I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
MOUNT PLEASANT — A protest to pressure the Isabella County prosecutor to file felony ethnic intimidation charges against a Central Michigan University student who hung four nooses in a campus classroom featured the leader of the New Black Panther Party, Minister Malik Shabazz.
The party has been termed a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors such organizations, said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC Intelligence Project. The SPLC is considered the leading expert on hate groups and hate activity in the United States.
About 200 people from Detroit, Grand Rapids, Benton Harbor and Mount Pleasant attended the protest rally at the Isabella County Building.
Kierre Majors, 21, a student at CMU who helped to plan the protest, said she was stunned when asked about Shabazz’s status as a leader of a known “hate group”. “It makes me aware of something I wasn’t aware of before,” Majors said. “He did not get up there and speak about hate.”
Shabazz himself dismissed the listing by the SPLC. “They have their own agenda,” he said. “I know what my agenda is… . We (black people) are the most oppressed people in the world and so my work has to be for black people.”
He said the Panthers are nothing like other hate groups, like the neo-Nazis and KKK who also talk about their race being oppressed and working for their race. “They work against other people,” Shabazz said. “Those are terrorist organizations. There’s a difference.”
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