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  1. #1
    Senior Member WhatMattersMost's Avatar
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    THE HISTORY OF SLIM COLEMAN

    Chicago Tribune Silent on Illegal Immigration Activist's History
    By Michael M. Bates | August 16, 2006 - 11:13 ET


    On the Chicago Tribune's front page today is the story of an illegal immigrant who's taken refuge in a Chicago church to avoid deportation. The headline is "Act of faith, defiance" and the article includes a color photo of the woman and her son. Yesterday's Tribune coverage on the event noted: "The church's pastor, the Rev. Walter Coleman, said his congregation decided to offer Arellano refuge after praying about her plight.. . . 'She represents the voice of the undocumented, and we think it's our obligation, our responsibility, to make a stage for that voice to be heard,' he said."

    Walter Coleman? Could that be Walter "Slim" Coleman, a longtime left wing activist? Yes, it is.

    And what's interesting is the Tribune makes no mention of the Reverend's extensive background, much of it documented by the Tribune over the years.

    A self-described community organizer, Slim was on the board of a group getting Federal money back in the 70s to provide free lunches to hundreds of poor children each day. Tribune writer Jeff Lyon reported in August of 1979 that an investigation disclosed the real participation was about 70 children a day.

    This experience no doubt helped Coleman in becoming a key adviser to Chicago's Mayor Harold Washington. A Tribune piece in August of 1984 carried the charges of an alderman that Chicago "agreed to give $70,000 to a health clinic operated by the Heart of Uptown Coalition headed by Slim Coleman, a Washington supporter."

    The following year Slim, then identifying himself as a journalist, was provoked by a Washington opponent and leaped to the City Council floor screaming "I'm going to get you" at the alderman. The Tribune's Robert Davis reported in the June 14, 1985 edition: "Published reports have said the mayor often seeks Coleman’s advice, particularly on dispensing federal funds for neighborhood and community development. There also have been published reports that Coleman, after years of criticizing the political use of government money, has told community organization leaders that to dip into the federal trough, they would have to do political things like picket the homes (of Washington's opponents.)"

    According to Tribune columnists Kathy O'Malley and Hanke Gratteau in December of 1986: "Leave it to Slim Coleman to throw the first below-the-belt punch of Campaign '87. The Uptown activist, who uses his community newspaper to defend his good chum Mayor Harold Washington, is spreading the word that he's sitting on a dossier of photos, a sort of `"This is Your Life`" for (another) mayoral hopeful."

    After Mayor Washington's death, the Tribune gave editorial advice to his successor: "People like Slim Coleman and Ald. Helen Shiller were making their influence felt during Mr. Washington`s second term; the new mayor should sweep them out of City Hall's fifth floor and purge city policy of their loony leftist ideas."

    In 1990 the newspaper reported on the first Midwest Radical Scholars and Activists Conference. Wrote author Jessica Seigel: "'Everyone is dissolving,' said Uptown activist Slim Coleman at the Chicago conference Sunday. 'Every time I meet someone, they’re no longer a Marxist-Leninist this or that.'"

    In January of 1991, the Tribune covered an antiwar demonstration and noted the presence of Coleman, identified as "a longtime advocate of affordable housing and other causes."
    2004 found Slim condemning the abuse at Abu Ghraib and the Tribune reported: "Preaching at St. Adalberto United Methodist Church, a Hispanic storefront parish on Chicago's South Side, Rev. Walter 'Slim' Coleman told his small congregation that the number of photographs--estimated at 1,500--shows the abuse was a policy, not an aberration in the war. 'Rumsfeld said it was just a few rotten apples, not the policy of the government,' Coleman said in a fire-and-brimstone sermon."

    The Most Reverend Coleman has quite a record, one that the Chicago Tribune and other media outlets should make some mention of in reporting his current activities. They don't need to provide extensive details, but they should give their audience a clue.

    http://newsbusters.org/node/7013
    It's Time to Rescind the 14th Amendment

  2. #2
    Senior Member WhatMattersMost's Avatar
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    Immigration issue indeed one of morality

    Dennis Byrne, a Chicago-area writer and consultant
    Published August 22, 2006


    It has been a long time, but Slim Coleman finally has his mug back on television and in the papers.

