The Resistance Movement: Targeting African Americans With Prayers, Buzzwords, and Charges of Genocide

With Barack Obama’s inauguration just around the corner, it looks like anti-choice activists are swinging into high gear:

Beginning January 1, the Christian Defense Coalition will lead prayer for President-Elect Obama outside of the White House every day at 12:00 noon until the Inauguration.

The group will close with a large prayer vigil on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday on Monday, January 19 at noon.

The Christian Defense Coalition is encouraging the faith community to pray for Mr. Obama at noon in their homes, churches and local communities all across the nation.

That sounds rather innocuous, but the Baltimore Sun reports that, like every other CDC event, there is more to it than meets the eye:

The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, will be going on a 21-day fast and hunger strike to pray for and "stand in solidarity and identify with the homeless, poor and disenfranchised of America, as well as the 50 million innocent victims of abortion."

Considering that Mahoney is a tireless anti-choice crusader, it’s pretty safe to assume that his efforts are aimed more at ending abortion than helping the homeless.  

But Mahoney is not alone is seeing the upcoming inauguration as an opportunity to press his anti-choice ideology:

Dr. Alveda King, Pastoral Associate of Priests for Life and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said today that African Americans celebrating the upcoming inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama should carry a pro-family agenda to Washington, DC.

"African Americans are pro-life and favor procreative marriage," said Dr. King.  "As we see the dawn of a new year and a great milestone being passed, blacks across the country should let our new president know that we want babies in the womb protected and traditional marriage respected.  The accomplishment of an African American holding the nation's highest office will be of little value if the black community continues to be destroyed by the horrible plague of abortion."

Tips-Q raises a good point – when did the Religious Right start replacing their standard “traditional marriage” with “procreative marriage”?

But nobody in the anti-choice movement seems to be as excited about the opportunity they believe they will have to highlight the evils of abortion under Barack Obama as Clenard Childress, who proclaims the incoming president to be the face of black genocide:

Clenard Childress Jr., senior pastor of New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, N.J., and founder of BlackGenocide.org, criticizes Obama's pro-abortion voting record and rhetoric but says, "The good thing about an Obama presidency is that we now have a face to put on the genocide of African-American babies in this country."

In fact, it looks like anti-choice adovcates are now embarking on an effort to specifically target African American communities:

Georgia Right to Life is pleased to announce that Catherine Davis will be leading GRTL in outreach efforts to the African American community. In 2006, Catherine Davis ran for the 4th District Congressional Candidate because she had a desire to impact her community. Now just a few years later, she will have that opportunity by helping GRTL to preserve the legacy of the African American community ... As the new director of minority outreach for GRTL, Catherine will work to dramatically decrease the number of abortions while educating Georgians about the holocaustic impact this practice has had on the Black community.

Right after the election, we wrote about many of the people mentioned here when they simultaneously announced that they intended to form an anti-abortion resistance movement once Obama took office … and it looks like that is exactly what they are setting out to do.