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About
Frank Salvato
Frank Salvato is the
Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for
BasicsProject.org a
non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His
writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee
and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization,
BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series
addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the
International Analyst Network.
He also serves as the managing editor for
The New Media Journal.
Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is a
regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain's America Radio Show,
nationally syndicated by the Phoenix Broadcasting Network and on
NetTalkWorld Global Talk
Radio catering to the US Armed Forces around
the world. Mr. Salvato is also heard weekly on
The Roth Show with Dr.
Laurie Roth syndicated nationally on the USA Radio Network. His
opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The
Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally. He is
occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is available for public
speaking engagements. |
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Social Bookmarking
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Past Articles
First, He Was a Community Organizer
Denying
Reality Brings Us Closer to Nuclear Midnight
Demonizing the Tea Party the Chicago Way
The
Constitutional Crisis Started Long Ago
‘I
Will Support and Defend the Constitution’
We
Simply Can’t Afford Another Entitlement Program
How
Quick the Message Fades
Tough
Medicine for Getting Back to Good
Our
Federal Government’s Basic Purpose
The Tea
Party Movement, The GOP & Making It Work
The
Time Is Ripe for Divide & Conquer
The
Janus Face of the Progressive Democrats
At This Point It’s About Defining the
"Win”
American
Liberty v. Obama’s Social Engineering
Is the
Constitution Just a Grand Suggestion?
Have
Dems Been Marginalized within Their Own Party
Confronting
the Spin on the Fort Hood Massacre
Pretending
to Speak for an Entire Culture
When
Ideology Masks Ignorance
It's Time
to Pay Close Attention to the Politicians
The Only
Real Strategy for Afghanistan
Why Obama
Will Throw ACORN Under the Bus
"Please,
God, No...It's So Hot, I'm Burning Up"
Missing the
Larger Point on the Public Option
Challenging
the Status Quo
You Say You
Want a Real Solution
'You Have
Awakened the Sleeping Giant'
"Birther"
Label Overshadows a Real Issue
Reading
Legislation...It’s Your Job!
A
Government Run by Mrs. Kravitz
Instituting
a Safeguard Against Political &...Tyranny
Amid All
the Celebrity Deaths, A Reality Check
When In The
Course of Human Events...
Genocide or
Massacre, US Repeating Mistakes...
The Path to
the Future Requires a Return to the Roots
With All
Things, Facts & Truth Matter
Gitmo,
Liberals, Politics & Deceit
Obama, Cheney & The Bright Shiny Thing
Nancy Pelosi: Damaged Beyond Repair
Radical Islam By Any Other Name...
Celebrating the Exit of a RINO, Cheering as Rome...
Specter: An Opportunist Guilty of Political Treason
A Week for the Earth; A Day for the Constitution
Left Is Making a Mistake in Ridiculing the Tea Parties
Obama’s European Tour: Arrogance, Ineptness &...
The Two-Faced Brutality of Hope & Change |
Frank Salvato,
Managing Editor
First, He Was a Community Organizer
April 30, 2010
When Barack Obama entered the 2008
Presidential Election scene, aside from recycling the Clinton mantra of "Hope
and Change” (yes, Mr. Obama’s use of the campaign slogan was not original in
nature), we were told that his most endearing credential was that he had
navigated the "mean streets of Chicago” as a community organizer disseminating
"hope”; that he had been successful in making the poverty-stricken neighborhoods
of Chicago a better place to live, a safer place to live. As of April 25, 2010,
the residents of Chicago have stood witness to
113 homicides. I suppose, for President Obama, all that’s missing is a
"Mission Accomplished” banner.
By now, everyone has heard at least one story about the out-of-control violence
taking place in the mean-streets of Chicago. Gang crime is so bad in some parts
of the city that parents, when there are two existing in the household,
routinely remind their children not to play in front of the windows in their
houses for fear of being struck by a stray bullet fired from the gun of a
gangbanger. The situation is so bad that some lawmakers in Illinois’ capitol
have called upon the governor, Pat Quinn (D), to call in the Illinois National
Guard to supplement the Chicago Police Department.
While the notion of sending in the Illinois National Guard sounds good on the
surface, as John Howell of AM560 WIND in Chicago contends, the first time a
National Guardsman has to shoot a civilian the real fireworks will start. I’ll
take that a step further, the real fireworks will start when a Chicago
gangbanger shoots and kills an Illinois National Guardsman. Illinois Governor
Quinn has since rejected the idea so we shall never know how much blood would
have been running in the streets had these two scenarios played out.
