1.LM-ers puff 'gangster "civil rights" caricature'
2.Congress of Racial Equality - GM WATCH profile
Roy Innis has been described as a 'gangster "civil rights" caricature' but that hasn't stopped Spiked - part of the rightwing LM network - from puffing him in the article below as an anti-environmentalist civil rights hero.
The Spiked piece also claims we have given Innis an Uncle Tom award. Anyone who reads the 'Uncle Tom Award' article by GM Watch editor, Jonathan Matthews, will see it's actually Innis's organisation - CORE, and not GM Watch, that hands out Uncle Tom awards. But, hey, if the cap fits...
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=337
The black American journalists Glen Ford and Peter Gamble describe CORE - the organisation Innis heads - as 'a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black cheerleaders'. They also report how James Farmer, the heroic former head of the original Congress of Racial Equality confronted Roy Innis on TV for turning 'the organization into what Farmer called a "shakedown" gang.' (see item 2)
But for Spiked Innis apparently is just a dogged hero who's 'eye-balling greens, those usually well-meaning young trendies'.
For more on Spiked; http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=124
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1.'The greens want to do right, but they are so wrong'
Meet the Sixties black civil rights activist who now thinks that environmentalism is one of the greatest threats to Africa. [excerpts only]
Brendan O'Neill
Spiked-online, Thursday 25 May 2006
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/319/
'We are fighting the same battle, for the liberation of black people. In the past that meant taking on old racists and colonialists now it means challenging environmentalists too.’
Roy Innis doesn't mince words. As national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the New York-based black civil rights group founded in the Forties, he has caused a mighty stink with his attacks on greens. Innis thinks that environmentalist thinking is helping to 'strangle Africa'. He argues that European Union restrictions on the use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria are ‘killing black babies’; that Western liberals’ handwringing over genetically modified crops and food is 'holding Africa back'; and that ideas of sustainable development are causing a 'stagnation in African development'. As you can imagine, he hasn't made himself especially popular in the process he's even earned the tag 'Uncle Tom', a stooge for Big (White) Business, from some of the more intemperate greens.
'Yeah, I’ve heard that one', he says. 'I'd like to know where these people were in the Fifties and Sixties when my organisation provided the shock troops on the civil rights battlefield. Look at my work on civil rights and you'll see I'm the opposite of an Uncle Tom.'
How has the chairman of an organisation whose members confronted the racist cops and KKK members of the American Deep South in the heady summer of '64 ended up eye-balling greens, those usually well-meaning young trendies, in 2006?
...I’m sure introducing GM to Africa would be beneficial to farmers, but it would be no substitute for industrialisation and urbanisation, for liberating people from being reliant on farming in the first place, whether it be of the GM or non-GM variety.
Yet Innis is raising important and controversial questions. He's received a lot of flak for his arguments. Some greens seem especially irritated that a black man with a track record of fighting for civil rights is daring to criticise their aims and agenda. They claim that he has taken CORE from its civil rights roots to 'the far right'. One commentator has awarded CORE the 'Uncle Tom award', and the organisation has been accused of accepting 'Black Gold' (geddit?) from oil companies and from Monsanto, the multinational biotech company developing GM technologies (6).
(6) The Uncle Tom Award, Freezerbox, 14 March 2005
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=337
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2.Congress of Racial Equality - CORE
GM WATCH profile
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=174
CORE - the Congress of Racial Equality - is an African American group that played a leading role in the American civil rights movement. During the late 1960s, however, CORE all but collapsed and the remnant was taken over by Roy Innis who moved the organisation to the Republican right.
In January 2005 CORE organised two events as their Dr Martin Luther King celebrations. One of these was a 'UN World Conference' promoting GM. The other was CORE's reception at the New York Hilton Hotel where they honoured, amongst others, Green Revolution scientist, Norman Borlaug, and neo-conservative, Karl Rove, George W. Bush's election strategist and the man who oversaw black voter disenfranchisment in Florida and Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.
Past CORE invitees to their King Day celebrations are reported to have included Austrian politician and Nazi-sympathizer Jorg Haider, and right-wing radio host Bob Grant, who once called Dr. King a 'scumbag'.
The Chairman for the New York Hilton reception honouring Rove and Borlaug was Hugh Grant, Chairman and CEO of Monsanto. Monsanto is also listed as CORE's corporate partner. CORE does not only get support from Monsanto for its campaigning. In 2003 ExxonMobil gave CORE $40,000 - $15,000 of which was earmarked for 'global climate outreach'. (see Black gold?)
