Just one example from the SOLID
FOODS WEBLOG:
Yvonne Napoleon is a current member of Mosaic, L.A. When I asked if she
knew that her 501(c) organization, Neo Underground Railroad, was included on
the Awaken webpage she said she had not known this. She felt that "some
type of discussion should have taken place between me and them before Neo
Underground Railroad was added."
When I asked her if she knew what Awaken was, she replied, "I have no
idea what Awaken is." When asked to respond to the Awaken webpage's line:
"Gifts will be used to fund some of the following projects:" she
said, "Neo Underground Railroad has never received anything from
Awaken." She mentioned that in Christmas of 2005, she was given a
personal donation of around $1500 from a couple at Mosaic. Earlier this year,
2007, she was told by Eric Bryant that he had "some money" for her
charity but she is still waiting to receive it. Yvonne also told me that
Mosaic church often sends volunteers to help with the Neo Underground
Railroad, not an organization called Awaken.
Yvonne Napoleon was not pleased to see that her organization had been
included on the Awaken webpage without her knowledge and in such a way as to
be misleading about Awakens association with the Neo Underground Railroad.
Although we cannot say, that Christafari is a conscious
participant in -what seems to be- a fraudulent and at least suspicious
organization, we must conclude after reading the several articles on Awaken's
financial policy that there is a chance money donated to the festival will not
land where the organization claims it will.
We are aware, that this may not bother Christafari.
After all, it was exposed
in the book "Mystery of Christafarianism", how the Christafari
organization themselves have their creative ways of dealing with money too.
Christafari will receive money through a registered non-profit organization
(Sowers International) which is then used for a for-profit organization (Lion
of Zion, inc).
We are also aware, that this alert goes out just a day or two
before the festival takes place. The reason for that was, that Christafari
announced this performance in their latest newsletter which was only sent out a
couple of days ago. Our research took a few days, too.
Please inform others who might want to visit the festival,
please inform Christafari too about the suspicions of fraud and the New Age
character of the whole "Awaken" organization and philosophy. And when
you're reading this after the festival (May 13, 2007), simply look at it as
another piece of the puzzle that forms the "Gospel Reggae" Industry.
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