Author: Pat Hamsa

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Why Do Highlander Center Directors Hate America? – Part 4

They hate the America which embraces capitalism.
They hate the America which embraces life even before it enters the world.
They hate the America which believes biological sex identification is real.
They hate the America which embraces law and order.
They hate the America which is willing to own its history and learn from it instead of erasing it.
They hate the America which offers earned opportunity to all.
They hate the America which rejects dividing people by the color of their skin.
They hate judging a person by the “content of their character.”
They hate America’s freedom loving ally Israel.
They hate Americans who are leading morally-framed happy lives.

Looking back at the different Highlander Center directors explains plenty about the socialist training center’s evolution into a full-blown gathering headquarters for Marxists. These leaders are willing to “use any means necessary” to achieve “liberation.”

What does it tell you about the objectives when their idols are communists like Karl Marx and Angela Davis who recently quoted a fellow Marxist explaining that the BLM riots were “rehearsals for revolution.”

In the Southern states Marxists posing as social and racial justice warriors will be financed by the likes of George Soros and “liberal philanthropist” Susan Sandler.

Sandler has chosen to invest $200 million dollars targeted “to areas across the South and Southwest that are experiencing rapid demographic transformation” ie, from legal immigrants like refugees and illegal aliens.

Founding of the Highlander Center

Myles Horton co-founded the Highlander Folk School in 1932, and served as its first director. First located in Monteagle, Tennessee the school was shut down by the state. The school was renamed the Highlander Research and Education Center, moved to Knoxville and in 1971 made one last move to New Market, Tennessee where it is located today. The school’s founders modeled Highlander after socialist training centers they had visited in Denmark.

Horton believed that the Appalachian poor were being taken advantage of by the wealthy capitalist elites. Anti-capitalism and Horton’s experience helping labor to unionize and strike, expanded his ideas about “social justice” and his desire to create radical activists who would change the social, economic and political order of the South.

Horton served as Highlander’s director from its founding until 1969, during which time, prominent civil rights activists like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. received training at the Folk School.

Subsequent directors ratchet up Highlander’s radicalism

Suzanne Pharr

After Horton stepped down, there was a succession of directors over the next thirty years until 1999 when Suzanne Pharr took the helm; she served until 2004. A self-described feminist and anti-racist organizer, Pharr had already founded the Women’s Project in Arkansas.

Before leading Highlander, Pharr joined with several other black and white gay women and founded SONG – Southerners On New Ground.

SONG is a multi-racial queer organization which seeks to be “a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South.” They plan to “transform the region” through leadership development and organizing.

SONG names the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL) and National Bail Out among its “comrades.” It just so happens that Ash-Lee Henderson, Highlander’s current director, serves on National Bail Out’s Advisory Committee.

SONG, along with BLM Nashville, Workers Dignity (which advocates for the workplace rights of legal immigrants and illegal aliens), and several other groups, formed the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition, the group which aggressively pushed defunding the Nashville Police Department in support of defending black lives.

A former SONG board member, Stephanie Guilloud now serves as a co-director of Project South where Ash-Lee Henderson once served as a regional organizer. Ash-Lee continues her relationship with Project South through the Southern Movement Assembly.

Another co-founder of SONG, Pam McMichael served as Highlander’s director for twelve years, but before her, Monica Hernandez did a short stint leading the socialist training center.

Hernandez was very active at the Highlander Center for many years prior to serving as a director. For ten years, she was on Highlander’s staff working on immigrant issues. During this time she also served as the founding board president of the TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). Since 2007, Highlander has been training TIRRC organizers. Hernandez now serves as the co-director for the Southeast Immigrant Rights Network and is a board member of the National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights.

Before leaving her position at Highlander, Pam McMichael helped found Standing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ), an organization committed to helping white people overcome the shame of their white privilege. Of course defunding the police and doing electoral work to “swing Georgia left” are critical parts of divesting whiteness.

SURJ lists chapters and affiliates across the U.S. including a SURJ chapter in Nashville, Memphis, Blount County and the Highlander Center where SURJ conducts its retreats.

SURJ and the Democratic Socialists of America have worked closely in campaigns including pushing for Nashville’s anti-police community oversight board.

It should come as no surprise that SURJ-Nashville’s founding steering committee co-chair Marie Campbell is the Asst. Director of Education at the Scarritt Bennett Center, a social justice education center in Nashville, and a Vanderbilt Divinity School graduate.

Allyn Maxfield-Steele and Ash-Lee Henderson are Highlander’s current co-directors.

Allyn is also a graduate of Vanderbilt’s Divinity School and was also an educator at Scarritt Bennett.

Ash-Lee’s radical Marxist pedigree was detailed in Part 1 of the Highlander series.

Today’s Highlander Center is led by board members and chosen leaders who openly affiliate with the Marxist Freedom Road aka “Liberation Road” whose overriding goal is to destroy the Republican Party and then work with groups like the Communist Party USA, Democrat Socialists of America and a “mass of independent political organizations (IPOs) to defeat what they call the “New Confederacy.”

These Marxists say the “New Confederacy which like the first confederacy, is rooted in the most reactionary, racist, imperialist and anti-democratic forces in the country.”

Ash-Lee and Allyn describe Highlander’s perspective of the South this way:

“We recognize white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and colonization as harmful systems that are designed to oppress and divide our communities for the sake of hoarding and maintaining power for the white, wealthy elite.”

And they are actively working their plan to bring down what they believe is our oppressive government and replace it with a communist China-styled dystopia.

 

 

 

 

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Nashville Metro Council & TIRRC – Pay to Play?

The TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), a Soros-funded organization, seems to consistently get special treatment from the Nashville City Council.

Granted, it helped that one of TIRRC’s now former co-directors is married to a far left Metro Council member. It also helps that the majority of the Metro Council members are open border far lefties who hate ICE and believe that criminal illegal aliens should have the same benefits and privileges as legal immigrants and American citizens. 

TIRRC advocates for illegal aliens and legal immigrants such as refugees and intentionally blurs the line between the two by using the legal terms “refugees” or “asylum-seekers” loosely to refer to all their constituency.

TIRRC is a named affiliate of the National Council of La Raza (renamed UnidosUS), the largest Hispanic organization in the U.S. which “lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate crimes laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.”

Two recent Nashville Council resolutions, one giving TIRRC money, and the other, giving TIRRC an opportunity to influence the selection for the next Chief of Police, were sponsored by TIRRC-endorsed candidates elected to the Metro Council.

Shortly before the August 2019 election for the Nashville Metro Council, three organizations came together to form the Nashville Justice League (NJL), a PAC whose goal was to move the city council further left. Of the 15 endorsed candidates, 13 won their races.

