Weekly Featured Profile – Pamela Costain

KeyWiki

Pamela Costain assumed leadership of AchieveMpls in 2010, after four years as an elected member of the Minneapolis Board of Education.

In this role, she will work closely with the leadership of the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Board of Directors of AchieveMpls and business and community leaders to help ensure that Minneapolis students excel academically and are prepared for school, work and life.

Costain served on the Executive Committee of the successful Strong Schools Strong City referendum campaign in 2008 and was the first State Director for Parents United for Public Schools.

For 14 years, Costain was also Executive Director of the radical left Resource Center of the Americas, an “international human rights organization.”

In 2003, she helped found Wellstone Action, an organization dedicated to the legacy of Minnesota’s late Democratic Socialists of America aligned Senator Paul Wellstone, where she served as Director of Education and Training.

Pamela Costain traveled to Colombia with Paul Wellstone in November 2000 as part of the Senator’s attempt to stop U.S. support of that country’s anti-communist guerrilla war effort.

As late as 2008, Costain served on the the Advisory Board of the pro-communist, Madison Wisconsin-based Colombia Support Network, alongside Marxist academics Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Robert McChesney; radical activists Medea Benjamin, Larry Birns, Blase Bonpane, Fr. Roy Bourgeois and Mark Pocan – elected to Congress this last election cycle from Wisconsin.

In 1976, Pam Costain, Twin Cities Women’s Union, attended the Weather Underground and Prairie Fire Organizing Committee-organized Hard Times Conference on Jan. 30 – Feb. 1 at the University of Chicago.

Bernardine Dohrn, one of the Weather Underground terrorist leaders of that time, has, in recent years, been an active supporter of Pam Costain’s Colombia Support Network.

(more…)