ROSE AGAIN…
4-9-12
Having an irrational Rose Sanders in our midst all of the time, we find it hard to have an objective view of her pathological hatred for people such as Dr. Cecil Williamson. What we find difficult to comprehend is her almost insane hatred of someone who has been dead for 135 years-Nathan Bedford Forrest. Even more incomprehensible is her hatred toward a piece of marble in a city cemetery. If someone who has been dead for more than a century or a slab of marble could hurt Rose, we might understand her obsessive compulsive hatred of them. Even her visceral hatred of Dr. Williamson is difficult to understand in view of the fact that we have not heard him say anything about Rose Sanders in months or even years.
Because Rose is always with us, we might not have an objective view of her considering her misplaced priorities in cursing, hating and disliking a dead person and a slab of marble; therefore, we sought another perspective of Rose. Printed below verbatim is an article by Lee Stranhan, whom we do not know, about Rose and her recent appearance at a press conference in Washington. You draw your own conclusions about our own Rose after reading Stranahan’s article.
BLACK EXTREMIST GROUPS ARE HOLDING BACK BLACK FARMERS
…This press conference is a multilayered indicator of why the Pigford settlement has been such a train wreck for legitimate black farmers. It contained a number of shocking revelations-all caught on video-about fraud perpetrated by black ministers, a discussion of a second large organized fraud ring and also a number of offensive racial outbursts that had nothing to do with farming.
The press conference was held by a ragtag group of self-styled black leaders. The most notorious presence was Malik Zulu Shabazz, the leader of the New Black Panther Party, there to announce that NBPP was going to make “black farmers“ a focus of his organization. Also in attendance was Ridgley Muhammad, the Minister of Agriculture for the Nation of Islam, who has written critically about the Pigford settlement for years. Gary Grant, the head of the Black Farmers Association of North Carolina, also spoke for a long time at the sparsely attended presser.
The star of the show however, was Selma, Alabama, semi-retired attorney Rose Sanders. Mrs. Sanders arrived late-to applause from the audience and panel-but her presence was significant for not only what she said but who she is. ..They (Hank and Rose) were recruited by civil rights attorney J. L. Chestnut to work at his Selma based law firm decades ago. She’s fiercely and famously outspoken against her perceived enemies, including the Tea Party.
Sanders has been involved in the Pigford settlement for years, primarily working on Track B. claims. These are the claims in Pigford that require a much higher standard of proof than the fraud filled “Attempt To Farm” Track A Claims. Mrs. Sanders helped win the single largest settlement in the entire Pigford suit-around $13,000,000 for her longtime friend Shirley Sherrod, her husband Charles Sherrod and their New Communities collective farm.
Mrs. Sanders has an intimate working knowledge of how the Pigford settlement devolved, which makes her admissions at the Press Conference about large scale fraud in the Pigford settlement particularly damning. I interviewed Mrs. Sanders for my upcoming Pigford documentary and I know she’s well aware of fraud.
So why wouldn’t Mrs. Sanders-an officer of the court-have done something to stop the fraud?
To understand that, you need to understand the significance of why she was on a panel with Shabazz, Muhammad and Grant.
ROSE SANDERS AND BLACK EXTREMIST HATE GROUPS: A HISTORY
Mrs. Sanders sitting down with leaders from the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party isn’t an accident due to improper vetting. She has a history with both the NOI and its crazier, violence preaching offshoot. This past year, Sanders was sitting in the front row for a speech by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
In the late 1990’s when the left wing Southern Poverty Law Center named the Nation of Islam as a “hate group”, Sanders sprang to the defense of the Nation with an editorial implying that the SPLC were white, Jewish racists. Compare this to when the SPLC recently named the American Family Association and Family Research Council as being hate groups for being “Anti-Gay” and Sanders said nothing--despite the fact that the Nation of Islam is more rabidly anti-gay than the AFA. Sanders objection and her defense of the Nation of Islam directly related to its clear, undisputed and ugly anti-Jewish rhetoric.
When Andrew Breitbart published photos earlier this week showing the New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz speaking at the same podium with Barak Obama during an event commerating Selma’s “Bloody Sunday”, Rose Sanders is clearly visible on the podium only a couple of feet away next to both Obama and Shabazz.
Sanders is no stranger to the Nation of Islam or the New Black Panther Party, nor does she seem to be above their anti-Semitic or anti-white rhetoric. She’s also prone to make wild, scattershot accusations of racism. Sanders has been the friend and attorney for Shirley Sherrod for decades. Last year after Andrew Breitbart famously posted an excerpt from a speech that Sherrod gave as a part of an editorial about racism and the NAACP, Sanders got a few months of media spotlight as Sherrod’s spokesperson.
