Letter from a reader
Trump/Pence regime representative forced to leave the panel at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention focused on police murders of young Black men
September 15, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
White House Director of Communications for the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, was greeted at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Convention in New Orleans last month with people walking out, people standing and turning their backs to her, defections from the panel she was on, and the moderator of the panel attempting to force her to speak about Donald Trump.
Manigault-Newman was ultimately forced to leave the panel that was focused on police brutality and murders of young Black men.
Manigualt-Newman, who was a contestant on Trump’s TV show, The Apprentice, and is an ordained Baptist minister, supported Trump during the election campaign. In an interview with Frontline she said, “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.” The week after Trump was elected, Manigault-Newman appeared on the View and said, “I think in the first five days he’s done a spectacular job…” and she went on to say that she thinks that Trump will be “incredible” for the country, and “he brings me such joy.”
The organizers of the convention conveniently invited Manigault-Newman after the panel had been organized, but when her name was leaked to the press that she would be one of the participants in the panel on August 11—“W.E.B. Du Bois Plenary: Black and Blue [[:]] Raising Our Sons, Protecting Our Communities”—two of the panelists, Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times Magazine and Jelani Cobb, a journalism professor and staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, declined to participate.
The Washington Post reported that Manigault-Newman’s presence on the stage, “along with journalists and activists focused on police brutality and family members of black men killed by police, roiled the annual convention of black current and former journalists and public relations professionals.”
Before Manigault-Newman took the stage, two mothers whose sons were murdered by the police spoke. When she appeared on the stage several people in the audience stood up and turned their backs to her in protest. Several in the audience walked out, including Roland Martin of TV One and Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post. Lowery later tweeted out, “this omarosa appearance is beneath NABJ.”
In response to the two mothers, Manigault-Newman tried to turn the subject from police murdering Black people to violence in the Black community when she talked about how she lost her brother and father to violence.
The moderator, Ed Gordon, host of BET’s Weekly with Ed Gordon, immediately got into an argument with her when he asked her to talk about Trump. She refused to do so. Then it was reported, “Moments later, Trump’s voice billowed over the loudspeaker for several seconds before his face flashed on two large screens in the room” with Trump giving a speech to the cops on Long Island on July 28. “I said, please don’t be too nice,” Trump told the cops. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody—don’t hit their head. “I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”
When she refused to talk about Trump, she was questioned about Attorney General Jeff Sessions reviving the war on drugs and “broken windows”1 policing and if she had done anything “to address these issues within the administration.” She gave a feeble response that she does things for the Black community.
As things got more tense and heated, it was reported “the audience was in open disbelief—and discomfort—as dozens of cellphone cameras captured the exchanges.”
The Los Angeles Sentinel reported, “When NABJ President Sarah Glover stood before the audience to explain the strict parameters of Manigualt-Newman’s appearance, which did not include policy questions impacting African-Americans, the groans of exasperation grew louder.”
Due to the turmoil and open hostilities towards her from the stage and audience, Manigault-Newman was forced to leave the stage.
Now it is time for the masses of people in this country to drive the Trump/Pence off the stage.
The NIGHTMARE that was being confronted at the NABJ Convention panel—of Black and Latino people openly threatened by the President, with maximum sentencing, stop-and-frisk going national, intensified police brutality and murder of our youth with no holds barred—MUST END!
Organize for November 4—the beginning when people all over the country act together to drive this whole fascist regime from power.
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO!
1. The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of how to deal with the urban, Black and Latino communities, in order to go after anyone in those communities. When former LAPD Chief William Bratton headed the New York Police Department, he initiated this “broken windows” policy by calling for the use of disproportionate police force for minor offenses, in theory to prevent escalating criminal activity. In fact, “broken windows” in New York and Los Angeles became an excuse for the notorious stop-and-frisks that target young people of color for harassment, and for responding to minor incidents with sufficient force that de-escalation becomes virtually impossible. The policy is coupled with justifications for militarizing the police, post 9-11 and criminalization of dissent. (This definition was obtained from la.indymedia.org in an article about Occupy Los Angeles) [back]
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