Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Council for Conservative Citizens
The Implied Bigotry of NumbersUSA
01 year ago
by Jill Garvey
in Americans For Better Immigration, Californians For Population Stabilization, Council for Conservative Citizens, David Duke, Grassroots Organization, Immigration, Immigration Reform, John Tanton, Numbersusa Action, NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, Politics, Population Control, Roy Beck, White Nationalism
Beck at a CofCC event
NumbersUSA operates at the nerve center of the most influential anti-immigrant network in the country.
This network, created by John Tanton, consists of over two dozen lobby, legal, legislative, and environmental groups that have penetrated mainstream social and political discourse. Of late, no group has been more successful than NumbersUSA, which is leading a vicious campaign against immigration reform advocates. NumbersUSA was founded in 1997 under the financial umbrella of Tanton’s U.S., Inc.
Unlike Tanton’s other groups, NumbersUSA strategically avoids overt white nationalist rhetoric in favor of emphasizing the alleged negative economic and environmental impacts of immigrants. Based in Arlington, VA, NumbersUSA presently consists of three legally distinct but financially intertwined organizations: NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and Americans for Better Immigration.
Roy Beck is the executive director of NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and chairman of Americans for Better Immigration. Looking at Form 990s from each group, Beck is listed as a paid employee at all three. Compensated a whopping $274,500 in 2007 alone, Beck’s paycheck is more than five times the net income of an average American. Not bad for a gig at a “grassroots” organization.
Last week Beck laid bare his plot, called “S.T.O.P. Amnesty” to defeat a powerful march for immigration reform. NumbersUSA’s troops of choice are tea partiers and hard-core anti-immigrant activists. Beck all but ordered fractured tea partiers to fall in line behind his anti-immigrant agenda on a conference call last week. As evidenced at the national tea party convention, beating up on immigrants appeals to many tea party members; however, one has to wonder if they would be so enthusiastic were they to know about Beck’s views on population control.
Just in case the tea partiers don’t stick to the anti-immigrant talking points, Roy Beck is using his environmental background and population growth “expertise” to push anti-immigrant sentiment among the conservation crowd.
Under a coalition called America’s Leadership Team for Long Range Population Immigration-Resource Planning, NumbersUSA is partnering with the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF). AICF president John Vinson regularly writes for the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens. Vinson is also a founding member of the racist League of the South.
This year NumbersUSA released a report with Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). Rick Oltman, the media director of CAPS, was listed as a member by the Council of Conservative Citizens. Oltman also lost a Republican Party post in California after he supported physical attacks on undocumented immigrants.
While population growth is certainly a legitimate issue to address, just based on its ties to white nationalism as outlined above, NumbersUSA should be excluded from the discussion.
NumbersUSA supporters argue that the organization is merely a grassroots operation trying to protect American workers, but they conveniently ignore its ties to organized bigotry and murky financial structure. At the beginning of the week NumbersUSA’s campaign was heartily promoted by white nationalist David Duke. Nothing conveys “tolerance” quite like a pat on the back from a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
And what should be made of yesterday’s alert on NumbersUSA’s website that stated, “Organizers for the Amnesty March are providing transportation for marchers and have a website dedicated to helping marchers organize before Sunday. Immigration Equality is also providing transportation for the LGBT community, encouraging them to take part in the Amnesty March.”
It sounds as if NumbersUSA is pushing the buttons of some of its say, more extreme supporters, who may be into both gay and immigrant bashing.
Whether it’s in far-right conservative, working-class, or environmental communities, NumbersUSA, along with a host of related anti-immigrant groups, is trying to stir up trouble, not find solutions.
The answers to immigration issues will not be found through NumbersUSA’s brand of political extremism, but rather a vision that includes immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens working together to achieve a better life for all Americans.
Exhibit Provides Opportunity to Understand Race
02 years ago
By Katie Irwin
A few months ago I came across an exhibit about race by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota. It explains the realities and myths surrounding race, and how the concept has evolved through time. The Association is encouraging people across America to discuss and examine their thoughts on race. The What is Race? exhibit shows how the concept of race has changed and is still changing, and it uses biology, culture and history to educate the public. From the exhibit’s website it states:
“Racial and ethnic categories, which have changed over time, are human-made. We now know that human beings are more alike genetically than any other living species. Scientifically, no one gene, or any set of genes, can support the idea of race.”
As an anthropology student, I discussed these issues regularly. Every week my peers and I would talk about the articles or books we were reading and our own experiences we had regarding racial issues. Hearing, talking and discussing events that my friends or I have witnessed and been involved in has been beneficial in understanding this ongoing issue. My professor would say that these conversations don’t happen in the real world, and generally they don’t. This exhibit can help change that.
Unfortunately, there are extreme groups that do not want discussions about race to happen and have attacked the exhibit. The Council for Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a known white supremacist organization posted the exhibit’s introductory video on its website and labeled it biased and pseudoscience.
What these extreme groups ignore is that anthropologists try hard not to let the values and normality of their upbringing interfere with their research; what is normal for one culture might be considered strange in another culture, so we spend years learning to minimize bias. I think their attacks come from a place of hatred, and wanting to uphold racial divisions in this country.
In fact, this exhibit is helping dispel the myths of past scientists, philosophers, explorers, etc. who were influenced by their Euro-centric backgrounds which have led to some of the most biased and false science and propaganda about the “inferiority” of non-white “races.” One of the best books I read on this subject was “Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen J. Gould; he writes about the theories devised in the 18th century, when Europeans used science to try and justify slavery, and did the experiments himself to prove the biased nature of them.
This exhibit is a wonderful start in learning about the issues, and I believe we should be discussing this subject to truly understand that race is a social, political, and historic concept.
The National Council for Science and the Environment Should Dump Roy Beck
02 years ago
- Roy Beck presenting for the Council for Conservative Citizens
The white nationalist movement has long tried to dress up opposition to immigration as a “progressive” effort to protect the environment from population stress. So it should come as no surprise that Roy Beck, Executive Director of NumbersUSA, a Tanton-network group, will speak at a conference that starts today entitled The New Green Economy. What is both surprising and disturbing is that the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) invited him.
The environmental movement has been a target of aggressive tactics by anti-immigrant organizations for over 20 years. The strategy was first clearly articulated in 1986 by Beck’s former employer, and the original fiscal sponsor of NumbersUSA, John Tanton — widely described as the architect of the American immigration-restriction movement.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Tanton wrote in a then-secret memo to colleagues that their cause would benefit from getting the Sierra Club to adopt an anti-immigration position. Tanton’s idea was to deflect any damaging accusations of racism by having groups seen as “liberal,” such as the Sierra Club, take up policies opposed to immigration.
Let’s insure that Roy Beck doesn’t have the chance to further his hateful cause while distracting conference goers from real environmental concerns.
Platforms such as this conference only serve to provide a veneer of mainstream credibility to Beck’s disturbing agenda. Join me in calling or emailing the organizers of the event to ask them why they are supporting a controversial figure with ties to white nationalism at their conference.
Peter Saundry, Executive Director
Peter@NCSEonline.org 202-207-0002
Chris Bernabo, Director of Science Solutions
Chris@NCSEonline.org 202-207-0007
Let Peter and Chris know that Roy Beck is not an innocent man.
· Roy Beck has long associated with white supremacists and their organizations. In 1996, Beck spoke at a conference put on by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, which has described Black people as “a retrograde species of humanity” and opposes racial intermarriage, among other things.
· NumbersUSA opposes automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S., as guaranteed by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. They endorsed vitriolic anti-immigrant ballot initiative called the California Taxpayers Protection Act. “It is time,” it says on the initiatives website, “to stop the proliferation of the Third World in the United States.”
· Beck, NumbersUSA and their allies, including organizations designated as hate groups by the SPLC and key figures in America’s white nationalist movement, have been a top concern of civil rights organizations for a number of years. Their tactics have led to a dangerous increase in racial disharmony and intolerance and have had a direct impact on the disturbing rise in hate groups and hate crimes in America.
Clearly Beck wears many hats, from spokesperson for a hate group to anti-immigrant activist, but one thing he is not is an environmental expert. The inclusion of Beck among a roster of otherwise highly respected experts stretches the bounds of a well-rounded dialogue.
There are no excuses for NCSE to give the white nationalist movement space to spread their hate. Let’s make sure NCSE knows we’re watching.