So, the issue of street violence in Chicago remains with no immediate prospects
for improvement.
In 1985, Mr. Obama was hired as a community organizer by the Developing
Communities Project in Chicago and given the position of director. The
Developing Communities Project was a church-based organization comprised of
eight Catholic parishes on Chicago’s infamous far South Side.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there were 666 instances of murder
& non-negligent manslaughter and 34,172 instances of aggravated assault in
Chicago during
1985.
Mr. Obama worked at the Developing Communities Project from 1985 until mid-1988
during which time he increased the organization’s staff from one to thirteen and
increased its operating budget from $70,000 to $400,000.
Again, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 744 instances
of murder & non-negligent manslaughter and 33,529 instances of aggravated
assault in Chicago in
1986.
And during his just-short-of three years with the Developing Communities Project
– during which time he also worked as a consultant and instructor for the
Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute – he allegedly set up
a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program and a tenants'
rights organization in Altgeld Gardens, a location that still exists in extreme
poverty today.
Once again, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 687
instances of murder & non-negligent manslaughter and 34,172 instances of
aggravated assault in
1987.
In mid
1988, community organizer Obama decided that he had done such a good job for
the good people at the Developing Communities Project that he bid them "adieu”
(mission accomplished) and set out to see the Continent of Europe for three
weeks and then the ancestral African nation of Kenya for five weeks before
starting his education in the law at Harvard University.
The rest, as they say, is history, or what we are allowed to know of the facts
about Mr. Obama’s history, so many records and documents are sealed, don’t you
know...
The most often accurate Wikipedia explains
community organizing this way:
"Community organizing is a process through which people living in proximity
to each other are brought together into an organization that acts in their
shared self-interest...community organizers generally assume that social change
necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate
collective power for the powerless...”
It begs to be asked; wouldn’t the unbridled murdering of members of a
community be in the utmost of "shared self-interests” of a community? Wouldn’t
the senseless slaughter of the youth from poverty stricken Chicago communities
rank right up there with, let’s say, teaching ACORN the Alinsky method of
pressuring financial institutions into making bad home loans to people who could
never pay their mortgages or registering fictional characters and dead people to
vote?
For those who believe that the years of the Obama Community Organizing
Experience saw an anomaly where serious crime is concerned:
1990: 850 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 41,114 aggravated assaults
1991: 925 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 42,237 aggravated assaults
1992: 939 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 41,080 aggravated assaults
1993: 845 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 39,753 aggravated assaults
1994: 928 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 40,380 aggravated assaults
1995: 824 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 30,086 aggravated assaults
1996: 789 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 37,097 aggravated assaults
1997: 757 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 36,519 aggravated assaults
1998: 703 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 36,110 aggravated assaults
1999: 641 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 28,027 aggravated assaults
2000: 631 murders/non-violent manslaughters, 26,545 aggravated assaults
It should be noted that Mr. Obama served in the Illinois Legislature from 1996
until 2004 where he would have been able to employ lessons learned from his
extraordinary community organizing experience to affect "change” for what would
become – or "transform,” if you will – the gangbanger battlefield streets of
Chicago.
So, it would seem, one of the most important issues facing the communities
serviced by Mr. Obama’s organizing – the unacceptable level of violence
resulting in homicides – was either left unaddressed or, if it was addressed,
was done so in such a poor fashion that the slaughter continued to increase in
the years after his "organizing.”
So, for all you Progressives and Obama-apologists, all you Alinskyites and all
of you "hope and change” junkies, I ask, which is more important: to make sure
those who can’t afford mortgages get them so the rest of the nation can bail
them out down the road or securing the neighborhood streets from gang violence?
Is it more important to make sure that you get people who have no fact-based
understanding of the issues registered to vote or to make sure that when little
Jimmy walks home from school he doesn’t end up kicked to the curb with a bullet
in his head?
Many among the electorate have come to understand that President Obama and his
administration have their priorities mixed-up. I would point to the absolute
failure of his "community organizing” – as it pertains to the most important job
of a community organizer, keeping the members of the community alive – and say
he had his priorities mixed-up long, long ago.
But, hey, if the number of registered voters trumps the body-count, then I guess
he did one hell of a job. |
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