Oil sands get nod from U.S. anti-poverty group: 'All Energy Is Good'

[phantom power]

CALGARY -- Support for Canada's oil sands is coming from an unexpected American group--an anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders.

The group is waging a national campaign targeting 50 "extreme" environmental organizations and 100 U. S. politicians it says are restricting energy supplies through climate-change legislation, causing oil prices to spike to levels that are "strangling" the poor.

Niger Innis, co-chairman of the "Stop The War On The Poor" campaign and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the oldest civil rights groups in the United States, said the alliance wants more oil from Canada's vast unconventional deposits.

"We favour any and every energy source," he said in an interview. "We do not believe in this artificial game that the radicals play of pitting the so-called bad energy versus good energy. All energy, when prices are as high as they are, which is such a critical resource and the lifeblood of a nation's economy and the survival of people, is good energy as far as we are concerned."

http://www.financialpost.com/trading_desk/energy/story.html?id=687887

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. That's to bad, IMHO they are missing a great opportunity to empower labor.

What they should be doing is pushing for serious transit expansion for the working class and middle class, to cement a stronger coalition against the rich assholes. Then they should starting looking at ways expensive energy could make human labor valid again, and get those unions going. The oil sands are only a snooze button. Want to see the poor REALLY getting screwed? Let global warming decimate the worlds food supplies. We've got to move on in unity.

[depakid]

2. I guess so long as the pollution isn't in their backyards...

[bhbwl]

3. So very VERY wrong...

If "All Energy is Good," does that mean Big Energy is good too?

It's a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, I think. People sympathizing with their oppressors.

Maxine Waters is right about Big Energy. The trouble is that she needn't have stopped there.

[NickB79]

4. Good thing no poor people live in coastal cities that will be flooded by global warming, right?

Or eat food grown in areas of the world that will experience more extreme droughts and flooding, right?

[GliderGuider]

5. I wonder if any anti-poverty groups in Ft. McMurray are members of this coalition

It's astonishing how easy it is to get people to buy into things that are so manifestly against their own interests.

This is yet another example of why "we" (country, culture and species) are screwed. Human nature never ceases to amaze me.

[XemaSab]

6. It's the divide-and-conquer strategy the right wing has always used

Let's pit poor whites against slaves. Let's pit union workers against immigrants. Let's pit Christians against feminists.

It's an effective strategy, and it's especially effective in getting people to side against environmentalists and scientists.

Look at the whole loggers-versus-owls nonsense.

This is just more of the same.

[arenean]

7. Anti-poverty group?

Looking at their website, it seems less of an anti-poverty group, and more of a right-wing front.
I think their accusation of "left wing and extreme environmental groups" (54 of 'em!) denying access of fuel to the poor is a bit of a giveaway. Oh, and use of the word "American" every third word in a sentence....

[Viking12]

8. Ding, Ding, Ding! We have a winner!

Since 1968, CORE has been led by National Chairman, Roy Innis, who initially led the organization to strongly support Black Nationalism. However, subsequent political developments within the organization led it turn more towards the right. CORE supported the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972.

Recently, on same sex marriage and black health in the U.S.- "When you say to society at large that you have to accept, not only accept our lifestyle, but promote it and put it on the same plane and equate it with traditional marriage, that's where we draw the line and we say 'no.' That's not something that is a civil right. That is not something that is a human right," said Niger Innis, national spokesman for CORE, and son of Roy Innis.<1>. COREcares, an HIV/AIDS advocacy, education and prevention program for black women was dismantled. Niger Innis is on the board of the conservative Project 21 organization.

According to an interview given by James Farmer in 1993, "CORE has no functioning chapters; it holds no conventions, no elections, no meetings, sets no policies, has no social programs and does no fund-raising. In my opinion, CORE is fraudulent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Racial_Equality