One of the those organizations was TIRRC Votes, the 501(c)(4) arm of TIRRC. The TIRRC-backed Metro Council candidates continue to deliver on their promises to help fund and promote TIRRC’s agenda.

Substitute Resolution RS2020-459, introduced, adopted and passed on August 4 was “approved” and signed by Mayor Cooper the next day. This resolution appropriated $1,244,000 of COVID-19 Pandemic Fund to nine non-profit organizations operating in Davidson County.

TIRRC got $50,000 and fellow traveler Justice for Our Neighbors (JFON) got $50,000.

TIRRC’s endorsed candidate Bob Mendes (who is also the architect of the 34% property tax increase), sponsored this resolution. In 2017, pro-sanctuary city Mendes introduced two bills that had they passed, would have made Nashville the most liberal sanctuary city in the country. The bills were withdrawn after state legislators raised a ruckus.

TIRRC is flush in the money department with the ability to raise over $100,000 annually in donations. Influence Watch has posted the organization’s 990’s which show that in 2016, TIRRC’s budget included revenue of $1,935,988 and assets of $619,228. 

TIRRC has 24 paid staff and its 501(c)(4) TIRRC Votes in 2019, employed six lobbyists. TIRRC has a newly built 7,000 SF free-standing $2.5 million dollar building which reportedly, is fully paid for. The building will also house a legal services clinic which would most likely be JFON.

Not bad for an organization claiming to represent the poor, down-trodden and lawbreakers.

TIRRC, JFON, the American Muslims Advisory Council and others, have been long-time resident partners housed in the Conxion Americas building called Casa Azafran. The newly empty space now houses a Catholic Charities social services office. 

TIRRC repeatedly tries to turn refugees, the people they claim to represent, against the government that pays for all the public support made available to help them start new lives in Tennessee.

Justice for Our Neighbors (JFON), another open borders organization, provides legal services to legal immigrants and illegal aliens.

In 2016, JFON was all about “defending unaccompanied minors.” UAC (unaccompanied alien children) arrivals enter the U.S. illegally, are under age 18 and for whom, “there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States, or no parent or legal guardian in the United States available to provide care and physical custody.”

One Tennessee example of the loophole of the legal definition of UACs is the case of 16-year old Edwin Mejia, a UAC from Honduras who in 2013, was transported to Tennessee and released into the custody of his brother, an illegal alien living north of Nashville in Madison, Tennessee. The following year the two brothers moved to Nebraska where Edwin struck and killed 21-year old Sarah Root  while he was drunk and street racing in his truck. Root had just graduated from college. Mejia posted bond and left town.

A 2018 report from the Center for Immigration Studies documents that MS-13 gang members have entered the U.S. as UACs. Available data shows that from 2014 part-way through 2017, over 4,000 UACs were brought to Tennessee.

The other Metro Council resolution, RS2020-431, introduced on July 7, 2020, sought to have Mayor Cooper include certain special interest groups, a representative from the Fraternal Order of Police, and a representative from the anti-police Community Oversight Board, to help select the new Nashville Chief of Police.

Three of the four sponsors of this resolution were TIRRC Votes’ endorsed candidates.

The resolution was amended to direct Mayor Cooper to work with TIRRC, the Equity Alliance, the anti-police Community Oversight Board, the (ultra left) Metro Human Relations Commission and the Fraternal Order of Police in the process to select the new Chief of Police.

Not only does the amended resolution name specific organizations, but it also adds new language, which read in the full context of the resolution, suggests that some of these organizations represent communities who are allegedly the most “impacted communities” which need a say in the selection process.

The Equity Alliance and TIRRC already have their interests represented since The Equity Alliance is part of the Nashville Justice League, the PAC which also includes TIRRC Votes and the Central Labor Council that helped get these same Metro Council members elected.

The Community Oversight Board’s (COB) agenda for the new Police Chief has already been laid out in a report issued by the COB in April 2020. The report was requested the COB’s vice-chair Andres Martinez who also serves as Director of Policy and Communications for Conexion Americas, a Nashville organization and named affiliate of the National Council of La Raza.

The COB report says that there are 31,000 illegal aliens living and working in Davidson County. A deep dive into the COB report shows that they are pushing for the MNPD to adopt four policies that will help illegal aliens in Nashville go undetected and to ignore the state’s sanctuary city law, something a new police chief could make happen.

Equally concerning about the COB report is the glowing reference to a resolution adopted by the Austin City Council after Texas passed a very strong sanctuary city law which was subsequently ruled as Constitutional by a federal appeals court. The Austin City Council resolution was specifically intended to obstruct and skirt the state’s sanctuary city law.

Nashville Mayor’s Immigration Task Force is also recommending that the Metro Council adopt the Austin City Council resolution. If that happens, expect to see the same in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Memphis.

Now that TIRRC and The Equity Alliance have packed the Metro Council and maintain strong alliances with members of the COB and the Metro Human Relations Commission, it is reasonable to assume that voices regarding the new Police Chief will out-influence every other constituency in Nashville.

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Marxists Are Winning Local Elections in Tennessee! – Part 3 in the TN Highlander Series

Tennessee is rapidly becoming a Marxist political fantasy come true. In a super RED state like Tennessee which too often is undeserving of being described as “conservative”, Marxist-backed candidates are winning their political races.

Candidates don’t call themselves Marxists. Instead they use labels like “socialist” or “progressive” to camouflage their desired outcomes, which align with the openly radical left.

Jonah Goldberg summarizes it this way in Liberal Fascism – “In Italy they were called Fascists. In Germany they were called National Socialists. [later renamed Nazis] In America we call them progressives…”

Marxism provides the theoretical framework for communism and socialism – political systems which centralize power, suppress opposition and exert control over the masses using economic, social and psychological means.

There are many Marxist groups operating in Tennessee. They all act as electoral fronts with the same objectives and goals, such as the organization, Liberation Road – to fill seats in local elections with like-minded comrades, a sweet feat in a Trump state.

Liberation Road, Our Revolution, Nashville Justice League, Memphis for All, and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to name a few, work in concert to get their candidates elected. They refer to each other as “comrade” as affirmation of solidarity with a Marxist movement to overthrow ordered government.

Student groups like the Vanderbilt Young Democratic Socialists of America and the UT Knoxville Progressive Student Alliance (which has nothing to do with being “progressive”), are becoming more engaged in local elections helping to provide boots on the ground to canvass and man phone-banks.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what they call themselves – it’s what they seek to accomplish that matters. The groups discussed below work in concert with each other, creating the “new political ‘us’” laid out in Liberation Road’s 2019 – 2022 strategy, which is an agreement to form strategic alliances to defeat their enemies – the United States Government, the Republican Party and establishment Democrats.

