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.

I have to hand it to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). That Democrats like him use the race card whenever their political campaigns get tough can be expected. But who knew that he would find a way to use the race card over efforts to keep the government from taking over a sixth of the private sector economy with his government run health care turned health insurance plan?

The guy is a disgrace for a politician, let alone as the leader of the Senate. And to try comparing opponents of this government takeover to those who opposed the abolition of slavery is preposterous. On the contrary, opponents of this government takeover want to preserve that freedom for all people.

Let me remind Harry Reid of some historical facts. It was Republican Abraham Lincoln that fought for the abolition of slavery and got it. And 100 years later it was Republicans that carried the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where most of the opposition to the Civil Rights Act came from Democrats, including Al Gore Sr.

All of which makes Harry Reid look like a blooming idiot in every one’s mind but the media and others in his party. I hope I’m wrong about this, but you can expect them to circle the wagons around him.