So Now Herman Cain, A Black Businessman, Is Throwing His Hat Into The GOP's 2012 Presidential Bid Circus Too.
YAWN!!!!
I've Already Expressed My Sentiments About Cain Running Against Sitting President Barack Obama In A Previous Blog Post.
Just Another GOP Gimmick!
Of Course Mr. Cain Will NEVER Make It Out Of The Primaries, Nor Will He Become The GOP's Nominee.
Out Of Curiosity White, Racist So-Called "Supporters" Will Show Up At GOP Rallies To Hear Mr. Cain Speak But Will Those Same White "Supporters" Cast Their Ballots For Herman Cain During The Primaries Or During A General Election?
NO! NO! NO!
This Is Also Just Another Example Of How Some Black People Will Do ANYTHING For 15 Minutes Of Fame. Even If It Means Destroying Or Further Dividing The Entire American Black Community.
Besides NO One Is Going To Help Elect A Black Man With A Southern Accent As U.S. President! It Will NEVER Happen!
Remember Jesse Jackson??
Don't Waste Your Time Folks.
By The Way Why Didn't Anyone Hear About Herman Cain While George W. Bush Was Still In Office?
Using an urban phrase used to convey a sense of excitement, radio host and businessman Herman Cain emerged to throngs of supporters on Saturday and formally announced his presidential bid.
"Awww shucky ducky," the conservative Republican joked with the crowd in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park as he stepped out to applause and adoring chants.
Moments later, he turned to the more serious announcement.
"Right here, this day, this hour and this moment, I have looked inside of me. I came here to declare my candidacy for the Republican nomination for president of the United States of America," Cain said.
"And just to be clear, in case you accidentally listen to a skeptic, let me say it again, I'm running for president of the United States. And I'm not running for second," he added.
He went on to blast President Barack Obama over the unemployment rate, decry the nation's $14 trillion-plus debt and decry rising energy prices.
Cain is now the fourth Republican - and the first African-American - to officially enter the GOP race for president.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson have also officially declared candidacies. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is expected to do the same on Monday.
Others - including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum - are either expected to officially enter the race or are seriously mulling it over.
In a crowded field of contenders, Cain hopes his solid business credentials and Tea Party ties will help him stand out.
He's the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, and has previously been an executive with various companies including Coca-Cola, Pillsbury and Burger King. And his plainspoken defense of less spending and lower taxes has helped him become a favorite of Tea Party activists.
And yet, many political observers routinely dismiss Cain's candidacy. Some cite his scant political experience - he's never won elective office - and his low name recognition against the better-known contenders. Additionally, Cain has acknowledged some holes in his foreign policy knowledge, though he's said he'd employ and listen to the best experts to make decisions if he were president.
Meanwhile, Cain hews to a position on entitlement spending that's popular with conservatives but could be problematic with others who frown on major changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Saying that the United States has become an "entitlement society," Cain said: "Not only do I believe it is possible, but I also know that it's time - with restructuring programs instead of reshuffling programs - we can take this entitlement society to an empowerment society."
That said, Cain surely hopes his candidacy will get a boost both by his official entrance and by serving up red meat to hungry, anti-Obama supporters.
"Hope and change ain't working," he told the crowd, apparently tweaking the president's last campaign message. "Hope and change is not a solution."
Thanks to the New Black Panthers Party now the entire nation knows that severe Racism in the form of Lynching is still alive in states likes North & South Carolina.
Even though for the most part South Carolina is more open to correcting Civil Rights disparities than North Carolina, Anthony Hill's recent dragging death proves South Carolina too needs more work in the area of Race Relations.
Newberry, SC Law Enforcement officials have intentionally refused to charge the suspect (White) who shot Anthony Hill (Black, former U.S. Soldier) than dragged his body 10 miles down a road, with a Hate Crime because they don't want Feds "snooping" into their business.
Instead of standing with the New Black Panthers Party, local NAACP leaders are keeping their distance.
This is why I NO longer support the spineless NAACP organization.
Pumping fists in the air and hoisting signs that read, “Black Power” and “Justice for Anthony Hill,” a hundred or so demonstrators marched Saturday from a Newberry neighborhood park to the Newberry County Courthouse, rallying for a new day in race relations in this small town in central South Carolina.
Some came because, they say, local police pull black motorists over without cause, question black youths whenever they’re unsupervised and do not pursue crimes against blacks as vigorously as those against whites.
Others came because they believe the school system treats black students differently from white ones.
Still others came because of concerns over substandard conditions in the city’s public housing.
But all agreed the area’s racial tensions can no longer be ignored after a white man, Gregory Collins, was arrested in early June in the shooting death of his coworker Anthony Hill. Hill’s corpse had been dragged behind a truck for 11 miles, police said.
“Anybody who says prejudice is gone, I’m sorry but they’re wrong,” said Marquesia Abney of Newberry who demonstrated Saturday. “People need to wake up. I hear a lot of people around here say, ‘(This crime) has nothing to do with me.’ But if you live in this community, if you have kids, it does affect you. The message has to get out that people can’t do things like this.”
“It’s time people wake up,” added Abney’s friend Mike Raiford of Newberry. “Wake up and realize we get treated very poorly in this community.”
A group of local and national reporters worked the event while law enforcement officers from the city, county and state surrounded the peaceful event, some on foot, others in ATVs, on motorcycles or in vehicles.
The crowd, which included several demonstrators who came in from other states including Georgia and Texas, eventually swelled to several hundred at the courthouse to join in chants and prayers.
Police have Collins in custody, having arrested him a few hours after the incident.
That’s not enough, said Malik Zulu Shabazz, president of the New Black Panther Party, the primary speaker at Saturday’s event. He claimed during Saturday’s rally that Collins did not act alone and implied he should be put to death for the crime.
Instead, Shabazz said, law enforcement is sitting on its hands in an obvious hate crime.
“This case is an outrage. Gregory Collins has not even been indicted. That’s right. Over 40 days after (the) dragging and murder,” Shabazz yelled to the crowd through a megaphone on the court house steps. “When a man is dragged behind a pickup truck, that is a modern day lynching.”
But is it a hate crime, fueled by racial hatred?
Those interviewed in the crowd disagreed.
Some said the brutal nature of the crime is a undeniable echo of the South’s racially intolerant past when black men were lynched for failing to obey white men’s rules.
Others suspect that this was a crime of passion, the details of which have yet to be released to the public. Rumors swirl that Collins and Hill were at odds over a woman.
Others shrugged their shoulders in uncertainty over the true nature of the crime.
Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster acknowledged Saturday that unsubstantiated rumors are making the rounds in town about a woman.
“But we have not received any credible information,” he said.
As for whether it’s a hate crime, Foster said it’s up to the U.S. Justice Department to make that decision. South Carolina has no hate crime statute.
As for other claims made by Shabazz including that Collins did not act alone, the sheriff said, “He’s obviously got information that we don’t have.”
Residents lined the route, watching as demonstrators marched by, chanting “I’m black. I’m beautiful” and “Long live Anthony Hill.”
“I don’t see the point of it,” said Ken Gunter, a white Newberry resident who watched the march from the sidelines. “I don’t see the hate crime.”
Gunter speculates it was a spur of the moment crime over private matters that had nothing to do with race.
Fellow watcher Paul Willis of Newberry agreed.
“I’ve talked to both blacks and whites and we don’t see what this has to do with race,” he said.
The President of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP spoke out after he and three others were arrested during a Wake County School Board meeting last month.
Rev. William Barber and the others were charged with trespassing for disrupting the June 15 meeting. Following the arrests, officials sent a letter warning them to stay off school property or face legal action.
In response, Barber issued a statement Friday which said, "let them send us a thousand letters. What they need to do is send a letter of apology for wrecking the nationally acclaimed diversity policy and slowing the struggle to improve excellent educational opportunities for poor and minority children."
School officials said they can attend meetings if they provide written notice ahead of time and ask for permission
Meanwhile, Barber plans to hold a news conference before Tuesday's Wake County School Board meeting to make several demands from the board of education.
They include stopping segregation and promoting diversity, providing equity in funding, hiring and retaining high quality teachers, creating smaller class sizes, focusing on math, science, history and reading, promoting parent and community involvement and eliminating inequities in suspensions, graduation rates and performance.
The news conference is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the State Capitol building.
The New Black Panthers Party is planning to rally in Newberry Saturday in response to the murder of a man who was later dragged behind a truck for several miles..
Officials are expecting a large turnout and they're concerned about crowd control.
The group says they expect thousands of people to show up at the march.
The New Black Panthers say the murder and dragging of 30-year-old Anthony Hill, a black man, is an obvious hate crime. They've been demanding justice since the incident occurred in early June.
A suspect, 19-year-old Gregory Collins, was put behind bars without bond just hours after the murder.
Authorities continue their investigation, but say it's unclear as to whether it was a hate crime.
Newberry, SC Law Enforcement officials have intentionally refused to charge the suspect (White) who shot Anthony Hill (Black, former U.S. Soldier) than dragged his body 10 miles down a road, with a Hate Crime because they don't want Feds "snooping" into their business.
Instead of standing with the New Black Panthers Party, local NAACP leaders are keeping their distance.
This is why I NO longer support the spineless NAACP organization.
Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster is reassuring residents he has extra deputies in the county, as a weekend of protests begin by a group that has been labeled as a hate group.
The New Black Panther party had a vigil planned Friday for a 30-year-old Anthony Hill. He's the man who deputies say was shot, then dragged 10 miles behind a pickup truck in June.
Gregory Collins, 19, is charged with murder in connection with the death.
Deputies also found more than 20 assault weapons inside of Collins' home. Hill was a former soldier, and member of the volunteer fire department. The two men worked at a plant together, and Foster says they were together earlier in the day.
Foster said the death of Hill is being investigated as a possible hate crime, but that ruling can only come from the FBI, who is also looking into the case.
A week following the arrest, the New Black Panther party arrived in Newberry holding rallies, marches and starting a fund to help Hill's children. But what many in the community may not know is that they have been identified as a hate group by multiple organizations.
Documented video has shown members of their group using racial epithets for whites in speeches, and at rallies, calling for violence toward whites. Group members have also made numerous anti-Semitic statements on camera.
"They are certainly what we would call a black nationalist organization, they believe in notions of black independence black autonomy, some would classify that as being racially separatist or a hate organization," USC political science professor Todd Shaw says.
The New Black Panthers has been defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2000. The Anti-Defamation League has also condemned the group's actions.
"The rhetoric itself is strong it's obnoxious at times to others," Shaw says. "To draw the attention to the issue, to draw the cameras, to draw the public notice, that's the point, they also do it of course because they believe what they're saying, but they know that in some ways they see themselves as provocateurs."
While the New Black Panthers self-associate with the original Black Panthers from the 1960s, a leader of the group from that time, Bobby Steale says they are not the same.
