“Apply the Brakes:” Nativists and Naturalists Corrupt the Environment-Population Dialogue
Who would have thought that the renowned Lester Brown of Worldwatch Institute or Roderick Nash of the classic Wilderness and the American Mind would involve themselves in a portion of the environmental movement that dallies with nativists and white nationalists? Or that the Weeden Foundation, a mainstay funder of numerous environmental groups, might “steer the environmental movement toward a course fueled by bigotry and racism?”
With the release today of “Apply the Brakes: Anti-Immigrant Co-optation of the Environmental Movement,” the Center for New Community has laid these unseemly realities bare, and exposed yet another effort by anti-immigrant forces to corrupt the dialogue on the relationship of immigration to population growth to environmental degradation. As well, the report maps the ties between anti-immigrant interests and environmental groups nationwide.
Apply the Brakes (ATB) s a rather innocuous gathering of “long-time conservationists” committed to stopping “unsustainable U.S. population growth.” Having met in 2006 “to discuss the decade-long retreat of U.S. environmental organizations from addressing domestic population growth as a key issue in both domestic and global sustainability,“ the group determined to fill the population gap left by traditional environmental organizations. Flying low over the environment-population-immigration landscape ever since, Apply the Brakes is perhaps the most stealthy of anti-immigrant configurations, with long roots in The John Tanton Network and the contemporary nativist movement in the U.S. Read more
SB 1070: Battle at the Grassroots
By Joel Olson
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In the struggle over the notorious anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, anti-working class law SB 1070, a person might be tempted to see this as a conflict that plays out among the elites of Arizona politics: legislators, governors, sheriffs, newspaper editors, judges, lawyers, and nonprofits. This view would be understandable, but wrong. The real battle is at the grassroots.
On the one hand, there is a strong nativist movement afoot in Arizona that is overwhelmingly white, mostly over the age of fifty, and largely male. They fear that “illegals are invading” and causing all manner of mayhem, from home invasions to overcrowded emergency rooms to automated voices forcing them to “press 1 for English.” They are represented by the Tea Party and local politicians such as State Senator Russell Pearce. Their goal is to hound and harass all “illegal aliens” out of Arizona—and if they have to check the papers of every brown-skinned person in the state to do it, fine. “Attrition through enforcement,” Pearce calls it. That phrase is now written into Arizona law. At their demand, SB 1070 turns every cop in the state into an immigration officer, practically requires racial profiling, and denies the freedom of Arizonans to associate with whoever they please, documented or not. With the passage of 1070, nativists are confident that they control the territory.
But what happens when you hold a Tea Party and a bunch of “illegals” show up? Read more
“We are human beings looking for a means to survive”
Despite a feigned concern about the distinction between “illegal” and “legal” immigrants, anti-immigrant forces in this country have helped stir up a general contempt for immigrants which goes beyond the status of documentation. The rhetoric of FAIR and other nativist hatemongering groups has contributed to a prejudice from which documented immigrants are not immune.
Seila Mosquera is part of the Ecuadorian immigrant community in the greater New Haven, CT, area—a community which itself has been the target of white supremacy and nativist hate from such groups as the Community Watchdog Project and North East White Pride, as well as citizenry in general here in the supposedly liberal Nutmeg State. As a community leader and resident of East Haven, a New Haven suburb where police harassment against Latinos/as seems to be the flavor of the day, Mosquera is tired of the presumptuous and pejorative beliefs about her culture and her community. Read more
Anti-Latino Hate Crimes Rise for Fourth Year in a Row
Originally posted on SPLC’s blog, Hatewa
tch, by Mark Potok on October 29, 2008
Hate crimes targeting Latinos increased again in 2007, capping a 40% rise in the four years since 2003, according to FBI statistics released earlier this week.
As anti-immigrant propaganda has increased on both the margins and in the mainstream of society — where pundits and politicians have routinely vilified undocumented Latino immigrants with a series of defamatory falsehoods — hate violence has risen against perceived “illegal aliens.” Each year since 2003, the number of FBI-reported anti-Latino hate crime incidents has risen (see table, below), even as a swelling nativist movement has become larger and more vitriolic. read more
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