Obama left the Public Allies board when Michelle was hired, although he served on the Public Allies national board from 1997, when both he and Vanessa Kirsch participated in the Saguaro Seminars.
A second Saguaro Seminar member close to Obama is Reverend Bliss W. Browne. In December 1995, Browne’s United Imagination Network, a collective of five elementary schools and one high school, was one of the first 35 school networks and their partners to receive school improvement funds from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or CAC.
The CAC was founded by Weatherman domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, who served as the group’s director. With Ayers, Obama served as president of the CAC board of directors from 1995 to 1999. He continued as a member of the board until 2002.
Also at the Saguaro Seminars with Obama and Stephanopoulos was Martha Minow, then-dean of Harvard Law School. Minow is the daughter of Newton Minow, the former chair of the FCC, who serves as senior counsel at Chicago’s firm Sidley Austin. It was Martha Minow who reportedly recommended Sidley hire Obama for a summer job in 1989, after his first year of law school.
Obama named another fellow Saguaro Seminar member, Xavier de Souza Briggs, in January 2009 to serve as associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Briggs served as a team leader on the Obama-Biden transition team.
Also at Saguaro Seminars with Obama was the Reverend Jim Wallis, publisher of Sojourners magazine. Obama appointed Wallis as to his Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, where Wallis served a one year term. Wallis is a socialist activist who has championed communist causes and previously labeled the U.S. “the great captor and destroyer of human life.”
Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 7-9 p.m. His website is KleinOnline.com.
