Report exposes links of Tea Party to racism

Posted: Monday, October 25, 2010 11:53 am

WASHINGTON - The NAACP has released a report by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights which details various associations between Tea Party organizations and acknowledged hate groups in the United States (teapartynationalism.com). The report comes a few days after the NAACP board ratified a resolution calling on the Tea Party to repudiate racist elements within its ranks along with a resolution calling for civility in the political discourse. Those resolutions are part of nearly 80 others on jobs, education and climate change. The national attention sparked by NAACP call this summer for the Tea Party to repudiate racist elements within the group, inspired the Tea Party leadership to purge some outspoken racist elements including Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams well known for racist rants. The new report details ongoing links between Tea Party organizations and various white supremacist groups, anti-immigrant organizations, and independent militias. In addition, five of the six groups are headed by "birthers," people who deny President Obama's citizenship. "These groups and individuals are out there, and we ignore them at our own peril," stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. "They are speaking at Tea Party events, recruiting at rallies and in some cases remain in the Tea Party leadership itself. The danger is not that the majority of Tea Party members share their views, but that left unchecked, these extremists might indirectly influence the direction of the Tea Party and therefore the direction of our country: moving it backward and not forward." The report analyzes each of the six most active Tea Party organizations. Drawing from Tea Party literature and websites, as well as original statistical analysis, the authors provide demographic information and specific in stances of racist ties. It also offers interactive maps showing where Tea Party membership is located within the United States. It outlines instances of intolerance and extremism. An addendum details local Tea party leaders who have direct ties to white supremacist groups. The TeaParty.org faction is led by the executive director of the Minuteman Project, a nativist organization that has in the past been associated with the murder of migrant Mexican workers as part of its vigilante "border operations." Roan Garcia-Quintana, "advisor and media spokesman" for the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party and member of ResistNet, also serves on the National Board of Directors of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), the lineal descendent of the Council of White Citizens. In Texas, Wood County Tea Party leader Karen Pack was once listed as an "official supporter" of Thom Robb's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a modern-day white supremacist organization. In addition to the report, the NAACP has been running Tea Party Tracker, a website that monitors instances of racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement. You can visit it at www.tea­party tracker.org. This article was originally published in the October 25, 2010 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper