NAACP Leader Says Some Black Groups Aid Right Wing

[hang a left]

NAACP Leader Says Some Black Groups Aid Right Wing


By Jon Hurdle
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The leader of America's largest civil rights organization on Monday attacked African American groups that he said were helping white conservatives promote a right-wing agenda.

Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, condemned the groups as a "collection of black hustlers" who have adopted a conservative agenda in return for "a few bucks a head."

"When the ultraconservative right-wing attacker has run out of attack strategy, he goes and gets someone that looks like you and me to continue the attack," Mfume said in his opening address to the NAACP's annual convention.

"They've financed a conservative coalition of make-believe black organizations, all of them hollow shells with more names on the letterhead than there are people in their membership," he said.

John White, a spokesman for the NAACP, said this was the first time Mfume has publicly attacked other black groups.

snip>



http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=5648926

[MrBenchley]

1. He's 100% right...

The far right wing Bradley Foundation has set up a bunch of these phony "black" organizations...

"In recent years, Bradley has increasingly turned its attention to the African American community, posing as a friend with real solutions to long-term urban problems, particularly around the issue of school "reform". A brief review of its past role, however, tells a far different story. Bradley is a major funding source for the Center for Individual Rights, the public law firm that successfully argued Hopwood vs. the State of Texas, a challenge to affirmative action policies at the University of Texas Law School. That 1996 decision effectively eliminated affirmative action in the state university system of Texas as well as in neighboring Mississippi and Louisiana.
Through its funding of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), Bradley played a key role in the 1996 successful anti-affirmative action referendum campaign in California, known as the California Civil Rights Initiative. The co-author of CCRI is Thomas Wood, executive director of the state affiliate of the NAS, which receives over $100,000 a year from Bradley. The effect of the overturn of affirmative action in Texas and California has been enormous, not only drastically reducing the number of students of color in these two heavily populated states, but also choking the pipeline for future Black and Latino attorneys and elected officials.
Bradley is also a heavy funder of University of California Regent Ward Connerly and his American Civil Rights Institute. Connerly was a leading figure in the anti-affirmative action campaign in California. His Institute helped repeat that success in Washington state and is now trying to do the same in Florida. Bradley money supports the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group that provided pro bono representation to California Gov. Pete Wilson in his challenge to five state statutes dealing with affirmative action in state employment and contracting goals.
A bill that would end affirmative action on the federal level was drafted by Clint Bolick, vice president and director of litigation for the Institute for Justice, another recipient of Bradley money. Earlier in his career, Bolick led the legal defense for the the first Wisconsin voucher law, while working for the Landmark Legal Foundation, another Bradley recipient. (Bolick's co-counsel in that case was the now notorious Kenneth Starr, who had previously done other legal work for Bradley.) Bolick also played a pivotal role in attacks on Lani Guinier, President Clinton's nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Bolick's Wall Street Journal opinion piece headlined "Clinton's Quota Queen" dredged up the worst racist and sexist stereotypes and helped throw the Guinier nomination on the defensive. Bolick also teamed up with another Bradley-funded organization, the Free Congress Foundation, to orchestrate further attacks on Guinier."

http://www.mediatransparency.org/funders/bradley_foundation.htm

[Kolesar]

4. GOPs have invested $Billions into manipulating public opinion

It is no wonder they are so effective. In my political science book, the author never said that Ward Connerly was an "astroturf" fake grassroots organizer. They presented him as a real leader.

[mom cat]

8. Remember the flap about repukes and Al Sharpton? link:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0405/barrett.php

A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton's Campaign
Sleeping With the GOP
by Wayne Barrett with special reporting by Adam Hutton and Christine Lagorio
February 5th, 2004 8:20 AM

(
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.

Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections. Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN subsidies.

Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards." He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans, he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the Rockefeller drug laws," adding: "If he did let me use his credit card to cover NAN expenses, fine." The finances of NAN and the Sharpton campaign have so merged in recent months that they have shared everything from contractors to consultants to travel expenses, though Sharpton insists that these questionable maneuvers have been done in compliance with Federal Election Commission regulations.

Stone's Miami-based Fairbanks Limited also set up an e-mail service called Sharpton-at-the-beach, which has issued dozens of releases highlighting campaign achievements before news of them was posted on the campaign website. His impact on strategy even included giving Sharpton the ax handle he wielded at the July NAACP convention, which Sharpton used as a symbol of former Georgia Democratic governor Lester Maddox, who became famous in the '60s by chasing blacks from his restaurant with one. Sharpton stirred the crowd, yelling from the podium: "Anytime we can give a party 92 percent of our vote and have to still beg some people to come talk to us, there is still an ax-handle mentality among some in the Democratic Party." Sharpton said he doesn't remember whether Stone gave him the ax handle. Stone declined to comment, but has boasted to friends that he came up with the theatrics.

[sniffa]

2. since jc watts retired...

sean hannity is the Leading bLack repubLican.

[Tomee450]

3. I am so happy to hear this.

I was thinking about this subject yesterday. On Cnn's Paula Zahn show a black conservative was spouting the right wing line. He said that the reason that 60% of black men in NYC are unemployed is because "they made poor choices, just as Bill Cosby said." Now there will be more trotting out of such blacks to do the work of those who do not support equal rights. It's about time for black leaders to start criticizing African Americans who do the work of those who despise the black community.

[tom_paine]

5. Mfume is 100% correct. The Busheviks have extended "Poll Freeping"

to any number of their Phony "Grassroots" Organizations.

Kudos to Mfume for calling them on it!

[Sandpiper]

6. At least he didn't name names

*cough* Ward Connerly

*cough* Clarence Thomas

*cough* Larry Elder

[AspenRose]

7. *cough*

*cough* John McWhorter

*cough* Walter Williams

*cough* Star Parker (not to be confused with Star Jones)

*cough* Shelby Steele

[sangh0]

12. *cough* Calvin Butts

.

[readmylips]

9. Like Armstrong Williams and Clarence Thomas....

who are color-blind to their own skin color. Armstrong/Thomas your ass is black and bush rightwing racists don't want you to forget.

[ethimtemp]

10. And let's not forget...

*cough* Mr. "Let's delay the election" DeForest "Buster" Sories

I tell ya, he ran for a repuke seat last fall in a predominantly repuke district. He lost so bad that the only explanation is that repukes actually voted FOR the the dem candidate.....who was white.

Even after that slap in the face, he's still in bed with those idiots. Around here, he has always been held in low esteem by the black community.

[newyawker99]

11. Hi ethimtemp!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MisterP]

13. remember how Shrub thought his first name was Honorable?