Words Matter: Yep, They Do

By Keli Ata
March 18, 2008

Change and Hope, Hope and Change, Yes We Can yada yada yada. Blah, blah, blah!

Why has Barak Hussein Obama been able to seduce millions with three word catch-phrases? Why has he been able to get millions to roar and cry at the mere mention of his name? Well the media and most bloggers have ignored Obama's involvement with the Gamaliel Foundation I have first hand experience with one of the organization's affiliates, VOICE-Buffalo and can offer some insight into it, though I won't ever be able to fully understand why people shut their minds and mouths so easily.

As a reporter I've covered several of VOICE-Buffalo's local "core team meetings" as they are called. The meetings I attended were of a Catholic affiliate so I didn't see the more spirited exchanges at an African American core team meeting. Basically, the meetings I attended began with a guitarist playing a religious song "Here I Am Lord." It's a beautiful song taken from a purely spiritual context, but in the context of Gamaliel it is used to encourage attendees to do G-d's work through the core team without question or dissent. Always be at the ready and unquestioning. Then they went on in anal retentive detail their agenda for the week. The meetings ALWAYS ended with the director doing a poll, asking attendees to explain their impression of the meeting--but only in ONE WORD. There was no room for deviation. You could ONLY express a single word to convey the totality of your thoughts and emotions.

Most seemed to go along with this mind and thought control, thought stoppage is more like it. These core team meetings were always followed by larger public meetings with several Gamaliel Foundation affiliate congregations. First they carry their church's banner, sing religious songs, and then bring politicians and police officials on stage or up to the altar to get "commitments" from them for action. If the people fail to honor this commitment the affiliates then invite them to a second meeting (at which they are not allowed to speak) and berate them.

It's the equivalent of an ambush and verbal stoning. We've seen that with Obama. He's the nice face of his racist church (no different in my eyes from the Christian Identity movement Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was involved in). Obama offers promises of Change and Hope while his racist pastor offers condemnation of the US of KKK A and spews hatred via comments of G-d d*** America rather than blessings. It's typical good cop, bad cop. Obama says words matter and they certainly matter. The trouble is, people aren't really listening to what Obama, his pastor and their handlers are saying. It's a message of condemnation of American values, pro-Islamic, racist against non whites while at the same time uses whites to gain power and influence.

VOICE-Buffalo has had some success--the implementation of garbage totes to cut down on the rat problem but overall its fallen out of the media spotlight because frankly, the media and public grew tired of its bulling tactics and control. Religious people of all denominations were less than thrilled with the stance on issues such as abortion.

Obama's spell on his supporters really has less to do with his personal charm and charisma but more to do with tried and true control tactics of an elaborate cult. As I wrote earlier, I was surprised to see so little mention of Obama's ties to the Gamaliel Foundation in the mainstream press and on political blogs. Still, I searched around and found this on a website/message board called Wide Awake:

"Barack Obama, whose references to popular empowerment may reflect his experiences as a community organizer in one of the schools of organizing (the Gamaliel Foundation) descended from the late Saul Alinsky,(Wikipedia):

History of the Movement: This type of community organizing began in Chicago in 1938. Saul Alinsky created the "Back of the Yards Community Council". The organization operated in the shadow of Chicago’s stock yards. The community was beset with poverty, political corruption, gangs, disease, deteriorating housing and inadequate schools; but most of all it was beset with a sense of powerlessness. The organization successfully engaged people to change the conditions of the community. Its motto was, "We shall decide our own destiny."

And to a large extent and for some time, they did just that. Many organizations were created utilizing the model of the Back of the Yards Council. Unfortunately most of those organizations have dissolved, become stagnant, parochial and marginalized; have evolved into social service, advocacy, or economic development corporations; or have become the fiefdoms of political hacks. The original mission of empowerment and expansion of democracy has, all too frequently, been lost. To insure the promise of community organizing, the Gamaliel Foundation was born.

History of the Gamaliel Foundation: The Gamaliel Foundation was originally established in 1968 to support the Contract Buyers League, an African American organization fighting to protect homeowners on Chicago’s Westside who had been discriminated against by banks and saving and loan institutions.

In l986, the Foundation was reorganized as an organizing institute providing resources to community leaders in the efforts to build and maintain powerful organizations in low income communities. The Gamaliel Foundation has grown from three to more than forty-five affiliates in seventeen states and in three provinces of South Africa.

The Name: The first Christians were a threat to the establishment of Israel. The Sanhedrin met to decide the fate of the leaders of the new religion. Some wanted to kill them. But the wise man Gamaliel stood up and said "refrain from these men, for if this work be of men, it will come to naught, but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." Acts 5: 38, 39. We work in the hope and the confidence that this work is of God. (Typical Gamaliel stuff and the subject of their leadership training, which is extremely complex and esoteric; I've read one of their leadership manuals and can vouch for this).

In Corinthians, Paul states, I am Paul, a disciple of Gamaliel. Saul Alinsky made all of his organizers read the letters of Paul because he regarded his namesake to be one of the greatest organizers of all time. The Gamaliel Foundation mentors organizers.

Gamaliel Today

The Gamaliel Foundation is an organizing network of 60 affiliates in 21 states across the U. S. and five provinces of South Africa. We represent over a million multi-faith, multi-racial church-going people who work on social justice campaigns.

Gamaliel, as initially conceived, had as its goal the creation, maintenance and expansion of independent local organizations. This goal remains at the very core of the mission of the Gamaliel Foundation.

To this end Gamaliel:

1. works with leaders in communities to create new and powerful faith based organizations,
2. provides an array of leadership training programs and consultations, and
3. provides research and analysis on issues.

These organizations exist to be the vehicle for ordinary people to impact political, social, economic and environmental decisions that affect their lives.

Over the past three years the Gamaliel Foundation has expanded on its original mission in the following manner:

1. It moved new and existing organizations to accept a metro equity lens to understand and address seemingly endemic urban problems.
2. It has invited all of its affiliates to participate in a national campaign around the civil rights of immigrants.
3.It has set the stage to formalize a new mission of the Gamaliel Foundation that maintains its original goal of creating and maintaining local organizations, while adopting a structure to move toward a “more perfect union” which will, while creating a structure to work on national campaigns, also energize and enhance the goal of creating powerful local organizations.

The commitment to be a national organization gives purpose, direction, and energy to creating and maintaining local organizations.

Gamaliel operates in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Its methodology has proven effective in inner city African American and Latino communities, townships in South Africa, and in working and middle class communities in suburbs." Well, we see what people like Obama and his pastor are doing in the African American community, don't we?

Finally, a quote from Wikipedia on Saul Alinsky:

"In Rules for Radicals, he argued that the most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired ends, and that an intermediate end for radicals should be democracy because of its relative ease to work within to achieve other ends of social justice. " Obama and his racist, pro-Islamic, anti-American, anti-Israel pastor have conveyed what their desired ends are. Yep, words matter so start really listening.

I'm not good at all in writing about political issues, so hopefully this post isn't too disjointed or confusing. I just have serious concerns about the tactics Obama is using to seduce people and his success at it--not to mention his desired "ends."