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TN Highlander Center Director All in With BLM Anti-Semitism – part 7

The United States Commission on Civil Rights has stated, that “anti-Semitic bigotry is no less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.”

Tennessee Highlander Center director Ash-Lee Henderson and Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder, Patrisse Cullors are both vocal promoters of the Israel-hating campaign known as BDS (boycott, divestment & sanctions).

The anti-Israel BDS campaign attacks Zionism, the movement that helped to establish the State of Israel.  Martin Luther King Jr., often cited by progressives as a symbol for social justice, understood that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. As he said, “When people criticize Zionist, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”

BDSers want to eliminate the democratic state of the Jewish people.   For this reason, rallying BDS’ers use chants like “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” which means there would be no Israel or Jews between the Jordan River and Mediterranean. The Jew-hating BDS campaign against Israel is, without question, the new anti-Semitism.

Cullors’ anti-Jew wokeness was ignited after joining a 2014 junket to the West Bank led by Ahmad Abuznaid, a Palestinian-American who has convinced black Americans who hate both the police and the U.S., that their grievances align with Palestinians who hate Israel and its Jews.

Ash-Lee started her anti-Jew campaign in 2014, in Chattanooga when she was an organizer with Concerned Citizens for Justice, a self-identified black liberation organization whose goal was to end white supremacy in Chattanooga.

In December 2016, shortly before being named co-director of the Highlander Center Ash-Lee Henderson took a solidarity trip to what she described as “occupied” Palestine. “Going through checkpoints, seeing rubber bullets, reminds us what our comrades and some of us experienced in Ferguson, [and] IDF soldiers totally remind me of the cops that brutalized [me].”

According to Ash-Lee one of the trip’s highlights was spending time with the Afro-Palestinian, admitted terrorist Ali Jiddah, a former member of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The man she lauded as the “elder of the African village in Jerusalem’s Old City” was imprisoned in Israel for 17 years after planting four hand grenades which injured multiple people. He was released from prison as part of a prisoner swap and in a later interview, admitted to his crime.

Typical of radical leftists’ fake wokeness, Cullors and Ash-Lee ignore the fact that Palestinians still use the Arabic slur “abeed” (slave) to refer to Afro-Palestinians like Jiddah.

The same year Ash-Lee became anti-Jew woke, she received a formal promotion to the policy table leadership team of the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL), the revolutionary umbrella group for black activist organizations including BLM. M4BL advances its own form of racism and its hate of America and white people through policy platforms including one titled “Invest-Divest,” the first version of which labelled Israel an apartheid state.

After unexpected push-back, M4BL tried to conceal its lies about Israel by moving all anti-Israel language to a white paper titled “Cut Military Expenditures” now linked to the M4BL policy platform on invest-divest which claims that Israel is an apartheid state, is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people”, that homes of Palestinians and land “are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements”,  and that “Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US funded apartheid wall.”

Of course there is no mention that Israel’s security wall has decreased deaths from suicide bombers. 

Ash-Lee has joined with other anti-Jew groups like Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) which opposes Christian Zionism and pushes the BDS campaign in U.S. churches. She has also joined forces with Ahmad Abuznaid to keep pushing their anti-Israel vitriol.

 

Ash-Lee has also adopted BDSer’s favorite death-to-Israel slogan – “from the river to the sea…” and wearing the black and white keffiyah popularized by the “father of modern terrorism”, Yasser Arafat.

 

Founding board member of Tennessee’s American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) Drost Kokoye, was among the first Islamists to openly support the BDS campaign. It wasn’t long before AMAC featured Linda Sarsour, among the most vocal anti-Semites in the U.S., at an AMAC event. This was followed by then AMAC chair Zulfat Suara, publicly embracing Jew-haters Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Sarsour says she has been “deeply involved” in the BLM movement and was heavily praised by BLM co-founder Alicia Garza in a recent virtual interview. Recall, that Ash-Lee and Garza have a particularly close relationship.

