Catholic campaign for human development: Still entranced by leftist activism, despite growing unrest

Human Events, Nov 10, 2000 by Lopez, Kathryn Jean

ACORN demands that banks comply with its interpretation of fair lending practices and advocates for a higher minimum wage, federally subsidized housing, higher taxes and a repeal of the home mortgage interest tax deduction.

CCHD granted $28,000 to the Kansasbased Manhattan alliance for Peace and Justice in the 1999-2000 cycle. In March, the leftist Alliance sponsored a campus lecture at Kansas State University that devolved into a "Free Mumia" rally.

About 200 students rallied in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former radio host who is on death row for shooting a police officer in 1981. The invited speaker, whose parents had been served the death penalty, claimed "the Philadelphia police hated Mumia" because he decried police brutality on his radio show.

Another CCHD grantee is the Missoula, Mont.-based WEEL (Working for Equality and Economic Liberation), which was granted $30,000 in 1999-2000.

WEEL is a welfare-rights advocate that "works to hold those in power accountable to families instead of profits." Typical of CCHD grantees, WEEL's rhetoric is a thinly disguised attack on the free market and promarket politics, described as "belief and policy systems which keep people oppressed."

WEEL organizes low-income families for political action to obtain increased welfare funding, low-income housing, child care subsidies and guaranteed wages. It recently launched a campaign against the Fatherhood Initiative, an effort to teach men that families suffer unless fathers accept responsibility for their children's welfare, which WEEL calls insulting to single mothers.

In Los Angeles alone, CCHD funded several activist groups in 1999-2000:

The Los Angeles chapter of ACORN (granted $35,000) organizes welfare recipients, successfully pressuring the Department of Public Social Services to create an employee-grievance program for "workfare" participants.

The Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles (granted $40,000) was organized around a successful effort to defeat construction of a $535-million waste incinerator, claiming the mantle of environmental justice for low-income neighborhoods.

The Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (granted $40,000) helps organize garment and restaurant workers to advocate higher wages and benefits.

The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (granted $30,000) lobbies city and county officials to mandate increased wages by passing a "living wage" ordinance.

Among the traditional CCHD grantees are affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), founded by Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, a bible for left-wing political protest groups. Alinsky wrote, "To hell with charity; the only thing you'll get is what you're strong enough to get."

Alinsky's coalition group IAF still very much believes, it would seem, what Saul Alinsky taught.

IAF has support from CCHD's national and diocesan directors. The Rev. Carmen Mele, O.P., CCHD director in Forth Worth, Tex., says this of IAF: "I commend the parent organization as well as the affiliates with which I have worked for their efforts at bringing the poor into the democratic process. . . . The methods are much more constructive than party politics and deserve support. Yes, I sometimes wish that they might take up issues such as abortion (especially in El Paso where the people are largely conservative on the issue), but as long as they do not take a contrary position, it seems fair to continue backing the group."