"A xenophobic kind of rhetoric that turns into a kind of sort of racist rhetoric rather than anything that's constructive," says Steale, who is the chairman of the group. "Making absurd categorical racial remarks, that's not what it's about."
Shaw says it is important to ask what the organization believes in.
"Groups that have views of that extreme will use shocking violence, will use shocking racial rhetoric, obnoxious or not it's important to ask what's the broad set of questions that are raised by their presence," Shaw says.
South Carolina NAACP Chairman Lonnie Randolph tells News19, "I don't support their views but as long as they operate within the law, I am fine."
He also says he has been in Newberry when the New Black Panthers were there but did not meet with them.
The New Black Panthers say they are just looking for justice for Anthony Hill. That's part of their seven demands, along with federal hate crime charges in this case.
News19 has also learned that one of the New Black Panther party members who has made trip to the Midlands was arrested this week in Atlanta.
Hashim Nzinga is the National Chief of Staff for the New Black Panther Party. He's made appearances in Columbia with the group during news conferences about the death of Anthony Hill.
Atlanta Police confirm to News19 that Nzinga was arrested Tuesday on bank fraud charges. He has posted bond.
Investigators did not provide other details on his arrest.
The New Black Panthers Party is planning to rally in Newberry Saturday in response to the murder of a man who was later dragged behind a truck for several miles..
Officials are expecting a large turnout and they're concerned about crowd control.
The group says they expect thousands of people to show up at the march.
The New Black Panthers say the murder and dragging of 30-year-old Anthony Hill, a black man, is an obvious hate crime. They've been demanding justice since the incident occurred in early June.
A suspect, 19-year-old Gregory Collins, was put behind bars without bond just hours after the murder.
Authorities continue their investigation, but say it's unclear as to whether it was a hate crime.
Dana Brooks understands why the New Black Panther Party is organizing a rally and march Saturday through her hometown.
But she has no plans to be a part of it
“It feels like they’re stirring up more problems than they’re solving,” said Brooks, 18, and a recent graduate of Mid-Carolina High School. “I know they’re trying to call attention to a very serious situation. But I don’t feel like I should be in a situation where there could be problems.”
Fear and uncertainty are thick in Newberry as local residents prepare for Saturday’s rally. No one knows how many people to expect or what the mood will be. Downtown business owners were reluctant to speak this week about the planned rally but most said their businesses already will be closed by the time the Panthers assemble at the courthouse around 5 p.m.
The event is in response to the June 2 killing of Anthony Hill.
Hill, a black man, was shot to death and his corpse was dragged nearly 11 miles along country roads behind a truck. Gregory Collins, 19, who is white, is in jail without bail on murder charges in the case.
Authorities are investigating the killing as they decide whether to charge Collins with a hate crime. U.S. Attorney William Nettles said he has not decided whether the killing was a hate crime and the investigation would dictate when he made that decision.
Within a week of the crime, the New Black Panther Party had seized on the case and began holding meetings in town to demand the killing be labeled a hate crime. Last week, a few people who said they were members of the party accompanied Hill’s widow to a town hall meeting during which Nettles and other state and local law enforcement discussed the case.
Many people in Newberry, however, have said they are willing to let local law enforcement continue their investigation. And they do not welcome the Panthers to town.
Willie Davis, 60, said the Panthers know U.S. history with racism and hate crimes. But it’s too early to call Hill’s murder a hate crime, he said.
“People have to be careful about jumping to conclusions,” said Davis, who will not attend the rally or march.
The New Black Panthers Party is based in Washington, D.C., and are led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, an attorney. The group is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based nonprofit that monitors hate groups and hate crimes in the United States. It is not affiliated with the Black Panther Party that made its name as a militant group in the 1960s, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Potok said his organization did not have any reports of New Black Panther affiliates in South Carolina.
However, Tiffany Gibson, a Newberry resident, said she is helping organize the rally on behalf of the Newberry Black Unity Coalition and that the group is an affiliate of the New Black Panther Party.
Gibson, a graphic designer, said racism abounds in Newberry and the dragging death case brought it to a head. She formed the coalition as a way to take action.
“If we’re going to complain and no one else is going to take action, we must do it ourselves,” she said.
The Panthers have been in the national news this month after video surfaced of two members standing outside a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. The video was related to a controversy within the U.S. Department of Justice over whether or not to prosecute the men for voter intimidation.
“Anytime you have people come in from outside with a message of hate, that always causes fear,” said Maj. Todd Johnson of the Newberry County Sheriff’s Department.
State, local and federal law enforcement officials will be in full force, Johnson said. And authorities plan to have Emergency Medical Services on standby because the rally and march are scheduled to last five hours in the blazing heat, he said.
“We’re going to make sure they have a First Amendment right to free speech,” Johnson said. “But we’re also going to make sure their First Amendment right doesn’t infringe on anybody else.”
The Black Panthers event will begin at Wise Park in the heart of an in-town black neighborhood. The group then plans to march 1.5 miles to the county courthouse.
Jack Edwards, who lives across the street from the park, said he was nervous when the Panthers held a rally there in June. And he worried about the potential for violence Saturday, from the Panthers or someone who might oppose them.
“Those are some thick bushes over there,” he said. “You never know where snipers might be.”
He would rather the Panthers not come, but if they do, he hopes police will be out in full force Saturday to keep the peace.
“We haven’t had no trouble that we need somebody else to speak for us,” he said.
