After all the fun with Randy Graf and David Duke yesterday at the Pink Flamingo, I thought it was time to do an update on the anti-immigration scene in Arizona.  As of noon on Sunday, the Duke link was still up and running, even though Graf has appealed to have it removed. (From AZ Central.com)   It is a tremendous amount of reading.  But, some of the best work on the anti-immigration scene can be found here at the Subway Canaries, over at The Pink Flamingo, and over at The Pondering American.

"...Republican Randy Graf shot back at the Arizona Democratic Party today for trying to link him to notorious White supremacist David Duke.

From the Graf campaign:

The Democratic Party released a press release on September 20, suggesting that Graf “sever his ties” with KKK leader David Duke. Randy Graf does not know Duke, has zero ties to Duke, and abhors David Duke and the things for which he stands. Graf deplores this sleazy attempt by the state Democrats to To associate him with Duke. It appears that the racist and anti-Semitic Duke has placed part of an article from U.S. News & World Report on his web blog, about Randy’s victory in the September 12 Arizona Republican primary and with a link to the article and the Graf campaign website. It would be as absurd to claim that U.S. News has ties to Duke as it is that Randy has ties to him. Graf campaign manager RT Gregg stated: “The Graf for Congress campaign knows of no way to monitor nor does the campaign have the resources to monitor which individuals or groups link their websites to any other websites.”

The Graf campaign also criticized the Arizona Democratic Party for linking to Duke's Web site, which Gregg says give Duke "attention for his warped cause...."

To fully understand where all this is going and the fact that maybe the whole anti-immigration platform promoted by Tancredo may be on the verge of blowing up in Tancredo's face, one must understand what is going on with the whole anti-immigration scene in Arizona and the past history.  I must warn you, it is not a pretty one.

Let's deal with the whole minuteman,et.al. problem now.  There is a tremendous amount of material about it, and none of it covered better than the Pondering American. (Just ignore the football obsession, with the PA from LA.  His archive of research into the financing of the minutemen, et. al. and Chris Simcox can be found here at the Subway Canaries.

The problems seem to have begun several years ago when certain elements in Arizona decided to keep Arizona safe for Arizonans.  They used the model created by Barbara Coe in CA (that basically destroyed the GOP's electoral chances in the state). (From a previous Subway Canaries expose):  Barbara Coe is the most visible of the tawdry little group who could teach the ladies of Wisteria Lane a thing or two.  She is associated with the Cof CC and is a close, personal friend of Jim Gilchrist.  She doesn't like Hispanics and once referred to them as savages. 'Two months later, in a speech to the California Coalition on Immigration Reform, a hate group whose leader, Barbara Coe,routinely refers to Mexicans as “savages,” Simcox offered a dire warning to his audience.'.  She's also the chair of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform.  She periodically contributes to Vdare (an extremely racist web-based publication that is rapidly becoming mainstream).

And so, Protect Arizona Now (PAN) was born. 

Randy Graf, as mentioned by the panned AZ Dem press release mentioned above is mentioned in a VDARE piece in 2004. 

"...Jacoby interviewed Randy Graf, Congressional candidate and PAN advocate. Graf is well qualified to speak about the urgency of passing the PAN initiative in November. But, although Jacoby’s interview took place two days before the LA Times printed her column, she quoted nothing of what he told her...."

An Arizona Conservative news release also links Graf to PAN in 2004:

"...Bay Buchanan said, “There is a security threat here, jobs are on the line and there is a cultural aspect here. It is imperative that this initiative pass. We cannot wait for the officials to wake up. They are gone, and we can’t count on them. Reach out to others to join in this cause. It is incumbent on us to become involved. And Randy Graf must be elected … and others like him. He is going up against the establishment and the press.” Graf is a state representative opposing Kolbe in the District 8 Republican primary Sept. 7. ..."

To get an accurate background into what started the whole anti-immigration movement, you need to start with this same press release, which puts all the leading characters into their places.  And, once again, we come  up with the same cast:  Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan, Bay Buchanan, and their total hatred of George W. Bush.  To understand Tancredo's hatred, you must go back to his feud with Karl Rove.