CORE's Chairman, Roy Innis, was the 'host' at the Hilton celebrations as well as the opening speaker at CORE's 'UN World Conference' on GM. Roy Innis has proven a curious champion of racial equality. He is said to have called the struggle against Apartheid 'a vicarious, romantic adventure' with 'no honest base,' and when asked in 1973 why his organization supported Idi Amin despite the Ugandan president's hatred of Jewish people and praise of Hitler, he said, 'we have no records to prove if Hitler was a friend or an enemy of black people.' Amin's decision to expel 50,000 Asians from Uganda was hailed by Innis as 'a bold step'.
CORE's GM campaign got underway in 2003. In September 2003 CORE was among groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, taking part in pro-GM protests during the WTO summit in Cancun, Mexico.
A few months earlier, in May 2003, CORE was reported as planning a protest against Greenpeace, alleging that the environmental group had committed 'eco-manslaughter' through the impact of its policies on the developing world. Greenpeace's 'opposition to genetically modified foods' was listed by CORE as among the ways by which 'these zealots' cause 'misery and death'.
Roy Innis's son, Niger, who currently serves as CORE's National Spokesman, was quoted in a press release for the anti-Greenpeace protest as saying, 'The carnage has got to end. People should be ashamed to support these fanatics and the eco-manslaughter they are perpetrating on the world's most destitute people. Today's protest is just the first step in bringing justice to the Third World.'
Roy's son Niger is no stranger to 'counter protest'. The Competitive Enterprise Institute noted the involvement of Innis when reporting a counter protest outside an ExxonMobil shareholder meeting in Dallas: '...faced with the unexpected numbers of free market demonstrators the anti-corporate protestors finally left. "I think we rattled them. They're packing up their bags and they're leaving," said Niger Innis of the Congress on Racial Equality, one of the groups conducting a counter-demonstration. "Victory is sweet."'
In late January 2004 CORE organised a 'Teach-In' in New York entitled, 'Eco-Imperialism: The global green movement's war on the developing world's poor'. Contributors included the lobbyists Patrick Moore, CS Prakash, and Roger Bate. In a press release CORE's Niger Innis, another contributor, said that after the Teach-In 'eco-imperialism' would be a household word, adding, 'We intend to stop this callous eco-manslaughter'.
Another contributor was Paul Driessen of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), the Godfather among lobby groups attacking the environmental movement. CDFE are also behind The Economic Human Rights Project, descibed as 'an initiative of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, in cooperation with the Congress of Racial Equality', and as a 'growing coalition... dedicated to correcting prevalent environmental myths and misguided policies that help perpetuate poverty, misery, disease and early death in developing countries.' Driessen is also said to be a senior policy advisor to CORE.
Niger Innis also serves as an Advisory Committee member for Project 21 an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research - a conservative/free market foundation with a strongly anti-environmental agenda.
Black American journalists Glen Ford and Peter Gamble describe Project 21 as a 'Black front group' and 'a network and nursery for aspiring rightwing operatives'. They are equally scathing about CORE - 'a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black cheerleaders'. They also report how James Farmer, the former head of the original Congress of Racial Equality confronted Roy Innis on TV for turning 'the organization into what Farmer called a "shakedown" gang.' Ford and Gamble describe Innis as a 'gangster "civil rights" caricature'.
Dr. Herschelle S. Challenor, Professor at Clark Atlanta University, in an address on Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, given at the United States Embassy in Kinshasa in January 2000, drew a sharp contrast between the character of Farmer and that of Innis: 'James Farmer, the leader of CORE during the highpoint of the civil rights movement, was a bright, dedicated activist of unimpeachable integrity. His immediate successor, Roy Innis was seen as a chameleon prepared to change his political ideology as necessary. There were rumors that he worked in later years as an FBI informant.'
In 2005 CORE produced a Monsanto-funded video called 'Voice from Africa'. The director and script-writer had worked on previous Monsanto projects. It drew heavily on interviews with GM cotton farmers in South Africa who claimed sizeable benefits from Monsanto's GM cotton. However, a five year study has shown that small-scale South African cotton farmers have not benefited from GM cotton and that the impression that they have is due to media hype created by American biotechnology companies to try and convince the rest of Africa that they should approve genetically modified crops. Another damning report, on the biotechnology industry's showcase projects in Africa, from Aaron deGrassi, a researcher in the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK, came to very similar conclusions.