In downtown Newberry, where antiques shops and cafes line Main Street, there was a nervous undercurrent among business owners. Many of them refused to comment on the event.
“I hope we don’t have to expect too much,” said Shane Wicker, an employee at the As Time Goes By antique store. “I hope nothing will be too wild.”
Theresa Wilson, 24, who works at the C.T. Summer hardware store, said she had heard all sorts of rumors about who would be coming to town as part of the rally. But she wished the Black Panthers would leave Newberry alone.
“I want Anthony Hill’s family to have peace of mind, and they’ll never have peace if they keep stirring this stuff up,” she said.
As Voter-Intimidation exercises go, it wasn’t much. In 2008, a lone white voter reported he had encountered two black men dressed all in black, one carrying a nightstick, at his Philadelphia polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood.
The armed man was escorted away by police, and no one reported the incident to the local district attorney. But the incident was caught on camera, making it great fodder for cable news because political campaigns were actively scouting for voter-intimidation cases they could use against opponents. Still, it seemed like the sort of incident that happens at dozens of polling places every Election Day, then quietly recedes.
Twenty-one months later, though, right-wing Bloggers can't get enough of the story, and it's starting to make it into the mainstream press. Even Sarah Palin has joined the act, tweeting: "Watch FOX's Megyn Kelly on Black Panther voter intimidation case; she knows the case; she's speaking truth; her revelations leave Left steaming."
So how did the incident become a replay of the ACORN scandal? There's some resemblance between the two: an organization with unacceptable practices and a vague connection to the Obama administration (through voter registration drives in the ACORN case and Justice Department litigation in the Panther case) becomes a tool for critics of the White House to attack it as corrupt and illegitimate.
But as in the ACORN case, the scandal is minimal (much of the ACORN hit has been discredited)—and the allegations against Obama flimsy.
Let's start with the cast of characters. The two reportedly imposing men at the Philadelphia polling station were members of a fringe group that calls itself the New Black Panther Party—much to the chagrin of the "old" Black Panther Party, which strenuously rejects the NBPP. Its leaders go by peculiar pseudo-African names (like chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz), and it is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League.
Its ideology tends to skew toward the black supremacist and anti-Semitic.
The group typically gets attention every few years when it successfully manages to bait the national media with some nutty stand. In 2006, for example, the New Black Panther Party announced it was going to Durham, N.C., to investigate the Duke lacrosse case.
Fox News, in particular, loves it: after the Duke charges were dropped in 2007, Bill O'Reilly had Shabazz on the program, where he called syndicated conservative columnist Michelle Malkin a "whore."
Several months after the 2008 Election Day incident (and 13 days before President Obama was sworn in) the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the NBPP under the Voting Rights Act, alleging voter intimidation. In May 2009, Justice—now led by Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama's appointee—successfully obtained an injunction against King Samir Shabazz, the man who carried the nightstick, then dropped the suit, Fox News reported.
A spokeswoman at Justice says a career attorney made the call, which was then affirmed by an appointee, because "the facts and the law did not support pursuing claims against the other defendants in the case. A federal judge determined that the relief requested by the Department was appropriate."
That's where things get messy.
Starting last summer, some conservative media outlets—notably The Washington Times—began digging into the case, suggesting that because a top Obama appointee had signed off on the decision to drop charges, a move allegedly opposed by career lawyers, it provided proof that Holder's Justice Department was a bastion of political favoritism (and, by implication, racism, given that both Holder and Obama are black).
Although that story didn't go mainstream, it did cause the Commission on Civil Rights, an independent body, to take up the case. As Dave Weigel reported, there was more to that decision than met the eye: after eight years of George W. Bush appointments, the commission tilted definitively right. In addition, the star witness in the case against the NBPP, Bartle Bull, wasn't exactly impartial.
The white former Robert F. Kennedy aide, who called the incident "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s," had been an outspoken critic of Obama for some time.
The commission has met several times to examine the case, but things really blew open on July 6, when Bush Justice official J. Christian Adams, who is white, suggested that Justice's voting division avoided bringing cases where defendants were black and plaintiffs were white.
Adams's testimony is questionable; there are doubts about whether he was actually present for the incidents he described, and he's refused to offer details on key questions. Critics see other credibility problems for Adams: he was, for instance, hired when Bush's Justice Department was systematically weakening the civil-rights division by forcing out career lawyers and replacing them with attorneys who had strong conservative credentials but little in the way of civil-rights experience.
This week's resolution by the NAACP blasting "racism" in the Tea Party has further fanned the flame. At its 101st annual convention in St. Louis, the nation's oldest civil-rights organization condemned the party's "continued tolerance for bigotry." Tea Party leaders heatedly rejected the criticism, and Palin dismissed it as "a diversionary tactic." To some commentators on the right, the NAACP action is rank hypocrisy, given that the group hasn't condemned the racism they see festering over at Justice.
With some help from Fox News's Kelly, the New Black Panthers story is now gaining steam. While there's little doubt that the NBPP is a fringe group, critics of the decision to drop the suit have a tough case to make. The problem is that although it may look like voter intimidation, there aren't actually any voters who filed an official complaint claiming to have been intimidated.
As Adam Serwer writes, a polling station in a predominantly black neighborhood isn't the best place to go if you're trying to scare white voters off: "I imagine that the New Black Panthers thought they were protecting black voters from some phantom white-supremacist conspiracy (their public statements say as much)." And Weigel, who's followed the case, has suggested there's not much to it either—plus, "there's no evidence the NBPP's clownish Philadelphia stunt suppressed any votes, or that they'll try such a stunt again."
