The Gamaliel Foundation: Alinsky-Inspired Group Uses Stealth Tactics to Manipulate Church Congregations

Stopping Juvenile Detention: The Gamaliel Foundation: Alinsky-Inspired Group Uses Stealth Tactics to Manipulate Church Congregations By David Hogberg Summary: The radical left-wing Gamaliel Foundation worms its way into church congregations and uses the “in-your-face” tactics espoused by community organizing guru Saul Alinsky to incite church members to agitate for socialism. Worse, Gamaliel indoctrinates its own community organizers in creepy cult-like teachings and de- ceives church congregations about its real motives. regory Galluzzo, executive director of the Chicago-based Gamaliel GFoundation, writes on the foundation’s website about his encounter in the early 1980s with a young man who “would work to found a new independent project in the South side of Chicago” called the Developing Com- munities Project. Galluzzo met this young man on “a regular basis as he incorporated the Developing Communities Project, as he moved the organization into action and as he developed the leadership structure for the The executive director of the creepy Gamaliel cult, Gregory Galluzzo, is a mentor of organization. He would write beautiful and President Barack Obama. One organizer describes Gamaliel as “ruthless” and as brilliant weekly reports about his work and having a “strange and warped culture.” the people he was engaging.” The young man Galluzzo describes is Barack July 2010 Obama. It seems that Obama learned many When the young man “was leaving [to attend of his community organizer skills from the law school] he made sure that Gamaliel was Gamaliel Foundation. CONTENTS the formal consultant to the organization that he had created and to the staff that he had The Gamaliel Foundation describes itself hired.” In subsequent years, he would sup- The Gamaliel Foundation as “a community of people living out our port Gamaliel “by conducting training both Page 1 faith and values to collectively transform at the National Leadership Training events our society and bring about justice locally, and at the African American Leadership Philanthropy Notes nationally and globally. Gamaliel exists to Commission.” Page 8 FoundationWatch form organizations that empower ordinary people out there that are doing the really and other lenders were discriminating against people to effectively participate in the po- shady tactics.” them. Then in 1986 Galluzzo and Gonzales litical, environmental, social and economic re-organized the League and renamed it for decisions affecting their lives.” Helping the poor is part of the mission of the savvy lawyer who defended the fi rst inner-city churches. But the mission of the Christians. The Gamaliel Foundation was set up to “insure the promise of community Gamaliel targets local churches in inner cit- Gamaliel Foundation is to advance a far-left organizing.” The Foundation aims to “mentor ies, organizing their congregations to fi ght political agenda that provides little benefi t organizers” who will establish and maintain political battles in their communities. Many to the poor. Churches openly proclaim their so-called community organizations in low- of the “community organizations” it helps to mission. But Gamaliel operates by using create become effective local powerbrokers income neighborhoods. Galluzzo became stealth tactics. It’s likely that when Barack and remains Gamaliel’s fi rst and only execu- that win battles to increase local and state Obama acquired his community organizing tive director. spending for health, transportation and wel- skills at Gamaliel, he did not learn practical fare entitlements. Guided by a belief that the problem-solving motivated by religious In 2008, the most recent year for which fi - ends justify the means, Gamaliel is willing faith. He learned how to disguise his intense nancial information is available, the Gamaliel to practice deception to win the confi dence political convictions by portraying them Foundation had revenue of just under $3.4 of local church pastors for purposes they as practical problem-solving motivated by million, expenses of $3.2 million, and net would not approve. religious faith. assets of more than $1.7 million. “The Gamaliel Foundation is not represen- History and Organization In 2008, Gamaliel made grants of just under tative of every group that does community In the Bible (Acts 5:39), the Pharisee Ga- $340,000 to its various affi liates. Included in organizing in the country,” said Rey Lopez- maliel is a defender of Christ’s followers. He the $340,000 fi gure were $126,500 Gamaliel Calderon, a critic of Gamaliel who worked speaks on their behalf before the Sanhedrin, a gave to Atlantans Building Leadership for for it in the late 1990s. “I am very much a council of judges in Israel, warning it against Empowerment (ABLE) in Atlanta, Ga., proponent of community organizing. When persecuting Christ’s apostles, saying “refrain and $11,500 it gave to A Regional Initia- tive Supporting Empowerment (ARISE) in it’s done well, it’s done well. When it’s from these men, for if this work be of men, Albany, N.Y. done badly, it’s done badly. There are some it will