Thread: Black Conservatives Critical of NAACP on Eve of Saturday's N

Black Conservatives Critical of NAACP on Eve of Saturday's NAACP New York "Mobilization"

nationalcenter.org
For Release: December 9, 2011
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or (703) 568-4727 or project21@nationalcenter.org or Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org



Black Conservatives Critical of NAACP on Eve of Saturday's NAACP New York "Mobilization"

NAACP Marches to Oppose Voter IDs, Purging Voter Lists of Dead or Unqualified Voters and the Enforcement of Laws Prohibiting Felons from Voting

NAACP Position "Demeans Blacks" Say Project 21 Spokesmen: "Does the NAACP Believe Blacks are Too Lazy, Ignorant or Incapable of Getting Valid Identification?"

Washington, D.C. - Black conservatives with the Project 21 leadership network are calling out the alarmists and political schemers at the NAACP who are once again "crying wolf" -- claiming this time that the ballot integrity and voter-protection statues passed or under consideration by state legislatures across the nation are "the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow."

"If you have to show an ID to check into the Holiday Inn Express, then it makes perfect sense that you should do the same when you are exercising the most sacred constitutional right -- the right to vote," said Project 21 spokeswoman Cherylyn Harley LeBon, a former senior counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The idea that showing identification poses a barrier to my constitutional right to vote is both ridiculous and insulting," added Project 21 spokeswoman Shelby Emmett, also a lawyer. "Does the NAACP believe blacks are too lazy, ignorant or incapable of getting valid identification? Is it a cost issue? Obtaining identification to vote costs money, but so does driving to the polls or taking an hour off of work to vote. Does the NAACP have any calls to action against gas stations or places of employment open during voting hours?"

With the endorsement of labor unions, partisan entities and liberal special interest groups, the NAACP is holding a December 10 march in New York City to draw attention to its "Stand for Freedom" campaign against voting rights protections at the state level. The march begins at New York City offices of Koch Industries (to single out limited-government donors Charles and David Koch) and will end at the United Nations. Next year, the NAACP reportedly will send a legal team to appeal their concerns about voting rights to the U.N.'s human rights bureaucracy in Geneva, Switzerland.

In a broadly-cast appeal, the NAACP claims that laws to require valid identification at polling places, the purging of voting lists to remove dead or disqualified voters and enforcing voting restrictions against felons are targeting "the voting rights of black voters, Latino voters, Asian American Voters, Native American Voters, as well as students and young people, seniors, working women, and immigrants of all colors... who are most likely to support workers rights, equal opportunity, women's rights, LBGT rights, environmental protection and peace." NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous, who made the Jim Crow analogy, further claims: "Voter ID laws are nothing but reincarnated poll taxes and literacy tests."

"It seems the NAACP conveniently forgets how their position demeans blacks," adds Project 21's Emmett. "We fought for over a hundred years not just to vote, but to have that vote count and mean something. How does allowing illegal immigrants and dead people to vote and other forms of voter fraud secure and protect black rights? Maybe if they viewed blacks as capable beings, obtaining identification wouldn't equal a 'poll tax' but would instead equal blacks protecting and defending their rights as Americans to a fair and transparent process open only to real, live American citizens. Maybe it's the NAACP that is instituting a new barrier to voting."

Project 21 members also dispute the earnestness of the NAACP's campaign considering its inaction regarding existing voting rights problems.

For instance, the "Stand for Freedom" online pledge calls on the U.S. Department of Justice "to fully enforce the Voting Rights Act." But unlike Project 21, the NAACP has not asked for a full investigation into why progress on a Voting Rights Act case against New Black Panther Party members regarding alleged polling place intimidation in Philadelphia in 2008 was reversed and an immediate settlement allegedly ordered by senior Obama Administration political appointees in 2009. In fact, J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on the case, testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he was told by superiors that "NAACP members or staffers were [contacting the Justice Department and] asking, 'When is this case going to get dismissed?'"