Of course, even if the case against the NBPP is thin as onion paper, it's still a problem if the Justice Department is systematically screening its cases by race. So is there evidence of that beyond Adams's testimony? The department denies the charge. Spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler says in part: "The Department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved."
Cord Jefferson of the The Root, a black-issues Web site, says the case is spurious, but that Justice must explain itself further. But Abigail Thernstrom, a white conservative member of the Commission on Civil Rights, complains that it's all light and no heat:
Get a grip, folks. The New Black Panther Party is a lunatic fringe group that is clearly into racial theater of minor importance ... This case is a one-off. There are plenty of grounds on which to sharply criticize the attorney general—his handling of terrorism questions, just for starters—but this particular overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility of his conservative critics.
Thernstrom may be right, but she misses the point. Like the ACORN case, it's not about a real investigation; it's about staging an effective piece of political theater that hurts the Obama administration.
Local officials are expecting a Large crowd for Malik Zulu Shabazz & The New Black Panthers Party Civil Rights Rally in Newberry, SC.
Both White & Black Politicians are Nervous.
I say come on down! ha ha!
Since the NAACP is scared, sold us out & refuses to address Hate Crimes (a Black man dragged to death) or Re-Segregation of Schools, the South desperately needs the Panthers.
The New Black Panthers Party is planning to rally in Newberry Saturday in response to the murder of a man who was later dragged behind a truck for several miles..
Officials are expecting a large turnout and they're concerned about crowd control.
The group says they expect thousands of people to show up at the march.
The New Black Panthers say the murder and dragging of 30-year-old Anthony Hill, a black man, is an obvious hate crime. They've been demanding justice since the incident occurred in early June.
A suspect, 19-year-old Gregory Collins, was put behind bars without bond just hours after the murder.
Authorities continue their investigation, but say it's unclear as to whether it was a hate crime.
Dana Brooks understands why the New Black Panther Party is organizing a rally and march Saturday through her hometown.
But she has no plans to be a part of it
“It feels like they’re stirring up more problems than they’re solving,” said Brooks, 18, and a recent graduate of Mid-Carolina High School. “I know they’re trying to call attention to a very serious situation. But I don’t feel like I should be in a situation where there could be problems.”
Fear and uncertainty are thick in Newberry as local residents prepare for Saturday’s rally. No one knows how many people to expect or what the mood will be. Downtown business owners were reluctant to speak this week about the planned rally but most said their businesses already will be closed by the time the Panthers assemble at the courthouse around 5 p.m.
The event is in response to the June 2 killing of Anthony Hill.
Hill, a black man, was shot to death and his corpse was dragged nearly 11 miles along country roads behind a truck. Gregory Collins, 19, who is white, is in jail without bail on murder charges in the case.
Authorities are investigating the killing as they decide whether to charge Collins with a hate crime. U.S. Attorney William Nettles said he has not decided whether the killing was a hate crime and the investigation would dictate when he made that decision.
Within a week of the crime, the New Black Panther Party had seized on the case and began holding meetings in town to demand the killing be labeled a hate crime. Last week, a few people who said they were members of the party accompanied Hill’s widow to a town hall meeting during which Nettles and other state and local law enforcement discussed the case.
Many people in Newberry, however, have said they are willing to let local law enforcement continue their investigation. And they do not welcome the Panthers to town.
Willie Davis, 60, said the Panthers know U.S. history with racism and hate crimes. But it’s too early to call Hill’s murder a hate crime, he said.
“People have to be careful about jumping to conclusions,” said Davis, who will not attend the rally or march.
The New Black Panthers Party is based in Washington, D.C., and are led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, an attorney. The group is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based nonprofit that monitors hate groups and hate crimes in the United States. It is not affiliated with the Black Panther Party that made its name as a militant group in the 1960s, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Potok said his organization did not have any reports of New Black Panther affiliates in South Carolina.
However, Tiffany Gibson, a Newberry resident, said she is helping organize the rally on behalf of the Newberry Black Unity Coalition and that the group is an affiliate of the New Black Panther Party.
Gibson, a graphic designer, said racism abounds in Newberry and the dragging death case brought it to a head. She formed the coalition as a way to take action.
“If we’re going to complain and no one else is going to take action, we must do it ourselves,” she said.
The Panthers have been in the national news this month after video surfaced of two members standing outside a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. The video was related to a controversy within the U.S. Department of Justice over whether or not to prosecute the men for voter intimidation.
“Anytime you have people come in from outside with a message of hate, that always causes fear,” said Maj. Todd Johnson of the Newberry County Sheriff’s Department.
State, local and federal law enforcement officials will be in full force, Johnson said. And authorities plan to have Emergency Medical Services on standby because the rally and march are scheduled to last five hours in the blazing heat, he said.
“We’re going to make sure they have a First Amendment right to free speech,” Johnson said. “But we’re also going to make sure their First Amendment right doesn’t infringe on anybody else.”
The Black Panthers event will begin at Wise Park in the heart of an in-town black neighborhood. The group then plans to march 1.5 miles to the county courthouse.
Jack Edwards, who lives across the street from the park, said he was nervous when the Panthers held a rally there in June. And he worried about the potential for violence Saturday, from the Panthers or someone who might oppose them.
“Those are some thick bushes over there,” he said. “You never know where snipers might be.”
He would rather the Panthers not come, but if they do, he hopes police will be out in full force Saturday to keep the peace.
“We haven’t had no trouble that we need somebody else to speak for us,” he said.
