Malibu Mafia
The "Malibu Mafia" was an informal group of wealthy American Jewish men who donated money to liberal and progressive causes and politicians during 1960s–1990s.
[1] Associated with the beach city of Malibu, California, the group included economist Stanley Sheinbaum, Warner Bros. chairman Ted Ashley, television producer Norman Lear, and four businessmen: Harold Willens, Leopold Wyler, Miles L. Rubin and Max Palevsky.
[1] The Malibu Mafia was the more liberal and idealistic challenger to the 1960s–1990s fundraising efforts of Jewish political donor Lew Wasserman, chairman of MCA, whose views have been characterized as centrist and pragmatic.
[10] In the late 1970s as the Malibu Mafia peaked, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden headed an informal group of younger liberal donors and activists called "The Network".
[11] Activist "Ping" Ferry called Sheinbaum to help gather funds for the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg who had released the Pentagon Papers which demonstrated that the US government had lied about the expansion of the Vietnam War.
"[14] In 1978, Sheinbaum and Lear led the Malibu Mafia in underwriting the struggling progressive magazine The Nation,[5] organized under publisher Hamilton Fish as silent partners.
[15] In 1979 leading up to the 1980 United States presidential election, most of the Malibu Mafia opposed the re-election of President Jimmy Carter, and they formed Democrats for Change.
At the White House, Reagan was dismissive, telling Willens that the Soviets were ahead in the nuclear arms race, that the United States should catch up before a freeze could be considered.
[2] In 1987, Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson spoke to Israeli representatives about a possible peace solution; he thought that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) should discuss this same idea with American Jews before engaging in direct talks with Israel.
Andersson contacted Sheinbaum, who assembled a small group of three other American Jews to meet in November 1988 in Sweden with four high-ranking PLO officials.
With a positive result, Arafat spoke to the United Nations later in December, convened in Switzerland to allow him to attend, as George Shultz refused to issue him a visa to visit New York.