Ash-Lee and Linda Sarsour serve together on the advisory board of the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity an organization pushing to move more foundation funding to groups led by “people of color.”

In 2019, BLM’s Cullors was named the Executive Director and Board President of the BLM Global Network Foundation. Cullors now sits on the multi-million dollar BLM war chest and is the media go-to person to speak for BLM. Cullors has doubled down on BLM’s embrace of the BDS campaign – “[w]e realized we [BLM activists] needed to take our solidarity [with the BDS campaign] a step further. We had to be more public.”

Three Jew-haters with access to bottomless BIG money – what could go wrong?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hagerty & Blackburn Were Against Election Fraud Before They Certified It

Six days after Tennessee’s two Senators voted to certify the electoral college votes, One America News questioned why the Democrats were being allowed to divert attention away from the “mounting” evidence of election fraud, including a number of the easiest to question:

Pennsylvania – 205,000 over-votes (meaning more votes than registered voters); 682,000 votes illegally processed due to lack of oversight.

Georgia – 66,248 underage voters; 10,315 dead people voted; 2,560 convicted felons voted; 4,502 unregistered voters voted.

Arizona – 36,400 non-citizens voted.

These and many more election irregularities such as those related to absentee ballots are catalogued in the three-part Navarro report which concludes that “[t]here was no single ‘silver bullet’ that allegedly won the election for Biden; instead it was ‘death by a thousand irregularities’ in any given battleground state; and, most importantly with respect to the question as to whether the election may well have been stolen, the narrow alleged Biden ‘victory’ margins in each of the six battleground states were dwarfed by the number of potentially illegal ballots.”

On January 2, four days before the electoral college votes reached Congress, Hagerty and Blackburn surprised Tennesseans with a strong, forthright commitment to object to certifying the electoral vote:

“Tennesseans elected us as their United States Senators to represent their views and values in Washington and to always fight for them, which is why we have concluded without any reservation that we will stand against tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election. We know that our elections, built around the Electoral College which is a fundamental element, are the envy of the world. Protecting their integrity and ensuring the results are free and fair are critical to maintaining the trust of our own citizens. Since November 3, hardworking men and women from across Tennessee have contacted us to justifiably express anger and concern that some states conducted the recent election in a manner that did not respect the rule of law and may have violated many of their state constitutions as well as Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Many are concerned about the sanctity of the one person one vote guarantee. Our founders understood that it is ultimately the people’s job to preserve the sanctity of these most fundamental American systems, and so they charged the people’s representatives in Congress with a specific role in the process. We plan to exercise that role fully in the new Congress.” — Senator Marsha Blackburn and Senator-elect Bill Hagerty

Big bold words which Hagerty and Blackburn ditched after the Antifa riot as if somehow it justified their back-pedaling. The feckless and insincere Benedict Arnolds reversed course, voted to certify what they previously claimed were “tainted electoral results” and hand the country over to the tyranny of a Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer administration.

Unlike the intelligent and principled Sen. Josh Hawley from Missouri, Hagerty and Blackburn showed how little respect they have for legal voters in Tennessee – including the ones who have given them the privilege of serving in the U.S. Senate. They’ve shown Tennesseans how quickly and easily they will concede and have yet to explain how or why they now believe that election fraud is acceptable.

Even if one believes that the responsibility to address the electoral shenanigans rests with state legislatures, members of Congress have the statutory option and the representative duty, to question, debate, and if necessary, object to electoral outcomes.

Once the Capitol was secured and the electoral vote count resumed, Hawley continued explaining his objection to Pennsylvania and the “unprecedented interference of the Big Tech corporations in this election in favor of the Biden campaign, not just in Pennsylvania but everywhere.” Hawley’s wife and child had been threatened in their home by protestors the night before Congress’ counting of the electoral votes. Hawley refused to be intimidated either by the harassment of his family or the pathetic “riot” at the Capitol – he moved forward offering making his statement of objection because he refuses to “bow to a lawless mob.”  

In stark but sadly, predictable contrast, Hagerty and Blackburn put their own political careers ahead of their oath of office. They put their own self-interests ahead of their representative duties. They fled from upholding the Constitution.

Hagerty used President Trump’s endorsement to fool the uninformed voter and when the going got tough on January 6th, Hagerty showed Tennesseans that he is neither loyal to the one that brung him to the dance and that he is sufficiently arrogant to take voters for granted.

Blackburn’s betrayal is the best evidence that she has been in D.C. waaaaaay too long!

Both have impugned their credibility and indelibly proved they can’t be trusted – as if they ever could. It remains to be seen whether Hagerty’s new fixer-smoother-over Jim Henry, a long-standing Republican political insider, can gloss over the fact that Hagerty has always been an Establishment RINO.

Let’s see how creatively Hagerty and Blackburn explain selling-out Republicans in Tennessee – that is, if they ever bother to explain themselves. It also remains to be seen the effect these sell-outs have on the Tennessee GOP.

 

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Highlander Expands Reach of Radical Agenda Using Fiscal Sponsorship – Part 6

Following the example set by Black Lives Matter (BLM) funders, the Highlander Center is also using the less-than-transparent fiscal sponsorship model to expand the reach of its Marxist agenda more rapidly.

Fiscal sponsorship is a fast way for a new “non-profit” entity to solicit and accept tax-deductible donations using the 501(c)(3) umbrella of its fiscal sponsor who is responsible for reporting to the IRS. This arrangement has been criticized as potentially enabling tax-deductible donations to flow quickly to an entity ultimately deemed not qualified to receive this money.

For example, in 2016, the Thousand Currents Foundation agreed to act as the fiscal sponsor for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLM GNF), the money chest for the BLM movement. Since the BLM GNF was not a 501(c)(3), the fiscal sponsorship shielded it from “having to file regular Form 990 reports with the IRS, [or] disclos[ing] comprehensive financial data in the same way a tax-exempt nonprofit must.”

Instead, the BLM GNF operated as a “project” of the Thousand Currents Foundation. Under this arrangement, millions of dollars flowed into the BLM GNF.

BLM co-founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi served as advisors to the BLM GNF which has been noted for its lack of transparency. Between 2017 and 2019, the BLM GNF spent about $4.6 million dollars on travel, consultants and personnel versus a measly $328,000 granted to outside organizations including some BLM chapters.

As of 2018, Garza and Tometi have moved on to other projects.

Garza founded the Black Futures Lab (BFL) whose fiscal sponsor is the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) which the Heritage Foundation says is a promoter of the Community Chinese Party.

The Black Futures Lab supports the BLM GNF and the Movement 4 Black Lives. Recall, that Highlander co-director Ash Lee Henderson is on the policy team of M4BL and that Garza, considers Ash-Lee Henderson “fam.”

There is plenty of cross-pollination in funding sources for these “social justice” organizations with money funneled through a spider web of foundations. Highlander’s donors listed by Influence Watch include several Soros-funded front groups including Tides and the Proteus Fund. Other organizations in Tennessee including TIRRC and the American Muslim Advisory Council have received money from the Proteus Fund.

Highlander’s last available 990 from 2018, shows an annual revenue of over $4 million dollars and the other Highlander Fund showed an end of year balance of almost $3 million. Flush with money, Highlander’s co-directors are ready to hire an executive assistant. They are also advertising for a full-time digital strategist and a person to expand Highlander’s Economics & Governance program.

The Center’s 2016 annual report showed continued financial support from TN-ACLU director Hedy Weinberg and her Vanderbilt sociology professor husband Dan Cornfield, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the TN Arts Commission.

Highlander Center gets into fiscal sponsorship game 

To date, Highlander is acting as the fiscal sponsor for seven organizations which include, BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity), National Bail Out, People’s Advocacy Institute, Power U Center for Social Change, SiOP (Standing in Our Power), Southern Connected Communities Project, and The STAY Project.