The bottom line for these groups – if you don’t support creating a totalitarian socialist/communist America complete with the economy killing Green New Deal, Medicare for All, abortion on demand and open borders to name a few, you are their enemy.

Our Revolution (OR) – federal and state elections

Our Revolution (OR) and the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) often collaborate to help fellow comrades win elections. The senior electoral manager of OR who was also the former deputy director of the DSA has disclosed that nothing prevents the forming of a two-sided DSA/OR local chapters. In a 2017 interview, OR cited Knoxville’s OR chapter which helped elect two DSA candidates to the city council.

OR is very active in Tennessee. It has a Nashville/Mid TN chapter and one in Memphis called Memphis for All.

In 2019, OR’s 6 endorsed candidates all won their races for the Metro Nashville City Council. Two winners along with another Metro Council member served as Bernie Sanders’ Tennessee 2020 presidential campaign co-chairs.

Our Revolution began as the 501(c)(4) arm of the failed 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. It now joins the mix of revolutionary change agents working to “grow the squad” and get more of their “progressive” radicals like Jew-haters Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib elected to public office. OR is also responsible for helping Ocasio-Cortez get elected.

In 2020, OR endorsed Nashville’s Keeda Haynes who lost her primary race for U.S. House of Representatives against 30-year incumbent Democrat Jim Cooper. But Tennesseans should not lose sight of the fact that Haynes took 44% of the vote.

OR also endorsed first-timer and BLM protest leader, Cori Bush in Missouri, who won her primary for Congress, ousting a 20-year incumbent. Bush’s campaign includes defunding the police which is part of OR’s “progressive” platform to “defend democracy.”

OR did not endorse first timer from Memphis, Marquita Bradshaw in the Tennessee Democratic primary for Lamar Alexander’s seat. After winning her primary, OR support for Bradshaw is now coming in the form of Cori Bush’s endorsement who herself was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Bradshaw campaigned as an environmental activist who was also an experienced labor organizer. She was first endorsed by the DSA. Her platform is based on The Justice Guarantee, (you have to read the 6 planks to believe it), which is supported by the Sunrise Movement and many other radical left wing groups including the ACLU. The Justice Guarantee platform is a project of Tides Advocacy which according to Capital Research, runs the Fund for Fair and Just Policing campaign funded by George Soros.

After winning the primary in Tennessee, Our Revolution’s Nashville & Mid TN chapter, Nashville Musicians For Change, Memphis-Midsouth DSA, Sunrise Tennessee, Vanderbilt Young Democratic Socialists of America, & Indivisible Tennessee joined together to endorse Bradshaw and are working to get her elected to flip Lamar Alexander’s seat.

The joinder of these groups follows the formula promoted by Liberation Road.

Our Revolution’s Nashville candidate James Turner for the Tennessee House, lost his primary to long-time incumbent Rep. Mike Stewart. But OR’s Memphis for All candidates fared much better. Gabby Salinas and Torrey Harris won their primaries, while Jerri Green and Andrea Bond-Johnson had no opponents in the Democrat primary. They will each face incumbent Republicans except for Harris who will be challenged by 26-year incumbent Rep. John DeBerry who is running as an independent after being kicked out of the Democrat party for being too conservative.

Memphis for All and OR’s Nashville and Mid-TN chapter, are part of Liberation Road. Thomas Wayne Walker, a member of Liberation Road’s National Executive Committee is also a Memphis for All Steering Committee member.

In 2018, Memphis for All endorsed and helped get former state senator Lee Harris elected for Shelby County Mayor. The group also added two county commissioners, Tami Sawyer and Racquel Collins. Sawyer, is a Black Lives Matter Leader and organizer of taking down Confederate statutes in Memphis.

The following year, Sawyer ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Memphis with support from Memphis for All and Marxist fellow traveller Highlander co-director Ash-Lee Henderson.

Memphis for All also endorsed and helped elect Katrina Robinson for state Senate and London Lamar for the Tennessee House. Liberation Road volunteers were noted to have helped Memphis for All canvassing in these districts.

In early August 2020, Sen. Katrina Robinson was indicted on 48 counts of theft and embezzlement of federal program grant funds.

Memphis Liberation Party

This newly formed group endorsed Marquita Bradshaw and is working to help her get elected. This group identifies itself as a “political party fighting for workers’ rights, environmental justice, and self-determination for the people of Memphis” and is promoting a comprehensive platform of demands to “liberate Memphis” from the State of Tennessee.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Knoxville’s DSA is an affiliate chapter of Our Revolution and has successfully helped three of their comrades get elected to the Knoxville city council running on platforms that reject capitalism in favor of supporting “working class interests.”

Seema Singh Perez was the first Knoxville DSA member to win a seat on the city council in 2017.

This DSA chapter is running the “City Council Movement” and two years later, the chapter endorsed three comrades for the council – Amelia Parker, David Hayes and Charles al-Bawi. Amelia Parker won an at-large seat.

In 2018, Knoxville DSA member Edward Nelson, endorsed by Our Revolution for a Tennessee House seat lost to the Republican candidate.

Anti-police Sean Parker in Nashville (no relation to Amelia other than in comradeship), is the co-founder of the Middle TN DSA, a fact he proudly shared on his campaign page. He was elected in 2019, to represent District 5 (hipster East Nashville neighborhoods), on the Metro Nashville City Council.

Chattanooga’s DSA chapter is just getting started by issuing a “list of demands on local government and business leaders to alleviate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the working and vulnerable people of greater Chattanooga.”

Highlander co-director Ash-Lee Henderson has deep agitator roots in Chattanooga. In 2012 she was an organizer with United Campus Workers, an organization that the college DSA chapters attach to.

She was also a Board member of Chattanooga Organized for Action (COA).

In 2014, working as an organizer for Concerned Citizens for Justice (CCJ) in Chattanooga, Ash-Lee was arrested while marching against alleged police brutality. That same year, Ash-Lee marched again with CCJ to affirm organization’s solidarity with Palestinians.

Don’t be surprised when Chattanooga Marxists start catching up to their comrades in Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis.

Nashville Justice League (NJL) whose tagline is “A New Power is Rising” helped 13 “progressive” far-left radicals get elected to the Metro Nashville city Council.

Shortly before the August 2019 election for the Nashville Metro Council, three organizations came together to form the Nashville Justice League (NJL), a PAC whose goal was to move the city council further left. Of the 15 endorsed candidates, 13 won their races.

Well into 2020, the NJL candidates have proven to be the “progressive” far-left radicals the PAC wanted.

