Did Gov Walker Stage Wisconsin State Fair Race Attack? This blogger thinks so.
Last week, reports came out that “500 Black Youth” attacked white visitors to the Wisconsin State Fair. Then came the predicable reactions and all of the resurfacing of the White Supremacists, who crawl out of their holes whenever they think something that smacks of a race war is going down – fools that they are. And then come the calls for the parents – where are they? – in all of this.
But the one question never asked by a gullible public is this one: how did it happen, and did it really go down?
I looked on YouTube expecting to see video, after video of kids filming themselves, or someone filming them, as they went on about the business of allegedly attacking white people at the Wisconsin State Fair. I mean, there were “500” of them – right? That’s the report, as if someone bothered to count them.
I don’t think there were 500 kids, and further, I think someone paid those kids to do that – perhaps not every kid, but enough to be catalysts for the action.
What caused me to think this was not just what I mentioned above, but two other things: first, that Governor Scott Walker was all set to make a statement on the event, second, that the incident occurred so close to the Wisconsin Recall Election, held today.
Think about it: what better way to get Wisconsin conservatives all riled up, and ready to vote for their folks?
The other factor was my own history in politics, which I share by way of this story – one of many.
In 1997, I served as Economic Adviser to then-Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris. One major problem was that three downtown Oakland organizations were essentially standing in the way of the completion of the 14th and Broadway transit corridor development.
At that time, 14th and Broadway was a place you didn’t want to be – dirty, old-looking. And without the proper sidewalk design to fit the audience of people waiting for the AC Transit Bus Lines. So, to help the effort along, I created the Oakland Downtown Coalition. An informal group that met at the Mayor’s Office once a month on Thursday at 6 PM. The organization grew from 10 people to 45 people over the year, and mostly due to the fact that each meeting was catered, with great food and wine.
It was the best way to get everyone together. That, combined with the hand-picked crowd, made it a combination meeting and business mixer. But it worked.
Eventually, word about the organization got around to some group called BOSS Oakland, who’s representative contacted me about attending the meeting on 14th and Broadway. Since the person who called me was combative, saying I “ducked” the homeless community – which was a bunch of bull – and the person could not explain how they came to find out about the meeting, I said she was not invited.
I didn’t want someone who came off as immature and argumentative as that person was screwing up my meeting, in fact, I told her so.
So, as the our meeting was concluding that day in July, someone from the Oakland Police came to the Mayor’s Office, asking for me. What happened was that BOSS had organized a group of homeless people to come down and chant “Hey Hey. Ho Ho. Zennie Abraham has got to go.” In from of Oakland City Hall.
So I walked out with the Oakland police, but realized the crowd had NO IDEA WHAT I LOOKED LIKE. They were expecting a white guy. So, I got down and chanted with them.
Yep. I did.
Then, after about five minutes of that crap, I got up and said “I’m Zennie Abraham.” Before that good conversation – for which I gained a new disrespect for BOSS Oakland – and when I was down there chanting against myself, I found out that many of the people were paid $5, but they didn’t really know what was going on, just asked to chant.
Against a guy named Zennie Abraham.
What I learned was that people will use other people to stage events, and more often than not, the people asked to do the event are only given part of the story. They’re being used. Caught where they don’t have a dime, and are of low self-esteem, they are perfect pawns for the actions of political organizations that have no moral squabble with using them, as BOSS Oakland did in 1997.
My contention, based on that and other examples that could fill a book, is that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was, in some way, behind that so-called Black Youth Attack and worked to benefit from it. It didn’t just happen.
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll