The New Black Panther Party planned armed patrols near several polling places in Georgia on Tuesday as voters headed to the polls to cast their ballots in the state Senate runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.
“No one will come and touch, harm, threaten or do anything to anyone entering the voting booth.” Organizer Hallida Ramla Bastet said about it at a press conference on Monday.
Founded in 1989 in Dallas, Texas, the New Black Panther Party is a black nationalist group unrelated to the Black Panther Party founded in Oakland, California in the 1960s by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. The new Black Panther Party said Monday it would not endorse Democratic incumbent Warnock or his Republican challenger, Walker, in the race.
“This is the legal position we are taking. We are in a position where if something happens to someone, we are here to offer you legal representation. We are here to offer you security. And that’s it. And may the best man win, said Bastet.
In addition to armed guards, the group Black Advocates for Justice said it would be at the polls to watch for “white supremacy.”
Armed patrols were scheduled to take place from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in metro Brunswick, Savannah and Atlanta.
There is a Southern Poverty Law Center Appointed a new Black Panther Party as a “hate group,” calling it a “violently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders encourage violence against whites, Jews, and law enforcement officers.”
Georgia’s runoff election is the final Senate race of the 2022 midterm elections. Nearly 2 million ballots have already been cast in the Peach State during early voting, which set records for a single day until Tuesday.
.