Get ready for more Bachmann-style guilt by association.
Michele Bachmann is all over the media questioning Barack Obama's "association" with former sixties radical William Ayers.
But, Bachmann has palled around with two, count 'em TWO former, sixties radicals.
Bachmann's PRT pod-pal (Gary) Dean Zimmermann
Bachmann proudly associated herself with Zimmermann in this 2004 MPR news story about Persona Rapid Transit:
Supporters range from Minneapolis City Council member Dean Zimmerman, a Green Party member, to Republican Sen. Michelle Bachmann of Stillwater. Bachmann says personal rapid transit, like many political issues, creates strange bedfellows.
"People on the right, people on the left, we have the common goal of moving people with transit, but doing it in the most cost-effective manner, in fact, in a manner that may end up costing no government subsidy, it may end up paying for itself," she says.
Maybe she didn't know or didn't care that Zimmermann was a sixties radical who joined a violent "political cult" in the 1970's called the "CO", later called the "O".
An April 6, 2003 Star Tribune article mentions Zimmermann's involvement in the O:
Minneapolis City Council Member Dean Zimmermann, who was briefly an O. member, agrees. "People wanted a dramatic change in our society. And this co-op organization with the left-wing dogma exploited that deep, burning desire to transform our society in a way that would make it better for all and not just the privileged.
"We looked to Cuba, which had health care for everyone. We looked to China, which eradicated starvation. We thought we could transform our society and eliminate the chasm between the rich and the poor," Zimmermann said.
What was the O?
The O. started around 1974 as the C.O. (Cooperative Organization), a Marxist-Leninist group, and operated for more than 25 years. Longtime members who left speculate that fragments of it may exist today.
At its height, the O. probably had 100 members, but was so secretive that even well-connected people in the Twin Cities political left were clueless about its inner workings, said Craig Cox, author of the 1995 book “Storefront Revolution” and executive editor of the Utne Magazine.
What they did see was an amazingly destructive force as the O. infiltrated existing food co-ops, antiwar and feminist organizations in the 1970s.
“These people were incredibly driven by ideological purity,” Cox said. “They believed that to allow the co-ops to be this elite hippie, anarchist thing would detract from their own work. They were fairly ruthless in their desire for business gain.”
Although the O. started its own businesses to prepare for the coming revolution, its leaders viewed the growing food co-op movement as an economic opportunity, Cox said. Late one Sunday night in May 1975, O. members armed with iron pipes took over the People’s Warehouse, which distributed food to all the co-ops, fomenting Minneapolis’ “co-op wars,” Cox said. O. members later firebombed an opponent’s truck and were believed to have a cache of weapons stored on the South Side of Minneapolis, Cox said.
The O. divided what had been one of the nation’s most vibrant co-op communities, leaving it in disarray.
“I know people today who are still bitter about what the C.O. did to them and the co-op movement, and that was 30 years ago,” Cox said.
None of the O.’s co-ops survived, Cox said. “The revolution that they wanted to create never happened.”
Years later, Zimmermann was elected to the Minneapolis City Council. In 2006, Zimmermann was convicted on 3 counts of bribery and is currently serving the last months of his sentence in a halfway house in Minneapollis. You can read all about Zimmermann's trial at the Minneapolis Confidential blog. Zimmermann was also a close associate of another Bachmann associate Rep. Mark Olson.
Here is a video of Michele Bachmann's pod pal Dean Zimmermann at a peace rally in Minneapolis shortly before he went to jail:
Norm Coleman
Then there's that other sixties radical that Bachmann pals around with - Senator Norm Coleman (video here of the two sharing the stage at a McCain Palin Rally in Blaine in September). Here's a description of Coleman's alleged radical activities and illegal drug use back in the 1960's:
NORML's open letter to Sen. Norm Coleman
Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman acknowledges on his website that he was a "campus organzizer in the '60s" when he attended Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. His Wikipedia entry states: "He ran for student senate and opined in the school newspaper that his fellow students should vote for him because he knew that 'these conservative kids don't fuck or get high like we do... Everyone watch out, the 1950s' bobby-sox generation is about to take over.'" Several photos (reproduced here) show the then longhaired Coleman speaking through a bullhorn and unfurling an anti-war banner with other students.
Coleman was also apparently, a stoned campus radical according to this open letter from Norm Kent, a lawyer who went to Hofstra with Coleman:
NORM KENT'S LETTER TO SEN. NORM COLEMAN
Dear Mr. Coleman,
My friend Norman.
Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana. Years ago, in our dorm rooms at Hofstra University, you, me, Billy, your future brother-in-law, Ivan, Jonathan, Peter, Janet, Nancy and a wealth of other students smoked dope.
 Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows, but we got high, and yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's advice.
We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint. And the days of our youth we look back fondly upon as years where we stood up, were counted and made a difference, from Earth Day in 1970 to helping bring down a president and end a war in Southeast Asia a few years later.
We smoked pot when we took over Weller Hall to protest administrative abuses of students' rights. You smoked pot as you stood on the roof of the University Senate protesting faculty exclusivity. As the President of the Student Senate in 1969, you condemned the raid by Nassau County police on our dormitories, busting scores of students for pot possession....
So, there!
Bachmann's got at least two... count 'em TWO former stoned, hairy, hippie, radicals for associates compared to Barack Obama's alleged one.
When are the reporters going to ask Bachmann why she palled around with Coleman and Zimmermann?
NEXT UP: Tony "Obama Waffles Perkins, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, and more!!!! |
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