The three organizations which organized the NJL are:

TIRRC Votes is the 501(c)(4) arm of the Soros-funded TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), which advocates for illegal aliens and legal immigrants such as refugees. TIRRC began its collaboration with BLM in 2015; this was during the time that TIRRC’s board was led by Daoud Abudiab, a Muslim activist.

The Equity Alliance Action Fund which is the 501(c)(4) of the Equity Alliance. Founded in 2016, The Equity Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, employs state-wide and community organizers, communications and operational managers along with two co-executive directors. This group organizes around issues of alleged police brutality, equity for people of color, and like every other far left group, maintains a 501(c)(4) arm which is working to vote Trump out of office and elect progressive socialists.

The Central Labor Council of Nashville & Middle TN (AFL-CIO) – Jobs With Justice has a chapter in East and Middle TN and is part of the Central Labor Council. Jobs With Justice lists the Highlander Center as one of their partners. The Council endorsed state Rep. John Ray Clemmons in the 2019 Nashville mayoral race. Clemmons is a fellow traveler of the radical left and is running unopposed for a fourth term.

The Nashville Justice League was recognized as an ally in Liberation Road’s July 2019 newsletter:

“The Nashville Justice League launched at the end of June to bring together the strategic alliance into the electoral field. This IPO Project is a new PAC, and a joint project with the Central Labor Council, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, and the Equity Alliance, a civil rights and civic engagement organization run by black millennial women. We are using voting pledges, social media advertising, and canvassing to break down the silos of our membership and combine our strengths to get true champions of justice elected. We are currently focusing on Nashville metro elections, but have our eyes set on combining the IPO city-based projects for 2020.”

Given the NJL’s core mission there is no surprise about the candidates they endorsed.

For example, Bob Mendes and Colby Sledge were the council members who in 2017, introduced two bills that if passed, would have made Nashville the most liberal sanctuary city in the country. Sledge is married to Lindsey Harris who until very recently, was a co-director of TIRRC.

The NJL also endorsed Zulfat Suara who openly admitted to being a socialist. She resigned her leadership of the TN American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) to run for the Metro Council. Under her leadership, AMAC board members began agitating against alleged police brutality. From the comfort of her new $650,000 home, Suara served as one of Bernie Sanders’ three Tennessee campaign co-chairs. Suara led her activist AMAC board to join forces with Linda Sarsour, a defender of Sharia law and intensely vocal anti-Semite, who served as “Bernie Sanders’s Anti-Semitic Surrogate”. More recently, Suara was chosen as a PLEO (party leader and elected official) delegate to the DNC. She nominated Bernie Sanders and voted “no” on the DNC platform because of the absence of Medicare for all and, following the lead of Jew-haters Sarsour, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the absence of “stronger foreign policy language, especially on Israel and Palestine.”

Kyontze Toombs, who serves as Secretary and General Counsel for the Equity Alliance was endorsed and won her Metro Council race so they now have a front row seat at the table.

Gicola Lane, another NJL endorsed, but losing candidate, was paid by Black Voters Matter as a campaign coordinator in getting the anti-police Community Oversight Board on the ballot and passed. This year she is an electoral justice fellow with the Movement for Black Lives, the policy setting umbrella organization which Highlander Center’s co-director Ash-Lee Henderson, helps lead.

Ringleader TIRRC has a long-established relationship with the Highlander Center which they list as a coalition member. Beginning in 2007, Highlander provided Justice School for TIRRC with “sessions combin[ing] nuts-and-bolts training on organizing and leadership skills with broader discussions of social, political, and economic issues related to immigration and the immigrant rights movement.”

Vanderbilt sociology professor Dan Cornfield and his wife Hedy Weinberg the TN-ACLU director who has also served on TIRRC’s Advisory Board, have been long-time supporters of the Highlander Center.

Cornfield co-led Highlander trainings for Vanderbilt college students and faculty organized by Vanderbilt’s Office of Active Citizenship with “programs such as ‘More Radical Than Communism’ and on ‘Becoming a Change Agent.’”

Our Revolution joined forces with TIRRC Votes in July 2019.

Sunrise Movement

Sunrise is a movement to stop climate change. Their platform includes pushing for more regulations and government control of the economy under the guise of fighting climate change. They are mainly college, high school and middle school students who have been inducted into world of the socialist/progressive platform.

They call their chapters “hubs” and have hubs in Nashville, Franklin and Knoxville. According to the Memphis Progressive Student Alliance, there will soon be a Sunrise hub in Memphis.

Sunrise Tennessee joined with Our Revolution’s Nashville & Mid TN chapter, Nashville Musicians For Change, Memphis-Midsouth DSA, Vanderbilt Young Democratic Socialists of America, & Indivisible Tennessee, to endorse U.S. Senate Democratic candidate Marquita Bradshaw.

The leader of the Nashville Sunrise Movement is Rick Herron, believed to be the son of Roy Herron, former chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party. Roy Herron served in the Tennessee House and Senate.

Party for Socialism & Liberation

The Party for Socialism and Liberation has been active working outreach to like-minded minority communities in Nashville and held an event at the Islamic Center of Tennessee.

UTKnoxville Progressive Student Alliance (UTKPSA) has close ties to both the Highlander Center and Liberation Road. The UTKPSA has become active in local Knoxville elections, endorsing Charles al-Bawi in 2019 for the Knoxville City Council.

Here’s an example of how these Marxist organizations work together. Thomas Wayne Walker, a Memphis agitator, is a member of Liberation Road’s National Executive Committee. During his tenure as an executive board member of the United Campus Workers (UCW) movement in Tennessee, he engaged the UTKPSA in a campus protest. At the time, Ash-Lee Henderson was an organizer for the UCW. Several years prior, Ash-Lee and Walker were together at a public option rally in Nashville.

Coming full circle, Ash-Lee, who is also connected to Liberation Road, is currently the co-director of the Highlander Center whose staff members Coy Wakefield (also a BLM organizer in Knoxville), and Andre Canty interface with students at UTKnoxville.

Following the Marxist footpath of Ash-Lee Henderson, Movement 4 Black Lives, BLM and the DSA, the UTKPSA has signed onto the Jew-hating anti-Israel platform.

 Vanderbilt Young Democratic Socialists of America (VYDSA)

In December 2019, the VYDSA was given official DSA chapter status. Following the model laid down by the UTKPSA, the Vanderbilt DSA is endorsing Marquita Bradshaw for U.S. Senate, and staying connected to Robin Kimbrough who was also a socialist candidate in the primary but lost to Bradshaw. Kimbrough says she’s coming back in 2022.

VYDSA has also connected itself to BLM Nashville and pushed the VYDSA members to lobby Metro Nashville council members in support of the Peoples’ Budget Coalition recommendations.

