{"id":1531483,"date":"2022-06-28T16:49:16","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T20:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1531483"},"modified":"2022-06-28T16:49:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T20:49:19","slug":"this-far-left-activist-was-too-woke-for-minneapolis-but-not-obamas-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/this-far-left-activist-was-too-woke-for-minneapolis-but-not-obamas-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"This Far-Left Activist Was Too Woke for Minneapolis\u2014But Not Obama\u2019s Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthis-far-left-activist-was-too-woke-for-minneapolis-but-not-obamas-foundation%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1531483&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/democrats\/\">Democrats<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">Former president hires one-term city council member who was ousted for supporting defund police initiative<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\"><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tFormer Minneapolis council member Phillipe Cunningham (L) and former president Barack Obama (R) \/ YouTube and Getty Images\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/collin-anderson\/\" title=\"Posts by Collin Anderson\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Collin Anderson<\/a> \u2022 June 28, 2022 4:45 pm<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span>Former president Barack Obama has a new top staffer at his foundation\u2014a far-left activist who was ousted from the Minneapolis City Council for supporting an initiative to defund police.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>On Monday, former Minneapolis council member Phillipe Cunningham <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pm_cunningham\/status\/1541433152303939586?s=20&#038;t=XKR36NKncmAU15jWdSj65Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>thanked Obama<\/span><\/a><span> after starting a &#8220;new role at the Obama Foundation as the deputy director \u2013 U.S. lead of global leadership programs.&#8221; The move comes just months after voters ousted Cunningham, who backed a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/minneapolis-voters-reject-defunding-the-police\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>failed measure to defund city police<\/span><\/a><span>, from the Minneapolis City Council in November. Cunningham in June 2020 also spoke at a defund-the-police rally, where the activist and nine other council members pledged to &#8220;end policing as we know it.&#8221; Cunningham&#8217;s opponent, LaTrisha Vetaw, said that pledge made her feel &#8220;silenced&#8221; and called public safety &#8220;the only issue&#8221; in the race.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Obama&#8217;s decision to ignore voters in deep-blue Minneapolis and hire Cunningham for a top position contradicts the former president&#8217;s rhetoric on the defund-the-police movement. Obama in November 2020 said he would not defund police and criticized activists who use the phrase. But Obama <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.obama.org\/reimagine\/issuing-the-pledge\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>appeared alongside<\/span><\/a><span> Cunningham at a virtual town hall when the activist was openly calling to defund police\u2014during that June 2020 event, Cunningham stressed the need to &#8220;completely transform our public safety system.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>President Joe Biden, Obama&#8217;s vice president, claimed last year that those who say Democrats want to defund police are &#8220;lying.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As part of the Obama Foundation, Cunningham will head the U.S. branch of the group&#8217;s global leadership programs, which aims to provide &#8220;emerging leaders&#8221; with &#8220;values-based leadership development frameworks to help build their skills and scale their work across public, private, and nonprofit sectors.&#8221; It&#8217;s unclear how Cunningham&#8217;s values align with the program\u2014the Obama Foundation did not return a request for comment on the hire and whether the group agrees with Cunningham&#8217;s position on defunding police.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Republican National Committee spokesman Nathan Brand said Obama&#8217;s new hire shows &#8220;there is no daylight between the looney left and the Democratic Party establishment.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;With radical defund-the-police leaders like this in charge, it is no wonder Democrats are alienating more and more Americans and are set to lose in November,&#8221; Brand told the <\/span><i><span>Washington Free Beacon<\/span><\/i><span>. &#8220;From that perspective, Dems couldn&#8217;t have picked a better person to lead these efforts.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Cunningham, a biological woman who transitioned as a college junior, became the first transgender man of color to be elected to public office in the United States in 2017. Roughly three years later, following George Floyd&#8217;s death in the summer of 2020, the then-councilmember <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xLWgl-lb9pI&#038;t=3624s&#038;ab_channel=UnicornRiot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stood behind<\/a> a giant &#8220;DEFUND POLICE&#8221; sign at a Minneapolis rally and argued that the city&#8217;s residents could &#8220;keep our own community safe&#8221; without police. Cunningham also praised those who &#8220;threw the first bricks at police officers&#8221; during the Stonewall Riots in New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>One year later, as the defund police movement lost popularity, Cunningham did not back down. In 2021, Cunningham backed an unprecedented amendment to dismantle the city&#8217;s police department. The measure, which Minneapolis voters rejected by double digits, would have replaced the city&#8217;s police department with a &#8220;Department of Public Safety&#8221; and called to abolish the city&#8217;s minimum funding requirements for police.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Cunningham&#8217;s decision to back that amendment came as Minneapolis experienced a surge in violence. In the last week of 2021, the city notched its <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.startribune.com\/a-most-violent-year-in-minneapolis\/600131444\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>96th homicide<\/span><\/a><span>, just one murder shy of its record level seen in 1995. That trend has continued into this year\u2014in late April, Minneapolis had 9 murders in 10 days, putting the city on track to surpass its 1995 numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Obama has worked with far-left activists beyond Cunningham. Defund-the-police organizer and MSNBC contributor Brittany Packnett Cunningham served on the former president&#8217;s policing task force. She later argued that rising crime rates are the police&#8217;s fault.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;This rise in crime is not the fault of the movement, it&#8217;s actually the fault of the police,&#8221; Packnett Cunningham said during a June 2021 MSNBC appearance. &#8220;This has been our point all along\u2014why should we keep funding systems and institutions that keep rendering themselves ineffective?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats Former president hires one-term city council member who was ousted for supporting defund police initiative  Former Minneapolis council member Phillipe Cunningham (L) and former president Barack<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}