"...On Thursday evening, the eyes of America focused on Arizona, ground zero in the border invasion that tears at the fabric of the nation. Lawmakers and immigration experts came to Phoenix to encourage volunteers to do everything possible to succeed in getting the Protect Arizona Now (PAN) initiative qualified for the fall ballot.

PAN aims to require proof of citizenship to register to vote, photo I.D. when voting and proof of eligibility to receive non-federal mandated public benefits. By June 30^th, PAN must submit 122,000 valid signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State’s office in order to get it placed on the official voting ballot for the November election. Recently, the signature tally was over 60,000.

One by one, a high-profile parade of speakers strode to the podium to implore Arizonans to make PAN succeed. The only person absent was PAN director Kathy McKee, who is feuding with fellow initiative leaders and is mistrustful of FAIR.

Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, the foremost federal lawmaker in fighting the border invasion, flew in to rouse the PAN troops. So did Bay Buchanan, the sister of Pat Buchanan and director of Team America, Los Angeles talk show host Terry Anderson and several members of the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR). Based in Washington, D.C., FAIR is spending $100,000 to pay people to gather the necessary signatures. FAIR sponsored Thursday’s rally.

Tancredo said, “I love Arizona and will come to Arizona at the drop of a hat. The task you have ahead of you is a difficult one. Some good things are happening. You can tell momentum is shifting in this country. Little things are happening."

The congressman said that President Bush ignited a firestorm of protest in  January when he introduced a Temporary Worker Program.

“That prompted a response I’ve never seen,” Tancredo said, “1,000 calls to my office in four hours, 99.999 percent of which were negative. People were saying, ‘I’ve been a Republican all my life and I’m not going to vote for him (President Bush).’”

Pat Buchanan said last week that the president has abandoned that plan.

However, at a Republican congressional retreat in Philadelphia two weeks after the Bush announcement, Tancredo felt that immigration reform would surely be placed on the agenda.

“It’s the one thing people agree on,” Tancredo said. “People by the throngs say, ‘yes, secure the borders!’ We have two problems to get anything accomplished: the Democratic Party – it’s a source of votes. On the other side we’ve got the Republican Party, which sees a source of cheap labor. These two power brokers are tough to beat. Karl Rove (senior adviser to Bush) and the White House people were at the retreat. At the end of the second day, I went up to speak. There were 30 members in line. Every person who spoke said, ‘this immigration thing … is he (Bush) crazy? Tell him to knock it off!’ ..."

PAN was founded by Kathy McKee.  McKee eventually brought Virginia Abernathy in to help with the growing organization.  Then the problems began.  Abernathy has close ties to the KKK and various other white supremacist organizations.   One of the important articles needed to explain who McKee is has been pulled, like many of the other KKK articles.  There is consensus among most that there is an immense problem ... Kathy McKee, an anti-immigration activist said about these centers, ... Kathy McKee was able to get the support of FAIR, Federation for American Immigration .www.kkk.bz/there_is_consensus_among_most_th.htm - 71k - Cached - Similar pages)  It is too bad, because this wonderful little piece is no longer available for public consumption

"One immigration reform website had this to say: ?It is our hope that the stench of McKee and Abernathy will not waft over those decent and well-meaning citizens who have labored hard and long for the true purpose of Prop 200...That she should engage a known radical ?separatist?, which is synonymous with racist and white supremacist, in any capacity is no surprise to those of us who have known of her narcissistic nature since first contact over a year ago.?The remarks made about Abernathy and McKee are inexcusable and are symptomatic of the problem with so many in the different umbrellas of the ?conservative? movement. They want a clean white Christian nation (even if they don?t admit it) but they want to keep their reputation also. ..SHAME!"

From the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix..."The Center for New Community, an anti-bigotry group based in Chicago, has criticized Abernethy for her leadership roles in other extremist efforts, such as the Occidental Quarterly, a publication that declares that immigration into the United States should be limited to "selected people of European ancestry." Pan'sointment of Abernathy, the center says, should make us all question the group's real motives.