All of these organizations are doing their part for “transformative justice” and community organizing. Highlander describes its fiscal sponsorships as “Incubating & Innovating Radical Work – Highlander incubates and innovates radical work by offering fiscal sponsorships and high capacity support to projects and networks.” (see December entry).

Power U’s “principles of unity” mimic much of Ash-Lee’s M4BL’s policy platforms – “the systems of White Supremacy, Capitalism, and Heteropatriarchy are the roots of oppression in our society.”

Among Highlander’s fiscally sponsored organizations, Power U and The Stay Project target young people, complimenting Highlander’s own youth programs – Children’s Justice Camp (ages 6 -12, to “work toward a society that celebrates diversity and equity through the brilliant minds of our youth”), Seeds of Fire (ages 13 -17, to train youth into social justice warriors “to build collective power and influence critical shifts in policy decisions and practice”), and training programs for college students.

In 1935 Hitler reminded us that “he alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

The concept was simple – children of the Hitler Youth movement would be immersed in the ideology of Naziism using education and Nazi propaganda to ensure that Naziism would control Germany’s future.

It appears that the Highlander Center agrees with Hitler about molding young minds. It is using fiscal sponsorships to expand its reach and help raise a new generation of Marxists.

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the Highlander Center’s use of its

financial growth combined with its national reach and connectedness to its Marxist leadership.

For example, in 2018, the TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) had Highlander use its “local and national relationships” to bring an intense and negative focus to ICE arrests of illegal aliens working at a meatpacking plant in Bean Station, Tennessee.

Ash-Lee Henderson is the driving force for the Highlander Center, committed to using her national connections and growing resources to create the “new America.” She explains it this way – if the “Breathe Act” which she worked on with Congress squad members Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, which “uses federal dollars to reward cities and counties that defund their police departments” doesn’t get signed into law then, she “promise[s] that you will continue to see the kind of fervor and rigor of peaceful and passionate and righteously rageful protests in the streets until Black people get what they want.”

BLM leader Patrisse Cullors, a self-described Marxist, puts it more simply – if their demands aren’t met, then “burn everything down.”

And they have proven that they mean it.

 

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Gov. Lee Wants Closer Ties to Communist China Despite Warnings

Even if Bill Lee chooses to ignore the Secretary of State and the U.S. Director of Intelligence, it doesn’t mean that our state legislators have to. Make sure to share this information with your state House and Senate members.

In February, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at the February 2020 National Governors Association meeting and shared two pieces of cautionary information:

  • a Chinese government-backed think tank report has rated U.S. governors on their attitudes toward China and that “[m]any of you, indeed, in that report, are referenced by name.” 
  • that groups with seemingly benign names and objectives like the The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship in Foreign Countries, is actually “the public face of the Chinese Communist party’s official foreign influence agency, the United Front Work Department.”

This week, America’s Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said that along with election interference and influence, China “poses a greater national security threat to the U.S. than any other nation – economically, militarily and technologically.”

Consistent with Pompeo’s warning to governors, Ratcliffe emphasized that “[m]any of China‘s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The 2013 Smithfield Foods sale to China proves their point about the very thin line between the communist Chinese government and so-called “private” Chinese companies. Shuanghui, the “private” Chinese enterprise which acquired Smithfield, had a much closer relationship to China’s communist government than Smithfield’s CEO claimed to know. A U.S. reporter investigating the sale wrote:

Despite its public listing in Hong Kong, Shuanghui answers to the Chinese government – going beyond regulatory compliance. It receives directives from Beijing, and it follows them… Here was conclusive proof. Robert Wan, son of Chairman Wan Long, confirmed this relationship to me…..The Chinese government acts like a de facto board of directors for the country’s domestic industries – even for publicly traded companies like Shuanghui. The Communist Party issues the five-year plan, and Shuanghui is expected to follow that direction.

In September, in response to media about the Tennessee session at the North American Chinese Investment Summit held in Beijing, Governor Lee indicated that the state was reviewing its policy regarding recruitment of investment in Tennessee from Chinese business owners.