Furthermore, the pledge calls for lawmakers to repeal "every voter suppression measure" and for the United Nations to "investigate and condemn voter suppression tactics in the United States." This past April, Lessadolla Sowers, a member of the executive committee of the NAACP chapter in Tunica County, Mississippi, was convicted by a jury on ten counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots and sentenced to a five-year sentence for each count (to be served concurrently). Neither the national NAACP nor the Mississippi State Conference NAACP appear to have released statements on the verdict. Such vote fraud effectively cancels out legal votes, and examples such as this are motivating the legislation the NAACP is now publicly opposing.

"The NAACP has reached a new low with their recent attack on voter identification legislation. The NAACP should be protecting and upholding the constitutional rights of law-abiding black Americans to exercise their fullest privileges and rights as citizens. Instead, focusing on the rights of the criminal and other immoral issues have lead to the disfranchisement and decimation of black American communities across the country," said Project 21 spokesman Charles Butler, a talk radio host. "The reality is that part of being an American citizen is personal responsibility. Laws that state one should be a law-abiding citizen and provide some form of identification are needed. Most citizens possess valid identification of some type regardless of their socio-economic class."

Groups endorsing the NAACP's December 10 "mobilization" include the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Government Employees, the 1199 SEIU union local, Democratic Socialists of America, Al Sharpton's National Action Network and the Barack Obama Democratic Club. Another endorser is the Center for Community Change, which received $600,000 in 2008 from the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundation.

GroupSnoop.org, an educational web site administered by the National Center for Public Policy Research (the parent organization of Project 21), recently posted a profile of the NAACP, noting that the group "promotes a race-first agenda that seeks to elevate minorities in school, politics and the workplace based only on skin color" and "has been closely associated with radical political networks."

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org).

http://www.nationalcenter.org/P21PR-NAACP_120911.html

The rights of black Americans are indeed being sold out by the NAACP to foreign nationals who don't have the right to vote and can't obtain the identification necessary to vote illegally.

Shame on you, NAACP.

It is not about voter rights, it is about political and financial power and influence. Prior to and during the civil rights movement the NAACP was relevant. Once the Civil Rights Act was passed and enforced, the primary purpose of the NAACP no longer existed. Issues had to be invented in order to keep the membership dues rolling in and to maintain political influence locally, statewide and in the US Congress. So today the NAACP takes on voter ID laws along with purging of registered voter rolls and denial of voting rights to convicted felons. Meanwhile, truly important issues to the black community are ignored. For example:

1. The recent elimination of a charter school in Harlem that local blacks begged to be allowed to retain, but were opposed by the Teachers Union and of course their elected Democrat puppets. Where was the NAACP outrage when one union official, questioned by a reporter about the desires of the community, stated that her concern was only with the union, and did not care what the community wanted?

2. Statistics show that over 70% of black babies born in the US today are born out of wedlock. This implies a single parent home probably headed up by a young woman or girl with little or no education, training or resources. This is a formula for continuous poverty. What is the NAACP doing about it? If we want to reduce poverty in the United States this is the main issue that has to be successfully addressed. (Note: the statistics for Hispanic and Caucasian babies born out of wedlock are not too hot either, being over 50% and 30% respectfully).

3. While unemployment is over 8.6% (according to some, true unemployment is over 16%), unemployment among blacks is estimated to be as much as double these rates. Is the NAACP jumping all over Obama and the administration for policies that have shrunk the economy, stifled economic growth, and discouraged private investment and expansion? Nope. Their concern is only with the continuation of the entitlement programs without a thought of what it takes to fund them.

I believe the reluctance of the NAACP to take on these issues is due to a a callous calculation that it resonates better with those whom they wish to influence and intimidate to attack issues where they can invoke the specter of racism and discrimination rather take on the unions, or endure the controversy of criticizing the sexual practices and culture of their community or to deal with the controversy of opposing the Democrat party agenda. Got to keep the dues rolling in and the influence factor high regardless of the results.