Burrowed amongst extensive X-Games construction and L.A. Live weekend traffic, the historic South Central L.A. Tea Party held their first rally on July 24, 2011 outside the 102nd NAACP National Convention in Downtown Los Angeles to challenge the racist allegations against the Tea Party movement. During this busy Sunday afternoon, Tea Party advocates from all over Southern California came together on the lawn of the L.A. Convention Center in support of their newest members. In addition to signs that read “Give Me Liberty, Don’t Give Me Debt” and “Spread My Work Ethic, Not My Wealth,” there were signs that called the NAACP “Morally Bankrupt” and “Pro-Union, Anti-Black Citizens” which had some NAACP proponents booing and honking for the protestors to go home.

While the crowd robustly chanted “Tea Party No Retreat” and “Obama Stop Lying,” more heated NAACP supporters stood on the outer edge of the rally, contentiously spewing opposing views and yelling “the Tea Party is racist!” Still other adversaries coming from the convention peacefully gathered around to listen to the speakers and interact with the multi-racial crowd. When Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, organizer of the South Central L.A. Tea Party, took to the mic and proclaimed, “It’s not about being black, it’s not about being white, it’s about protecting America,” the 200 plus Tea Party members cheered.

Amid the array of enthusiasts was political activist Ted Hayes, Jr. who elaborated on the purpose of the South Central L.A. Tea Party gathering, “It will cause Black people to think. It gives us an option…hopefully, Jesse Peterson’s controversial step will cause Black people, even though to disagree with him, to at least consider what wrong with him, what he’s thinking about, and maybe they will find their way.” Having just come from the NAACP convention himself, The Tygrrrr Express conservative columnist, Eric Golub, said in defense of the NAACP, “It’s not a bunch of raving leftist preaching death to Republicans, it’s about medical and health issues, and the Army and Marines are in there.” A collected man promoting the decency of the NAACP added that an award ceremony for Black students who did well in school was taking place at that very moment.

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When Howard Dean implemented his “50 State Strategy” most, including some in his own party, considered his plan to be unworkable and more importantly “unwinnable”. After the resounding sweep of the Democrats in 2006 and Obama in 2008, the RNC has only feebly attempted to replicate this strategy.

From Wikipedia:

“As chairman of the party, Dean created and employed the ‘50 State Strategy’ that attempted to make Democrats competitive in normally conservative states often dismissed in the past as ’solid red.’ The success of the strategy became apparent after the 2006 midterm elections, where Democrats took back the House and picked up seats in the Senate from normally Republican states such as Missouri and Montana. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama used ‘The 50 state strategy’ as the backbone of his candidacy.”

As the November 2010 mid-term elections rapidly approaches it  is now even more important to focus on every race, every state, and every primary. Blogger Melissa Clouthier describes the problem in the Republican party:

“The Republicans conceding in between elections as well as races, themselves, has been a tremendous source of irritation. It is one thing to microtarget and write off a district because it’s ‘unwinnable’. The problem is that too many areas were written off that could, in this election, be won. And now, with no foundation there, it makes the task of winning more difficult. Texas isn’t the only place this has happened. In fact, this is a problem nationwide for Republicans. With a lack of organization and get out the vote effort and the lack of relationship building, many potentially winnable races will be lost simply because there is no there, there. It’s been conceded.”

Clouthier’s article includes a review of a primary race in a solidly red state of Georgia. In Georgia’s 12^th Congressional district candidate Ray McKinney is running a tight primary race against former fire chief Carl Smith, Jr. McKinney, a former supporter of Smith, has run a solid campaign while Smith has been embroiled in a number of ethical situations reminiscent of Democrat candidates. This is where the problem lies, as the Tea Party activists have become more politically savvy, every candidate must be held to a higher standard. To ensure a government that is free of corruption, the people must be willing to expose those within their own party whose actions are not aligned with our values.

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Isn’t it finally time for the behind-closed-door racial slurs to die?  If our legislators truly do represent the people, then, how is it possible that in this nation, with so many people, of so many different ethnicities and races, an individual could  be castigated for accented speech or the texture of their hair or the color of their skin?

I was born in 1958, at the cusp of one of the biggest change in our country’s ideology– the civil rights movement.  But, six years later, desegregation had still not infiltrated all aspects of our national society and in Louisiana, it had had almost no effect at all.

As  a six year old, desegregation had little impact, until the day that Bobby Kennedy came to our house and, sitting at our kitchen table, convinced my dad to “try once more” and apply to have me attend an all-white, private school in New Orleans.  That day changed my life.

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As the Senate Finance Committee completed its work on a bill that would greatly expand the government’s role in health care – requiring nearly everyone to buy insurance, and designing that insurance through subsidies and mandates – President Obama is trying to rally doctors to his side. At an event last week at the Rose Garden, phalanxed by doctors wearing their white coats (as well as some that White House staffers had handed out), Obama declared, “nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do.”

Dr. Benjamin Carson receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Yet one of the nation’s top surgeons, with credibility and acclaim the world over for the pioneering surgeries he has and his personal story of overcoming hardship, recently ripped the dominant health care legislation before Congress in a critique similar to that of conservatives and libertarians. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md., and recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, criticized in a recent interview the approach of the current bills for their mandate, creation of a “public option,” and lack of malpractice liability reform. 

“My biggest problem is I feel it’s going in the wrong direction,” Carson told reporters at TV station WLOS in Asheville, N.C. (Video here.)“It’s giving us more government and less autonomy. And I think we should be going in exactly the opposite direction. We should be having more autonomy and less government. And that is the kind of thing that brings the prices down.”  (more…)