Farrakhan decamped to Louisiana to view the Dec. 15
graduation
of his granddaughter at Grambling State University. He blew into Shreveport the
prior day, whereupon the city corralled some on-duty
police officers and escorted him from the airport to the city-owned Hilton
Hotel.
Plans to escort him to the city limits the next
day on his way to Grambling apparently never materialized. Allegedly, he also
received such services to a restaurant where a private function occurred, but city
attorney William Bradford denied any such authorization existed.
But someone high up in the city’s hierarchy must have given permission to use manpower and resources that could have gone to crimefighting for the controversial Farrakhan, who preaches racial separation and has called whites the “anti-Christ,” terms Judaism a “gutter religion,” and evaluated Adolf Hitler as “wickedly great.” It seems inconceivable that having a request for this service and its approval would not have reached the attention of Mayor Ollie Tyler, but the city remains mum on any details involving the incident.
Yet if Tyler seemed a bit too accommodating to the
likes of Farrakhan – imagine a similarly-famous political figure whose ethnic views
parallel Farrakhan’s except one who would substitute the color “black” in
Farrakhan’s epithet “white devils,” former state Rep. David Duke, receiving a taxpayer-paid
escort by Shreveport’s finest – Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo
went whole hog. Farrakhan jetted over to Monroe, whereupon Mayo presented him
with the key to the more easterly of the Twin Cities and the city gave him its
own police escort.
Mayo likewise remained tight-lipped in the days
following after-the-fact media reports of the meeting. This contrasted with his
garrulousness at the Farrakhan airport meeting, where he apparently bestowed the
second key Farrakhan has received for Monroe and invited him to speak to all of
Monroe.
Over a week later, Mayo did break his silence
after media focus on the meeting began reaching statewide. At a subsequent City
Council meeting, he
took critics to task, calling Farrakhan a “national and international
dignitary” with an inspirational message worthy of city honors while all that
complainers wanted to do was deflect from the subject of race relations. He said
he need apologize for nothing, and that city resources spent on the visit amounted
to fewer than $100.
This dalliance with Farrakhan by a big-city Louisiana
mayor actually began
years ago in Baton Rouge. Former Mayor Kip Holden in 2012 with a police
entourage met Farrakhan in New Orleans, whereupon they proceeded to Southern
University Baton Rouge where Farrakhan spoke to an audience of around 2,000.
That did not seem to hurt Holden’s bid for reelection
he won just weeks later. However, it did create more controversy when Holden forced
out former Police Chief Dewayne White some months later, he claimed in part from
White’s misleading about use of police resources to ferry around Farrakhan.
Making matters more interesting, White defended
his actions saying any unauthorized use came from a subordinate disobeying
orders, naming Noel Salamoni – the father of Blane Salamoni, who incident to a
2016 arrest fired
shots killing Alton Sterling that led to protests and retaliation against
local law enforcement officers by a disturbed gunman. The Salamonis are white,
while Sterling was black.
Clearly, with Farrakhan’s decades-long record of
hateful rhetoric, by lauding and defending him Mayo must know the highest political
office to which he can aspire – he has run for Congress on three occasions in
the past five years – is to be Monroe Mayor-for-Life. Now Louisiana waits on
which black mayor in the state next will find some way to treat Farrakhan as worthy
of honor and taxpayer support.
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