come to naught, but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found Editor: Matthew Vadum even to fi ght against God.” Gamaliel doesn’t always make direct grants. Sometimes it runs training programs so that Publisher: Terrence Scanlon According to its website, Gamaliel’s execu- communities can develop organizations that Foundation Watch tive director, Gregory Galluzzo, began his eventually will become Gamaliel affi liates. In is published by Capital Research community organizing career by running the 2006 and 2007 it spent $1.9 million and $2.1 Center, a non-partisan education and million, respectively, on these activities. research organization, classifi ed by Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, now a the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Gamaliel affi liate, from 1971 to 1975. Pilsen, once an old Slavic neighborhood, became Gamaliel’s funding comes from left-leaning Address: 1513 16th Street, N.W. predominantly Mexican in the 1960s, hous- foundation grantmakers. Since 2000, Ga- Washington, DC 20036-1480 ing large numbers of legal and illegal His- maliel has received $3.4 million from the Ford Foundation, over $1.5 million from the Phone: (202) 483-6900 panic immigrants. After leaving Chicago for Long-Distance: (800) 459-3950 community organizing work in Washington Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, $525,000 state, Galluzzo returned to the city to work from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, E-mail Address: [email protected] with his now-wife, Mary Gonzales, in setting about $195,000 from George Soros’s Open up the United Neighborhood Organization Society Institute, $186,000 from the Tides Web Site: Foundation, and $150,000 from the Bauman http://www.capitalresearch.org (UNO) from 1979 to 1986. Family Foundation. Organization Trends welcomes let- Gamaliel was founded in 1968 as the Con- ters to the editor. tract Buyers League. It was dedicated to Gamaliel claims to have 60 affi liates in 21 Reprints are available for $2.50 pre- U.S. states and in fi ve of South Africa’s nine paid to Capital Research Center. fi ghting for African-American homeowners on Chicago’s West side who believed banks provinces. The U.S. affi liates are divided into 2 July 2010 FoundationWatch fi ve territories, each of which has a director “This type of community organizing began in a society where geographic place confers who supervises that territory’s affi liates. in Chicago in 1938. Saul Alinsky created the privilege through spatial racism, classism Galluzzo’s wife, Mary, is director of the ‘Back of the Yards Community Council’. and segregation of opportunity.” Western Territory. The organization operated in the shadow of Chicago’s stock yards.” Doing Justice: Congregations and Commu- Gamaliel also has a “National Clergy Cau- nity Organizing (Fortress Press, 2001), a book cus.” The website claims that its purpose This passage is typical of Gamaliel’s tactics. written by Dennis A. Jacobsen, the director of Gamaliel’s National Clergy Caucus, of- is “to act within the Gamaliel Foundation There is no further information about Alin- fers insight into the character of Gamaliel’s network in ways that faithfully witness to sky’s radical background or the disreputable radical vision. A rambling treatise that tries the God of love, power, justice and commu- tactics he promoted in his 1971 book Rules to fuse Christianity to the philosophy of the nity. The [Caucus] will serve as the shaper For Radicals: A Practical Primer for Real- and bearer of the comprehensive vision of atheist Alinsky, Doing Justice begins with istic Radicals. a description of the world as hopelessly congregation-based organizing for Gamaliel corrupt. Foundation affi liates through each affi liate’s It was Alinsky who counseled community clergy caucus.” Its responsibilities include organizers to combine hope with fear to “The world, as it is, is the enemy of God. developing a network of clergy caucuses create an effective mass organization. The The world, as it is, is the enemy of the people as well as a body of theological material “relevant to the principles of community organizing.” Clergy from many Gamaliel affi liates serve on the Caucus board. Liberal or Far Left? It is not always easy to discern just how politically radical Gamaliel is. For example, it advocates universal health care, immigra- tion reform, affordable housing, more public transportation, and economic development— a public policy agenda that is certainly liberal. However, look more closely at the group’s website and you can begin to see how Ga- maliel disguises its far left politics. The website’s vision statement reads, “We Community organizing guru Saul Alinsky (1909 - 1972) claim the value of a sacred community over isolating individualism. We further claim that tactic is found in Gamaliel’s “vision state- of God … It is so because the world, as it is, is driven by abusive power, consuming each person has the right and responsibility ment”: “We claim the value of unrelenting greed, relentless violence, and narcissistic to make the sacred community a reality.” hope over numbing fear.

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