In an interview with Media Matters, Sanders said, “Having him on that show is like rewarding a Klansman-giving a Klansman an award for burning a cross on Shirley Sherrod’s house.” …Mrs. Sanders own prejudices don’t allow her to see that the real Ku Klux Klan would never invite Jewish Andrew Brietbart out with them to ride horses dressed like ghosts. Predictably, nobody in the press called her out on her hideous, baseless accusations.
THE MENTAL PLANTATION
After a year of investigation, we now have video evidence from major figures in the Pigford case admitting to widespread fraud. We’ve had these admissions from a number of black farmers for some time now but this video evidence represents something new and it demands an immediate investigation from the House, Senate and Department of Justice. The Pigford scandal is more expensive than Solyndra and more sweeping than Fast & Furious, as significant as those scandals are.
Sanders and Grant both readily discuss fraud in Pigford during this press conference in a way that neither of them would do when I interviewed them. This video contains a major smoking gun; it shows them casually discussing the fact that black ministers were committing fraud. Sanders did talk about the Texas fraud when we spoke and as in the press conference, she focuses on the perpetrator being white.
So why the openness to discuss Pigford fraud? I believe it as because they were speaking in front of all black audience. Grant, Muhammad, Shabazz and Sanders share a common belief that the perceived enemies of black people are constantly attempting to divide and conquer by splitting black people into small groups and causing them to fight each other. According to this theory, it keeps black folks weak and distracted while the real enemy-the white oppressors-continue their reign of exploitation. It is a paranoia borne of a philosophy based on bottomless victimization.
I’ve interviewed Sanders, Muhammad and Grant and each has expressed this view to me in one form or another as the reason they are opposed to any focus whatsoever on fraud in Pigford, especially by white media. They see the fraud investigation as a trick--another way to divide and conquer black folks while the real culprits such as white lawyers and government hires make out like bandits. Ridgely Muhammad has also taken it upon himself to point out these white bandits are largely Jewish. Meanwhile, they believe it makes villains out of thousands of poor black people who be persecuted over a measly $50,000 while lawyers like Al Pires make millions.
I’ve actually heard similar objections to investigating fraud in Pigford from a number of white liberals. It’s a direct consequence of holding an oppressor/oppressed view of the world and pits racial or class forces against each other in a constant struggle for supremacy. It’s a victimology worldview that I’ve come to see as guiding premise of liberalism as such. It forms the intellectual underpinnings for Black Liberation Theology, since it has Marxist roots.
Ideas have consequences, and one of the consequences of this oppressor/oppressed worldview view is a constant, inescapable paranoia. You can see this same virus in slightly different strain right now in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Sanders, Grant, Shabazz and Muhammad are all united by common vision of being trapped in a world of perpetual struggle against racial oppressors. It is a nightmare universe where slave ships and attack dogs feel like present day realities. Progress is invisible to them. They don’t see an America that has made a steady climb away from legal collectivism based on skin color or that has given them freedom and opportunity to pursue their own dreams.
Rose Sanders herself started from humble beginnings to become someone locked arm-in-arm with a former U. S. President. Think of that and think what it says about the United States. Yet that vision of America is invisible to her. Right in front of her, unseen.
The mind is a powerful thing and what we repeat to ourselves is truth for us. The same set of facts and our beliefs cause us to reach vastly different conclusions. Her contrast in perceptions and attitudes with black Americans of around the same age like Herman Cain or Adam West couldn’t be starker.
Thus, the spectacle of Sanders, Shabazz, Muhammad and Grant is just pathetically sad. They have largely been failures at actually helping black farmers as a group and they have no idea why. They blame the system and the white man and the Jews but can’t look in the mirror and see how their own fatalist views have made a solution impossible. They don’t want a successful resolution for the black farmers because it would prove their most fundamental worldview wrong.
If the hard working black farmers are ever going to achieve any sort of victory in this dispute, they need to transcend the philosophy of victimology that has helped cause this mess.
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This is as good an analysis of Rose Sanders and her friends in the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party as we have ever seen. If you will read it carefully, you will see that what is said about her in this article is what we experience daily in Selma. It is hopeless to expect Rose to ever change because she is forever trapped by her own worldview in which things in the past such as slave ships and attack dogs are present day realities. She is forever trapped in the paranoia of being oppressed and can not see if the society was the way she visualizes it, she would never be free to do and say the outrageous things she does and says.
She is more to be pitied than scorned!
