Did The New Black Panther Party Help Get Obama Elected Through Voter Intimidation?
By George Leon at 11:17 am on Monday July 12, 2010
It’s bad enough that virulent, racist hate-speech like this goes on at all in America. But it’s going on Philadelphia. In my Southwest Center City neighborhood, in fact. The setting of the following video is at the Odunde Festival centered at South Street and Grays Ferry Avenue, an otherwise lovely celebration of African culture and African-American heritage. But for some, it’s an occasion for hatred. Here’s the video:
Yes, this uniformed member of the New Black Panther Party is actually saying that he hates all white people and yes, he is actually saying, “if you want freedom, you have to kill some crackers. You have to kill some of their babies.” Nice way to celebrate the festival, no?
But it gets better. In the next video, you see the same guy, again in uniform, this time wielding a night stick, “guarding” a polling place in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia during election day 2008.
Claiming to be “security,” he doesn’t hesitate to confront and question the man filming the incident. But the election commission does not hire New Black Panther Party members to guard polling places in Philadelphia. This is not security, it is voter intimidation. It’s a violation of Voting Rights Act and yes, it’s a federal offense. So this guy went to jail, right? No, it’s a little more complicated than that.
Turns out that the US Department of Justice dropped their investigation of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, which had endorsed Obama and deployed its members to polling places in like manner nationwide. In fact, the DOJ's Inspector General told lawmakers that he was not empowered to investigate complaints of voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential election, according to the Washington Times. And until the Voting Rights Act violations emerged, the endorsement of the New Black Panther Party was posted on Barack Obama's web site.
Was this endorsement in any way connected to the Justice’s Department’s willingness to so easily dismiss the case?
But it gets even better. US Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams, one of the attorneys on the case, has come forward and accused the Department of racial bias for dropping the charges. He claims there is “a pervasive and open hostility towards equal enforcement of the law” and supports his allegations with numerous case examples. But what is perhaps equally disturbing is the mainstream media’s apparent total lack of interest in the case. Except for Fox News, both the original case and especially whistleblower Adams’ testimony has been virtually off the radar screen of all major media outlets. If you are not a Fox News viewer and are hearing about this for the first time, that is why.
And almost humorously if it wasn’t such a tragic and vile situation, the head of the New Black Panther Party is now claiming that attempts to draw attention to the situation (I guess such as this article) is part of a 'right-wing Republican conspiracy to demonize President Obama'.
In other words, violence-provoking hate speech, voter intimidation, violations of the Voting Rights Act, questionable actions by the Department of Justice and whistle blowing by DOJ attorneys is all business as usual and should be ignored. And apparently most media outlets agree with him.
Now just imagine if some Caucasian nut case donned white sheets or perhaps a brown shirt, carried a night stick and “guarded” some polling place in Philly on election day. Do you think that would get mainstream media attention? And if it turned out that members of his group had been deployed nationwide in such a manner? And that the Justice Department of the President who the group supported as a candidate dropped the charges? Can you even imagine such a scenario?
That just wouldn’t happen and in the unlikely event that it did, it would be THE STORY in all the mainstream media outlets for months on end. But no one seems to care about this story – except Fox News, for pity sake.
This is a tragic story about our country and our city. There is a need for healing but that can’t occur without open acknowledgement of the problem. And it’s an even sadder story for the journalistic profession and the so-called mainstream media who, for apparently political or ideological reasons, chooses to ignore it. What ever happened to honest, impartial journalism? What ever happened to transparency? What ever happened to Hope and Change?
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