In downtown Newberry, where antiques shops and cafes line Main Street, there was a nervous undercurrent among business owners. Many of them refused to comment on the event.
“I hope we don’t have to expect too much,” said Shane Wicker, an employee at the As Time Goes By antique store. “I hope nothing will be too wild.”
Theresa Wilson, 24, who works at the C.T. Summer hardware store, said she had heard all sorts of rumors about who would be coming to town as part of the rally. But she wished the Black Panthers would leave Newberry alone.
“I want Anthony Hill’s family to have peace of mind, and they’ll never have peace if they keep stirring this stuff up,” she said.
As Voter-Intimidation exercises go, it wasn’t much. In 2008, a lone white voter reported he had encountered two black men dressed all in black, one carrying a nightstick, at his Philadelphia polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood.
The armed man was escorted away by police, and no one reported the incident to the local district attorney. But the incident was caught on camera, making it great fodder for cable news because political campaigns were actively scouting for voter-intimidation cases they could use against opponents. Still, it seemed like the sort of incident that happens at dozens of polling places every Election Day, then quietly recedes.
Twenty-one months later, though, right-wing Bloggers can't get enough of the story, and it's starting to make it into the mainstream press. Even Sarah Palin has joined the act, tweeting: "Watch FOX's Megyn Kelly on Black Panther voter intimidation case; she knows the case; she's speaking truth; her revelations leave Left steaming."
So how did the incident become a replay of the ACORN scandal? There's some resemblance between the two: an organization with unacceptable practices and a vague connection to the Obama administration (through voter registration drives in the ACORN case and Justice Department litigation in the Panther case) becomes a tool for critics of the White House to attack it as corrupt and illegitimate.
But as in the ACORN case, the scandal is minimal (much of the ACORN hit has been discredited)—and the allegations against Obama flimsy.
Let's start with the cast of characters. The two reportedly imposing men at the Philadelphia polling station were members of a fringe group that calls itself the New Black Panther Party—much to the chagrin of the "old" Black Panther Party, which strenuously rejects the NBPP. Its leaders go by peculiar pseudo-African names (like chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz), and it is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League.
Its ideology tends to skew toward the black supremacist and anti-Semitic.
The group typically gets attention every few years when it successfully manages to bait the national media with some nutty stand. In 2006, for example, the New Black Panther Party announced it was going to Durham, N.C., to investigate the Duke lacrosse case.
Fox News, in particular, loves it: after the Duke charges were dropped in 2007, Bill O'Reilly had Shabazz on the program, where he called syndicated conservative columnist Michelle Malkin a "whore."
Several months after the 2008 Election Day incident (and 13 days before President Obama was sworn in) the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the NBPP under the Voting Rights Act, alleging voter intimidation. In May 2009, Justice—now led by Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama's appointee—successfully obtained an injunction against King Samir Shabazz, the man who carried the nightstick, then dropped the suit, Fox News reported.
A spokeswoman at Justice says a career attorney made the call, which was then affirmed by an appointee, because "the facts and the law did not support pursuing claims against the other defendants in the case. A federal judge determined that the relief requested by the Department was appropriate."
That's where things get messy.
Starting last summer, some conservative media outlets—notably The Washington Times—began digging into the case, suggesting that because a top Obama appointee had signed off on the decision to drop charges, a move allegedly opposed by career lawyers, it provided proof that Holder's Justice Department was a bastion of political favoritism (and, by implication, racism, given that both Holder and Obama are black).
Although that story didn't go mainstream, it did cause the Commission on Civil Rights, an independent body, to take up the case. As Dave Weigel reported, there was more to that decision than met the eye: after eight years of George W. Bush appointments, the commission tilted definitively right. In addition, the star witness in the case against the NBPP, Bartle Bull, wasn't exactly impartial.
The white former Robert F. Kennedy aide, who called the incident "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s," had been an outspoken critic of Obama for some time.
The commission has met several times to examine the case, but things really blew open on July 6, when Bush Justice official J. Christian Adams, who is white, suggested that Justice's voting division avoided bringing cases where defendants were black and plaintiffs were white.
Adams's testimony is questionable; there are doubts about whether he was actually present for the incidents he described, and he's refused to offer details on key questions. Critics see other credibility problems for Adams: he was, for instance, hired when Bush's Justice Department was systematically weakening the civil-rights division by forcing out career lawyers and replacing them with attorneys who had strong conservative credentials but little in the way of civil-rights experience.
This week's resolution by the NAACP blasting "racism" in the Tea Party has further fanned the flame. At its 101st annual convention in St. Louis, the nation's oldest civil-rights organization condemned the party's "continued tolerance for bigotry." Tea Party leaders heatedly rejected the criticism, and Palin dismissed it as "a diversionary tactic." To some commentators on the right, the NAACP action is rank hypocrisy, given that the group hasn't condemned the racism they see festering over at Justice.
With some help from Fox News's Kelly, the New Black Panthers story is now gaining steam. While there's little doubt that the NBPP is a fringe group, critics of the decision to drop the suit have a tough case to make. The problem is that although it may look like voter intimidation, there aren't actually any voters who filed an official complaint claiming to have been intimidated.
As Adam Serwer writes, a polling station in a predominantly black neighborhood isn't the best place to go if you're trying to scare white voters off: "I imagine that the New Black Panthers thought they were protecting black voters from some phantom white-supremacist conspiracy (their public statements say as much)." And Weigel, who's followed the case, has suggested there's not much to it either—plus, "there's no evidence the NBPP's clownish Philadelphia stunt suppressed any votes, or that they'll try such a stunt again."
