|
?:reviewBody
|
-
On the weekend leading up to the 6 November 2018 election in which Georgia voters will choose a new governor, a handful of members of the Atlanta chapter of the New Black Panther Party gathered for a small demonstration which they said was held in support of voting rights and the Second Amendment, called Armed Rally Against Voter Suppression. They posed for photographs in which they wielded firearms; and some of them carried campaign posters for Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate who could potentially become the United States' first black female governor. The Panthers posted photographs and video from the gathering to their Facebook page, which prompted some exaggerated commentary on the subject. One Facebook user, for example, claimed the photographs were evidence that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was enlisting the New Black Panthers as a voter intimidation tactic to block Georgians from voting for Abrams' opponent: Another Facebook page asserted that the New Black Panthers were roaming the streets in an overt attempt to intimidate residents into voting for Abrams: And Breitbart regurgitated some of the pictures as viral clickbait under the headline Armed Black Panthers Lobby for Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams: What none of these sources reported was that in the very same Facebook post in which these pictures appeared, the Atlanta New Black Panthers stated that they were not working with any political campaign and had organized the small rally independently in response to Georgia's exact match law that could potentially disenfranchise thousands of black citizens: The New Black Panthers also hinted at more tepid support for Abrams than these sources suggested, differing with her over her positions on issues such as gun legislation (the New Black Panthers are Second Amendment enthusiasts, while Abrams supports policies such as universal background checks): In other accounts, the group's chairman voiced more open support for Abrams: We found no accounts from Atlanta reporting that this New Black Panthers group had shown up at polling places (or anywhere else) or had overtly attempted to coerce or intimidate voters into casting ballots for Stacey Abrams. Similarly, Wired noted of such claims that: The Breitbart article included no indication that the Abrams campaign condoned, or was even aware of, this activity of the part of the New Black Panther Party, nor any indication that Breitbart had made any attempt to ascertain that information. Instead, the article offered only a critical statement from the campaign of Abrams' Republican opponent. We reached out to Breitbart with a set of questions about the story, but political editor Matt Boyle declined to comment. We also reached out to the New Black Panther Party and did not receive a response. A spokesperson for the Abrams campaign responded to our query but didn't address the issue directly, saying via email that: The New Black Panther Party, which takes their name from an older and defunct political organization which originated during the Civil Rights Era, is categorized as an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of anti-Semitic and violent rhetoric. The Georgia gubernatorial election has been a heated close call and beset with racial strife. Abrams' opponent, Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp, has been accused of disenfranchising tens of thousands of black voters, leading to accusations of conflict of interest. Although Kemp denounced a white supremacist group's racist robocall attacking Abrams, Abrams' camp has blasted Kemp for posing in a photograph with a supporter wearing a t-shirt bearing an anti-Islam message: As the election cycle wound down to the wire, Kemp opened a hacking investigation into his Democratic foes without citing evidence of their culpability.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}