The VYDSA also promotes a “mutual aid network” meaning that its members should also connect with their local Our Revolution and/or Sunrise movement chapter.

Memphis Progressive Student Alliance (MPSA)

The University of Memphis PSA has been around for a while. In 2011, six students attached to the MPSA, were arrested along with Ash-Lee Henderson for protesting inside and during a Tennessee legislative hearing. In late 2019, however, the board resigned and the organization disbanded due to improprieties of its president. The MPSA has now folded into the Memphis Liberation Party.

Justice Democrats – a federal political action committee (PAC)

It is a great concern for our state that the Justice Democrats operate out of a Knoxville address. This organization successfully installed “the squad” (Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley) in Congress.  

They claim credit for Cori Bush’s win in Missouri. Of their 9 new candidates for Congress, 5 have so far won their primaries with one primary upcoming. Of the 7 incumbent candidates, 6 have won their primaries with one soon to come.

Incumbent Pramilla Jayapal, from Washington state, served as the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) which Ilhan Omar joined as soon as she was elected to the U.S. House.

 

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Nashville Metro Council Goes All Out Police State For Masks

First it was Metro Council member Sharon Hurt who wanted to criminalize not wearing a mask. Her idea was that if someone was outside not wearing a mask and someone else catches COVID, the non-mask wearer might be subject to criminal charges of attempted murder.

The Council’s director of legislative affairs advised her that it’s the state legislature’s job to define and set penalties for crimes and criminal behavior.

At Tuesday’s Council meeting a “late-filed” ordinance was presented. Given the contents and objective of this bill, it’s more likely that it was not timely filed so as to avoid public pushback …. or maybe state pushback.

As of this writing, the ordinance, which passed on first reading, has not been posted to the Metro government website but it’s not too hard to guess who the sponsors might be. What is known is that power-grabber and illegal alien protectionist Council member Bob Mendes, is a co-sponsor. This is the same Bob Mendes who back in 2017, sponsored a bill that had it passed, would have made Nashville the most liberal sanctuary city in the country, ie, illegal aliens committing crimes would be protected from deportation.

Mendes is the prime architect and sponsor of the 34% property tax increase passed by the Metro Council. He is assembling a record to run for mayor or Congress.

This new bill would allow Metro employees from pretty much any department to issue citations to anyone not wearing a mask.

Talk about abusing power under the cover of COVID. It’s also about enforcing the edicts of Nashville’s mayoral tyrant so that his subjects behave according to the little man’s orders.

The more you look at the actions of Nashville mayor John Cooper and the Council, the more it looks like they are carrying water for the Biden-Harris ticket. While Nashville is not currently being lit on fire by BLM Marxists, Cooper is pretty much on par with comrade NYC’s DiBlasio in taking down a once economically thriving city despite Cooper permitting hookah bars and strip clubs to stay in business.

From the start of COVID in Tennessee, Bill Lee said Metro Nashville could do whatever it wanted to manage the public health issue. Cooper’s “management” has Metro Nashville losing an estimated $100 million dollars weekly.

Lee’s lack of leadership is also costing the state millions. Davidson County is pretty much the cash cow for the state’s different tax collections which ultimately effects all Tennessee taxpayers.

 

 

 

 

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Bill Lee’s Administration Joins BLM Culture War

The TN Council on Children and Youth (TCCY), its nine regional council members and anyone else that wants to participate, will access a free webinar on checking their white privilege.

The “free” webinar “Cultural Collisions” addressing “cultural competency” is being paid for by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (TDMHSAS). This is the second webinar in a series on implicit bias and racial equity.

The third and final webinar is titled “Lets Talk Race.” The training objectives include “a safe and carefully led conversation about the history of slavery in the United States and its inevitable impact in present day”…and “the impact of racial constructs in legislation, policies, practices, and cultural identity.”

TDMHSAS Commissioner Marie Williams was originally appointed by Haslam and was reappointed by Bill Lee in January 2019.

The goal of “cultural competency” is to help white people understand and acknowledge their implicit biases across a wide range of issues which can include race, class, gender sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, weight, discrimination and the mother of them all according to BLM, white privilege.

Last year, Williamson County teachers were shown a “Cultural Competency” video series as part of professional development, one of which addressed white privilege and how it causes “unintentional bias.”

The free webinar for Tennessee employees and TCCY council members addressing “cultural competency” includes free “CEUs” (continuing education units required to retain certain practice licenses), a sure draw for anyone needing the credits. Guest speaker Pastor Edward Palmer is a certified diversity trainer who has previously provided his course to Tennessee departments. He’s back for a repeat visit. Palmer’s focus area is juvenile justice systems.

Palmer and his wife co-pastor at The Sign of the Dove Church International located in Radcliff, Kentucky. From his bio:

“He is a Certified Diversity Trainer and works to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities within the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.  He most recently became a certified Racial and Ethnic Disparities Capstone Project Fellow through the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University.”

Palmer has a single entry on his blog, entitled, What is Race?

Race is a social construct used by some as an indicator of inferiority or superiority. Race as a social construct influences how individuals are perceived and treated by others and systems within society. Since as early as and even before the 1500s, the pseudoscientific idea that race defines who is less intelligent, less capable and of less value to humanity has been used to justify the violent, demeaning and harsh treatment of people on the bases of skin color….

 Because the consequences are real, race will continue to matter until we debunk and deconstruct the idea of race and the systems that have used this ideology to discriminate and depress people of the perceived minority group.

It is a laudable mission for resources to be directed to struggling and vulnerable children, young adults and their families. Successful interventions serve the larger community but the timing of this diversity training is highly suspect and too many actions are being justified under the COVID intervention umbrella.

The August TN Commission on Children and Youth (TCCY) newsletter includes the Commission’s statement on racial justice with the view that Tennessee is a racist state:

Another TCCY August newsletter focused on federal updates includes links to ultra-left Center for American Progress COVID information, the left-leaning Urban Institute which more often than not, pushes a progressive policy agenda, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which was a key funder of groups pushing Obamacare and has made grants to the Clinton Foundation.

To round it out, the TCCY federal update newsletter included a link to this anti-Trump piece put out by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, another group “widely regarded as being aligned with progressive and liberal positions.”

The TCCY is a state agency funded with public money and should not be using its access to state-wide employees to share its own overt political bias.

Richard Kennedy is the TCCY Executive Director and can be reached at (615) 741-2633 or tccy.info@tn.gov

Commissioner Marie Williams whose agency is paying for the cultural competency webinar series can be reached at 615) 532-6500, Marie.Williams@tn.gov

In 2012, AMAC activists trained DCS staff

 

 

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TN Highlander Center Trains Radical Groups to Overthrow Our Government – Part 2

 Within days of Trump’s election, Ash-Lee Henderson “of the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) and Freedom Road aka “Liberation Road”, was featured on a webinar hosted by Liberation Road to strategize against his election victory.

