A black liberation advocate with ties to national far-left activist groups and a pro-Kamala Harris PAC is publicly praising the murder of two Israeli Embassy workers in Washington, D.C.
Leftist political organizer and former lawyer Kamau Franklin co-signed an online statement by anti-Israel groups that called the May 21 shooting of a couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum “a legitimate act of resistance against the zionist state.” Franklin’s work has included stints at the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Friends Services Committee and the Black Voters Matter Action PAC, which endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024. That PAC has received funding from an organization bankrolled by left-wing megadonor George Soros.
“Opponents of imperialism, zionism, and genocide must rally to defend Elias Rodriguez, and through this defense support the legitimacy and necessity of resistance itself,” the co-signed Monday statement said, naming the suspect charged with gunning down Israeli Embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The statement argued that “such counter-violence is legitimate.”
Witnesses say Rodriguez yelled “free, free Palestine” during his arrest and told police he “did it for Gaza,” authorities said.
Franklin is the founder and national director of Community Movement Builders, a group with chapters across the country that aims to fight “racism, capitalism, classism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia,” according to its website. The website contains a collection of Afro-centric Marxist social controls as indicative of their core values. Franklin is not currently registered as an attorney in New York or Georgia, where he currently lives, state databases show.
Franklin has also worked with several other left-wing organizations, including ones focused on questioning law enforcement responses to crime and terrorism.
Franklin was an attorney in the 2000s with the Center for Constitutional Rights and helped litigate against police over alleged overreach, its website shows. After he left, the center co-hosted a 2023 panel that included Franklin about how anti-terrorism laws are supposedly unfair toward political dissenters. Less than two years later, Franklin would go on to openly support murder in the name of resisting Israel.
The center’s website in 2008 also listed Franklin as co-chair of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, a group formed in 1968 that boasts five chapters in the U.S.
American Friends Service Committee also hired Franklin as a regional director in April 2014, and he worked there until at least late 2015, documents show. The committee has existed since 1917 and advocates for liberal policies on criminal justice, immigration and other issues, according to Capital Research Center.
The National Lawyers Guild, which claims to have chapters at more than 100 law schools and in almost 40 states, hosted Franklin for a 2023 webinar about “spurious” terrorism charges against Antifa-linked “Stop Cop City” protesters in Atlanta. Franklin was also the treasurer for the Black Voters Matter Action PAC as of April, federal records show. Black Voters Matter, the PAC’s affiliate group, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, National Conference of Black Lawyers and American Friends Service Committee did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
The statement that Franklin co-signed which calls the D.C. murders “legitimate” caused a rift among some on the left, with members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) debating internally about whether Rodriguez’ actions should be condemned, The Free Press reported. The DSA told the DCNF that pro-Rodriguez comments from some DSA members “do not reflect the official position of the organization.”
Franklin, however, said in a May 26 X post that “individual actions can spark resistance,” posting a link to a “Free Elias Rodriguez” webpage.
“Rodriguez’s supporter Kamau Franklin has ties to the Left’s lunatic warp-and-woof, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild, which reveals that throughout the Left, including its preferred political party, one finds radicals expressing nihilistic bloodlust,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, told the DCNF. Walter added that Rodriguez also “had ties to the Left’s lunatic fringe” via his past activism.
“Unless the Left renounces violence at home and abroad, matters will worsen,” Walter told the DCNF.
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