Stacey Abrams evidently has some ‘splainin’ to do after she was outed for sitting on the board of a foundation that has awarded millions of dollars to woke professors who are anti-capitalists, support CRT, and advocate for the abolition of prisons.
Abrams is currently running for governor in Georgia for a second time against Republican Governor Brian Kemp and the results of that face-off may be even worse for her than last time.
She was a strong Democratic voice decrying conservative voter integrity laws in the state, claiming it was a return to the “Jim Crow” era. Unfortunately for Abrams, her statement was debunked when a record turnout of voters showed up on primary day.
She is a board member of the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation, named after Marguerite Casey, the sister of UPS founder James Casey, Fox News is reporting. It is a private grant-making foundation with a distinct woke tilt favoring leftists. She joined the board in 2021.
(Video Credit: Fox News)
The far-left foundation loudly advocates for defunding and abolishing the police as well.
Abrams has worked diligently at distancing herself from the #DefundThePolice movement. But the issue is apparently never far from where she stands. The high-profile Democrat has received at least $52,500 from the foundation, according to financial disclosures.
We're so excited for our event w/ Dr. Kelley + @DereckaPurnell on Thursday! They'll discuss her book #BecomingAbolitionists, how decolonization movements have informed police abolition movements and the necessity of an abolitionist future ✨ Register here: https://t.co/9WTMjFieRp https://t.co/420wVv8qjZ pic.twitter.com/6dUPbjNadY
— Marguerite Casey Foundation (@CaseyGrants) February 2, 2022
Edited by @Kaepernick7, #AbolitionForThePeople guides us towards a future without policing and prisons. The resource features the brilliance of many amazing thought leaders, building on decades of organizing and opening radical possibilities. Get a free copy below! @KaepernickPub
— Marguerite Casey Foundation (@CaseyGrants) October 14, 2021
In an effort to distance herself from the foundation, Abrams told Fox News Digital that she does not hold the same views as the foundation.
The foundation’s awards are revealing. In December, it announced the recipients of the 2021 Freedom Scholars Awards. Six professors who are “leading research in critical fields including abolitionist, black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies,” were awarded $250,000 each.
According to the foundation, the $1.5 million annual award “counters the limited financial resources and research constraints frequently faced by scholars whose work supports social movements.”
One notable award winner is Robin D. G. Kelley, who teaches African American history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and contends that capitalism is inherently racist.
“The secret to capitalism’s survival is racism,” he stated in a February NPR interview.
So exciting to see the videos celebrating the scholarship, research and activism of our 2021 #FreedomScholars cohort – @orangebegum, Angélica Cházaro, @CathyJCohen, @Lorgia_Pena, @Orisanmi, and Robin D. G. Kelley – recognized in this way! 🌟
— Marguerite Casey Foundation (@CaseyGrants) May 26, 2022
"the key to capitalism is racism"
-Robin D.G.Kelley.— JikDahPrime (@JikReuben) May 30, 2022
“So any true liberation has to be anti-capitalist,” he proclaimed. “There’s no way capitalism can save us. And even if you could create a capitalism that’s somehow non-racial, which of course, is impossible – but let’s say in theory you can do that. We still have deep exploitation and inequality produced by it.”
Even more damning during that interview was when Kelley declared that his “goal” growing up was to be a “communist for life.”
“I was involved in a study group organized by the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, AAPRP, and we’d study Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Angela Davis, I mean, Kwame Nkrumah. So this was outside the classroom. This is where I got the real education,” he commented.
“I wanted to be a communist for life. I wanted to make revolution,” he added. “And it’s like, of course, you’ve got to be a historian to be a real good communist, not the other way around.”
“I’m the first to say that what we think of as state socialism or communism has been a disaster,” he admitted. “I’m the last one to defend what actually becomes, in the case of Soviet Union, for example, not socialism at all, but state capitalism that’s redistributive. That’s what the Soviet Union became. And China’s the same thing. China did amazing things in terms of being able to raise the basic standard of living. But China is a state capitalist neoliberal society. We don’t have a communist country anywhere in the world. We’ve never actually had one. It has never happened.”
Another recipient was Lorgia García Peña, who is a former Latinx-studies professor at Harvard University whose tenure was rejected in 2019.
García Peña, who is now a professor in Tufts University’s Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, posited in June 2020 that ethnic studies are an “urgent” area of study “from elementary schools up to college,” because it is “charged with filling in the immense gap left by our Eurocentric education systems.”
“What we teach at every school right now — what we consider to be the standard humanities and social science curriculum—is actually grounded in white supremacy, but is masked as objectivity,” she told Boston Review.
“I was part of a program, Freedom University — which created a parallel university system to support University of Georgia’s undocumented students when the governor banned their enrollment — and because we had students and we had teachers we had a school,” García Peña remarked. “Literally, that is all you need, and then everything else is extra. So it’s critical to support students and support their demands.”
"The university has functioned as a laboratory for white supremacy, fascism, and the 'experimentation' of racialized bodies for centuries."
–Lorgia García Peña
— micah (@micahinATL) December 2, 2020
Other award recipients included Angélica Cházaro, who is a Critical Race Theory (CRT) professor at the University of Washington School of Law and also advocates for prison abolition, and Amna Akbar, who is an Ohio State University professor and proponent of “movement law.” She describes the legal concept as the “approach to legal scholarship grounded in solidarity, accountability, and engagement with grassroots organizing and left social movements.”
Angélica Chazaro, UW prof and migrant justice activist and author, telling @GovInslee, @thurstoncounty, and @tyemenser all the reasons they should cancel plans to build a new prison. #nonewwomensprison! pic.twitter.com/PuAH6JFqZt
— No New Washington Prisons (@NoNewWAPrisons) April 8, 2020
Check it out! Our essay is up, a preview of the @BostonReview "Rethinking Law" issue, by me/@sameer_ashar/@orangebegum, adapted in part from our @StanLRev article "Movement Law": https://t.co/AcZq7Z7iwE
— Jocelyn Simonson (@j_simonson) April 26, 2022
And there’s more… in 2020 the foundation awarded $3 million to its Freedom Scholars. Those included Alisa Bierria, a gender studies professor at UCLA who recently argued that the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade signaled “a broader attitude by this government that treats women’s lives as disposable and trans people’s lives as disposable.”
Ananya Ray, who is an urban studies professor at UCLA, was given $250,000 for supporting the abolishment of private property because it is “rooted in whiteness.” She is also a proponent of eminent domain and advocates for the government seizing hotels to turn them into housing for the homeless.
Another recipient is Charlene Carruthers, who is the founder of the Black Youth Project 100. She described the project as “a political home for anti-capitalists, radical black feminists, abolitionists, artists, educators, and many more types of freedom fighters.”
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