National Council of La Raza promotes radical groups

Tom Tancredo writes:

The National Council of La Raza bills itself as "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States" who works through "its network of nearly 300 affiliated community-based organizations."

Among these affiliates are several chapters of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan) who La Raza helps fund. Aztlan is what radical "Mechistas"—as they refer to themselves on La Raza’s website—call the American Southwest, which they claim still belongs to Mexico. Their slogan is "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada" meaning "For The Race everything, outside the Race nothing." One chapter says on La Raza’s site that their mission is "empowerment of our gente and the liberation of Aztlan."

La Raza receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to set up charter schools like the Aztlan Academy of Tucson where they fly the Mexican Flag, but not the American Flag and teach students "Aztec Math."

See the link for some of his citations, and the "liberation of Aztlan" group is promoted at lideres.nclr.org/content/groups/detail/2308. In addition to that call, they also include the MEChA logo of an eagle holding a stick of dynamite and a war club. See also lideres.nclr.org/content/article/detail/1743 where they promote someone who joined a Brown Berets group while in the sixth grade; they're even more extreme than MEChA. And, right there on the right in that section: the logos of some of the NCLR's corporate sponsors: Allstate, Best Buy, MetLife, and Sodexo. Note also that the NCLR claims not to support separatism at nclr.org/section/separatist. So much for that.

The first group mentioned above is in the list at lideres.nclr.org/content/groups/?orderby=name&page=37 and other questionable groups are also being promoted by the NCLR, including at lideres.nclr.org/content/groups/?page=15. Screengrabs of those pages are here and here in case they get edited.

In response, Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress offers "Tancredo: Sotomayor Pals Around With Mexican Separatists" (thinkprogress.org/2009/08/01/tancredo-aztlan). His response is little more than a barely-coherent attempt to distract their readers from Tancredo's point that also includes him playing the race card.

Mon, 08/03/2009 - 05:27 · · Importance: 4