Category: Highlander Center

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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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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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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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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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Why Millions Do Not Support Black Lives Matter

 The current climate has many believing if you do not support  Black Lives Matter you are considered a racist. However, there are millions who do not support it, or find it credible due to it being founded on the lie “hands up don’t shoot”. Promoting an agenda based on a proven lie has diminished its struggle for justice. It all began with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson MO on August 9 2014 at the hands of a white police officer. As the criminal acquittal of the officer caused communities to be enraged, former Attorney General Eric Holder launched an investigation to see if civil rights were violated. On page 8 of Eric Holders report it states:

       

The entire claim that Michael Brown was surrendering with his hands up exclaiming “don’t shoot” was proven not to be true. Another problem Black Lives Matter has, is the out right, public  disdain for police. It is certainly a first amendment right to declare your hate for something, but promoting violence towards those you hate is something else. In this video originally captured by NBC, protestors in NYC are heard chanting “what do we want?” “Dead cops!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”    This as the death of Eric Garner sparked new protests by Black Lives Matter in December of 2014/

                                                                               http://Video Shows NYC Protesters Chanting for “Dead Cops

                               

Probably the most egregious faults of the Black Lives Matter movement is the slogan itself.  How is it black lives matter, but only those killed at the hands of white police? Hundreds of black, mostly men are murdered every single day in cities throughout the United States, with Chicago leading the way. Why do their lives not matter enough for rage and demands for change? Do their families grieve any less because, their son was killed by one of their own? Did that life not matter enough because a white cop was not their killer? Murder is murder, but it seems to take a different perspective when a black is killed by a black.

It never fails that when a sign or chant declaring “all lives matter” is seen or heard, the word racist is used immediately. It is unfortunate what could be a symbol for change and justice is demeaned and exploited.  Until those who lead the movement of Black Lives Matter shows their sincerity and willingness to be outraged at every black death, including the millions of black babies aborted, their cause will only appeal to those who are taken by lies not facts. 

Murder is Murder…all lives matter.