By Andrew W. Griffin

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: August 4, 2009

reddirtreporter@gmail.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – The flyer is simple but informative. “Community Organizing at St. Charles.” Sounds innocuous enough. But upon closer inspection, it appears to be further attempts by ACORN-esque organizers to infiltrate well-meaning parishioners in the Catholic Church in the Oklahoma City area, among other places.

The flyer reads: “Come to a special training in community organizing for Catholic parishes, presented by Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee and hosted by Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish.”

Not much could be found about the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, other than a Grace Presbyterian Church flyer online that notes that “the OSC is a congregation-based community action group that equips churches to better meet the needs of their communities through training and support.”

It also said seven Catholic churches are part of 27 churches in Oklahoma City that are getting involved with this community-organizing activity.

The corrupt group ACORN, which had been active in Oklahoma City until late last summer, is believed to be connected to this action considering it's past links, as noted in this 2003 National Housing Institute article. Red Dirt Report was given an exclusive peek into a recently-abandoned ACORN office in south Oklahoma City last October. That report can be found here.

The event, scheduled August 8 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. is not being held at St. Charles Borromeo, rather at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their Connor Center at 32^nd and Western.

Among items on the “program” at this “community organizing” event, includes “interactive community organizing training based on the first five chapters of Nehemiah with attention to the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity, by Kris Ausdenmoore, lead organizer, Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee.”

Ausdenmoore, it turns out, according to a 2008 article in the Sooner Catholic, was the lead organizer for the Oklahoma IAF. IAF stands for Industrial Areas Foundation. They are located throughout the United States and have chapters in Canada, England and Germany, according to www.industrialareasfoundation.org. And they deal with not only Christians but Muslims, Jews and others as well.

“The leaders and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundation build organizations whose primary purpose is POWER – the ability to act – and whose chief product is social change. They continue to practice what the Founding Fathers preached; the ongoing attempt to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday realities for more and more Americans.”

IAF is pushing socialistic political ideas like the “living wage movement” in the United States, according to their website. And when they ask themselves why they do what they do, they respond, in part: “We do it because we are angry.” Boiled down, they are angry that life is not fair and more must be done to make it fair, whatever it takes. This is not much different from the liberation theology movement that swept Latin America and radical Catholic churches in North America more than 30 years ago.

It also notes there will be a potluck lunch, “focused house meeting training,” and don’t forget your Bible.

Alerting the masses to this Marxist organizing activity was popular afternoon radio talk show host Mark Shannon on KTOK AM 1000 in Oklahoma City.

“This is nothing more than a scam for Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama’s Marxist mentor. And to the churches, shame on you,” Shannon said.

And this is true. Obama, the community organizer, was a great admirer of Rules for Radicals author and activist Alinsky, who died in 1972. Charles Beggs, who writes for the Tulsa Beacon, wrote in April in an article called “The Wolves Are At the Door,” that IAF has “disavowed some of Alinsky’s more extreme views” but also split churches in the process “seek(ing) to work within unsuspecting Catholic and Protestant congregations, and among other constituencies, to further a decidedly liberal agenda.”

Callers to his show Tuesday afternoon were equally concerned. One caller noted that this is nothing but a government attempt to further Obamanize the churches by forming “brownshirt” groups and advance leftist and socialistic ideas, including redistribution of wealth.

Another caller said he was fed up with Oklahoma City Archbishop Eusebius Beltran because he is a poor leader and Catholics who have concerns about radical leftists making inroads in their churches are ignored.

Shannon tended to agree and chided the churches that are getting involved with this activity, calling on listeners to “infiltrate the meeting” and “tape record the meetings” and send them to him afterward.

These community organizers, Shannon said, are “bad, bad news. We don’t want them in Oklahoma City.”

Further research led Red Dirt Report to the website of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, which goes into more detail about the “Community Organizing at St. Charles.”

The website says they are involved in community organizing by quoting Pope Benedict 16^th and the late Pope John Paul II and noting that they are looking out for the “common good.”

“In September (community organizers) will conduct a parish information campaign. The object of this campaign will not be to GIVE information to parishioners. It will be to HEAR the concerns of our parishioners and to lean abou the pressures facing our families and individuals as citizens in the metropolitan area.”

With that in mind, Red Dirt Report hopes to attend the Saturday organizing event and will report more in the coming days.

Copyright 2009 West Marie Media