In her defense of Abernethy, PAN founder and chairwoman Kathy McKee jumped on the Center for New Community, questioning its legitimacy and comparing it to The Southern Poverty Law Center, which she branded "a hate group." The SP LCcourse, devotes itself to promoting tolerance and counteracting hate. McKee, like Abernethy, has an agenda so far to the right as to be off the page.

In related news, even farther off the page, the ADL last month confirmed that a self-admitted neo-Nazi is leading a push to recruit armed volunteers for a new "Arizona Guard" militia to patrol the Arizona/Mexico border from a compound near Douglas. ADL Regional Director Bill Straus said the news validates the ADL's warnings that "extreme anti-immigrant groups ... have historically attracted white supremacist and other extremist support."

Even some of PAN's legislative supporters, such as state Rep. Russell Pearce, (R-Mesa), are distancing themselves from PAN now that Abernathy is in the picture. Pearce told the Tribune through an assistant that he no longer works with Protect Arizona Now. But he still supports the initiative. Let's hope the rest of us know better..."

"Virginia Abernathy "Last year, Virginia Abernethy, a professor emeritus at Vanderbilt's medical school and leader of the Tanton-influenced Population-Environment Balance, became the latest in the Tanton network to join the Citizens Informer editorial board.
"My view of the Council of Conservative Citizens," she told the Intelligence Report, "is that they support traditional values and the freedom of people to associate with people that they want to associate with." She spoke on the same day that the CCC's website carried a comparison of black pop singer Michael Jackson and an ape a comparison that Abernethy suggested may have reflected "bad taste," but not racism. "What is the point of a society that pushes [racial] mixing?" she asked when told of another CCC web item that derided the wife of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl as a "mixed race" woman who is "committed to racial and ethnic amalgamation." "Our society pushes mixing," the retired Vanderbilt professor added. "I think this is probably not a good thing for the society."  The Cafe Press"

A much publicized KlanKat fight basically destroyed PAN and alienated their 'sugar daddy' Randy Childress.  From Arizona IndyMedia.

 "...PAN Treasurer Rusty Childress, owner of Childress Auto Mall in Phoenix, agrees that we need to protect the United States from immigrants because "we need to be careful that we don't become the third world country that a lot of these illegal aliens are running from." (Horizonte, KAET TV, Dec. 18, 2003)..."

 But, not to worry, Childress turned his attention from PAN to that absolutely idiot Michelle Dallacroce and her equally hystarical Mother's Against Illegal Immigration.  The SPLC has already put her in one ot its reports.

"...Well, I'm protesting you," the anarchist called back. "If anybody gave you an order to torture an Iraqi, you know you'd follow it like a good little fascist." Back at the Minuteman mini-rally, Mothers Against Illegal Immigration founder Michelle Dallacroce warned of Mexicans taking over America by "outbreeding our mothers." Gilchrist's towering, pony-tailed bodyguard shoved a news photographer who got too close. Meanwhile, a group of high-school boys in business suits with National Young Leaders Conference name tags made their way over to the neo-Nazis, where they stood next to Bill White and sieg-heiled while their giggling girlfriends snapped souvenir photos...."  

Spencer now runs the American Patrol Report.  Spencer is such a great humanist, you are going to want to check his page on "Mexican Family Values".

This lead to the arrival of Glenn Spencer.  I like to use the Aztlan article against him.  (Just desserts).  Spencer was working with Coe in CA.  Then things got a little too hot for him, so he packed up and moved to Sierra Vista in Cochise County, same county as Chris Simcox, only Simcox went to Tombstone.  (FYI - I'm not even getting into the whole Simcox thing in this epxose.  I've provided enough links up by the Pondereing American). 

