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Did YOU know that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Mn) was JUST ELECTED as Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus?
CPC Elects New Leaders
Thursday December 02, 2010
Washington, D.C. – Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva and Keith Ellison today released the following statement marking their Dec. 1 election as co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for the 112th Congress:
“We are honored to have the opportunity to serve as co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) for the 112th Congress. We will work tirelessly to project a progressive vision for America, and to advocate that vision to the American public. Working families deserve a commitment from Congress to look out for their interests every day, and the Progressive Caucus will be on the front lines to honor that commitment.
The 112th Congress will present many challenges and opportunities for this country.As co-chairs, we will advocate for America’s working families and strive to ensure middle class prosperity for generations to come.We will work with President Obama to withdraw our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and to make peace the guiding principle of our foreign policy.We will be the first to reject and defeat Republican attempts to eliminate benefits for unemployed Americans even as they call for another billionaire bailout.We will continue to work with the broader progressive community to ensure that every American who wants to work can find a good-paying job to support their family. These and other fights will take time and dedication, and we welcome the opportunity to lead the way.
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Keith Ellison:
- Minnesota congressman
- First Muslim elected to the U.S. House of Representatives
- Supported Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam
- Former steering committee member of the National Lawyers Guild’s Minnesota chapter
- Publicly defended former Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist Kathleen Soliah
***EXCERPTED***
After earning a Juris Doctorate in 1990, Ellison worked three years as a litigator with the firm of Lindquist & Vennum. He then served as executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, which specialized in the pro bono defense of “low-income people and people of color.” After that, he took a job with the law firm Hassan & Reed Ltd.
Between 1992 and 2000, Ellison failed to pay all or part of his income taxes in five separate years. Consequently, the IRS placed liens on his home and he eventually was forced to pay some $25,000 in back taxes. Ellison also ignored fines that he had incurred for parking tickets and moving violations so numerous that his driver’s license was suspended multiple times.
Born in August 1963, Keith Maurice Ellison was raised as a Roman Catholic in Detroit, Michigan. He converted to Islam at age 19, while attending Wayne State University. After graduating with a B.A. in economics in 1987, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School.
As a third-year law student in 1989-90, Ellison penned two columns for the Minnesota Daily under the name “Keith Hakim.” In the first, he made respectful reference to “Minister Louis Farrakhan” and used a tone indicating that he was an avid Nation of Islam (NOI) advocate; Ellison also defended the incendiary NOI spokesman and black supremacist Khalid Abdul Muhammad. In the second piece, Ellison demanded reparations for slavery and said that African Americans should be offered the option of settling in an all-black, geographically self-contained, separate “homeland” if they wished. In February 1990, Ellison participated in sponsoring Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) to speak at his law school on the subject, “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy or Both?”
[…]
In 1995 Ellison worked actively on behalf of the Nation of Islam. At a University of Minnesota rally to promote Louis Farrakhan’s highly anticipated Million Man March, Ellison appeared onstage with Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who delivered a thundering, racist diatribe.
That same year, when Qubilah Shabazz, daughter of the late Malcolm X, was indicted for conspiring to murder Farrakhan, Ellison organized a march on the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minneapolis demanding that Shabazz be released and alleging that the FBI itself had conspired to try to kill Farrakhan. In a November 6, 1995, column for the Minneapolis periodical Insight News, Ellison wrote under the name “Keith X Ellison” and condemned a Star Tribune editorial cartoon implying that Farrakhan was an anti-Semite. Ellison argued to the contrary.
In February 1997 Ellison appeared as a local NOI spokesman with the surname “Muhammad.” He spoke at a public hearing in connection with a controversy involving Joanne Jackson of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism (MIAR), who supported Louis Farrakhan and was alleged to have said, “Jews are among the most racist white people I know.” Declared Ellison:
“We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction. Here is why we support Ms. Jackson: She is correct about Minister Farrakhan. He is not a racist. He is also not an anti-Semite. Minister Farrakhan is a tireless public servant of Black people, who constantly teaches self-reliance and self-examination to the Black community.”
[…]
In February 2000 Ellison gave a speech at a fundraising event sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, on whose steering committee he previously had served. The event was a fundraiser for former Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist Kathleen Soliah after her apprehension in St. Paul for the attempted murder of Los Angeles police officers in 1975. Ellison referred to Soliah as a “black gang member” (though she is white) and a victim of government persecution. He described her as a woman who had been “fighting for freedom in the ’60s and ’70s” and called for her release. (Soliah subsequently pleaded guilty to charges in Los Angeles and to an additional murder charge in Sacramento.) Ellison also spoke favorably of cop-killers Mumia Abu Jamal and Assata Shakur.
In November 2002 Ellison was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives and was re-elected two years later.
In 2006 Ellison ran (as a Democrat) for Minnesota’s Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Early that year, the Minnesota State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board reprimanded his campaign for unreported contributions, misclassified disbursements, and inaccurate cash balances. Ellison himself was fined for willful violation of Minnesota’s campaign-finance-reporting law and was sued twice by the state attorney general.
During the 2006 campaign, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad spoke at an August 25th fundraiser for Ellison, who accepted thousands of dollars in donations from Awad and another CAIR leader. In October of that year, Ellison traveled to Florida on a fundraising tour that included a party hosted by Altaf Ali, CAIR’s state director there.
Also in 2006, Ellison addressed his Nation of Islam links in a letter he penned to the local chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council. In the letter, Ellison asserted that his involvement with NOI had been limited to an 18-month period around the time of the Million Man March in 1995; that he had been unfamiliar with the organization’s anti-Semitic views at that time; and that he himself had never expressed or defended such views. All of those assertions were false.
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Ellison: Dems must “create crisis” to force GOP on tax cut
Cloward-Piven anyone?
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HAD ENOUGH….YET…..AMERICA?
We are not racist.
We are not violent.
We are just no longer silent.
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