    It took Elvira Arellano--the picked-upon illegal immigrant who as of this writing is holed up in Coleman's tiny Humboldt Park church--to do it, but us scribblers have got to stand in admiration. The publicity-seeking Uptown "activist" Coleman managed not just to yank himself out of decades of local obscurity, but instantly land himself on national TV.

    Wow.

    I imagine (or hope) by the time this appears, the media will have gotten around to detailing Coleman's background, which may have been obscured by the fact he is now going by his given name, Walter. It was in 1985 that columnist Mike Royko pulled back the covers on Coleman, who was bounding around Uptown, City Hall and wherever he could attract a camera, posing as a hillbilly activist. He gave himself the name Slim to better appear to be one of the many Appalachian good old boys and their kin residing up yonder around Wilson and Broadway.

    In fact, he was a son of well-to-do Texas parents and a Harvard University philosophy student, according to Royko. While in his Snuffy Smith mode, he made the news by such stunts as trying to attack former Chicago Ald. Eddie Vrdolyak in the City Council. Since then, few of us realized that he had been laboring for the salvation of souls in the local vineyards, until he was mentioned at the bottom of a story a couple of years ago as being among the "religious leaders" who "decried" U.S. "torture" of war detainees.


    Slim continues in the same vein with the Arellano stunt, with the same results: a PR disaster. Yes, conventional wisdom says that claiming church sanctuary is masterful PR, putting immigration officials in the Hobson's choice of dragging a woman and her young son out of a church, or letting her flout the law. But already it has hardened feelings against illegal immigrants and created some doubts among their supporters. Clearly, it didn't prove the need for "legalization" of illegal immigrants, as provided in a Senate-passed bill. (For utopians who think the Arellano affair demonstrates the need for the Senate's "reforms," do you think that she and millions of others would, as the bill requires, show up to pay a $2,000 fine and back taxes, then wait five years to apply for citizenship, contingent on a criminal background check, steady employment and no criminal conduct--other than sneaking into America?)

    But, come, let us not doubt Coleman's purity of purpose. Let's concede that Arellano, Coleman and their supporters truly believe their assertion that deporting her would be "immoral." She is defying an "immoral" law, just as civil rights pioneers asserted when they defied civil authorities to protest clearly immoral Jim Crow laws. Moral, they say, trumps legal. I agree.

    But just how are restrictions on legal immigration immoral? Just saying it doesn't make it so. A few do make a stab at explaining it: For some, it is immoral to "deny opportunities" to lawbreakers. Others say "social justice" requires that the laws not be enforced. For some, simply being "mean-spirited" or "insensitive" is immoral.

    Is it moral for a nation to create a ready supply of easily exploitable and underpaid peons? Is a cash-only system of tax evasion, shifting more of the tax burden onto taxpayers, moral?

    Is it moral to regard human beings as primarily a unit of labor important to our nation's financial health? Is it moral to depress the wages of those who are here legally? Is human smuggling moral?

    Yes, the moral imperative to care for everyone applies equally to Arellano. And if moral choices simply applied to individuals, Arellano would stay. But morality is more complex, involving such concepts as the "common good" and doing what's right for an entire community, even if that entire community is as big as a sovereign nation.

    Thus, immigration officials, in seeking to expel Arellano, are acting not only legally, but also morally. Because without such moral actions, our country would be a mess.


    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opin ... 7931.story
    It's Time to Rescind the 14th Amendment

  3. #3

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    Regardless of Slim's history, which is pertinent, the United Methodist
    Church supports illegal immigration. So every time you give money
    to a Methodist church, or other mainline, you are supporting illegal
    immigration.

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    The History of Slim Coleman

    This wonderfully wicked information just made my day - thank you for these posts!
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  5. #5
    Senior Member Nicole's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dem4labor
    Regardless of Slim's history, which is pertinent, the United Methodist
    Church supports illegal immigration. So every time you give money
    to a Methodist church, or other mainline, you are supporting illegal
    immigration.
    This is exactly it. There needs to be a boycott of these churches. My husband is Catholic and because of the sex abuse scandal and their view on illegal aliens has not set foot in the Catholic church since 2001 and that was only for his dad's funeral. For the longest time he was going to my church-United Methodist and was going to convert. However, now we do not go to either or give money. We have developed a personal relationship with God outside of the church. I know he will never go back to the Catholic church because of the whole sex abuse thing, but it would be nice if we could go back to my church or another Christian church, however as long as there is this blatant disregard for the law and supporting illegal aliens that will not happen.

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