O-GOP Movement

Houston - Consider this: most eligible Blacks don't register; most who register don't vote; most who do vote, vote Democrat. What if those who are eligible, decided to register and vote in Republican primaries just to see if we can moderate or fire a shot across the bow of O-GOP (Our Grandparents Original Party)?

To my "Yellow Dog" Democrat friends: this is not a threat to your allegiance to the Democratic party. I know the Dems have done much for our people during the last half of the 20th century. However, they have also crippled our spirit of self determination with a Santa Claus like welfare state that is unsustainable and not in our best long term interest. There are issues we rarely discuss in our community like: master-slave relationship with party bosses, mental health, child molestation, abortion, separation, reparations, repatriation, and agriculture among other matters. Unless we are willing to put everything on the table for the liberation and salvation of our people; we who claim to be leaders will be nothing more than cowards. If what we have been doing over the last 40 years has been working so well, then why are Black people in such bad shape despite having our brother Obama in the White house?

You think you have a permanent friend in the Democratic party? Watch these Blue Dog Democrats vote like Republicans in the next Congress. Unless Black people take their destiny in their own hands and put everyone on notice that we have no permanent political friends and no permanent political enemies, just permanent interest - we will continue to be ignored by the Republicans and taken for granted by the Democrats. Politics IS NOT the panacea by which our people will be saved. But if we are going to play the political game, we might as well play to win. Mission Impossible? What are we afraid of? We don't have anything to lose but our chains.

Disorganized Love and Organized Hate

Houston - In 1993, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said to me as we sat in a car at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas: "Brother, disorganized love can be overcome by organized hate." I never forgot his words and wise counsel.

Last night, November 2, 2010, those who openly advocated "taking back their nation" and conversely putting us back in our place, completed one step in that process. The victory of the Tea Party is reminiscent of 1877, when post emancipation Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow began.

The message from Tuesday's election is clear. Those who see the ascendancy of people of color as a threat have struck back like the sequel to Star Wars. Yes, the Empire has indeed struck back. The members of the Tea Party are NOT the majority; we are. How then were they able to win? The victory of the Tea Party is actually the result of our apathy and disorganization.

In the end, they stayed on message and organized themselves accordingly. The same economic conditions that existed in the post Civil war America exist today. The same social and political climate hovers over this country. We must not go hide in a closet and cry our eyes out. We must challenge these hardhearted demagogues on their turf.

It is time to organize a winning strategy. That requires a message that resonates with our people and an organizational effort to bring what we envision into existence. No matter how much we love, if we are disorganized we can be overcome by those who hate us. Let's get moving brothers and sisters. Time out for siting around waiting on a mystery God to bring us food, clothing and shelter. President Obama has his hands full. We must organize for our own self interest. If we don't nobody else will. Be prepared for the Return of the Jedi!

Help Defend the Poor Children of Houston against the Texas Education Agency

The Texas Education Agency has unleashed a nine year blistering attack against a Houston area charter school that caters to at risk inner city youth. Unable to revoke the Alphonso Crutch Charter School's charter in 2002, the agency has done everything to destroy the school and its founder Vida Belford. The school once had three campuses and nearly 1,700 students. Nearly 70% of the students were there because no other school in 18 area school districts would accept them. Crutch is the alternative school of alternative schools. Like many charter schools in Texas, Alphonso Crutch had its issues, but nothing that couldn't have been remedied. Unfortunately, This has become a personal matter and here is who is behind it.

The only attorney in TEA history to lose a charter revocation case is Jim Thompson. He has never gotten over it. He told me to my face in front of witnesses on April, 2003: "I see no purpose for this school." He has been on a mission to use any administrative means at his disposal to accomplish what he failed to do in a fair and open hearing before an independent third party.

The fact is, not only has Alphonso Crutch defeated Jim Thompson in administrative revocation hearings and the subsequent appeals by TEA, but also in three state district courts and the Texas Court of Appeals. Attorney Jim Thompson and TEA refuse to obey the ruling of their own administrative law judges, Republican and Democratic judges and an unanimous panel of appellate judges. This agency is out of control and nobody, I mean nobody can put them in check.

Unfortunately, the Texas Attorney General's office is joined at the hip with TEA and cannot be objective enough to show TEA the unconstitutionality and illegality of its behavior in this case. Instead of defending due process and equal education rights of poor children, the Texas Attorney General has sided with this out of control state agency. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott can't possibly know what his lawyers are really doing in this case. We can't imagine him allowing the power of his office to be used against poor children of color in the state of Texas. We know he wouldn't allow himself to be used like he was in the Kidcare case 7 years ago.