What is Liberation Road? 

Liberation Road was one of the two groups that formed the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO),  a US Marxist-Leninist organization with a Maoist flavor.  In 2019, this group split in two.

After the split, the group most active in electoral politics and local organizing called itself Liberation Road. The full formal name is Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organacion Socialista del Camino paper la Libertad. Despite the name change, Liberation Road is still sometimes referred to as “Freedom Road.” 

The goal of Liberation Road and its Marxist allies is to destroy the Republican Party and then work with groups like the Communist Party USA, Democrat Socialists of America and a “mass of independent political organizations (IPOs) as a part of a broader front to defeat the New Confederacy.” They want to create a powerful and politically dominant U.S. socialist party. The Highlander Center, Project South, the Southern Movement Assembly, just to name a few, have been working for years to help build and support these IPOs.

The Nashville Justice League, whose members were trained at Highlander, was recognized as an ally in Liberation Road’s July 2019 newsletter. The Nashville Justice League is an IPO (independent political organization) which has endorsed and gotten candidates elected to the Nashville Metro Council. Part 3 of this series will discuss Tennessee organizations actualizing the Liberation Road agenda.

Liberation Road states clearly that they are committed to combatting patriarchy, white supremacy and its privilege, capitalism and recreating the left into a “powerful disciplined revolutionary organization, big enough, deeply rooted enough among the people, and well-coordinated enough to challenge the white supremacist US ruling class for power.” They call this “left refoundation”.

Liberation Road has been energized by socialist election wins in Virginia, Durham, NC, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville, and its members are organizing to defeat President Trump and continue going after more local and State seats.

The Highlander Research and Education Center

Right after Ash-Lee’s webinar, Black Lives Matter leaders rushed to gather in secret at the Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee. They met to work out their future agenda in what the Marxist Liberation Road described as the “Trump disaster.”

Viewed in the context of Ash-Lee’s national and Tennessee connections, and her commitment to Marxist ideology and tactics, the convening of BLM leaders at the Tennessee site made sense.

One month after the Highlander Center secret meeting, Ash-Lee Henderson, was promoted to the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL) policy roundtable and became the Co-Director of the Highlander Center.

Groups involved in the 2016 M4BL policy roundtable which are connected to the Highlander Center and/or the state of Tennessee, included Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Black Youth Project 100, Dream Defenders, Project South and Southerners on New Ground (SONG).  

The Highlander Center was founded in 1932 to bring socialism to the South. In recent years Highlander’s leadership made the Center the go-to-place for planning how to take down the “New Confederacy.”  The New Confederacy is what Liberation Road calls the GOP, which they describe as “the most reactionary factions of capital allied with racist/nativist, right-wing populists.”  They believe that “the Republican Party is the political expression of this alliance. We use the term ‘New Confederacy’ to emphasize the fact that this right-wing political force is rooted in an explicitly racist program and strategy.”

And the South is their declared prime target.

The Culture of the Highlander Center, Liberation Road, Black Lives Matter

Charlene Carruthers, who founded the Black Youth Project 100, was at the 2016 Highlander secret meeting. She describes her national organization of young Black activists who “work through a Black, queer feminist lens.” Carruthers and Ash-Lee had already crossed paths at the 2015 national M4BL convening in Cleveland out of which grew the M4BL policy roundtable in which Carruthers’ organization was involved.

The Cleveland convening was celebrated for focusing on the new rising young radical black leaders and discarding those now considered establishment like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The “new force,” taking control are “black and brown youth” who are anti-capitalist, anti-police, and heavily represented in the LGBTQI community.

Indeed, many of the groups and their leaders working at the Highlander Center, the M4BL umbrella organization and Liberation Road, identify with the LGBTQI spectrum.

Part of the M4BL ”End the War on Black People” policy platform includes “End the War on Black Trans, Queer, Gender Non-Conforming and Intersex People.”

Liberation Road says that their war on patriarchy means “supporting the leadership of women and queer people in our organization and the movements we work in.”

If you really want to destroy a country like America and a civilization founded on Judeo-Christian principles, you go after its foundations, the family, belief in God and the biological differences between men and women, boys and girls.

Also present at the 2015 Cleveland convening were the three co-founders of BLM – Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors. Both Garza and Cullors identify themselves as “queer” and as such, have made it a point to affirm black and brown “queer” and transgender people by putting them front and center of their anti-America culture war.

Tometi, who describes herself as a “transnational feminist,” heads up another organization called BAJI – Black Alliance for Just Immigration.  This group was featured during the 2016 National Immigrant Integration Conference hosted by the TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), in Nashville.

Garza is the chief strategic advisor of the BLM Global Network Foundation which gets to spend all of the millions of donated dollars. The foundation has been noted for its lack of transparency; between 2017 and 2019, it has spent about $4.6 million dollars on travel, consultants and personnel versus a measly $328,000 granted to outside organizations including some BLM chapters. Cullors is also a top advisor with the Foundation.

The point is that they have a lot of money so now people can be paid to organize communities, agitate and riot.

There is good reason to believe that Tometi and Cullors were at the 2016 secret Highlander meeting. BLM was founded by Marxist revolutionaries; Cullors openly admits that she and Garza are radical, anti-white trained Marxists. She would have had every reason to want to conspire with comrade Ash-Lee who has also proven her commitment to Marxist ideology and tactics.

And it was Ash-Lee’s organization Liberation Road that advanced the launch of BLM.

At the time of the Cleveland convening in 2015, Ash-Lee was a regional organizer for the Atlanta-based Project South Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, and a Highlander Center Board member. Project South, an anchor organization of the Southern Movement Assembly, is all about radicalizing students and teaching them how to organize. Ash-Lee remains on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly.

In an interview about the Southern Movement Assembly, Ash-Lee channels the left refoundation objective of Liberation Road. She tells her interviewer that action sought by the Highlander Center has to be “transformative” as opposed to actions they “concede to in reform.”

Ash-Lee also says that, “I take very seriously the notion that organizing the South saves the country.” She and her ilk are committed to breaking the Southern states – however long that takes. And as Liberation road says, “by any means necessary.”

Trevor Loudon who has spent more than 30 years researching the radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics, has issued a warning that we would be wise to heed – “Liberation Road works well-under the radar but is highly effective, disciplined and relentless. If the good people of the U.S. South do not want to suffer ‘socialist liberation’ in the next few election cycles they’d better wake up fast.”