On September 15, 2020, a Tennessee Government Operations Joint Subcommittee heard testimony from Economic & Community Development (ECD) Commissioner Bob Rolfe. During his testimony, Rolfe stated that regarding China and Tennessee’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) initiative, 40-plus companies operate in Tennessee representing approximately $600 million dollars invested in the state and employing about 6,000 Tennesseans.

These figures put China as the third largest FDI country doing business in Tennessee. According to Commissioner Rolfe, Tennessee was not doing business with China as a country but with private businesses from China. It’s not clear whether or even how the Commissioner has verified the status of these businesses.

The Department of Justice’s China Initiative has identified FDI as warranting a high level of transparency because of its potential to threaten U.S. infrastructure.

Rolfe also informed the Subcommittee that about $2 billion dollars annually of Tennessee goods are exported to China, while Tennessee imports approximately $28 billion dollars annually of goods made in China.

Common Core math applied to trade.

According to Rolfe, Bill Lee has asked ECD to “make sure Tennessee maintains its automotive ecosystem,” and that the state remain at the “forefront of recruiting any project related to electric vehicles.” Rolfe told the Subcommittee’s legislators that “most of this technology comes from private companies in China.”

Pompeo and Ratcliffe’s warnings suggest that on the economic front, Tennessee’s leadership is moving the state in a questionable direction. Moreover, these decisions do not account for the cultural and political inroads being made and championed by the Marxists and pro-Communist China Liberation Road agitators operating out of the Highlander Center near Knoxville.

Tennessee has already experienced at least two incidences, the latest in 2019, of Chinese nationals who became naturalized U.S. citizens being prosecuted for theft of trade secrets.

In February 2019, a grand jury indicted a U.S. naturalized Chinese national employed by the East Chemical company in Kingsport, Tennessee. She was working with a Chinese national living in China. Together, they conspired and almost successfully stole trade secrets owned by several companies estimated to have cost approximately $119,600,000 dollars to develop. This case also involved China’s Thousand Talents plan referenced by Secretary Pompeo in his address at the National Governors Association meeting. This Chinese program which helps harvest U.S. technology was implicated in the East Chemical case.

Three years earlier, a U.S. naturalized Chinese national attempted to steal Dupont/Chemours process for making the color white. At that time, the Chemours plant in New Johnsonville, Tennessee was one of the few Dupont plants making the color white using the trade secret which was almost stolen and exported back to China.

In both cases, despite being a U.S. naturalized citizen, the Chinese national went back to the communist Chinese government to make the trade secrets and intellectual property they attempted to steal available to government officials.

More recently, during the same month that Secretary Pompeo was warning governors about the potential of being hoodwinked when dealing with Chinese entities, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was indicted for wire fraud and making false statements about his affiliation with a Chinese university “while receiving funding from NASA.” Federal law prohibits NASA from funding projects in collaboration with China or Chinese universities. Concealing the information caused UTK to falsely certify its compliance with federal law.

The Lee administration should be held to account to Tennesseans for his administration’s decisions and actions regarding business with Chinese companies – even those they believe are private entities. The Lee administration should be required to share with Tennesseans fully vetted and reliable information that the Chinese companies neither act at the direction of or are accountable to the Chinese Communist Party.

Tennesseans have good reason to be concerned especially if Joe Biden successfully steals the election.

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Tullahoma City Alderwoman Rupa Blackwell At It Again!

Once again, a leftist , progressive city level politician aims to transform the city of Tullahoma TN by creating a “diversity” council. Alderwoman Rupa Blackwell, who was endorsed by the Women for Tennessee’s Future, a very liberal organization whose founding member was the disgraced, former mayor of Nashville Megan Barry, among others. According to the donor website “Open Secrets”, the Women for Tennessee’s Future is listed as a “liberal” organization.

Alderwoman Rupa Blackwell

                                      

This isn’t about diversity. Diversity is a word used when certain members of various populations want to change their surroundings to fit their beliefs and lifestyles.  This is about the current political climate throughout America, which is anti-everything that America stands for.

In a previous article published on Dailyrollcall.com in July of 2020, we exposed the original agenda which included residents of the city of Tullahoma suggesting ideas which could be the focus of this new “council” which centered on bullying, the lgbtq community, and gender bias. Also discussed were the possible renaming of anything confederate, such as schools and streets.

While everyone believes in fairness and equality for all, this formation of a government entity would allow said governing body (Tullahoma City Council)  to create special classes of people, that would be given special considerations. That is not the role of any body of elected officials.

Despite the push for a socialist agenda, we are still a Republic governed by a Constitution which is for all the people, not those designated by liberals as marginalized. 

If the residents of the City of Tullahoma wish to remain in the governing for all business, they will consider voting Rupa Blackwell out in 2022.  

In the meantime, Tullahoma and Coffee County residents should attend an open meeting on Weds, Dec 2 at 4pm at the Tullahoma City Hall to say no to government creating special classes of residents!

 

 

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Nashville’s Gideon’s Army Not What Local News Reporter Says.. Part 1

The public face of Gideon’s Army is one of blacks helping blacks within their community. From mental health issues, to mentoring Nashvilles black youth, to “violence interrupters” walking the city streets trying to enforce peace. Sounds great, and on one level this is a much needed community resource.

However, one only has to look and listen to what members of Gideon’s Army says and does privately and you will see that public persona is a front for radical activism. Doing good for the community is great, using that community to promote an agenda is not.
Recently, in an ad campaign that portrayed Gideon’s Army to be an extreme arm of black power, a local Nashville News reporter, Phil Williams decided to take to the streets with Gideons to see the work they do. What the local reporter did not do was delve into who the members are, and who they connect and partner with.

The first noticeable problem is how they present themselves to the community. Dressing as black militants,and wearing shirts with black raised fits denotes radical activism. Claiming to be role models for the youth of their community while dressed like street soldiers sends a really bad message to young kids. To some it may even be intimidating. If your goal was to truly show black kids how to develop into constructive adults, why not show them how to dress for success?

Another disgusting show of disrespect for their own, is the constant referral to others in the community as “niggas”. Haven’t blacks fought for years to have that word banished as they find it highly offensive? Yet members of the Gideons army use it repeatedly. Don’t tell me it is acceptable within the black community to use that word when people have been fired and arrested for calling a black the “N” word. You can’t have it both ways. In this video clip, Hambino Godbody is discussing the stupidity of N’s killing N’s, and how there is a time and a place for it but not against their own. Watch fast, it is sure to disappear!

http://https://www.facebook.com/hambino.godbody/videos/3473111956116590

 

Working with children in black communities is of utmost importance to members of Gideon’s army, yet their personal posts on social media ( all public) show a lack of respect for woman, and down right disgusting sexual references. 

 
Then there is a the racism issue. Whites are often excluded or put down as being supremacists if you don’t agree with BLM. Martin Luther King worked for equality and the desegregation of blacks, but now through groups like Gideon’s Army and other radical organizations, they demand their own of everything. Black tv, black radio, black schools, black sports, black unions, and much more.  Gideon’s Army engages with other groups like the Black Nashville Assembly, that call for the “transformation” of Nashville. Unlike their public persona, which claims to be all about children, and peace, they stand with others that want to defund the police and develop “political clarity”. 

 

 This is not the way to go about  changing the black community. Has Gideon’s Army done good for their neighborhood? In part, yes. What they need to learn is you have to practice what you preach. 

 

 

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Tennessee’s Highlander Center: A Home for the Chinese Communist Party? Part 5

It’s no secret that Movement 4 Black Lives leaders (M4BL), Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the pro-Communist Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) have the same intention and objectives.

Part 1 of the Highlander series provided details about Highlander co-director Ash-Lee Henderson’s connectedness to Liberation Road, one of the two pro-China communist organizations operating in the U.S..