Of course, even if the case against the NBPP is thin as onion paper, it's still a problem if the Justice Department is systematically screening its cases by race. So is there evidence of that beyond Adams's testimony? The department denies the charge. Spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler says in part: "The Department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved."
Cord Jefferson of the The Root, a black-issues Web site, says the case is spurious, but that Justice must explain itself further. But Abigail Thernstrom, a white conservative member of the Commission on Civil Rights, complains that it's all light and no heat:
Get a grip, folks. The New Black Panther Party is a lunatic fringe group that is clearly into racial theater of minor importance ... This case is a one-off. There are plenty of grounds on which to sharply criticize the attorney general—his handling of terrorism questions, just for starters—but this particular overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility of his conservative critics.
Thernstrom may be right, but she misses the point. Like the ACORN case, it's not about a real investigation; it's about staging an effective piece of political theater that hurts the Obama administration.
About 200 students and community members rallied in Moore Square Friday to take part in a national movement to fight racism.
Gov. Bev Perdue declared Friday "Stand Against Racism" day in North Carolina. Across the country, 250,000 people were expected to participate in events organized by the Young Women's Christian Association.
"What at the heart of the event are people in our community who want positive solutions to some of the things that we still feel are the effect of racism," said Folami Bandele, executive director of YWCA of the Greater Triangle. "These are folks that believe as individuals, we can make a difference by making our voices heard."
Adults talked about solutions to the negative effects of racism, particularly on education, housing and employment. They were joined by about 100 students who marched from Moore Square Middle School. The adults talked the children about being brave enough to speak out on important issues.
"If there's an issue they're concerned about, if there's something going on in your community, you have a responsibility to stand up adn be head and do something about it," Bandele said.
Bandele said she believes event like this one can show that a community stands against hate groups.
A recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center showed that there were approximately 30 hate groups in North Carolina and that the number of such groups grew nationally by about 50 percent in the past decade.
"Most of the time these groups are allowed to flourish, because the people who feel differently are silent, and their voices are not heard," she said. "But by coming together and taking a stand, we say that one, we don’t tolerate racism in our community and two, we’re willing to do something to create a different kind of world."
Rally participants also get to experience the support of people who are concerned about the same issues, Bandele said.
"I think that most people see so much negativity in the media and in the community around them and that they are looking for positive ways that they can contribute," she said. "This event lets them connect with people that are concerned about the same issues and coming up with positive solutions."
Organizers expect about 400+ people to come from across the Triangle to rally against Racism at noon today in Moore Square downtown.
About 170 students from the school will be coming to the YWCA-sponsored event, also to include talks by Civil Rights veterans the Rev. David Forbes and Folami Bandele, executive director of the YWCA of the Greater Triangle.
About two dozen students will evoke the event's theme by performing "Live the Dream," a song they wrote for the occasion, and by staging a re-creation of the Greensboro sit-ins of 1960, which are seen as a crucial spark in subsequent national protests.
"It should be a positive, uplifting, powerful program with the kids," YWCA spokesman Scott Misner said.
Stand Against Racism is being observed in more than 70 locations across the United States.
"Any individual or group that believes in a society free of racism is invited to join us Friday during lunch for the Stand Against Racism," said the YWCA's Bandele.
David Kershner, principal of Moore Square Middle School, said faculty and students got involved in dealing with racism as a school at the request of a parent who is associated with the YWCA.
During non-instructional time, they started taking part in "study circles" - small groups in which people with various experiences share their stories and come up with ideas for taking action.
Several groups prominent in opposition to the Wake school board's ruling majority are among rally sponsors. But the rally wasn't planned in reaction to controversy - including hotly denied charges of racism - surrounding the board's decision to end the diversity policy in Wake student assignments, organizers and activists said.
"I think this is too important an issue," said Yevonne Brannon, a former county commissioner who has been active in the school board controversy. "I think it simply stands on its own for all Americans."
Students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg's high-poverty schools face an "opportunity gap" in access to college-level classes, says a report from a citizen advisory panel being presented today.
Students at several low-poverty suburban schools can choose from more than 20 Advanced Placement subjects this school year, while students at four high-poverty schools have fewer than 10, the report says.
The Equity Committee, appointed by the school board, spent the past year looking at Advanced Placement along with services for students who don't speak English well. The recommendations, designed to boost equal opportunity, are likely to clash with budget-cutting plans.
For instance, the panel recommends that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools do more to increase AP offerings at the high-poverty schools, where most students are Black or Hispanic. The panel also calls for more minority enrollment in AP courses at all schools. But a consultant advising CMS on the likelihood of budget cuts for 2010-11 has suggested cutting some AP classes with low enrollment to focus on boosting basic skills.
"We're just in challenging times right now," said board Vice Chair Tom Tate. "I think that the board is going to have some pretty interesting debate on this."
AP Challenge
AP offerings range from 25 subjects at South Mecklenburg High to seven at Waddell, the report says. Even at schools such as Mallard Creek High and Northwest School of the Arts, which have large numbers of middle-class black students, AP classes are disproportionately white.
Taking AP classes can help students get into competitive universities, and students who earn high scores on the exams can get college credit. "The lack of a diverse range of core and elective AP courses at all schools raises serious equity concerns," the report says.
CMS offers other college-level options, including classes hosted by Central Piedmont Community College and advanced classes in International Baccalaureate magnets. The report did not look at those.
