The Georgia Latino Vote 2006 campaign received a disturbing threatening call on August 7, after a voter registration drive was announced in local media. The call said, “What are you trying to do? We should throw them out of this country; they’re destroying it. Visit www.mexicosux.com. Mexico S-U-X dot com. You’re disgusting! We should shoot them as soon as they cross the border, especially the pregnant ones!”
The website mentioned shows a bumper sticker on a car that says, “Keep America Beautiful. Kill a Mexican!”
Previously, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) received an e-mail that read: “Listen up! We are going to have a violent bloody civil war because trash like you keep trying to destroy Georgia and America’s White Christian heritage. You’re playing with death! We will not tolerate this racial eclipse any more. We will not accept the ethnic cleansing of White people in their own country. You’ve been warned!”
With the knowledge that congressional hearings on immigration reform would take place on August 14 and 15 in Georgia, GALEO asked our elected officials to promote civil discourse on immigration and denounce racist and violent statements.
The response from Georgia politicians was a deathly silence, except for Representative John Lewis (D-GA), an constant defender of human rights.
“You and I should contribute to the formation of a complete community on simple justice, a community that values the dignity of every individual,” said Lewis.
In contrast, Representative Charlie Norwood (R-GA) used the hearings to provoke more anti-immigrant aggression.
As the moderator, Norwood began by saying, “I had no interest in immigration until I found out that a man named Miguel Angelo Córdova raped a three-year-old girl here in Georgia. That got my attention.”
With a fistful of carefully chosen words, Norwood evoked one of the most shameful periods of history when Georgia had the highest number of lynchings in the world “because every black man wanted to rape our White women.”
The Federal Education and Labor Force Committee of the House of Representatives organized twenty-one supposed hearings around the country about immigration, with two taking place in Georgia, on August 14 in Gainesville, to blame immigrants for unemployment and low salaries, and on August 15 in Dalton, to blame them for overloading the health care system.
Audience members could only attend the hearings by invitation, and most were party members supporting the party's position. The panelists that did not agree to show only one side of the coin were persuaded, pressured and occasionally insulted, particularly by Congressman Norwood.
The hearings had the intention of garnering support for the punitive House of Representatives proposal HR4437 and to discredit the Senate proposal S2611, which proposes comprehensive immigration reform.
During his presentation, Norwood always referred to the Senate legislation, commonly known as the McCain-Kennedy project, as the Kennedy-McCain-Martinez project, emphasizing Martinez and deliberately ignoring the other sponsors, Senators Arlen Specter (R–PA), Samuel Brownback (R–KS), Lindsey Graham (R–SC), and Chuck Hagel (R–NE).
Two other Georgia Republican congressmen, Nathan Deal and Tom Price, joined Norwood on the panel.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors hate groups, names three neo-Nazi organizations in Norwood’s Ninth District: the National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, and the Aryan Nation. The most dangerous of the three is the National Alliance, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The National Socialist Movement originated from the American Nazi Party. The two are promoting anti-immigrant sentiment and participating in campaigns against the undocumented.
The Gainesville and Dalton police departments prepared for this type of confrontation during the hearings.
The Aryan Nation/Church of Jesus Christ was for a time the most famous neo-Nazi group in the country. The United Knights of the North and North of the Ku Klux Klan, in Ellijay, and the White Knights of the North of Georgia, of the Ku Klux Klan in Fort Oglethorpe, operate in Deal’s 10th District.
What was once the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United States – the Ku Klux Klan – now consists of independent groups, fighting among themselves in the face of waning membership and funds.
The supremacy of young White people has slipped though their fingers. However, because of their past brutalities, Georgians are cautious of their potential to incite violence.
Price’s district includes Cobb Country, where the Brotherhood of the Chosen resides. Skinhead racists like the Brotherhood are particularly violent White supremacists, who have often been called the troops of the coming revolution, according to the Anti-Defamation league.
Speaking of skinheads, the local journalist D.A. King, with his shaved head, was one of the invited panelists. King calls himself a full-time anti-immigrant activist and advisor to Republican politicians.
King founded a militia group called The American Resistance (TAR). His website states, “We formed TAR to confront the powers that can destroy our republic and our way of life... Our nation is being invaded and colonized. We are a coalition of immigration crime fighters.”
Last year King founded another anti-immigrant group called the Dustin Inman Society, named for a 16-year old boy who died in a car accident, in which the undocumented immigrant responsible for the crash fled the scene.
Due to the lack of support for the anti-immigrant protest in front of the Georgia State Capitol, King paid several homeless people to carry signs during the protest.
“These organizations are not the White supremacists of the old Ku Klux Klan model, but they are organizations that are one step away from those that are historically connected to intolerance and stubbornness,” said State Senator Sam Zamarripa (D-GA).
Republican Congressmen Charlie Norwood, Nathan Deal, and Tom Price can win the votes of the Neo-Nazi electorate – sympathizers of White supremacists who blame immigrants – but lack proposals to resolve our real domestic issues.
