Clear Channel caves to BLM’s demands to remove anti-poverty billboards erected by black conservatives

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A billboard campaign aimed at helping lift inner-city youth out of poverty launched by the Center for Urban Renewal and Education has ended after the organization’s founder said it came under a “deliberate attack” by Black Lives Matter activists.

CURE founder Star Parker, a black conservative activist, syndicated columnist and author, told “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade on Monday that the billboards, which featured a picture of black male and female youths along with advice like “Finish School” and “Take Any Job,” were targeted by BLM because they didn’t like the message.

“Why would people be upset by that message?” Kilmeade asked.

“People upset, no this is a deliberate attack of Black Lives Matter,” she said. “They went to [communications company] Clear Channel and demanded that these billboards are taken down.

She went on to explain that CURE is a Washington, D.C.-based policy institution “promoting messages to fight poverty and promote restored dignity through messages of faith, freedom, and personal responsibility for 25 years.”

“I have taken this message into our most vulnerable ZIP Codes to talk to the heart of the people,” Parker, who has lifted herself up from a life of poverty and welfare, continued.

“So after the [post-George Floyd] riots this last go around, this summer, we decided … that we were gonna go in and speak to the hearts of those that are waking up the next morning and say, ‘What has happened?’” Parker said, adding that one of the most effective ways of reaching them is through billboards.

“These are the homes and ZIP Codes that they do not have cable, they do not have Internet, they have broken schools and broken families. And so you speak to them through billboard,” she added.

(Courtesy: Fox & Friends)

In a statement to Fox News, Clear Channel claimed that the company tries to accommodate most “viewpoints.”

“We strive to respect a wide variety of viewpoints on diversity and racial sensitivity in our local communities,” the statement said. “This ad did not receive proper approvals, lacked appropriate attribution, and was promptly removed.”

But Parker pushed back saying that Clear Channel “helped design” the billboards.

“This is a deliberate attack,” she said, lamenting the Left’s “cancel culture” that she believes prompted opposition to the billboards.

“Now Black Lives Matter is gonna demand every advertising agency, every company let them vet the information before it goes through?” Parker asked.

The CURE founder said she demanded to know what “was so offensive” about the messaging, which included phrases like “Get Married,” “Save & Invest,” and “Give Back to Your Neighborhood,” as well as various Bible verses and the organization’s website URL.

The messaging, she said, “is about a success sequence that works and the people that are most vulnerable, those young people that are caught between all of this violence that really need our help as a society needed this message.

“And for Clear Channel to take them down, they’re breaching a contract, and I don’t think that Black Lives Matter should get away with” pressuring the company to allegedly “break a contract” by removing the billboard ads.

Kilmeade noted that a Democratic politician in a district where one of the billboards was located also objected to its message and vowed to “get rid of it.”

Parker said that BLM activists “stormed” Clear Channel’s Baltimore headquarters demanding that the billboards be pulled. She also said that fears BLM activists will force magazines and other media to vet ads through the organization before running them, which she says is “unacceptable.”

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