UPDATE: Heard through the grapevine that CORE will be on the Canadian CBC show, the Current tomorrow morning. We’ve contacted the producers and have offered to provide more information.

With major corporate donations in the past from big players like Monsanto and ExxonMobil, I apologize for being more than a little cynical about the Congress of Racial Equality’s latest “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign.

To say that CORE has enjoyed a cozy relationship with big industry would be an understatement. In fact, the above photo is a picture of Monsanto’s Chairman and CEO, Hugh Grant chairing CORE‘s celebratory reception in honor of Martin Luther King Jr in 2005.

The visit to CORE by Monsanto’s President coincided with a conference organized by CORE decrying environmentalists and their opposition to the use of genetically modified crops in Africa. Just so happens that Monsanto is the largest producer and supplier of genetically-modified seed in the world.

You can check out the an archived version of CORE‘s website where they once proudly touted Monsanto as the corporate sponsor of their pro-GM food campaign. I saved a screen capture of the Monsanto/CORE site archive just in case it goes “missing.”

Then there’s the $275,000 CORE has received from the largest oil company in the world, ExxonMobil, most of the money tagged for public policy work in the area of climate change. Roy Innis, the head of CORE, has a long and well-documented history of attacking the environmental movement over the issue of global warming.

For example, in March, 2008 Innis spoke at a press conference in New York claiming that:

Again, pardon me for being a little cynical when an organization that took $250,000 from ExxonMobil comes out against investing in renewable energy.

But I’m not the only cynical one. There’s a lot of us. For example, the original founder of CORE, James Farmer has accused Innis of:

Looks like they’re right. Here’s the full story on the Congress of Racial Equality that I have put together in a briefing document and entered into our climate denial industry database.

Next up on the research docket are the other two members of the “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign, the High Impact Leadership Coalition and the Americans for American Energy.

For more on the who’s who of the climate denial industry, check out our comprehensive climate deniers research database.