Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Roy Beck
Controversial Anti-immigrant Group Attends Immigrant Rights March
01 year ago
by Stephen Piggott
in American Renaissance, Americans For Immigration Control, Council Of Conservative Citizens, Federation For American Immigration Reform, Hate Campaign, Immigrant Rights, Immigration, Jared Taylor, John Tanton, Numbers Usa, Numbersusa, Politics, Roy Beck, White Nationalists, White Supremacist
Today in Washington D.C., Roy Beck, the executive director of the anti-immigrant organization NumbersUSA will be on the National Mall debating with immigration reform marchers who are flooding to the capital from all across the country.
NumbersUSA will be streaming the event live on its website as part of a four day anti-immigrant hate campaign which began on Friday. NumbersUSA’s campaign has so far failed to live up to its own high expectations with less than one percent of its alleged 900,000 members signing its most recent “anti-amnesty” petition, a key part of the four day campaign.
Throughout the campaign, NumbersUSA has updated its twitter page constantly. On many of the tweets there is the term “#AFIRE.” This term refers to Americans for Immigration Control and Enforcement, a “National DC based office in conjunction with Americans for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (AFIRE) made up of FAIR and Numbers USA.” According to this statement on the Utah chapter of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), we can see that NumbersUSA and FAIR are actively working together. This is just another example of two John Tanton Network groups teaming up to bash immigrants.
NumbersUSA’s finances and ties to white nationalists are very disturbing. Roy Beck, the group’s executive director spoke at a 1997 Council of Conservative Citizens conference, something that has haunted Beck ever since. Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) is a white supremacist hate group. Its conferences have hosted a who’s who of the white nationalist hierarchy over the years, including Jared Taylor, founder of American Renaissance.
Beck is paid a colossal amount of money each year by NumbersUSA to spew anti-immigrant rhetoric. Beck was compensated a whopping $274,500 in 2007 alone, Beck’s paycheck is more than five times the net income of an average American.
Beck has also begun to think about the future of NumbersUSA and who will replace him at the helm when he finally retires. One of Beck’s right hand men at NumbersUSA is Chad MacDonald, the Director of Social Media Marketing for NumbersUSA. Chad recently spoke with Roy Beck and Tom Tancredo at the National Tea Party Convention, telling the crowd that each tea party group should have an “immigration expert.”
MacDonald has been busy in recent weeks in preparing for the four day anti-immigrant campaign. He has appeared in many videos, on both NumbersUSA’s website and YouTube page, discussing the immigration reform march and NumbersUSA’s anti-immigrant response to it. MacDonald is a much younger and more likable alternative to Beck, making him an ideal candidate to be the new face of NumbersUSA.
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.
NumbersUSA’s Excuses are a Dime a Dozen
01 year ago
The controversial anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA is still having a difficult time being completely above board with the American public. Over the last year the organization has been busy spinning its connections with white nationalists and its organizational stance on reproductive rights. This week it appears that NumbersUSA is adding fundraising to the list.
Last week Imagine2050 blogger Stephen Piggott wrote about a NumbersUSA Action email solicitation that asked individuals to donate money. NumbersUSA Action is one of the three interlocking organizations under the umbrella of NumbersUSA.
In the email NumbersUSA Action suggests to its donors that, unlike its opponents, it receives no monies from government or foundation sources. The email does not inform supporters that its research and education arm has no problem taking millions of dollars from the right-wing Sarah Scaife Foundation and the population control oriented Colcom foundation.
Last week NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck wrote to Imagine2050 saying “Our grassroots lobbying organization relies 100% on the small donations of concerned Americans.” According to its 990s (government tax records) that’s not exactly true either. In 2006 and 2007 alone NumbersUSA transferred nearly a million dollars from its research and education arm to NumbersUSA Action.
While it is perfectly legal for the organization to transfer these funds, to turn around and say that it “relies 100% on the small donations of concerned Americans” comes across as misleading. Something that NumbersUSA appears to be growing extremely comfortable with of late.
