The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis recently announced plans to build a "community empowerment center" on the site of the Ferguson, Missouri, QuikTrip convenience store that was burned and looted by protesters Aug. 10, the day after Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown.
But to one investigative reporter, the development is as offensive as the infamous "Ground Zero mosque" in Manhattan.
"It is showing that these leftists … that their race-obsessed philosophy has triumphed in Ferguson, Missouri, so it's like a big statue is being erected to their ugly, race-tinged view of American society," said Matthew Vadum, senior editor at the Capital Research Center.
The National Urban League's mission, according to its website, is "to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights."
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The organization supports many liberal goals: giving every American access to a job with a living wage and good benefits; ensuring every American lives in safe, affordable, energy-efficient housing; giving every American access to quality and affordable health care; and ensuring every child is ready for college, work and life.
Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said last week it was not enough for the Ferguson police chief to resign. The Ferguson's Police Department, he insisted, needs to be "disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up."
Vadum, author of "Subversion, Inc.," said the NUL is not as radical as some other left-wing groups but still part of the "racial grievance industry."
He blamed the NUL and their ilk for turning Ferguson into a cauldron of racial strife.
See the details of what's going on in America, in Mathew Vadum's "Subversion, Inc."
"People like these left-wing race-mongers are the people who caused a lot of the problems in Ferguson, and now they're getting to do a little victory dance, basically, on the ashes of Ferguson and celebrating, in effect, the policies that helped to destroy Ferguson," Vadum said.
Angry protesters looted and burned the QuikTrip at West Florissant Avenue and Northwinds Estates Drive on Aug. 10 after a protest vigil for the slain Michael Brown.
QuikTrip employees hid in a back room as the looters pillaged the store.
In the following days, the protesters turned the destroyed QuikTrip lot into their staging ground, the place where they gathered every day and night to protest. The charred QuikTrip became a symbol of the unrest in Ferguson. But eventually, police cleared the lot of protesters and erected a wire fence around it.
Colin Flaherty, author of "White Girl Bleed a Lot," said the Urban League's presence on the former QuikTrip lot will be "a monument to the greatest bait-and-switch of our generation."
He was referring to the idea that the unrest in Ferguson was actually citizen anger over too many traffic tickets from Ferguson police.
"It's a symbol of the greatest hoax of our generation, which is relentless black victimization by relentless racist white people all the time, everywhere, and that explains everything. So I hope somebody puts a plaque up on it to commemorate that," he said.
Jack Cashill, author of "If I Had a Son," opined that the new Urban League office will be less useful to the community than the QuikTrip was.
"You can't get gas at an Urban League, you know?" Cashill said. "QuikTrip is probably the best franchise in the country. It's extremely well-run, and the absence of that in a neighborhood is just not easily replaced. And you can't replace it with some social service agency. It will not meet any real needs."
Flaherty notes that while the Urban League is entering Ferguson with visions of economic empowerment for black people, many businesses are fleeing the city, as are middle-class residents. It doesn't bode well for the city's future, he said.
"It tells you that the damage in Ferguson is so intense and so long-lasting, it's gonna be generations before it recovers, no matter how many Urban Leagues do relentless programs of institutional resentment against white people," he said.
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