In 2016, Liberation Road restated its solidarity with “Black activists, protesters, organizers, and communities in the fight for Black Lives” and “the unleashing of Black rage and Black hope, the forging of Black organizations and the nourishing of Black leadership.”

Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is the other U.S.-based pro-China communist organization. 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.

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 is also a member of the M4BL policy table leadership team. Launched in 2014, M4BL is a revolutionary-focused umbrella group of Black organizations whose agenda includes “Black Power Rising,” a massive redistribution of wealth and abolishing the electoral college.

Ash-Lee’s comrade-in-arms Alicia Garza, a trained Marxist and co-founder of BLM, also takes credit for helping to create the M4BL.

M4BL’s website states unequivocally, that “We are anti-capitalist: We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system.”

Garza wears a variety of hats; she serves as the chief strategic advisor of the BLM Global Network Foundation and is the founder and principal of an advocacy group called the Black Futures Lab, (BFL), which supports the BLM Global Network Foundation and the M4BL. The fiscal sponsor of the BFL is the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA).

The Heritage Foundation states that the CSA has, from its founding in 1972 in San Francisco, been a “promoter” of China’s communist government. “‘According to an authoritative 2009 Stanford University paper tracing its early days to the present, and which can be found on marxist.org, the CPA began as a Leftist, pro-People’s Republic of China organization, promoting awareness of mainland China’s revolutionary thought and workers’ rights, and dedicated to self-determination, community control, and ‘serving the people.’”

Both the San Francisco CPA and the Boston CPA voiced support for BLM here and here, and their own grievance against perceived police brutality and use of excessive force.

CPA’s Boston chapter partners with the Chinese consulate. In 2010, the Boston CPA showed their support for the takeover of China by its communist party by raising the Chinese Communist Party’s flag over Boston’s City Hall. Ayanna Pressley, then a member of the city council, was present. She is now a member of the “squad” in Congress.

Ash-Lee Henderson’s “strong” organization, Liberation Road, notes that a communist-led revolution includes “overthrow of the capitalist state” and that “our thinking on these stages is drawn” from Lenin and “Mao’s discussion of the origins of the Chinese communist party.”

The Highlander Center which Ash-Lee co-directs, fiscally sponsors PowerU, an organization whose “principles of unity” says that “the systems of White Supremacy, Capitalism, and Heteropatriarchy  are the roots of oppression in our society,” mimicking the M4BL’s policy platforms.

In July, Garza and Ash-Lee were featured at a Harvard Kennedy School Summer Teach-In along with Jessica Byrd who is also a M4BL activist. This teach-in was intended to help draw students, faculty, and community members to support the radical goals of Garza and Ash-Lee’s movement.

Garza tweeted out her excitement about this event to her “fam @JessicaLByrd and Ash-Lee Henderson!”

Ash-Lee and Garza appear to have a close personal and ideological relationship. They are Marxists who abuse the idea of “social justice” to try and topple the horrible capitalist America which ironically, has provided the millions in grant money funneled to their organizations.

Ash-Lee’s anti-capitalist venom even extends to other Black people.

She says that they have people who are “really ready to throw down” and that now’s the time to take action against “the violence of white supremacy, the violence of capitalism, the violence of militarized forces in our communities that are terrorizing people…”

The Daily Signal reported that in 2015, Garza “told an important gathering of global Marxists, ‘It’s not possible for a world to emerge where black lives matter if it’s under capitalism, and it’s not possible to abolish capitalism without a struggle against national oppression.’”

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The Highlander Center is the foremost and oldest social activist training center in the U.S. Under the leadership of Ash-Lee Henderson, it is a hub for boots-on-the-ground agitators and their organizations, and teaches young and old the basics of Marxist/Maoist community organizing skills.

The people of Tennessee, as well as those in other states who want a free market, Constitutional Republic, need to wake up and realize that the Highlander Center is dedicated to insurrection against our government.

What, if anything, will be done about this treasonous organization and its supporters?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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.