Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Bigotry
Center for Immigration Studies Picks Up Torch on Greening Bigotry
01 year ago
Anti-immigrant groups are eyeing America’s environmental movement in the hopes that it will serve their controversial agenda.
Immigration and climate change might not seem to have much in common, but a bitter battle has been waging between the anti-immigrant movement and mainstream environmental groups for decades. The John Tanton Network is, as usual, deeply involved in this conflict.
The latest example of anti-immigrant attacks on environmentalists comes from Center for Immigration Studies, a controversial anti-immigrant group founded by John Tanton, who also founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Spearheading the effort is Jerry Kammer, senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies with his memo entitled, “Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club’s Distortion on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining Its Environmental Legacy”.
Jerry Kammer isn’t just writing about the Sierra Club, he’s also taking his attacks to the Breakdown the Walls conference in Phoenix, Arizona. He intends to speak on a panel today titled, “The Politics of the Environment in the Modern World.” Jerry Kammer and Center for Immigration studies are trying once again to divide and conquer environmentalists in the hopes of bringing climate-concerned activists into their anti-immigrant fold.
Leaders in the John Tanton Network may seem to have a genuine interest in environmental issues, but it is important to remember that John Tanton built his network in part from the $1.2 million he received from the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund is a foundation that has a history of promoting the genetic superiority of white, European-Americans.
Organizations founded by or in connection with Tanton should not be considered legitimate environmental voices. While Tanton has a long history in environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, his increasing dissatisfaction in the 1970’s with progressive environmentalists led him down an extreme path. He eventually created groups like FAIR and CIS to focus on U.S population control, and forged troubling ties with white nationalists.
In the 1990s, Tanton helped with an effort to pressure the Sierra Club to officially take an anti-immigration position. A major battle ensued, with many Sierra Club members seeing the proposed stance as fundamentally racist. Tanton later wrote that “the Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club!”
At the time, Carl Pope, current Sierra Club chairman, considered it a hostile takeover attempt, “The whole idea of people trying to hijack an organization to advance their cause was outrageous,” Pope told a Washington Times Reporter in 2006. “And I found many of the things he [Tanton] had said since I had known him deplorable and unconscionable.”
Jerry Kammer is trying to continue what Tanton started; he is attempting to green hate and force an anti-immigrant voice onto the environmental movement.
Kammer has attacked Carl Pope for trying to protect the integrity of the Sierra Club. Pope said if the Sierra Club comes out in favor of lower immigration levels, “we would be perceived as assisting people whose motivations are racist.” Kammer referred to it as a “smear campaign”.
The only ‘smear’ that is evident here is the one anti-immigrant groups are trying to pull on legitimate environmentalists.
The Enduring Power of Hate in Suffolk County
01 year ago
There is perhaps no other locale in the nation where anti-immigrant hatred has sunk roots as deep as those in Suffolk County, New York, where the powerful County Executive has built a career on it and where the judiciary is challenged to empanel a jury for the murder trial of a man accused of immigrant-killing for sport.
Almost a decade ago Newsday reporter Bart Jones aptly labeled Suffolk County “ground zero” of the anti-immigrant movement. As day laborers were brought in to provide low-wage labor for many of the upscale residents of the Long Island enclave, opposition to their presence began to build. The bellicose and belligerent “Sachem Quality of Life” crowd that sought to drum immigrants out of the County was subsumed by the Federation for American Immigration (FAIR)’s successful efforts to “mainstream” anti-immigrant bigotry, in spite of courageous efforts by community, religious, civic, labor, civil, and immigrant rights organizations. A decade later, the enduring power of FAIR-inspired anti-immigrant hatred is still manifest.
The New York Times reported last week that the task of empanelling an impartial Suffolk County jury for the first trial in the murder of Marcelo Lucero had become “a struggle to find tolerance.” Mr. Lucero was stabbed to death in the fall of 2008 when a group of seven teenagers out for an evening of “beaner hopping”—the “sport” of assaulting Latinos—killed him. Of 130 potential jurors interviewed over three days, only 5 were selected; the pall of anti-immigrant feeling ran deep and explicit, though subdued, among the pool of potential jurors. FAIR must have exulted—its work had, indeed, sunk deep roots.
The fact that teenagers even engaged in such “sport” is testament to the enduring power of anti-immigrant fervor in Suffolk County. Those who attacked Marcelo Lucero grew up in their formative years in an atmosphere rife with bigotry and hate that seeped into the lives of children and youth, as well as adults who, in 2010, could not serve as impartial jurors in the trial of those raised in their midst.
As the trial itself unfolds, reporter Bart Jones will likely not be writing about it for Newsday. After years of covering the anti-immigrant movement and its impact in Suffolk County, Jones has been reassigned by the newspaper, possibly under pressure from the powerful, anti-immigrant County Executive Steve Levy. Joe Strupp of Media Matters suggested last week that Levy may, indeed, have had his way at last, after complaining publicly for years about Jones’ thorough coverage of anti-immigrant activity and Levy’s own role in it. Jones helped break the 206 story that Levy was in the thick of the FAIR-inspired front group, “Mayors and Executives for Immigration Reform,” and he never let up reporting on Levy’s nefarious anti-immigrant politics. As much as the teenagers involved in the Lucero murder, Levy is testament to the enduring power of hate in Suffolk County; indeed, he is the embodiment of the political power birthed by such hatred.
In 2001 I saw the impact of this hatred when I first journeyed to Suffolk County to work with local organizations and religious leaders to counter it. Even in those early days of “ground zero,” hatred had taken deep root. As FAIR advanced its agenda in the County it became clear that it was playing a dual, pivotal role: mainstreaming its anti-immigrant mantra and, simultaneously, keeping the embers of hate glowing by ignoring the flames they would yield. In the early days neo-Nazis attracted to the County assaulted and intended to kill several immigrants. Immigrants were burned out of their residences. Hatred followed bigotry. Violence followed hatred. Murder followed violence. An immigrant died at the hands of youth raised in such an environment. An elected County Executive, a Democrat, fanned the embers, and when flames erupted he acted as if there were no heat.
Such is the enduring power of hate in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Unchecked, this is where anti-immigrant fervor goes, burning through neighborhoods, counties, and—as in Europe—countries as well; consuming the lives and spirits of youth and of those struggling for livelihoods and families; and making pawns of alleged leaders who smell only political opportunity in the deadly smoke of its flames.
Monthly Racism Round-up
02 years ago
Cairo, IL 1970
It’s common to encounter subtle bigotry from all types of people in every community in America, even in unexpected places. A sad reality of our progress as a nation is that we are not even close to overcoming racial divisions. But sometimes things are said or events take place that are so outrageously overt, they deserve special condemnation. This is a recent round-up of insidious items that went down just in the first month of 2010.
First up is Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies with this thoughtful quote, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” He goes on to say that French colonizers didn’t do a good enough job suppressing paganism. He is referring to Haiti becoming the first Black-led republic in the world when it fought for and won independence from France in 1804. It’s akin to saying that America should have been ruled by the British longer or slavery ended too soon. It’s blatantly racist and insults our most cherished American value: freedom. Center for Immigration Studies is trying hard to secure mainstream respectability, but with spokespersons like Krikorian, it can’t help stepping in racist doo-doo time and again.
Mark Krikorian’s friends at the white supremacist American Renaissance are on the radar as well. They’re on the hunt for a space to hold their annual conference on “Defending the west” after they were banned or booted from many DC-area hotels. With things like, “Virtually no whites anywhere are willing to break taboos about racial differences in IQ, the costs of ‘diversity,’ or the challenges of non-white immigration,” printed on its website, it’s no wonder every hotel is running in the opposite direction.
Concluding our racism round-up is Bob Kellar, a California councilman who spoke at a Save Our State anti-immigration rally in California and declared himself a “proud racist”. Kellar said he was glad when people told him he sounded racist. It doesn’t get much scummier than this blubbering bigot, folks.
As the above items illustrate, no matter how bigotry is qualified, it can’t be tolerated.
A Day at a North Carolina Tea Party
02 years ago
By Deborah Austin and Cloee Cooper
As a mother, activist and community member from Durham, North Carolina of Mexican, Native American decent, I can personally attest to the racist behavior and remarks at the Tea Parties Against Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants on November 14, 2009. Why is this an important story to share months later? Among many people I know, the white nationalist agenda of today’s anti-immigrant movement is hard to understand. Not surprising considering the debate we see unfolding in our media surrounding immigration.
I have been following our nation’s debate closely with the immigration reform bill that Gutierrez recently introduced and the upcoming bill that Schumer intends to introduce. But honestly, how can we have a debate on immigration without noting the bigotry, violence and outright racism of our nation’s leading anti-immigrant groups? I attended the Tea Party on November 14 in Raleigh, NC. I hope that my experience might speak to the doubts that currently clout perhaps the most important debate regarding race in the 21st century.
I woke up early that morning, gathered my notebook, pen and map, and hopped in my car. It was drizzling outside, so I was wondering if the event was still going to happen. When I got in the car for the one-hour drive, “Such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you” was on the radio. Ironic, huh?
As I approached Raleigh, I started looking for the cross streets, and a crowd that I suspected would be holding confederate flags. I didn’t have to look hard; about 40 people were gathered at the town square. Microphones were set up and people were already mounting signs reading “Illegals Out!”
I found a place to park and entered the crowd. Eyes darted at me. I was one of three people of color in the crowd. I kept my notebook close and tried to blend in. Soon the first speaker approached the microphone. “Good afternoon everyone… Glad to see so many people came out on a rainy day. It is people like you who make this country worth living in – people like you who make me proud to be an American. As you all know, we are facing a grim problem today – people who intend to invade our country and have no intention of becoming ‘American’ – the ‘Illegals’”.
I stood in the crowd while others cheered. As William Gheen, president of ALIPAC, stirred up the crowd, eyes again darted at me. I clearly fit the description – with my bronze skin color, dark eyes and dark hair. C’mon, my grandparents were born in Mexico, I must be illegal!
I listened carefully as he continued to say, “Illegals are taking our jobs. They are destroying the infrastructure of this country. They are destroying our environment…” These are things I have heard on the radio or television. This time, however, I was amidst a crowd of supporters – a crowd of people who really believed all of his arguments, and who of course looked at me as if I were to blame.
Not only was he spewing anti-immigrant arguments, he was directly attacking Mexican/Latino culture – and frankly, any person with a skin darker then a girl in a Cover Girl advertisement. He said, “Aren’t you tired of seeing George Lopez’s mug on every billboard in Raleigh?” My thought was, ‘George Lopez is American’. Then William Gheen went on to say “and you know who came in through the back door and is now serving on the Supreme Court.” Again, eyes darted at me. I thought, ‘Sonja Sotomayor is an American citizen, and was born an American citizen’. Then Ron Woodard, Director of NC Listen, who stated in the past that he “improved his public-speaking skills in courses sponsored by FAIR”, took to the stage. I realized in that moment that the Tea Party Against Amnesty for Illegal Immigration was really the front for white nationalist propaganda.
It was I that walked away with more ammunition than them. I was sad to see that people listened to such an ignorant man who knows nothing about the history of this country. Mr. Gheen is a man that spews hate toward a group of people who put food on his table. The information they provided me with was fuel to submit an article in our local newspaper, outing all the local politicians with ties to the white nationalist political extremists such as William Gheen who sponsored the event. Cheers to another day in November of exposing political extremists who attempt to uproot our nation’s values – the values that I hold dear as an American citizen.
Deborah Austin is a social justice advocate and mother from Raleigh, North Carolina.