If you want to know how dirty this has gotten check this out. TEA has withheld 100% of the school's state funding over the past 2 years. Alphonso Crutch survived because of the Federal Title 1 funding available because of the poverty of its student population. In 2007, TEA pre-approved a $44,000 draw for the school only to demand it be repaid soon thereafter.

TEA admits its was their mistake, knowing fully well in advance that federal money can only be paid back out of private or state funds. Now mind you, TEA has withheld nearly $1.7 million dollars in state funds illegally according to three district and an appellate court, yet they refuse to even partially fund this school that still is educating our most vulnerable children. Meanwhile, because of a $44,000 mistake in approving federal funds, TEA has blocked $1.5 million in federal funds Crutch qualifies for from coming to the school. If we can't call it a conspiracy, you can't call it a misunderstanding. What we have here is arrogance, corruption and an abuse of power. TEA is so bold, they even lie to the President Obama's Department of Education, knowing their is no independently sourced documentation that exists to back up their assertions against the school. The joke on the streets is: How do you know when TEA is lying about Alphonso Crutch? Answer: Are their lips moving?

I know any reasonable persons will find all of this hard to believe - but documentation beats conversation any day. I, Robert Muhammad, as Chairman of the Alphonso Crutch Charter School, pledge to allow any credible media, education or child advocacy organization come and review our records, as long as the privacy of the students and staff is not put in jeopardy. Who will take me up on this offer?

Here is what you can do to help: Call and email the TEA attorney listed below. Let him know that you are outraged and demand that the school be given a reasonable settlement so that it can continue educating the most needy children in our area.

Jim.Thompson@tea.state.us
(512) 463-9037

While President Obama is in Turkey: Right Wing Critics at Home Try to Cook His Goose

President Obama has enraged right wing talking heads once again. His crime: telling the truth. In President Obama’s address to the Turkish Parliament, he acknowledged that America is a “majority Christian” nation but not a “Christian nation.” The right wing spin machine is in full gear in an attempt to rally the remnant of the White Southern evangelical base that remains loyal to the Republican brand. By feeding their bigotry and engaging in revisionist history, the right-wing Klu Klux Klan-servatives are playing the “I told you he (Obama) was an unpatriotic socialist Muslim” card.



Is America a Christian Nation? What kind of Christian Nation? The right wing talking heads are guilty of slander of the President by omission and commission - especially when it comes to the context of American history. For example, they often fail to acknowledge that the Puritans, who sailed to the new world on the Mayflower, did so to escape persecution of other Christians. You see, the Puritans did not celebrate Christmas as the so-called “mainstream” Christians of today and yesterday did. In fact, the tradition of placing a lit candle in the window during Christmas was to signify that one was not a Puritan, thereby sparing them religious persecution in England. The truth is that the Puritans were just as thankful to get away from mainstream Christians as they were for landing in this land-o-plenty. Oops! I guess I will be accused of attacking the Thanksgiving narrative.

The Jefferson Davis wing of “the Party of Lincoln” also argues incorrectly that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America were Christians who followed the Bible without questioning one word of its text. On January 24, 1814, Thomas Jefferson wrote a private letter to John Adams. In it, he wrote the following:

“The whole history of these books (the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from the cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are the fabric of very inferior minds. It is easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”


Mind you, this is what one Founding Father wrote privately to his fellow Founding Father. Jefferson later wrote a book that attempted to expunge what he considered to be additions to the Gospels from the words of Jesus. This book was kept in his family and published after his death as the Jefferson Bible.




Remember, Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence, a President, a Christian, and a slave-owner. He had serious doubts about the Gospels, does that mean he was anti-Christian? He declared ‘all men to be created equal,’ yet held slaves; does he not deserve his place in human history? Jefferson, a Mason, was a Christian who had a Holy Qur’an in his book collection; does that mean he was unpatriotic? (Congressmen Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Muslim, was sworn in on Jefferson’s Holy Qur’an in 2007) My objective is not to attack Christianity, but to put a spot light on the hypocrisy of the right wing attack machine.



Why can everybody else speak the truth and question conventional wisdom, (other than President Obama) and have their reverenced place in history? Why can’t the Cotton-Curtain conservatives give the President a chance to try to bridge the gap between the United States and the 1.5 billion Muslims across the globe that right-wing bigotry and revisionist history has exacerbated after September 11, 2001? Time dictates Obama’s agenda – not right or left wing politics. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan admonishes us all to “consider the time.”

For more information on Thomas Jefferson read – Fawn M. Brodie (1974) Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History and Lester J. Cappon, editor (1959) The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams.