IREHR in The Columbian

Published in Press
Written by Devin Burghart

IREHR vice president, Devin Burghart, expressed concern about Richard Mack speaking at a Washington State Republican Lincoln Day Dinner.

As IREHR documented in Tea Party Nationalism, Mack, the former Graham County, Arizona sheriff popular in white supremacist and militia circles during the 1990s, found his speaking career rejuvenated with the emergence of the Tea Party.

The full article in the April 27, 2013 issue of The Columbian, “Tea Party reigns at GOP dinner: Stand up to government, event’s speakers implore” is available here - http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/apr/27/tea-party-reigns-at-gop-dinner/

The Boston Marathon Bombing: A Personal Statement

Published in IREHR
Written by Leonard Zeskind

Residents of Watertown, Mass. on the streets after arrest of the second suspect.

The senseless murder and mayhem in Boston has left me speechless. Initially, I refused to speculate about who did it, despite repeated requests to do so. I pointed to the wildly mistaken guesses about the Texas murders, when people who should have known better talked as if the Aryan Brotherhood were the perpetrators, sure thing. It turned out to be anything but. In this case, as a friend wrote me, “Chechens, who knew?” I certainly did not.

On Responding to the Far-Right, The LA Times Gets It Wrong

Published in IREHR
Written by Leonard Zeskind

A 1985 training session on countering the rural radical right.

In a March 8, 2013 editorial, the Los Angeles Times discussed a recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center about the increase in “patriot” groups. IREHR applauds the report and its discussion. But the Los Angeles Times opinion writers make the most egregious of mistakes when they write: “What can be done to reverse this tide of belligerent ignorance? Not much.”

Recognizing the First Amendment rights of racist, anti-Semites and bigots—whether they be known as militias, patriots, Tea Partiers or Ku Klux Klansmen—is not a ticket to surrendering our own First Amendment rights to speak out and peaceably assemble. Over the decades, in hundreds of communities and states, religious leaders, community-based organizations and youth and subculture groupings have used their own First Amendment rights.

IREHR Impact in Kansas

Published in IREHR
Written by Devin Burghart

IREHR president Leonard Zeskind gave the keynote talk at a gathering in Topeka of more than 130 women brought together by the United Methodist Women Conferences in Eastern and Western Kansas. Zeskind talked about racism, the white nationalism and the anti-immigrant movement. He described the white nationalist origins of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Then he traced the arc of the movement that began with Pat Buchanan’s 1992 run in the Republican Presidential primaries in 1992 and California’s Prop 187 in 1994. He also showed how the Tea Party movement had picked up the slack in the established anti-immigrant organizations, information that was based on IREHR’s Special Report, Beyond FAIR. The questions following Zeskind’s presentation revealed the hunger at the base of the United Methodist Women’s Conference for hard information. IREHR will follow up with this.

IREHR Impact

Hidden, Forgotten and Denied: Racism and Anti-Semitism in the State of Kansas

Published in IREHR
Written by Leonard Zeskind

Ku Klux Klan Members from Topeka, 1924 (source: http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/203)

On Monday, January 28, 2013, in Topeka, Washburn University’s Center for Kansas Studies asked IREHR president Leonard Zeskind to give a presentation for their main “Kansas Day” commemoration. The following is an excerpt from that speech.

Petition: Tell Senator Graham, Hands off the Fourteenth Amendment

Published in IREHR
Written by Devin Burghart

Just days before negotiations began with Senate colleagues to reform the nation’s broken immigration system, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent out notice that he wanted to eviscerate the birthright citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment.

On November 8, Graham tweeted, “Without changes in birthright citizenship we will have future waves of illegal immigration.”

We remind everyone, particularly the chief negotiators of immigration reform, Sen. Graham and Sen. Schumer, that citizenship for all those born in the United States and equality before the law should be forever entwined in the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

Passed after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment promised full citizenship for the new Freedmen, the children of Chinese immigrants and all those born in the United States. Unfortunately, it soon became a dead letter in the era of Jim Crow segregation, and was too often ignored by presidents, in Congress, by governors and in state legislatures. The 1954 Brown v Topeka Board of Education decision and the black freedom movement brought the Fourteenth Amendment back to life, and we will not let it die once again.

We ask: What part of the Fourteenth Amendment does Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, not understand?

The Fourteenth Amendment is non-negotiable. Hands off the Fourteenth Amendment.

Click here to sign the petition.

Abridging the Vote Report (pdf)

Published in Special Reports
Written by Devin Burghart

Abridging the Vote: True the Vote in North Carolina

Beyond FAIR Report (pdf)

Published in Special Reports
Written by Devin Burghart

Beyond FAIR report

Tea Party Nationalism Report (pdf)

Published in Special Reports
Written by Devin Burghart

Tea Party Nationalism

IREHR in the United Kingdom - 2012

Published in IREHR
Written by Devin Burghart

Photo courtesy Searchlight magazine, from left Leonard Zeskind, Megan Dobney, Cathy Pound, Steve Hart and Dominic Byrne.

Leonard Zeskind spoke at a side-bar meeting of trade unionists at a Trade Union Congress in Brighton, England on September 11. The event was organized by Searchlight magazine’s trade union liaison officer, Cathy Pound, who also served as moderator. The speakers also included Megan Dobney, regional secretary of the Southern and Eastern Trade Union Congress; Steve Hart, political director of Unite the Union, Bob Crow the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Marine and Transport Workers Union and Dominic Byrne, a divisional secretary for the National Union of Teachers. The meeting discussed British unions’ opposition to racism and fascism, to the thuggish English Defense League, and building opposition to the drive to enforce austerity measures. Leonard Zeskind talked about the dangers posed by the Tea Party movement in the USA. Thanks go to Cathy Pound for all her good work!

IREHR

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IREHR in The Columbian

The Boston Marathon Bombing: A Personal Statement

On Responding to the Far-Right, The LA Times Gets It Wrong

IREHR Impact in Kansas

Hidden, Forgotten and Denied: Racism and Anti-Semitism in the State of Kansas

Petition: Tell Senator Graham, Hands off the Fourteenth Amendment

Click here to sign the petition.

Abridging the Vote Report (pdf)

Abridging the Vote: True the Vote in North Carolina

Beyond FAIR Report (pdf)

Tea Party Nationalism Report (pdf)

IREHR in the United Kingdom - 2012

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IREHR in The Columbian

“Take these Tribes Down” The Anti-Indian Movement Comes to Washington State

Tea Party Joins Gun Lobby to Kill Gun Background Checks

The Boston Marathon Bombing: A Personal Statement

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