Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams is a board member of the Woke Marguerite Casey Foundation, which has donated millions to radical professors and scholars who teach that capitalism is inherently racist and advocate for the abolition of prisons and private property.
Abrams, who is once again challenging Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, became a board member of the Seattle-based funding organization named after UPS founder Jim Casey’s sister last May, Fox News reported.
For the past two years, the Woke organization has hosted a Freedom Scholars Awards ceremony that awards $250,000 to “leading research in critical areas, including abolitionist, black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies.”
Although Abrahams received at least $52,500 in revenue from the foundation last year, her campaign told Fox that she doesn’t share the same views as the group, which donated to anti-capitalist professors who believe private property is “in the Whiteness, ‘thinking that American Ethnic Studies is ‘too white’ and teaching Critical Race Theory and advocating for the abolition of prisons.
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams joined the woke Marguerite Casey Foundation in 2021, though she claimed she doesn’t share the group’s views
Last year, the group awarded $250,000 to University of California professor Robin DG Kelly, who claims capitalism is inherently racist and said his childhood dream was to be a communist
The foundation also awarded $250,000 to Tufts University professor Lorgia Garcia Peña (pictured), who believes ethnic studies in the US is “white supreme” and needs to be changed and taught in elementary schools
Among the most controversial scholars to receive funding from the foundation in 2021 is University of California professor Robin DG Kelley, who believes capitalism is inherently racist.
Kelley, who once told NPR his childhood goal was to be a “communist for life,” claimed that capitalism survives on racism and can never exist in a truly just society.
Speaking to the radio station in February, Kelly said: “Any true liberation must be anti-capitalist. Capitalism cannot save us.
“And even if you could create a capitalism that is somehow non-racist, which of course is impossible – but let’s suppose that you could theoretically create that, we still have a deep exploitation and inequality that it creates.”
Lorgia Garcia Peña, a professor at Tufts University, was another 2021 Freedom Scholars Award recipient with far-left views.
Peña, a former professor of Latinx studies at Harvard who was denied a position in 2019 after members of the Ivy League school claimed her work was more activism than science education, now teaches at the Tufts Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and diaspora.
In 2020, Peña told the Boston Review that ethnic studies needed to be taught in elementary schools and moved away from “Eurocentric education systems.”
“What we currently teach in every school — what we consider to be the standard liberal arts and social sciences curriculum — is actually based on white supremacy but masked as objectivity,” she told Review magazine.
Angelica Chazaro, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law (above), was also recognized by the foundation last year and is a campaigner to abolish prisons
Ohio State University law professor Amna Akbar was another recipient of the $250,000 award. She believes modern legal scholars should learn from radical social movements
Angelica Chazaro, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, also received $250,000 from the Marguerite Casey Foundation last year.
Chazaro teaches CRT, poverty law, and immigration law at university and is a prison abolitionist and co-founder of La Resistencia, a Washington-based organization dedicated to ending immigrant incarceration.
She had served as chief negotiator during the 56-day hunger strike at Norwest Detention Center in 2014, when more than 700 detained immigrants refused to eat in protest at their prison conditions.
Chazaro has campaigned to end private prisons and detention centers as part of the nationwide prison reform movement, which has gained momentum in recent years but has recently drawn criticism as liberal cities that have embraced the changes continue to suffer from rising crime rates.
Ohio State University law professor Amna Akbar was another recipient of the $250,000 award.
Akbar is a proponent of the “law of movement,” which she described in the Stanford Law Review as an “approach to jurisprudence grounded in solidarity, accountability, and engagement with grassroots organizations and left-wing social movements.”
She wrote in the New York University Law Review that modern legal scholars should focus on and learn from radical social movements in the United States
“By studying not only the critiques of radical social movements, but also their visions for transformative change, the frontiers of jurisprudence can be expanded, a deeper set of critiques, and a longer set of histories—of colonialism and settler-colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade, and Mass incarceration centered and pushed ahead with a bolder project of transformation,” Akbar wrote.
In 2020, the foundation awarded $250,000 to Ananya Roy, an urban studies professor at UCLA, who has claimed that private property is “white-rooted” and should be abolished
Charlene Carruthers (above), a black queer feminist activist who supports Critical Race Theory and founded the Black Youth Project, which she described as a “political home for anti-capitalists, radical black feminists and abolitionists,” also received the award in the year 2020
Also in 2020, the Marguerite Casey Foundation awarded $250,000 to Ananya Roy, an urban studies professor at UCLA, who has claimed that private property is “white-rooted” and should be abolished.
In a 2021 essay in Society and Space, Roy argued that private property laws were introduced in the US to secure the wealth of white landowning men, and claims the concept continues to undermine black women.
Roy also called for the reduction of university police forces and urged colleges to end contracts with outside police forces and security agencies following the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
Also honored in 2020 was Charlene Carruthers, a black queer feminist activist who supports Critical Race Theory and founded the Black Youth Project, which she describes as “a political home for anti-capitalists, radical black feminists, abolitionists, artists, educators and many more.” denoted more types of freedom fighters.’
She has been recognized by The Root 100 as one of the 10 most influential African American women and as one of Ebony Magazine’s “Woke 100”.