Valerie Jarrett’s Radical Roots
November 14, 2012 by John Perazzo 10 Comments
It was recently revealed that for several months, President Obama’s closest and most trusted advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has been leading secret negotiations with representatives of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in an effort to develop normalized relations between the U.S. and Iran. Hallmarks of such a relationship would include the commencement of direct airline flights between American cities and Tehran; the granting of entry permits for citizens of each country to visit the other; and most significantly, high-level diplomatic dialogue regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Jarrett, however, has no experience whatsoever in international negotiations. Her major area of expertise has been to help President Obama “fundamentally transform” the United States into a socialist paradise. Toward that end, for instance, Jarrett helped recruit to the Administration such luminaries as the self-identified communist revolutionary Van Jones (as green jobs czar), the Alinskyite radical Mark Lloyd (as chief diversity officer within the Federal Communications Commission), and the die-hard advocate of wealth redistribution Cass Sunstein (as regulatory czar). But for the task of striking a bargain with the America-hating Islamic supremacists in Iran, it is difficult to identify any qualifications Jarrett posesses apart from the fact that she was born in that country and lived there till age 5. Jarrett’s weak resumé in that regard might well explain not only why the Administration tried so hard to keep a lid on her talks with Iranian leaders, but also why Obama refused to back Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s call for a clearly defined “red line” beyond which Iran’s nuclear program would not be permitted to progress.
Like so many Obama appointees, Valerie Jarrett bears the unmistakable imprint of the president’s ideology. She is a leftist to her core, with notable personal ties to the communist movement. Jarrett’s maternal grandfather, for instance, was a Chicagoan named Robert Taylor, who in the 1940s was involved with such communist fronts as the American Peace Mobilization and the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee. Also a member of these groups was Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist who in the 1970s would mentor a young Barack Obama.
Jarrett’s mother (and Robert Taylor’s daughter) is early-childhood-education author Barbara Taylor Bowman, who co-founded a Chicago-based graduate school in child development known as the Erikson Institute, named after the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson; in 1950 Erikson became a hero to the left by choosing to resign from his professorship at the University of California rather than sign an anti-communist loyalty oath as the school required. Indicative of the Erikson Institute’s radical political orientation is the fact that its board of trustees has included, in addition to Bowman, such figures as Tom Ayers (father of the former Weather Underground terrorist and lifelong Marxist Bill Ayers) and Bernardine Dohrn (longtime wife of Bill Ayers).
In 1983 Valerie Jarrett married the son of Vernon Jarrett, a black journalist who formerly wrote for the communist-influenced Chicago Defender. In the 1940s, Mr. Jarrett was a leader of the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy—youth wing of the Communist Party USA. He also served on a publicity committee for the Packinghouse Workers Union, a Chicago-based entity dominated by the CPUSA. In each of these endeavors, Mr. Jarrett had close contact with the aforementioned communist, Frank Marshall Davis.
According to The Washington Post, Vernon Jarrett was “a key influence” in persuading Harold Washington, a politician with powerful socialist ties, to run for mayor of Chicago in 1983. Four years later Mr. Jarrett helped his daughter-in-law, Valerie, enter the political arena as an official in Mayor Washington’s Administration. After Washington’s death in 1987, Ms. Jarrett worked as deputy chief of staff for his successor, Richard Daley.
Valerie Jarrett’s ties to Barack and Michelle Obama were first formed in 1991, when Ms. Jarrett recruited Michelle (who at the time was engaged to Barack) to Chicago’s City Hall. Jarrett quickly became a trusted confidante of both the Obamas. Thus would she play a key role in then-Senator Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Following the election, Jarrett was appointed as a senior advisor and assistant to Mr. Obama, who admittedly consults Jarrett on every important political decision he makes. Indeed, the president once told a New York Times reporter that he completely trusts Jarrett “to speak for me, particularly when we’re dealing with delicate issues.” It seems that this trust extends even to Jarrett’s handling of such “delicate issues” as whether Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism, will develop a nuclear weapon and, in its own way, forever “fundamentally transform” life not only in the United States, but throughout the world.
