Red Reps 11: Karen Bass, Just Another Cheeky Little California Red

New Zeal

Red Reps 10 here.

Karen Bass

When former California State Rep. Karen Bass took over Diane Watson’s Congressional seat in 2010, the voters of California’s 33rd district merely exchanged one pro-Marxist representative for another.

Clearly marked out for big things, Bass was selected by then Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to serve on the prestigious Steering and Policy Committee which sets the policy direction of the Democratic Caucus. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, also appointed Bass to serve as an Assistant Whip.

Karen Bass also wasted no time in joining the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the influential, eighty strong bloc of leftist Democrats, many of whom are connected to Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, or both.

Karen Bass started her political organizing as a middle school student when she signed up to be a precinct captain for Robert Kennedy in 1968. In 1990, Bass founded and ran Community Coalition, a “community-based social justice organization in South Los Angeles to empower residents to get involved in making a difference.” In addition to her 14 years as Executive Director for Community Coalition, Bass has a long history as an activist, creating change on both a local and an international level.

In the Community Coalition, Karen Bass worked closely with some of South Los Angeles’ most dedicated Marxist activists.

  • Bob Wing – Director of Strategic Projects for the Coalition, has a history with the Maoist leaning Line of March, the Communist Party splinter Committees of Correspondence and the Sacramento Marxist School, where he lectured on “Post 9/11 Left Political Strategy.” in January 2002, a group of San Francisco leftists, mainly former Maoists or activists involved with STORM or Committees of Correspondence, founded a national anti-Iraq War newspaper – War Times. One of Wing’s War Times co-founders was Van Jones, later to find fame as President Barack Obama’s short lived “Green Jobs Czar.”
  • Steve Tarzynski – Vice-Chairman of the Community Coalition Board, was for many years a leader of Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America and is local chair of Physicians for a National Health Program, the pro-socialized medicine lobby group founded in Chicago by DSAer and long time Obama mentor Dr. Quentin Young.

In 1993, Bass revealed her socialist bent when she addressed that year’s West Coast Socialist Scholars Conference.

Democratic Left March/April 1993, Page 13

The event was co-sponsored by D.S.A., Committees of Correspondence, Socialist Community School, International Socialist Organization – Socialist Organizing Network – Solidarity and the Union for Radical Political Econonics.

Co-speakers included Angie Fa, Bogdan Denitch, Mona Field and Harold Meyerson, all of D.S.A., future Los Angeles City Councillor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Line of March founder and Committees of Correspondence founder Irwin Silber and Harold Meyerson, who incidentally was the first journalist to bring then obscure Illinois State Senator Barack Obama to national attention.

Communist Party supporting Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, the “first Member of Congress to call on the President to bring our troops home,” was to be in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 4th, 2006, for a ‘very exciting but critical fundraiser against the most well-known, well-financed challenger she’s ever faced.”

The Host Committee for this fundraiser included the cream of the Los Angeles Democratic Party left: Ben Affleck, Ed Asner, Warren Beatty, Jodie Evans, James Cromwell, Matt Damon, Tom Hayden, Mimi Kennedy, Norman Lear, Stanley Sheinbaum & Betty Sheinbaum, Gloria A. Totten, Senator Barbara Boxer, Congressman Joe Baca, Congressman Xavier Becerra, Congresswoman Lois Capps, Congresswoman Jane Harman, Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, Congresswoman Grace Napolitano, Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, Congressman Adam Schiff, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Congresswoman Diane Watson, State Senator Sheila Kuehl and then California Assemblywoman Karen Bass.

The fundraiser was at the Stanley & Betty Sheinbaum residence in Brentwood. Both Sheinbaums have been members of Democratic Socialists of America, as was Ed Asner.

As of 2009, Karen Bass, then Speaker of the House, California State Assembly, was on the Board of Directors of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a Los Angeles based organization “seeking to advance movements for social change through a combination of grants, leadership training and alliance-building.”

At Liberty Hill, Karen Bass served with several D.S.A. members and supporters, including Paula Litt, Reverend Jim Conn, The Honorable Jackie Goldberg, Peter Dreier, Paul Schrade, Kent Wong, Margery Tabankin and the Sheinbaums. Other Liberty Hill colleagues included Los Angeles Councillor Mark Ridley-Thomas and the city’s pro-Marxist mayor and former Obama Transition Team member, Antonio Villaraigosa.

Karen Bass brings nothing new to the US house of Representatives.

She is just another cheeky little California red. Old wine, in a new bottle.


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Trevor Loudon, top researcher of the global neo-Marxist movement, administrates KeyWiki and NewZeal.

Mr. Loudon’s Obama Files articles are also listed at NewZeal.

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