Loudon recommends as a starting point to have state-level hearings on the Liberation Road influence on local and state elections. It will be up to concerned citizens to inform their state and local elected officials and urge them to follow Loudon’s advice.

More parts to the Highlander Center series are forthcoming and will have information about how the Liberation Road agenda is playing out in Tennessee radical organizations and elections.

 

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Do “Lee-vites” Have Voters’ Remorse Yet?

Refugee resettlement. Child wellness visits. Take your pick, Lee is neither a conservative nor a student of the U.S. or Tennessee Constitution.

First it was Lee’s failure to uphold Tennessee’s Tenth Amendment rights against the federal government forcing the state to pay for the refugee program even after the state had withdrawn.

Instead, Lee said he was committed to bringing more refugees to the state.

Even though he admitted he wasn’t a politician, he never disclosed during the campaign that he knows almost nothing about the U.S. and Tennessee Constitution. This only became known after he took office.

Lee’s proclamation to continue refugee resettlement violates the separation of powers since Lee can’t appropriate state dollars that are being used to pay for the federal program. Only the state legislature has the authority to do that.

Now Lee wants a “Child Wellbeing Task Force” to be put in place. And he’s having Penny Schwinn, TN Commissioner of Education to get guidelines written about how local school districts can come to your home and make sure your kids are okay.

“Goal: ALL Tennessee children will receive a wellbeing check. Purpose: Connect with each child to verify wellbeing and identify need. Expectation: It is encouraged that all children, birth to age 18, receive a wellbeing check.”

Get that ALL children.

And because school districts are all ready too busy trying to educate remotely, Lee’s “guidance” will allow for “third-parties (non-district employees)” to come to your home and evaluate whether your kids are okay.

And notice that well being check caseloads are to be “equitably” distributed among well being checkers. Just what you’d expect from California-bred Schwinn.

How much will this cost? What about interpreters? Will illegal aliens cooperate with the well-checkers for fear of being discovered? What about that little thing called government overreach?

Anyone else had enough of Bill Lee?

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Homegrown Marxist Heads TN Highlander Center – Part 1

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson co-directs the Highlander Research & Education Center located about 25 miles outside of Knoxville in New Market, Tennessee. She is a nationally-connected Marxist, a member of the M4BL policy table leadership team, and works with a myriad of other socialist/Marxist/communist oriented organizations across the country among her other affiliations.

M4BL is the Movement 4 Black Lives, a revolutionary umbrella group established in 2014; it is fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice. M4BL policy platforms demand “end the war on black people, payment of reparations, invest (in communities)-divest (from police), economic justice, community control, and of course, political power.

M4BL will hold a Black National Convention at the end of August focused on harnessing the “black vote” to oust Trump and show Biden and the Democrat party the make-or-break heft of their voting power. These radical electoral organizers call their strategy the “Left Inside/Outside Project“.

Ash-Lee tells her comrades (her term of endearment), “organize the South to save the country.”

By organize, she means using umbrella organizations like her M4BL (Movement 4 Black Lives) to raise funds and train groups like Black Lives Matter, aka, “burners, looters & Marxists.”

Training and convening happens at the Highland Center.

It’s critical for all Tennesseans who oppose the evils of socialism, communism and Marxism (whose ends are the same in the U.S.), to know about the Highlander Center, it’s leaders, spin-off groups, the affiliates, the funders, and of course, their agenda to take down what they call the “New Confederacy.”

You can’t oppose something you don’t know about.
You can’t understand the planned destruction to civilized society if you don’t learn about it.
You can’t understand the planned destruction for our constitutional republic if you don’t learn about it.
You can’t publicly condemn and push-back against something you don’t know about.
You can’t educate anyone else about something you don’t know about.
You can’t demand push-back from your community and elected leaders if you can’t explain it to them.

It’s a mistake to cavalierly dismiss these passionate, destructive groups. They are well-funded and have been able to make the industry of organizing and destroying, a full-time paid job.

Who is Ash-Lee?

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson

Ash-Lee says that her mother was “an original member of the Black Panther party.”

The Black Panthers were a 60’s revolutionary socialist political group. Their platform, based in Marxist ideology, is no different than the one the Marxist BLM and affiliated groups is working from – anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti the U.S. Constitutional republic. These groups view violence as justified if it’s used to get their demands for social justice met.

The Panthers, BLM and M4BL, for example, were and are grounded in Black Liberation Theology. As an added feature, these groups hate Jews. More on this in another post.

Ash-Lee has invested herself in the radical nest created by the Panthers, BLM and many others, among them the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). In 2019, FRSO split into two groups; one group renamed itself Liberation Road and is heavily focused on electoral politics and the community organizing that goes along with it. This is just one group with which Ash-Lee works.

Liberation Road is “strong” in Tennessee, and “works closely with the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, Solidarity, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, Socialist Party USA, and sometimes the Workers World Party.”

Ash-Lee’s early years before she became co-director of the Highlander Center 

Being the daughter of an original Black Panther gave Ash-Lee a good foundation to begin amassing her own revolutionary bona fides.    

During high school she began to dabble in resistance organizing. But it was her time at East Tennessee State University when her revolutionary spirit really matured. Ash-Lee served as president of the Black Affairs Association, became active with the M4BL and was arrested for protesting. Her next arrest came in 2011, during a protest inside a Tennessee state legislative committee hearing.

Ash-Lee recognizes the opportunities to train and radicalize children through the Highlander’s Justice Camps, high school and college programs.

Highlander Justice Camp

The following year, Ash-Lee was an organizer with United Campus Workers and a Board member of Chattanooga Organized for Action (COA).

In 2013, before the FRSO name change, Ash-Lee stepped up her game and joined a FRSO fantasy junta to Mississippi to help the mayoral campaign for a black liberation activist. She traveled and campaigned alongside Cazembe Jackson, a trans male who, in 2016, became the national organizer for FRSO.

Ash-Lee and Cazembe continue to work together through M4BL (Movement 4 Black Lives).

She’s gotten involved in climate change radicalism, was an organizer for Chattanooga’s Concerned Citizens for Justice and was arrested during their protest against police brutality. In 2014, the same organization held a demonstration in Chattanooga to affirm their solidarity with Palestinians.

2016 Was a Big Year for Ash-Lee 

In the same year that Ash-Lee was named co-director of the Highlander Center, she was featured on a webinar hosted by Liberation Road to strategize against Trump’s election victory. She also received a formal promotion to the policy table leadership team of the M4BL.

