Washington, D.C. – As the NAACP plans to use its group’s prestige to bash the tea party movement, members of the Project 21 black leadership network are urging delegates at the NAACP’s national convention not to turn the NAACP into a pawn for progressive political bosses.

“As a frequent speaker at tea party rallies around the country, I can assure the NAACP that the tea party movement’s concerns are about President Obama’s policies and not his race,” said Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. “I’m deeply concerned that the NAACP is being used as a political tool to do the dirty work of the progressive movement. Instead of criticizing tea parties, the NAACP would be better served denouncing the racist comments made by a member of the New Black Panther Party and their voter intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in the last presidential election.”

According to a report in the Kansas City Star, the NAACP, which is conducting its 101st annual convention in that city, will take up a resolution as early as Tuesday to urge “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

Kansas City NAACP chapter president Anita Russell said the tea party movement is “really not about limited government.” The resolution reportedly dwells on “explicitly racist behavior” that relies upon anecdotal posters opposing President Obama and allegations of the use of racial epithets by tea party participants.

Project 21’s Borelli added: “I urge the delegates to read the Contract from America – a list of policy objectives for Congress that was developed by tea party members nationwide. These objectives are clearly about limited government and liberty. In fact, the NAACP should be very concerned Obama’s cap-and-trade energy policy will lead to higher energy prices and higher unemployment – particularly among poor and minority households.”

Borelli, who has spoken at tea party events nationwide (including last year’s 912 rally at the U.S. Capitol) is the author of the commentary “Liberals Crash Tea Party, But Stay Silent On Black Panther Hate Talk,” published by FoxNews.com on July 12, 2010.

“Personally, I’m tired of arguing with the ignorant,” said Bob Parks, a Project 21 member who has also participated in tea party events – including the rallies outside the U.S. Capitol the weekend of the House votes on Obamacare. “Al Sharpton recently tried in vain on his radio show to get me to apologize for alleged tea party racism. He tried to get me to apologize for racial epithets hurled at Congressman John Lewis that only Lewis seemed to hear. I would guess neither Al Sharpton nor the overwhelming majority of NAACP members have ever been to a tea party, so they speak from intentional ignorance. While liberals scream racism at the tea parties purely because of their audacity to oppose Obama, it’s the progressives who seem to feel free to use racial epithets against others as they know – as is seen in this instance – that the NAACP turns a blind partisan eye.”

The NAACP’s Russell reportedly is “pretty certain” the anti-tea party resolution will pass.

“Progressives have hijacked the NAACP to the extent that the group stands silent as conservative blacks suffer indignities for their beliefs. Some NAACP even egg on this appalling behavior – providing political cover and lapdog services for these elitists,” said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. “As a conservative black man, I have felt more welcomed and at home within the tea party movement than among those of my own who side with the this new NAACP. If a few random signs of President Obama looking like the Joker is indeed racist, then where was the NAACP when conservative blacks are depicted as lawn jockeys, Oreos and Uncle Toms?”

“The level and depth of ignorance and misrepresentation of truth is unquantifiable,” said Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie, another speaker at tea party events in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Michigan. “The simple truth is that the tea party movement is about smaller government, lower taxes and an adherence to the Constitution. The NAACP is welcome to disagree with the tea parties, but in making that complaint they must be truthful and not fall prey to ignorance and perceived disaffection.”

A $100,000 reward offer made by Andrew Breitbart to anyone who can provide video and audio evidence that racial epithets were shouted at Congressional Black Caucus members by tea party activists on March 20 remains unclaimed months later.

Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information about the history of Project 21, visit the Project 21 website.

Congressman Should Know Better than to Compare Tea Party Attendees to Klansmen, Black Leader Says

Washington, DC: Deneen Borelli, full-time fellow with the Project 21 black leadership network and frequent speaker at tea party rallies, says Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)’s recent comparison of tea party rally participants to members of the Ku Klux Klan is baseless.

What’s more, Project 21’s Borelli notes, Cohen should know better, as he himself suffered similar charges during his last primary election campaign.

Borelli said: “Representative Cohen’s comments seem to be the norm these days in the effort to dispatch anyone opposing the progressives’ big-government agenda. The goal of partisans such as Cohen is obviously to demonize and discredit ordinary citizens – people who attend rallies, town hall meetings, make phone calls and visit their representatives with the simple, legitimate concern of wanting to preserve their liberty.”

“The tea party movement is making a positive difference for the direction of our country in a manner that would make our Founding Fathers proud, and the derogatory comments targeting these freedom-loving citizens really only shames those hurling them,” added Borelli. “And it is especially odd that Representative Cohen was the one hurling the mud this time. Two years ago, he suffered through an opponent publicly comparing him to a Klansman. He certainly must not have enjoyed that. Is Cohen that tone-deaf that he is willing to immediately turn around and use the same vitriol against others?”

Borelli continued: “Let’s not forget that none of the racial allegations made against tea partiers the weekend of the Obamacare vote have yet been corroborated by video or audio. Representative Cleaver, who initially charged he was spat upon, has even begun to distance himself from his allegation.”

While appearing on “The Young Turks” radio show on Sirius XM satellite radio April 1, Cohen said tea party rally participants “are, kind of, without robes and hoods” and “against any type of diversity.” He later suggested the motivation behind the tea parties are not necessarily issues but “to be against Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel and the different people.” He additionally called the sight of people protesting on the U.S. Capitol grounds on the day of the Sunday Obamacare vote in the House of Representatives “a very sad scene on America.” The interview can be viewed on YouTube at http://tw0.us/A7W.

Cohen represents a majority-black congressional district in Memphis. In 2008, Nikki Tinker, a primary opponent, ran television ads that placed a photo of Cohen next to one of a Klansman. Tinker based the implication against Cohen on the fact that, as a member of the Center City Commission, Cohen once voted against exhuming the body of the late Confederate General (and KKK founder) Nathan Bedford Forrest from Forrest Park in Memphis.

Project 21, established in 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org), a non-profit foundation established in 1982 and funded primarily from the gifts of over 100,000 recent individual donors.

Six years ago I wrote a book called “Uncle Sam’s Plantation.” I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.

I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A vast sea of perhaps well intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960’s, that were going to lift the nation’s poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from “How do I take care of myself?” to “What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?”

Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems. The kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.

Through God’s grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.

I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican congress and signed into law by a Democrat president. A few years after enactment, welfare roles were down fifty percent.

I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth producing American capitalism.

But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.

Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.

Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, “Thank you, Suh.”

Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.

There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.

In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.

“This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending-it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care, and education.”

Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place “with unprecedented transparency and accountability.”

Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education.

Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 — The War on Poverty — which President Johnson said “…does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.”

Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single parent homes and out of wedlock births.

It’s not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama’s invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.

Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?

Star Parker is president of the Coalition for Urban Renewal & Education and author of the new book White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay.