Filed Under:  OpEd, Opinion

Blacks for Trump are making it rain

3rd February 2020   ·   0 Comments

By C. C. Campbell Rock
Contributing Columnist

Judas sold out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, so it’s not surprising that a small cabal of Black people on Trump’s bandwagon a are selling out their culture and 56 years of Black progress, in the process.

It was recently reported that two groups of Trump surrogates are trying to boost the president’s Black voter turnout numbers to at least 20 percent in 2020 and have resorted to going into Black communities offering cash prizes.

Last December, the Urban Revitaliza-tion Coalition, Inc. , a charity, co-founded by Pastor Darrell Scott and Kareem Lanier in 2018, handed out thousands of dollars in cash as part of an event promoted as a “Christmas Extravaganza.” They gave away $25,000 in amounts over $300, including a gift of $1,000. An online video shows names were drawn and Scott calling people to the stage like the host of Let’s Make A Deal, saying, “Come on down…”

While they were giving out the money, they lavished praise on Donald Trump.

Surely in America, people have the right to support the candidates of their choice. But what Black person in their right mind would support a white man who called African and Haiti shithole countries (when he railed against immigrants from those countries, saying basically that they were undesirable and useless); a man who has described people of color, as rapists, criminals and vermin; a man who rose to prominence on the back of the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama, the first Black president, was not born in the U.S.; a man who has berated Black women in Congress and said they should go back where they came from; a man who called urban cities crime-ridden and rat-infested; a man who spent a half-million in advertising to push for the death penalty for the exonerate Central Park Five, even after DNA tests proved they did not murder the white female Central Park jogger; a man who threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Marie took the lives of more than 2,000 of the inhabitants (and Trump lied about that number); a man who is cutting food stamps and plans to cut Medicaid and Medicare, among other evil deeds? What Black sane person would vote for Trump.

America First Policies, the nonprofit arm of a pro-Trump super PAC, which was started by former Trump campaign aides, issued a $238,000 grant to the Urban Revitalization Coalition Inc., in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, according to its 2018 tax return first published by the Center for Public Integrity.

Scott jumped on Trump’s bandwagon in 2016, when he and now jailed Attorney Michael D. Cohen founded the National Diversity Coalition for Trump. On November 30, 2016, Trump selected Scott to be part of his executive transition team in which Scott publicly thanked Trump on Twitter, that resulted in a backlash on social media. Scott was called an Uncle Tom and was accused of taking money in exchange for his support of President Donald Trump.

In January 2017, CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill characterized Scott and other members of Trump’s diversity team as “mediocre Negroes” during a Don Lemon CNN Tonight segment

Scott is also the chair of Black Voices for Trump, which rolled out last November in Atlanta. This third organization for Trump that Scott leads is also supported with Trump dollars. The advertisement paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., on the Black Voices for Trump webpage is nothing more than a data-mining text vehicle to get the names of Blacks for future campaign pitches. Don’t click it.

An estimated 30 million Black Americans will be eligible to vote next year.

Third Way and the Joint Center conducted nine focus groups of Black voters and non-voters in and around Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia and found that Black Americans’ increased motivation to vote this year stems from an intense opposition to President Trump and a belief that he “has been a disaster for our country, and we need to do everything we can to vote him out,” according to the survey.

Most respondents said they believe Trump’s election has emboldened people with racist views to express them publicly.

One cause for concern as the president touts a strong economy as core to his re-election message: Only 22 percent of Black Americans said their personal financial situation has gotten better over the last two years.

When they come to your neighborhood with stacks to make it rain, we have a choice: Take the money and vote for anybody but Trump or tell them where they can stick Trump’s blood money.

This article originally published in the February 3, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

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