Exclusive: Willie Barrow, the Third Farrakhan Joker in Obama's Faith Endorsements deck

Willie Barrow, Michelle Obama and Khadijah Farrakhan

It was September 1988 and while Dukakis had brought home the nomination at the party convention last month, the ghost of Jesse Jackson who had fought his own campaign all the convention, continued to haunt Dukakis. Jackson had brought a great deal of racial baggage to the Democratic Party's campaign and in September 1988, some of the baggage was unloaded when three Pro-PLO and Farrakhan linked figures were discovered on the Democratic Party's National Committee. One of the three was Willie Barrow, the executive director of Jackson's Chicago-based Operation PUSH. The scandal quickly blew over as the Dukakis campaign found itself buried in even more problems.

Today Willie Barrow is a superdelegate and DNC member pledged to Obama. She delivered remarks at the Women for Obama Luncheon where Michelle Obama described her as "our friend". And she appears on Obama's Faith Endorsements page. There she claims ties with Obama going back quite some time.

I support Barack because exemplifies a real man. He is a Christian, husband and father. I remember he would consistently attend our Saturday morning broadcasts with his two little girls long before I ever met his wife Michelle.

But like so many others on Obama's Faith Endorsements page, she also has decades worth of ties to Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Mrs. Barrow was quoted in a 1985 article in The Washington Post as saying, ''I love my brother, Minister Louis Farrakhan. The devil don't like it, Chicago don't like it the world don't like it, but we love it.''

And Farrakhan has loved Willie Barrow back, affectionately quoting her in his sermons. During the recent NOI scandal Willie Barrow served as the chair of the Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes. When the Nation of Islam Minister of Protocol Claudette Marie Muhammad joined the commission, its Jewish members resigned after Muhammad invited other commissioners to a speech by Farrakhan filled with anti-semitic invective. Barrow, however true to her ties with the Nation of Islam, continued to defend Muhammad and condemn the commissioners who resigned.



However Willie Barrow's political radicalism goes beyond her ties to Farrakhan. There's her sponsorship of a fundraising dinner for the People's World Weekly. The PWW is the weekly newspaper of the United States Communist Party.

Kathy Kelly, two-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Ishmael Flory, long-time member of the Communist Party, head the list of honorees at this year’s annual People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo banquet.

Bachtell said the banquet committee sees the event “as more than a fundraiser for the People’s Weekly World, important as that is. It is also planned as an opportunity to draw strength for a final push to defeat the right wing in this year’s election wars.”

Bachtell, organizer of the Illinois district of the Communist Party, said the election will be “even more crucial” if the Bush administration succeeds in its effort to win congressional approval for launching a war against Iraq. “We simply cannot allow such a crime to happen,” he said.

In addition to Bachtell, banquet sponsors include Rev. Willie Barrow, chair, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition board of directors; Chicago Alderman Theodore Thomas; Katie Jordan, president, Chicago CLUW; Rep. Bobby Rush; and Tom Balanoff, president, SEIU Local 1.

Willie Barrow also cosigned the World Can't Wait to Drive Bush Out letter which said in part;

"People look at all this and think of Hitler — and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.

There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn — or be forced — to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it."

This is as close to a call for a coup as the left has come in a while. And it's chock full of the real leftist radicalism that is the engine behind the Obama campaign, much as it might try to disguise its roots.

Time and time again Barack Hussein Obama's Faith Endorsement page is filled with preaches, pastors and figures who are left wing radicals and have ties to the Nation of Islam. After ABC News played enough embarrassing tapes of Jeremiah Wright, his faith endorsement was removed, but Pfleger's remains up, as does J ALfred Smith's as does Willie Barrow's and the Rev. Jane Fisler-Hoffman, all with ties to Farrakhan.

In fact if you count, it begins to look as if the majority of clergy on Obama's Faith Endorsements page have ties to Farrakhan. That alone should be disturbing to anyone.

Back in the 80's, "William Strickland, former New England coordinator for the Jackson campaign, then raised his hand, and named the three pro-Jackson members of the Democratic National Committee who have backed the PLO. "If Bob Farrell, Ruth Anne Scaff, and Willie Barrow are removed from the Democratic National Committee simply because they are pro-PLO, I don't think the party will survive it."

And now from a DNC role, we've gone to a Presidential candidate who might repeatedly lie about his beliefs and affiliations, but who is closely tied by every single connection to left wing radicals and Farrakhanites and who arrogantly refuses to cut ties with them. It's as obvious as the names on his own website. And the party won't survive it.