Anti-Glenn Beck group honors disgraced czar
Aaron Klein
Soros-funded organization charged former Fox News host with 'anti-Semitism'
A George Soros-funded leftist group that describes itself as a Jewish organization last night honored Van Jones at its annual dinner gala.
The Jewish Funds for Justice, or JFFJ, was the driving force behind a campaign to paint former Fox News host Glenn Beck as anti-Semitic after Beck used his show to air a special investigation into Soros.
WND previously found JFFJ is led by individuals associated with communist and socialist groups, the children of Soviet spies and a U.S. socialist organization that seeks to infiltrate the Democratic Party.
The group has been vocal in its support of the Occupy movement.
Together with the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the JFFJ held its annual “Pursuit of Justice” award gala last night. The event took place at the Paramount Studios in Los Angeles and was hosted by comedian Paula Poundstone.
The dinner honored Jones, President Obama’s infamous former “green jobs” czar who resigned after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and called for “resistance” against the U.S.
The gala also honored Steve Rohde, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
“Attending this event will be over 500 deeply committed, politically active, highly influential and progressive supporters which ally themselves with social justice issues. Join us!” read the JFFJ invitation.
It was Beck’s Fox News show that helped spotlight Jones’ radicalism, which was first reported by WND and by the New Zeal blog months before Beck took up the issue. The Fox News spotlight eventually led to Jones stepping down.
After Beck’s weeklong special on Soros, the JFFJ in January 2011 delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News in protest of the Soros show in which Beck referred to the billionaire as a “puppet master.” JFFJ deemed the show anti-Semitic.
JFFJ also took out full-page ads in several newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, demanding that Beck be sanctioned.
JFFJ recently had defended the Occupy movement in the face of charges it had taken an anti-Semitic tone, as WND previously exposed.
JFFJ activists also reportedly led high-holiday services last year at New York City, Boston and Los Angeles Occupy sites, including prayers for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The group helped erect sukkot, or customary temporary booths, at Occupy sites during the Feast of Tabernacles.
JFFJ is led by an assortment of radicals.
The group says it is seeking to create a just, fair and compassionate America, with social and economic security for all citizens. The group believes that “by transforming leaders, we are better able to transform society” and “create a more just world.”
The group also promotes “green” jobs, immigration reform and was a champion of Obama’s health-care bill.
JFFJ is funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute.
In 2009, the Open Society provided a $150,000 grant to the JFFJ and its associated group, the Funder’s Collaborative on Youth Organizing.
In 2010, Open Society provided a $200,000 grant to last a period of two years.
JFFJ was founded by Si Khan, who serves on the board of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which seeks to aid the children of parents the group deems “targeted, progressive activists.”
“We also assist youth who themselves have been targeted as a result of their progressive activities.”
The group was founded by Robert Meeropol, whose parents Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were accused of passing crucial nuclear secrets to the Soviets and executed in 1953.
JFFJ board member Amy Dean, meanwhile, has keynoted a Communist Party event and was involved with a U.S. socialist party.
She keynoted the Chicago Communist Party USA’s 22nd Annual People’s World Banquet last December. At the event, CPUSA labor secretary Scott Marshall deemed Dean’s work visionary and innovative.
Dean reportedly used the address to call for “much more” to be done “to build up the movement to ensure the Obama agenda and progressive change is advanced in Congress.”
In November 2011, Dean keynoted the seventh annual Working Class Media & Democracy Forum in St. Louis, which the New Zeal blog reports was arranged by Communist Party member Tony Pecinovsky.
Dean also was involved with the New Party, a controversial 1990s political party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
WND previously reported on evidence from the party’s own newsletter listing President Obama a member of the New Party.
Also, Marxist activist Carl Davidson recalled in a 2009 WND email interview that Obama participated in the New Party. He affirmed that Obama’s views overlapped with those of his party.
JFFJ board member Janice Fine was also a New Party leader and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, another socialist group.
JFFJ board member Donna Katzin is a former activist with the Cuba Resource Center.
New Zeal reported she is a donor to the Oakland, Calif.-based Data Center, which itself has close ties to Cuba.
JFFJ’s president and CEO, Simon Greer, previously worked as a labor and community organizer and social change leader for 15 years.
Greer previously wrote that he has had the “privilege of getting to know George Soros.”
“During our conversations, he made it clear that his experience surviving the Holocaust seared a simple but profound truth in his brain,” Greer said.
WND reported JFFJ runs a Selah Leadership Program, which provides community organizing training to local leaders. As of mid-2007, more than 200 leaders from 165 organizations had gone through the program.
Past participants include Heather Booth, founder of the radical Midwest Academy, which teaches the tactics of radical 1960s community organizer Saul Alinsky.
WND was first to report that the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit on which Barack Obama served as paid director alongside Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, provided money to Midwest Academy.
WND also broke the story that the executive director of Midwest Academy was part of the team that developed and delivered a group of volunteers for Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Another past participant in JFFJ’s training program is Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor.
JFSJ was listed as an endorsing organization of the One Nation rally in Washington, D.C., in October 2010, which was meant to counter Beck’s Washington event in August of that year.
The group has worked with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
“We are proud to be associated with the work of CAIR,” declared Jeffrey Denko, JFSJ’s senior vice president.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/anti-glenn-beck-group-honors-van-jones/print/