Ramblings' Journal

NAA(L)CP attacks Project 21 and other black conservatives

I wondered how long it would take before the NAACP began to go after black conservative organizations like Project 21.

NAACP president Kweisi Mfume did just that in a speech Monday at their national convention in Philadelphia.

Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, condemned the groups as a "collection of black hustlers" who have adopted a conservative agenda in return for "a few bucks a head."

"When the ultraconservative right-wing attacker has run out of attack strategy, he goes and gets someone that looks like you and me to continue the attack," Mfume said in his opening address to the NAACP's annual convention.

"They've financed a conservative coalition of make-believe black organizations, all of them hollow shells with more names on the letterhead than there are people in their membership," he said.

Paraphrasing a line from a 2002 speech by NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, he said, "And like the ventriloquist's dummies, they sit there in the puppet master's voice, but we can see whose lips are moving, and we can hear his money talk."

In a speech punctuated by cheers from the audience, Mr. Mfume said: "They can't deal with the leaders we choose for ourselves, so they manufacture, promote and hire new ones."

P21 executive director David Almasi and I had a conversation Monday afternoon about that very issue, after a reporter called him with questions over whether or not any members (myself included) were paid.

After I stopped laughing, I jokingly implored him, "Pay ME! PLEASE pay me!"

No. I'm not paid to be a member of Project 21.

I wouldn't mind being paid to write columns, and I'm slowly working on getting that under my belt, but I'm not paid to be a member or Project 21. I gladly serve on the national advisory board, and happily speak on their behalf to the press.

I do this of my own volition, hard as that might be for some folks to believe.

David Almasi, director of Project 21, acknowledged there is "probably" an ideological divide between his group and the NAACP but said Project 21 is financially independent from political parties.

"We take no marching orders from anyone," he said.

"We have received money from people who are Republican, but not from the Republican Party," said Almasi. "But think about the idea that, at one point, Jesse Jackson was getting some of his travel paid for by the Democratic National Committee."

Mind you the "non-partisan" NAACP is going to be screening Michael Moore's unapologetically partisan Fahrenheit 9/11 to their membership tomorrow.

And the NAACP, of course, still claims to be "non-partisan."

Non-partisan my eye...

Posted by mhking at July 13, 2004 12:48 AM