"...Glenn Spencer's history of anti-Mexican bigotry began in Los Angeles when he founded, along with a group of Jews, an organization called Voices of Citizen's Together (VCT) approximately 5 years ago. Many of the members of VCT were Jews who were also members of the now defunct Jewish Defense League (JDL). Glenn Spencer himself bragged that he was a card carrying member of the JDL on his website and that his two daughters were married to Jews. One of Glenn Spencer's staunchest supporters in Los Angeles is the notorious Mexican hating Jew Hal Netkin. Soon after Irv Rubin of the JDL was arrested for terrorism and assassinated in federal prison, Glenn Spencer ceased to brag about his membership in the JDL.

When things got hot for Spencer in Los Angeles he, like the Tombstone Vigilante Chris Simcox, headed for the Arizona desert to join up with the infamous Arizona rancher Roger Barnett and his posse of white anti-immigrant bigots. Roger Barnett for a while was featured in the US national media for advocating the organized "hunting" of "illegal Mexicans" that crossed the Mexico/Arizona border. Barnett boasted to the media that he had arrested thousands of "illegal Mexicans" and was often featured in photographs porting an M-16 assault rifle with a hunting scope.

Glenn Spencer and Roger Barnett teamed up and in the year 2000 they organized an anti-Mexican conference in Sierra Vista, Arizona. They issued a flyer inviting militias, white supremacist groups and the KKK to come to Arizona for "some fun in the sun". The meaning was clear! They were inviting white violent bigots to come to Arizona to have fun "hunting for Mexicans". The conference took place at the Windemere Hotel in Sierra Vista, Arizona on Saturday May 13, 2000. Among some of the proposals discussed at the conference was "the placement of military style land mines along the desert pathways used by Mexican undocumented workers". Soon after the conference, numerous bodies of murdered Mexican migrant workers turned up in desolate areas of the Arizona desert.

The arrest of Glenn Spencer on Saturday is no surprise to those who are monitoring his increasingly bizarre behavior. Spencer, like the Tombstone vigilante Chris Simcox, has been exhibiting classic paranoiac schizophrenic symptoms recently. Just 5 days before his shooting rampage in Sierra Vista, Spencer wrote and published in his website a strange personal letter title "WHITE FIGHT OR FLIGHT" in which he warns, "white Americans, should get out of California -- now, before it is too late to salvage the equity they have in their homes and the value of their businesses." The reason Spencer gives for the warning is that the Mexicans have taken over California. It is very clear now why Spencer left the Los Angeles area to live in Sierra Vista, Arizona. In his letter he expresses the belief that he is a "white exile" forced to leave the Golden State. ..."

The SPLC did an excellent expose on Spencer.

"...Spencer got involved in the anti-immigration movement in 1992, when he formed Voice of Citizens Together, also known as American Patrol, in California. In 2002, saying the battle was lost in that state, he moved to the "front lines" of the Arizona border, where he formed American Border Patrol. He was one of the first to call for border citizens' patrols and pioneered the use of surveillance technology.

He also was one of the first well-known anti-immigration activists to more or less openly court white supremacists and anti-Semites. He has attended conferences of American Renaissance magazine, which specializes in racist theories about blacks and others. He interviewed the magazine's editor, Jared Taylor, on his syndicated radio show. Another guest was California State Professor Kevin MacDonald, who is the architect of an elaborate anti-Semitic theory dressed up as evolutionary biology.

Just this September, Spencer promoted on his Web site a booklet published by Taylor called The Color of Crime. The booklet is a "relentlessly factual" study that alleges that blacks and Hispanics are far more likely than whites to be criminals. It also falsely alleges people of color commit vastly more hate crimes than others... "

The ADL says immigration groups in AZ have some interesting ties.

"...While Spencer tries to downplay his extremist message by claiming that he is not a racist, racist and anti-government extremist groups across the country have embraced his rhetoric; indeed, Spencer has personally appeared at events sponsored by white supremacists and racists. .."

Ironically, I don't think it is a coincidence that many of these organizations are headquartered or center in and around Cochise County, home of Tombstone and the ghosts of the Cowboys.  Maybe the frontier ideal attracts individualists.  There is a very definate alure in Tombstone, which is one of my very favorite places.  The anti-bunch is having a huge rally there in a couple of weeks. 

You deal with it.