Letter to KPFA from Swaneagle Harijan March 27, 2004 Berkeley, California
Since 1984, I have listened to KPFA when visiting the Bay Area as I traveled to and from Big Mountain, Arizona as a supporter of the Dine resistance to forced relocation. Over the past few years, I have lived and worked in Berkeley during the fall and winter months, as work is hard to find in Stevens County in northeastern Washington State.
I am a devotee of authentic Peace and Justice working very hard towards ending war and ongoing human rights violations at home and elsewhere.
I am the mother of mixed race children. It was hippie parents and their children who first called my son a "n-word" while we were living in the mountains of northeastern Washington in the early 80s. Having no support system to address this painful reality, we were forced to leave for many years. I have been educating myself and others about dismantling bigotry ever since.
In the early 90s, I returned to the region working for over 5 years with the Upper Columbia Human Rights Coalition. During this time, I did a radio show for 8 months addressing the rising problem of skinheads, neo-nazis and Christian Identity adherents in my communit. Stevens County continues to be a haven for some of this country's most virulent and violent bigots, several of who have left to kill others. Buford Furrow, who opened fire on a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, wounding several children, then shooting to death a Phillipino mail carrier, is one such former resident.
I attended several 2nd Amendment meetings, heard local white supremacists speak at a Black Helicopter Meeting, talked to militia leaders who were former Special Forces in Vietnam, attended other such events, collected the literature and became quite familiar with the style and goals of such people.
It is with great distress that I noticed KPFA co-sponsoring the Deception Dollar event this weekend at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.
Whe I first was given one of these 911 dollars, it gave me the creeps. I was vigiling in front of the army recruiter in Colville at the time. I checked the infowars.org website, featured on the Deception Dollar I was given, finding it to be anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and pro-gun. I checked the sites out finding a consistent threat and a failure to be critical of sites that promote outright hate. Some of the sites have direct links to Christian Identity websites and other white supremacist sites. Several of the first printings of the Deception Dollars have "The American Free Press" website on the front. The AFP was once known as the "Spotlight," a notorious Christian Identity newspaper featuring the likes of David Duke, Louis Beam, Eustace Mullins and other promoters of violent hate.
Most people I have talked to who pass out these dollars have never checked any of the web sites out. In my years tracking the extreme racist right, I have become familiar with techniques used to "woo the left".
Adddressing this development among activists in the Bay Area is not easy. Few people talk the situation seriously and those that do are often people of color familiar with the seriousness of such bigotry. I deeply appreciate each person that has taken the time to check out the webs sites and educate themselves about what is going on here. It is something we cannot afford to minimize or ignore.
Racism contintues to thrive among many who consider themselves progressive. Why this is so must be examined and corrected.
When a Mexican mother and her daughter were recently beaten to death in Fremont, I did not hear anything about this on KPFA. It was an email from my Chicana/Apache firend that informed me that killing took place after a "Save Our State" rally trying to generate enough signatures for prop 136 petitions, equivalent to prop 187. Four white male vigilantes killed them because of their ethnicity and no media has communicated this.
April 3rd is the day of a protest and rally in Fremont in support of the Hernandez family who lost their loved ones at the hands of bigots.
I implore KPFA to denounce the inclusion of Alex Jones and other questionable "experts" at the 9/11 event they are co-sponsoring. I implore KPFA to educate itself and all employees, staff and volunteers about the well-funded and dangerous racist right, the Third Positionist Movement sweeping Europe and the US and how such hate mongers are operating in the specific region.
The Peace Movement continues to be all too white and will only get worse unless we are deeply committed to building trust and cross cultural unity.
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