High-poverty high schools tend to have lower enrollments and more students struggling to meet graduation requirements, both of which can make it challenging to fill AP classes. For instance, Waddell offered 10 options on its "enrollment card" last winter but ended up only teaching seven, the report says.
But those schools also have successful college-bound students. The equity panel recommends offering a set number of AP courses at each school, even if enrollment is low, and urges schools to "actively recruit and place students in those courses."
The report says white students make up 37 percent of CMS's high-school students but account for 62 percent those taking of AP exams. Minority students may be hindered by home support, peer culture or low expectations in lower grades, the report says. Recommendations range from recruiting AP teachers "of various ethnic backgrounds" to "cluster(ing) students of racial groups in AP courses in order to provide peer support."
Language Barrier
On students with limited English skills, the report notes that some schools have so many that students may not be immersed in spoken English, while others have so few that it's tough to provide adequate staff support for kids and families.
CMS has eliminated jobs for bilingual parent advocates, even as the number of students whose families speak Spanish and other languages has grown. The committee recommends restoring those jobs at schools with large numbers of families who need translation, noting that parent involvement is essential to student success.
The report describes a visit to Merry Oaks Elementary, where 19 languages are spoken, most children come from low-income homes, and some students "not only don't speak English but may not have any experience with indoor bathrooms or electricity." Committee members saw a woman arrive to enroll a young child, who did most of the translating between his mother and the school secretary. Two hours later, the child and his mother "were still trying to navigate the enrollment process," it says.
The report urges CMS to make sure schools make better use of available translation services and make it easier for families without cars to get to the Family Application Center south of uptown, where international students must register. City buses used to run along that road, the report says, but no longer do.
Welcome to the BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog. (Established 2008)
My name is Laurel. (Author & Publisher)
I Blog with a focus on POLITICS, Business, and occasionally Entertainment.
FACTS ABOUT LAUREL:
Wife,
Mother of a U.S. Soldier,
Sister,
Woman of GOD,
Loyal Friend,
Creative,
Blood-related to a nationally known Charlotte Politician.
Black Female, Intelligent,
Married,
Love to Travel,
Credentialed by the RNC and DNC.
Political Blogger/ Commentator
Grassroots Activist,
PROFESSIONAL STATUS:
Credential Political Blogger/ Commentator,
Registered Independent Voter
Original Native of BROOKLYN, NY
Currently reside in CHARLOTTE, NC
I’m Nice but don’t get it twisted because my Mind is Sharp!
Since You’ve Chosen to Visit and Read the Contents of this Blog by Personal Choice, and of Your Own Free Will,
Please don’t ask me to Compensate you for Expressing individual commentary/ Posted Articles, which are protected by the First Amendment, citing Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Expression.
No Intentionally Malicious Slander, Libel or Defamation of Character content will be published and I will always Credit all Sources.
NOTE TO ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS, APPOINTED OFFICIALS & PUBLIC FIGURES:
Per the Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case: 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan………
The Public has a Right to Criticize the People who Govern them, so the least Protection from Defamation is given to Public Officials. When officials are accused of something that involves their behavior in office, they have to prove all of the above elements of defamation and they must also prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice.” (For a definition of actual malice, see the “History of Defamation and the First Amendment, below.”)
People who aren’t Elected but who are Still Public Figures because they are influential or famous — like Actors, Actresses, Movie Stars, Singers & Entertainers, Journalists, TV Hosts, Bloggers, etc., — also have to Prove that Defamatory statements were made with Actual Malice, in most cases.
To the Associated Press and other Media Organizations:
When I use your Content Links., I’m also citing the Fair Use Doctrine (Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107) for further Copyright permission.
Posts and Links published on Black Political Buzz are not endorsed by Black Political Buzz Blog Author Laurel’s Employer, nor the Employers of other Black Political Buzz employees.
This includes Links, Posts and Comments posted on Black Political Buzz’s Facebook and Twitter account pages.
Comments, Links and Opinions of site visitors are Independently-Owned and not endorsed by Black Political Buzz employees, Blog Author Laurel or Laurel’s Employer.)
(No Personal Offense intended) Please know that Black Political Buzz is not responsible for nor do I endorse Requests for Donations from Third Parties on this Blog.
I will Only Endorse Requests for Donations made on behalf of BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog for Business Purposes & Operating Expenses.
I will also Only Endorse Requests for Donations on behalf of Legitimate Politicians and Legitimate Political Candidates. PERIOD!!
If anyone else or another Organization wishes to post a link to Request Donations, I am NOT endorsing ANY of those Requests!
Unless I receive a personal Request to do so and I have Professionally Confirmed that the Third Party Organization or Charity is indeed a Legitimate Entity.
NOTE: Anyone who chooses to give to any Third Party Organization NOT Endorsed by BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ is doing so at his or her own risk.
BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ does NOT Discriminate against Politicians, Political Candidates, Organizations or Charities based on Race, Color, Nationality, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Faith, Disability, Political Affiliation, Creed, Education, Social Status, Age.
This disclaimer applies to ANY and All requests for Donations on this Blog. Thanks for understanding. Again No Personal Offense intended.
For Story Tips….Corrections…….. or Requests for Endorsements:
Please contact me via e-mail: blackpoliticalbuzz@gmail.com
or via my Facebook page: facebook.com/blackpoliticalbuzz
Thanks for stopping by
God Bless
Laurel @BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ
LINKS: POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE & INFORMATIONAL SITES
.jpg)