Ash-Lee explains the M4BL this way:

“I think the work of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) will save us. The Movement for Black Lives is modeling some really exciting opportunities to push transformative demands in a time of crisis. What’s real is right-wing populism is growing, and we need to be growing a left populism even faster, on a greater scale, to turn the ship around. So it’s got to be multi-tactic, that’s clear. We are creating as many entry points to movement as possible. As a multi-racial, multi-sector movement, we are creating more and more and more entry points for folks to come get down with us. That’s also the Black radical tradition. It’s been multi-tactic.”

Months before she was selected to co-direct the Highlander Center, Ash-Lee made her first trip to the Palestinian Authority with BLM activists to stand in solidarity with Palestinians who they say are systemically oppressed by Israel.

Ash-Lee was chosen to co-direct the Highlander Center because of her connections nationally and her commitment to organize the South – revolutionary style that is. She is confident that her movement will prevail over capitalism and white supremacy and says “if we win here, we can win anywhere.”

She is referring to the South, starting with Tennessee.

As will be revealed over the next several Parts, Ash-Lee appears to have big plans for the Highlander Center’s role in helping to transform and remake our state and federal government to fit a Marxist version of America.

Highlander Center is a convening Marxist destination in Tennessee where plans are hatched, developed and organized to first defeat President Trump’s re-election and then, continue to empower radical progressives who ascribe to socialist/communist/Marxist doctrines the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayana Presley to be the main drivers of the Democrat party.

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Hagerty’s Bad Deals For Taxpayers Are Good For His Big Dollar Cronies

 

Who does Bill Hagerty put first – the average Tennessee taxpayer or his big dollar cronies?

Two examples immediately come to mind – TNInvestco and the Nashville Soccer stadium.  

The failed TNInvestco initiative was launched in 2009, by the Bredesen administration. The plan was intended to spur the growth of start-up companies and with it, jobs. A deal was cut with private insurance companies where the state would “sell” $200 million dollars in future tax credits for $150 million dollars cash. Then ten firms managing venture capital funds, were selected by the state to invest the cash in start-up companies. The ten firms were allocated $20 million dollars in management fees regardless of whether the public money they invested, were successful in achieving the program’s objectives.

Hagerty was a partner in the venture capital investment firm, Tennessee Community Ventures Fund (TCVF) which was one of ten selected by the state to gamble with Tennessee taxpayer money with most of the risk shouldered by the taxpayer.

Six years into the program, Tennessee’s Comptroller calculated that only $5.3 million was recovered on the State’s investment which was a measly 2.6% return on the initial investment.

Regardless, firms like Hagerty’s got their money.

The more recent Nashville soccer stadium never was and still isn’t a good deal for taxpayers. But if billionaire John Ingram and multi-millionaire Bill Hagerty want it, well it’s going to happen even if the city can’t afford it and even if “[s]ports stadiums are notoriously bad deals for taxpayers.”

TNInvestco was launched by the Phil Bredesen administration. The soccer stadium was former Nashville mayor Megan Barry’s $250 million dollar plan. Democrats freely spending other people’s money.

Bill Hagerty had his hand in both.

Nashville billionaire Ingram, lead owner of the soccer team, wanted this so badly that he offered to put up some of the money, letting taxpayers eat the rest. His crony-loving buddy Hagerty organized the Major League Soccer (MLS) Steering Committee to bring the deal to the table. It was a deal which included $250 million dollars in public financing and a gift of 10 acres of land to get the team and the new stadium. According to one source, the land was undervalued in the deal when in actuality it was worth twice the amount to the tune of $20 million dollars.

The Nashville-based Beacon Center explained that the soccer stadium deal was a bad deal for taxpayers. And another sports-insider publication reported that taxpayers were “already on the hook for $300 million in upgrades to Nissan Stadium, home of the National Football League’s Tennessee Titans.”

To sweeten the deal for the Metro Council who would have to approve the deal, Hagerty turned to Sen. Steve Dickerson who calls himself “the different Republican” (aka, super RINO), to carry legislation which would help get Hagerty’s deal approved.

“Dickerson said the two discussed plans to push for the legislation as they watched their sons compete in the same youth soccer match.” Dickerson sees soccer as becoming popular “among his own children [who attend an exclusive private school] and many others in the Middle Tennessee areas as well as Nashville’s budding immigrant community.”

Hagerty’s business partner and long-time crony Will Alexander (son of Lamar), was the co-organizer of the MLS Steering Committee. Will recently left the private investment firm he joined with Hagerty, to be the MLS’ team chief revenue officer.

Right after Hagerty was appointed Commissioner of TN ECD, he promoted Alexander to chief of staff.

See the pattern? Rich cronies help each other to become richer using working folks’ money.

John Ingram gave the maximum donation of $5,600 to Hagerty’s Senate campaign.

 

 

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Sethi Is the Delete Button on the Lamar-Haslam Machine

Tennessee lives matter!!! Liberate Tennessee Conservatives!!!

For too long, Tennessee’s ruling political class has been inbred to the Lamar-Haslam circle of establishment elitists.

When Dr. Manny says he’s an “outsider” the Lamar-Haslam GOP agrees – he is not one of them.

They didn’t pick him or groom him to inherit Lamar’s seat. Only a hand-picked Establishment Republican can have it.

They didn’t support candidate Trump in the primary, nor did their hand-picked marionette.

Hagerty was still supporting Marco Rubio in the primary until March 2016 when Rubio dropped out of the race. And before Rubio, he supported Jeb!

Hagerty didn’t support Trump until after Trump won the nomination.

Dr. Manny supported Trump in the primary with a $10,000 donation to the Tennessee Republican Party’s federal election account. Dr. Manny’s campaign said the donation was to support candidate Trump.

Hagerty moved from one uber-Establishment candidate to another. Neither Jeb! nor Rubio had any credible conservative credentials. In fact, Rubio had already proven himself to be soft on illegal immigration, an issue of great concern for Tennessee conservatives.

Lamar and Haslam were also soft on illegal immigration.

Lamar voted for Rubio’s 2013, “Gang of Eight” amnesty immigration bill. Opposing a Trump Executive Order on illegal immigration, Lamar said he wanted a “bipartisan immigration solution [which among other things, provides a status [ie, amnesty], for those already here.”

Haslam pushed for in-state tuition for illegal aliens and refused to sign the strengthened anti-sanctuary city bill which helps protect Tennessee citizens from illegal aliens who commit crimes in the state.

Dr. Manny hasn’t revealed who from the Tennessee Establishment empire told him to stand down and not to run for Lamar’s seat. Would anyone be surprised if the order had been issued by “the Machine”????? These good ole’ boys are used to getting their way and Dr. Manny is upsetting their plan to continue running “the Machine” even after they leave office.

Dr. Manny is the best chance to break the Establishment headlock on Tennessee conservatives.