By DEXTER DUGGAN
MESA, Ariz. — The chairman of an Arizona Tea Party group introduced a representative of Black Lives Matter Arizona at a racial-healing conference here, saying, “Black lives matter, and of course we agree that all lives matter,” but blacks are unique in U.S. history as “a people who have endured chattel slavery.”
Ron Ludders, head of the Arizona Project Tea Party, introduced Katt McKinney as someone who “shares our values.”
McKinney told the audience, “Please know that our intentions are positive.”
The Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Arizona informed its readers about this conference.
After describing some of her background, including founding Black Women of Faith, McKinney said, “Today what you’re doing is very necessary.”
When she had lived in Los Angeles, she said, she didn’t distinguish among people as being members of different racial or ethnic groups.
“The 14th Amendment, and the knowledge of it, is very important to our community,” she said.
That amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed citizenship for freed black slaves.
The Tea Party’s Ludders proceeded to speak passionately for nearly an hour at the gathering, billed as the “2016 Arizona Civil Rights Conference,” about the oppressive history of slavery and of black liberation in the United States.
Black Lives Matter and the Tea Party probably would be cast as warring opposites by stereotyping major media. However, the goal of this conference, stated on the day’s schedule of activities, said: “Our foremost mission is healing the perilously deep and divisive race wounds that have broken the heart of our beloved country.”
Some of the black speakers noted that they had left the Democratic Party and become Republicans.
Stephanie Trussell, a weekend talk host on a major Chicago radio station, WLS (890 AM), said she switched parties and is “a loudmouth, a proud Republican” who thinks it’s wrong to partially deliver a baby then stick something into its head. We know what Planned Parenthood thinks about black and brown people, Trussell said.
If the attitude that Democrats have ill-served blacks were to be generally accepted, that political party would be threatened with the loss of one of its strongest groups of supporters.
Readings at the conference focused on key documents related to the struggle over slavery. They included excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, the post-Civil War 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C.
The suburban Mesa gathering originally was to have been right on the floor of the Arizona House of Representatives in central Phoenix on Saturday, May 21, now that the legislature had concluded its session.
However, House Speaker David Gowan, a white Republican, canceled permission to meet there after a black House Democrat, Reginald Bolding, objected.
One of the conference organizers, Ted Hayes, a California black activist for racial healing and against illegal immigration, told The Wanderer that Bolding thought there wouldn’t be diversity at the conference, but only white people.
The Arizona Capitol Times, read by politicians, other public officials and activists, quoted Bolding: “It looks like you have a group of individuals who are not representing the cultural diversity we need in this state. A group who I believe is trying to hijack the sacrifices that were made by those who actually fought in this country to ensure there are equal rights. It’s definitely concerning.”
The story said Bolding also was concerned the conference was to be in the legislative chamber, “rather than out on the lawn, where most rallies are held.”
The event had to go in search of a new site on short notice, but Hayes said he didn’t blame anyone for the cancellation. Bolding “did not know, he spoke before he investigated the situation . . . which he admits. . . . I’m not upset. . . . We just need to disengage and re-engage.”
Hayes hoped there’s still “another shot at (having) a conference on the (House) floor” this summer, focusing on the 14th Amendment and its related issues, and that Bolding will agree to help with the event.
House Speaker Gowan isn’t “a bad guy. He just got caught off guard” and cancelled the conference, Hayes said.
If anyone was to blame for a misunderstanding, Hayes said, he’d accept the blame himself.
Attendance at the May 21 meeting’s different site was down sharply from the expected level. The Tea Party’s Ludders said more than 150 people had confirmed they’d attend. But only about 25 people were in the audience seating, occupying a small part of the meeting hall.
Ludders told The Wanderer that he expected to see a local black activist, Rev. Jarrett Maupin, at the conference, but he didn’t show up. Maupin often is a regarded as a political liberal.
McKinney, the Black Lives Matter representative, told the conference she has acted as an adviser to Maupin.
The new conference location was about 21 miles to the east-southeast of the state capitol building, in the hall of a charter school in Mesa that was available on the Saturday.
Even though an email was sent on May 18 to warn of the change in location, Ludders told the audience as the conference began, “I understand some people have gone to the state capitol” instead and are asking, “Where are you guys?”
Ludders told The Wanderer that as he searched for a new location, he was being asked for “big money” to reserve a hall, as much as $5,000, before he heard the school location was available for free.
The conference lasted from 9:45 a.m. to 2 p.m., with only one 14-minute break. However, boxes of free pizza for a late lunch awaited participants as they exited to the lobby.
Trussell, the radio host, said she recently moved to Arizona and is learning about border issues here, but continues her weekly Chicago broadcasts on WLS, from 9 p.m. to midnight on Sundays.
The United States used to be about “Give me liberty or give me death,” Trussell said, but now it’s “Give me freebies.”
She told the conference she was born to a 17-year-old single mother and hopes she can reach some young girls in black neighborhoods now.
Like other black speakers here who switched to the Republican Party, Trussell said that becoming a Democrat was just something that was expected to be done.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president, Trussell said, she was 15 years old and working at McDonald’s to pay her way through Catholic school. She was hearing, she said, that if a Republican were elected president, blacks would be put back into slavery.
“What would make me very happy,” she told the conference, “would be more white people” standing up to reject charges they’re all racists.
The next speaker, James Spencer, a veteran of 11 years with the U.S. Marine Corps, also went to Catholic school, “where you read a lot,” he said, but becoming a Democrat means “you just go along with the program.”
Having lived under Jim Crow segregationist laws, the 61-year-old Spencer said, he became a Republican.
The Republicans passed the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, he said, but they take no credit for it. “Republican Party’s a great party. We have to get our message across.”
A frequent topic for Hayes as a speaker, which he presented again at this conference, is that the white majority in the U.S. shouldn’t feel it has to accept the blame of being racist, because this nation went to war with itself in the 19th century, at huge cost in lives, to battle against slavery.
“Oftentimes when we heal a wound, it’s gonna hurt, gonna sting,” Hayes said.
Hayes also emphasizes in public appearances that the 14th Amendment was written after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to freed black slaves, not as a general approval for citizenship for anyone who happens to be born on U.S. territory.
14th Amendment Misused
Former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, a strong foe of illegal immigration, also spoke.
“Illegal is not a race, it’s a crime,” Pearce said, asking why politicians would “incentivize someone” to enter this country illegally by offering the unauthorized entrant inducements like U.S. sanctuary cities, which hamper law enforcement.
Pearce illustrated that the 14th Amendment is misused to grant U.S. citizenship to babies born here to parents who aren’t under U.S. legal authority.
If a foreign diplomat happens to have a child born on U.S. territory, Pearce said, the newborn is a citizen of the parents’ country, not of the U.S. And if U.S. citizens have a baby born while they’re traveling outside the U.S., that child is still a U.S. citizen, not a citizen of whatever country he was born in.
Black pastor Myron Jackson told the conference he used to be a Democrat but became a Republican.
“We have not come as far as we could have come had we followed our Republican forefathers,” Jackson said. “…No Christian can be a pawn of a political party” that approves “the murder of babies, same-sex marriage.”
The Facebook page for McKinney’s Black Women of Faith says:
“Black Women of Faith (BWF) is a spokesman for the God-supported image of Black Women. We exist and unite to protect our public and media reputations, to erase the world’s preconceived notion of our lifestyles, to assist in overcoming emotional barriers, strongholds and curses, by encouraging the embracing of our culture and true beauty, and to advocate for and inspire in the expectancy of promises made, through the development of our Faith and spiritual lives, for the building of our homes, and our marriages, and in the raising of our children, and community.”
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