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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=lvpsf@igc.org href="mailto:lvpsf@igc.org">Steve Zeltzer</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=Undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:Undisclosed-recipients:">Undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, February 19, 2013 8:15 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights
Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs
Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership<BR>Wed, 08/10/2011 - 14:44 — Bruce A.
Dixon<BR>
<DIV><A
href="http://blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership">http://blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership</A></DIV>
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width=400 height=300 apple-height="yes" apple-width="yes"><BR>by BAR managing
editor Bruce A. Dixon<BR><BR>“Not only is Bill Gates a cousin,” gushed academic
Henry Louis Gates at the Urban League convention in Boston last week, “Bill
Gates a brother.” Bill Gates, of course, is the founder of Microsoft, and
one of the wealthiest men on earth. Invited to deliver the keynote address at
the National Urban League’s annual meeting in Boston last week, the
billionaire lectured the assembled on education and poverty, although Gates is
not qualified to teach an hour in any classroom in the land, and has
certainly never been poor.<BR><BR>Corporate Funding of the NAACP, Urban League
and Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership<BR>by BAR managing
editor Bruce A. Dixon<BR>Bill Gates has never been a friend of black people
anyplace on earth. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a large investor
in Monsanto, the company that invented genetic engineering, actuallycreates
hunger on the African continent and undermines the food security of African
nations by pushing genetically modified crops upon reluctant African
farmers and their governments. If African farmers can be locked into planting
patented crop varieties, instead of planting and saving their own seed
as they have the last ten thousand years, they will be obliged to buy the
expensive and environmentally destructive pesticides these frankenfood
crops require, along with paying yearly license fees.<BR><BR>Inside the US, the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been a key player in the drive to
privatize public education. Gates Foundation staff helped write
the guidelines for the Obama Administration’s Race To The Top program,
under which states and school districts, in order to receive any federal
education funds at all, had to hire consultants, often from the same Gates
Foundation to write the detailed plans for closing thousands of neighborhood
public schools, implementing high stakes testing and turning teachers into
the cowed, insecure and casual WalMart style workforce preferred by private,
often for profit charter school operators.<BR><BR>So how did the National
Urban League become the mouthpiece and cheering section for corporate
experiments on black school children at home and the hijacking of the
global food system in Africa? The answer is that like the NAACP, the National
Committee on Black Civic Participation, the National Council of LaRza,
the National Conference of Black State Legislators and even the
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Urban League is now and has for
some time past been completely dependent on corporate donations to keep
going. Those that pay the bills, call the shots.<BR><BR>This is the new model of
African American leadership – a leadership that covets, courts, kowtows and
accomodates to power rather than speaking truth to it. This is why whenever
the interests of ordinary black people conflict with those of corporate America,
a great number of our well-funded black misleaders will inevitably side
with their corporate sugar daddies rather than their constituents. It’s why the
Congressional Black Caucus and Operation PUSH assisted in foisting
subprime mortgages on countless black families, and why the NAACP speedily
forgave the predatory loan practices Wells Fargo and Bank of America. It’s why
Sharpton, the NAACP and the Urban League all endorsed the merger of
AT&T with T-Mobile and Comcast’s swallowing of NBC.<BR><BR>It’s time to turn
the page on the venerable civil rights organizations, whose model of corporate
funding has allowed them to be utterly taken over by corporate interests
and used against us at every opportunity. It’s time for something completely
different. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at<A
href="http://www.blackagendareport.com">www.blackagendareport.com</A>.<BR><BR>Bruce
A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a member of the state
committee of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him via this site's
contact page, or at
bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.<BR><BR></BODY></HTML>