Million-Dollar Racial Incitement Against Law-Abiding Poll Watchers

To get a sense of the racial incitement Democrats will be willing to use in November’s election, read this article written by a couple of college kids and published in the Tucson Sentinel. Despite the fact nobody reads the e-only-Tucson Sentinel, this irresponsible report by A.J. Vicens and Natasha Khan demonstrates the depths the Left is willing to plumb to stoke up racial resentment during the election.

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A. J. Vicens

Vicens and Khan’s operation isn’t a real journalism program. They are part of News21, an operation designed to attack conservatives and Republicans in the upcoming election — to accuse them of ill will and conspiratorial efforts against minorities. They are a well-funded and unfair opposition research program.

Natasha Khan

No sane Republican or conservative should grant an interview to anyone from News21 this fall, unless they demonstrate a change in their biases.

But of course News21 can’t change their biases. Their funders wouldn’t be happy. News21 is bought and paid for by the left-wing Carnegie Foundation. (The great Scot immigrant and Pittsburgh industrialist would be in a rage to learn his legacy is being used to undermine the rule of law). Their other funder, the left-wing Knight Foundation, is no different.

These foundations have showered News21 with cash to give college kids cameras and plane tickets to roam the country attacking voter integrity efforts. They cloak themselves with academic camouflage courtesy of Arizona State University. They proudly call themselves the “future of journalism.” “We’re redefining journalism,” their webpage declares.

No argument there. But conservatives should investigate the ideological agenda funding News21, because they seek to affect the November election. Recently the Washington Post swallowed their faulty voter fraud work with a feature article, no questions asked.

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Let’s turn back to the racial incitement of News21’s Vicens and Khan.

They report that black voters are “intimidated” by the presence of law-abiding poll watchers in a Milwaukee precinct. Vicens and Khan ask no tough questions about the legal meaning of intimidation when they blissfully report:

The black voter “noticed three people in the back of the room. They were watching, taking notes.”

Officially called “election observers,” they were white. [Jamilia] Gatlin, and almost everyone in line, was black.

“That’s pretty harassing right there, if you ask me,” Gatlin said in the hall outside the gym. “Why do we have to be watched while we vote?”

“Pretty harassing … if you ask me”? News21 was asking them — but didn’t ask the questions everyone is thinking: Pencils? Taking notes?  Vicens and Khan didn’t bother to ask what was so intimidating about taking notes with pencils. Heck, in Philadelphia even billy clubs don’t seem to bother some people! Vicens and Khan ignore that inconvenient backdrop when they use the term “intimidation.”

Vicens and Khan don’t turn to any law to define “intimidation.” They falsely accuse poll watchers of committing a crime. Do they teach defamation per se at the Arizona State j-school?

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Instead, Khan and Vicens, and their million-dollar funders, serve up racialist tripe. If there are white people in the room, black people should be offended!

Here’s the problem. Those poll watchers – which News21 simply must identify as white like some crime report from 1961 (“A negro robbed a woman…”) – have a right to be in the polls under state law to observe the election. News21’s funders might not like the fact that tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens will be in the polls all over the nation this fall to ensure that crimes don’t occur and laws are followed. But the poll watchers in the story did nothing wrong.

Except, of course, they were white. What more do you need?

News21 published the racial paranoia of Jamila Gatlin as if there was not a whiff of crazy in it. To college kids, heads filled with all species of racial grievance, perhaps there wasn’t. But to the rest of us adults who live in a multi-racial country with hundreds of interactions in a week with people of all races, Gatlin sounds nuts.

Worse than nuts, actually. She sounds like the segregationist from 1950s Mississippi. A black person ‘round here? How dare they.  Somebody do something!

Khan and Vicens should be ashamed of themselves. But they won’t be. They will email their story to friends, family, and fellow travelers with the implication they did a great job. They are soldiers on a mission no different than any political operative. They seek to excite the Democrat base because they want Democrats to win. And no matter the trappings, no matter the fancy academic mothership at Arizona State University, that’s exactly what News21 is. Republicans and conservatives best take careful note and respond accordingly.

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