Last year, in response to concerns about its relationship to hate groups, Beck wrote that “NumbersUSA has never had connections with white supremacists — not in the past, not in the present, not in the future.” Once a picture surfaced of Beck speaking at a 1997 white supremacist event he simply explained “I have never denied having spoken to the Council of Conservative Citizens on my book tour in 1997.
Having, at least in his own mind, explained why he spoke to an organization that was formed by those who defended racial segregation, Beck chooses to ignore why he and his organization continue to find themselves in similar predicaments seventeen years later. Until 2005 Beck continued to regularly publish in the The Social Contract Press. The journal is edited by Wayne Lutton a longtime leader in the white nationalist movement and a board member of the anti-Semitic Charles Martel Society.
But it is not just the past. This year NumbersUSA joined in a project with two notorious anti-immigrant organizations, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and U.S. Inc.
CAPS is headed up by Rick Oltman a purported member of the Council of Conservative Citizens who was removed from a Republican Party post in 1996 for supporting physical attacks on undocumented immigrants. The other organization, U.S. Inc., is run by white nationalist John Tanton who wrote that hate crime laws in Europe were pushed by “Jewish interests” and revealed to the American public that immigration was simply “a skirmish in a wider war.”
Instead of accepting responsibility for its actions, NumbersUSA seeks to satisfy its critics with excuses, omissions, and political spin. Recently, while giving a workshop at a national Tea Party gathering Roy Beck was confronted about NumbersUSA’s alleged support of abortion and population control. Beck responded by telling the tea party activists that these were not NumbersUSA issues.
Again Roy Beck wasn’t being quite as truthful as he could have been. I guess he somehow forgot to mention that he and Leon Kolankiewicz released a history of the U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998) in 2000 available on its website. Abortion and contraceptive are key components of population stabilization the essay argues.
I’m sure that NumbersUSA will shortly deliver up to twenty more excuses to explain its inability to be transparent with the American public. If excuses truly come a dime a dozen, NumbersUSA won’t ever have to worry about fundraising again.
NumbersUSA’s Three Branches of Financial Shadiness
01 year ago
NumbersUSA, the grassroots mobilizing arm of the John Tanton Network, has had a long history of lies and deceit. Executive director Roy Beck has long denied his connections to white nationalists. Beck spoke at the 1997 Council of Conservative Citizens National Conference, a fact he denied on numerous occasions until recently. At a recent event in Glenarden, Maryland, Beck told the crowd that he hadn’t been invited back since, in reference to the 1997 Conference.
NumbersUSA’s financial information is as murky and misleading as its leader. The group itself is split into three arms: NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation, NumbersUSA Action, Inc., and Americans for Better Immigration. According to financial documents, all three share offices and personnel with one other. NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization which means its lobby for legislation powers are limited. NumbersUSA Action, Inc. and Americans for Better Immigration are 501(c)(4) organizations meaning they have unlimited lobbying ability.
First let’s compare the income of NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation and NumbersUSA Action, Inc. According to its 2008 financial documents, NumbersUSA Action, Inc. received over $1.5 million in direct public support, NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation received over 8 million.
According to Open Secrets, NumbersUSA.com spent a whopping $630,000 on lobbying in 2008. NumbersUSA.com is the website listed on both NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation and NumbersUSA Action, Inc.’s 2008 financial documents.
Recently, Roy Beck wrote to NumbersUSA supporters asking them to donate money to help them pay the $90,000 a month they spend on “faxing, internet activism and grassroots mobilization programs.” Beck went on to say that NumbersUSA “doesn’t get a penny from any foundation or the government.”
This is yet another example of Beck possibly stretching the truth. According to its 2008 financial documents, the Sarah Scaife Foundation paid NumbersUSA Research and Education $50,000, but because it shares office space, personnel and a website with NumbersUSA Action, Beck’s statements are suspicious.
According to the Colcom Foundation’s 2007 financial documents, they gave NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation over $2 million. According to its 2008 financial documents, the Weeden Foundation gave NumbersUSA $25,000.
Roy Beck and NumbersUSA have a history of distorting the facts. There is a clear lack of transparency in this organization.
Though NumbersUSA’s financial information is very murky, its connections to the John Tanton Network are as clear as day.
The John Tanton Network Brings Hate to African American Community in Maryland
01 year ago
Tonight in Glenarden, Maryland, a townhall meeting is taking place entitled, “Understanding the Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Citizens of Prince George’s County and the State of Maryland.” The event features three groups connected to the John Tanton Network: Help Save Maryland, a group that is listed as a state contact on FAIR’s website; NumbersUSA, a project of the John Tanton Network; and Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), another project of the Tanton Network. The discussion’s moderator is Sandy Pruitt of People for Change. Leo Alexander, a candidate for mayor of Washington DC and Paulette Faulkner, a former State of Maryland employee are also speaking.
When I first read about this event the immediate question that came to mind was, ‘why is the John Tanton Network, a network of organizations with strong ties to white nationalists, coming into a town that is 95% black and holding a discussion on immigration?’
On the surface, it looks as if the John Tanton Network is reaching out to African Americans, but this is not the case. It is instead trying to divide the African American community over the issue of immigration. In recent months, the Tanton Network has used a populist method to attempt to divide religious leaders from constituents, and business and union leaders from workers over the issue of Immigration. For African Americans, this is a civil rights issue, not an immigration issue. The fact that the Tanton Network has the audacity to come into an African American community and attempt to divide it is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. The fact is the Tanton Network does not care about the African American community, they are merely using it for political gain.
This impudent attempt by the John Tanton Network to divide the African American community will not end after the discussion in Glenarden tonight. Roy Beck of NumbersUSA will go back to Virginia and Monique A. Miles of IRLI will return to Washington DC, but one group, Help Save Maryland will remain. This group has been extremely active over the past year and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. This group is a danger not only to the African American and immigrant communities, but to all residents of Maryland. Until Marylander’s take a strong stand against it, Help Save Maryland will continue to divide communities at the local level just as the national organizations of the John Tanton Network are attempting to divide both nationally and locally.
Palin’s 100k Speech Fails to Unite Teabaggers
02 years ago
Question: Was Sarah Palin paid $100,000 to rehash a speech from her 2008 vice-presidential campaign?
Answer: You betcha!
On the final night of the National Tea Party Convention, Sarah Palin wooed the audience with some of her trademark one-liners but failed to give the audience anything of substance to take home. Her speech, which was hurried and directionless, did manage to articulate a conservative message which carried across Tea Party and Republican lines.
Sarah hammered on time-worn issues such as upholding the constitution, fiscal responsibility, and reducing taxes. She stayed away from social issues like immigration and preserving Judeo-Christian culture and values. She did this to the chagrin of the die-hard teabaggers who had spent the last two days pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric and praying to God to help them defeat their enemies.
Palin also stated she would not be gaining financially from this event. Something many speakers were quick to point out during the three day convention. Sarah went on to say she was going to put her speaker fees back into the movement. Of course, this was a popular with the audience.
In the end, Sarah did not lay out much of a future for the Tea Party movement other than to say she would be endorsing some candidates who followed the movement’s “ideals”. Way to make a commitment, Sarah!
Before the banquet, during the first part of the day, the convention’s focus was on discussing the future of the movement. A panel about this featured Amy Kremer of the Tea Party Express and two men who might have been vying for the award of most self-absorbed and egotistical, Mark Skoda of the Memphis Tea Party and Dave DeGerolamo of NC Freedom. While Mark and Amy were in agreement that the party should endorse specific candidates for office, Dave was not afraid to voice his opposition to this idea. He was concerned that Tea Party members would not take the time to research candidates that shared their views but would instead let others do the choosing. He went so far as to say that if you weren’t willing to take a closer look at a candidate’s position on issues than you shouldn’t even vote.
Mr. Skoda kept pressing that a tea party member’s vote was the most important tool they had in their fight to take back Washington. During the discussion panel both men shamelessly plugged their break-out sessions which were to take place within the next hour. Clearly outlining divisions in the movement, Skoda’s session was a candidate meet-and-greet while DeGerolamo’s session bragged about what great things NC Freedom was up to next.
And what of Roy Beck? Well, apparently Mr. Beck’s flight back to D.C. yesterday was canceled which left him stranded with the teabaggers. For the next two days, Mr. Beck was spotted wandering the convention aimlessly looking for others with which to share his anti-immigrant message. He found one listener in Mark Skoda who was seen conversing with Beck for an extended period of time. Later that evening, a clearly disinterested Beck left during Palin’s speech. One wonders if Mr. Beck left because Sarah Palin didn’t talk about immigration or because he’d heard the same speech during the McCain campaign two years ago? The answer ]may never be known.
In the end, it wasn’t just Sarah Palin who didn’t give much for the audience to take home, it was the convention itself that failed to articulate a unified next step for the movement. The two main themes that most people were forced to take away from the event were lessons on internet usage and complicated get-out-the-vote strategies. While important to some in attendance, this should have never come with a $558 dollar price tag.
So much for fiscal responsibility.
Tea Party Convention Loses Steam
02 years ago
Day two of the tea party convention can be summed up in two words: confusion and disunity.
The day began at 8:00am when the continental breakfast quickly ran out of coffee – much to the dismay of many sleepy tea partiers. One of the first speakers of the day was the founder of the Memphis Tea Party, Mark Skoda. Skoda’s speech was passionate and rousing, a badly needed pick-me-up after the dreary end to the previous night. Instead of the day continuing on an energizing note, however, it turned to bickering and confusion. The rest of the day was broken into five sets of breakout sessions. The first session I attended was conducted by the Leadership Institute. The session didn’t have an official title but I would call it “facebook and twitter for dummies.”
After that snooze-fest I moved on to “5 easy fixes to the high cost of mass immigration” put on by anti-immigrant group, NumbersUSA. Roy Beck and Tom Tancredo. The presentation about the “dangers of mass immigration” was well received by the crowd, but the Q&A session altered the mood significantly. When someone asked if Roy Beck and NumbersUSA were pro-abortion and sterilization the mood of the crowd changed to nervous murmurs about NumbersUSA’s pro-choice stance.
The final session I attended was by far the most telling about what is going on in the “movement.” The session was a speech by David DeGerolamo the founder of NC Freedom a tea party umbrella group in North Carolina. DeGerolamo’s speech was soon interrupted by members in the crowd who vented their frustrations about how the movement was divided and little could be done to help it. People voiced their anger about each session and meal not starting with a prayer, something that has clearly disturbed and isolated many attendees. DeGerolamo begrudgingly agreed with the crowd, stating that he was disappointed at the event’s lack of accomplishment and unity.
For me, many of the breakout sessions were fillers that took up time and taught little. After all of the high profile pullouts, it was clear that the Phillips family and other organizers had no “plan B” which resulted in at least four of the sessions turning into technology classes for the mainly internet-illiterate crowd. Mark Skoda, a man who clearly likes to hear the sound of his own voice, seemed to luck out from the pullouts, scoring two breakout sessions back to back. Another obvious “filler” session was an Emergency Preparedness session sponsored by Bass Pro Shops. The crowd was told many important survival tips, such as “cotton balls make good kindling” and “you’ll need a percolator if you wanna make coffee.” Someone in the audience chimed in (I’m not joking here) to say that if you put your cell phone in a microwave, it will protect it from electromagnegitic pulse damage.
The night ended with a speech by Angela McGlowan, only the second African American I have seen during two days at the convention. McGlowan announced that she is planning to run for one of Mississippi’s house seats which brought the crowd to its feet.
As I left the second day of the event, I saw a movement that is going nowhere. I witnessed workshops teaching fifty-somethings about using the internet, sessions where the crowd took over with their complaints, and a complete lack of diversity and unity. Many of the people I talked to today had no idea who the leading tea party organizers or groups were around the country, let alone at the convention. The sense of optimism that was present at Tom Tancredo’s speech last night has definitely diminished. It remains to be seen if Sarah Palin can pull something out of the bag tomorrow, and even if she can, it will be tough to demonstrate that this event was a success.
Roy Beck Appearance Raises Concern
02 years ago
The word is the National Council for Science and the Environment did not boot Roy Beck from its conference on Thursday, and it didn’t turn out too well. Attendees to Beck’s session were given detailed leaflets beforehand explaining his associations to the John Tanton Network and white nationalism and voiced their concerns about his relationships during the session.
Following up on our recent post about the NCSE, here is an excerpt from Erin Rosa’s in-depth article at Campus Progress:
What was supposed to be an annual convention of environmental scientists and influential policymakers quickly turned into a political polemic after some discovered that a speaker at one of the event’s breakout sessions had close ties to white supremacists.
Due to what researchers say is growing trend of radical right-wing groups using the environmental protection movement to push their own nativist agenda, convention organizers may have unknowingly given legitimacy to an alleged white nationalist. Experts studying hate groups in the United States were shocked to find out that Roy Beck, a former environmental journalist and current executive director of the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, was invited to speak yesterday at the 10th National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment (NCSPE) held at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., Beck was scheduled this week to speak on “Perverse Incentives, Subsidies, and Tax Code Impediments to a Sustainable Economy” and how they relate to the convention’s “New Green Economy” theme.
The event was organized by the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE), a nonprofit that works to “improve the scientific basis of environmental decision making” and one that is hardly known for having a political agenda. But for years, watchdog groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have been documenting Beck’s intimate connections to the white power movement.
Read the entire article here.
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.
Tancredo Kicks Off Tea Party Convention with Racist Comments
0The registration room was an open hallway lined with media on one side and sponsors’ booths on the other. Sponsors included Judicial Watch, Jensen Apparel, Leadership Institute, and Surge USA. At 7:00pm attendees were ushered inside the grand ballroom, which had about 30 small tables for four and 400 seats surrounding an elaborate stage. Before taking seats, the masses were treated to hors’dourves of coconut shrimp and pulled pork canapé while the event’s organizer, Judson Phillips, took to the stage. Forgetting his notes didn’t help him remember the long list of sponsors he was supposed to thank, and after several awkward flubs Phillips collected himself enough to introduce former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo to the stage to a standing ovation. Tancredo stood smiling at the crowd and waving before starting off his speech with “I’m Tom Tancredo and I drive a Harley!” He quickly moved on from the topic of motorcycles, however, to get to his main target: immigrants.
He stated that many of the people who voted Obama into office “can’t even spell the word vote or even speak English,” which brought loud applause from the crowd. He said that it was a good thing that McCain didn’t win the election otherwise we would be see him and Rep. Gutierrez receive awards from NCLR for introducing and implementing an amnesty bill. He went on to talk about the “cult of multiculturalism” which is “aided by leftists.”
He issued a warning to the crowd that “our culture is at stake” and that our culture “is based on Judeo-Christian values whether people like it or not!” Near the end of his speech Tancredo announced to the crowd that he was going to be working with Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA (an anti-immigrant group with strong ties to white nationalists) at their breakout session on Friday. He encouraged people to attend the session and thanked Roy Beck and NumbersUSA for all their good work.
It is obvious that Beck and Tancredo are trying to push the issue of immigration to the forefront of the tea party movement, something that was explicitly clear during Tancredo’s speech. The acts that followed paled in comparison to Tancredo, who definitely stole the first night spotlight of the three day event. Tancredo was followed by two musical acts and a prayer led by Dr. Rick Scarborough before the movie, Tea Party, A Documentary was screened.
Stay tuned to Imagine2050 for more updates on the first ever Tea Party National Convention.