radicalism may have inoculated you to the fact that a member of Obama’s team is best-known for his mug shots, Jeff Jones does indeed warrant the country’s attention.
Some people, not enough, are aware that Jeff Jones co-founded the Weathermen, led the Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969, and then went underground for the next eleven years with fellow revolutionary and current wife Eleanor Stein (who teaches “climate change” at Albany Law School).
But how many know that as late as 2007 Jones organized a rebranding of the SDS?
The Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) became official at a conference at The New School. Fellow travelers on the left were giddy, though one nominated board member couldn’t make it that day: Rashid Khalidi. (Some photos from the event.)
The press coverage:
New York, NY — February 17, 2007. A bitter cold day did not prevent the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) from holding a well-attended conference at New York City’s New School University. The event was held in the Graduate Center, 65 Fifth Avenue, and about 100 participants were in attendance. The meeting featured several speakers who are well known figures on the US Left and an agenda that centered around electing a board of directors for MDS, Incorporated — the non-profit arm of MDS that was founded last August in Chicago, at the national SDS convention. Its purpose is to provide SDS’ student activists with a legal defense fund, monies for the Radical Education Project and a general fund for meetings, conventions and other SDS functions. Organizers were pleased with the turnout and excited about the election of Manning Marable as Chair of the new Board.
The organizers described the board as “remarkable for its diversity” and the conference as “historic.” The new board, elected by acclamation, included: Mark Rudd, David Graeber, Judith Malina, Jesse Zearle, Kate Khatib, Roderick Long, Alan Haber, Manning Marable, Muhammed Ahmad, Charlene Mitchell, Starhawk, John O’Brien, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gideon Oliver, and Bert Garskof. Elected as officers, in addition to Marable as chair, were three vice chairs: Paul Buhle, Judith Malina, and Jesse Zearle.
As nothing about the progressives is free of a connection to George Soros, Manning Marable heads the Soros-funded Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University.
Jeff Jones also hosted an event last week for the Rosenberg Fund which didn’t get much coverage despite the star power of guests Susan Sarandon and Ed Asner. And yes, the Rosenberg Fund is about those Rosenbergs. Here is the invitation, and an excerpt of it:
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Meet Robert Meeropol and hear his inspiring story at a benefit to celebrate 20 years of the RFC’s work helping the children of targeted activists in Albany and across the country. RFC beneficiary families have been active in the struggles to wage peace; safeguard the environment; preserve civil liberties; and organize on behalf of workers, prisoners, and others whose human rights are under threat. Hosted by Mark Mishler and Renee Hariton, Eleanor Stein and Jeff Jones, Kathy Manley and Daniel Straw, Steve Downs and Wil Downs.
Thai Jones, the son of Jeff Jones and Eleanor Stein, wrote about his life as the son of revolutionaries in a 2004 memoir. He writes of a father who can’t seem to let the movement go. When the Weathermen regrouped in the early 70s, changing its name from the Weather Underground to the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), Jeff Jones led the way by penning an underground manifesto:
Jeff had become an adult while he was underground. Fighting the war had been his primary purpose. With it over, he could have claimed victory and abandoned militancy. He might have surfaced, held a press conference, copped a plea bargain and gone on to pursue politics in the evenings like the rest of the movement people. But neither he nor the others considered it. They had gone too far down the path to turn around and come home. In fact, they would become more fanatical, study Marxist-Leninist theory, and talk more seriously than ever before about toppling the government, though the chances of succeeding were now slightly higher than they had been at any other time since 1968.
By 2006, Jeff Jones, Bernadine Dohrn, and William Ayers had authored a book: Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974.
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