"Damned right. I hate 'em all - negroes, wasps, spics, eskimos, jews, honkies, krauts, ruskies, ethopans, pakis, hunkies, pollocks and marxists; there are way too many of them. I'm all for trout, elephants, bacteria, whales, wolves, birds, parrot fish, deciduous foliage and mollusks. Time to rebalance the planet, bleeding heart liberals be damned. [sic]"

- Fred Elbel, President, Defend Colorado Now

CNC SPECIAL REPORT: DEFEND COLORADO NOW

Defend Colorado Now (DCN) has received significant financial support from national anti-immigrant groups.

The organization is headed by two long-time anti-immigrant activists—Fred Elbel and former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm—with deep connections to controversial national nativist groups.

DEFEND COLORADO NOW & US INC.

The largest single contributor to-date to Defend Colorado Now is a shadowy anti-immigrant foundation from Michigan run by the grandfather of the modern anti-immigrant movement.

The Petoskey, Michigan-based U.S. Inc. has contributed $48,000.00 to Defend Colorado Now since March 2005. [1]

U.S. Inc. is a financial umbrella organization for a number of anti-immigrant, population reduction, and conservationist groups run by John Tanton. Since its creation in the 1980s the organization has contributed to some of the most extreme grassroots anti-immigrant groups, including the California Coalition to Reform Immigration and Voice of Citizens Together/American Patrol.

 The flagship organization under the US Inc. umbrella is The Social Contract Press (TSCP) - the publishing wing of John Tanton’s vast anti-immigrant enterprise. US Inc. and TSCP actually share staff and office space.

Tanton, the head of U.S. Inc. and the publisher of The Social Contract once wondered aloud in a memo to other anti-immigrant activists if “As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? Why don’t non-Hispanic Whites have a group identity, as do Blacks, Jews, Hispanics?” [2] Tanton also commented regarding the fertility of non-white immigrants verses white Americans: “Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenitiva if borders aren’t controlled? Or is advice to limit ones family simply advice to move over and let someone else with greater reproductive powers occupy the space?” [3]  

Working closely with Tanton as the editor of The Social Contract is Wayne Lutton, an ardent white nationalist. Lutton has spoken at the biannual conference of the white nationalist group American Renaissance, is a trustee of the American Renaissance parent organization, the New Century Foundation, and is on the editorial advisory board of the Council of Conservative Citizens Citizens Informer and the white nationalist journal The Occidental Quarterly. He has also written numerous, pseudonymous articles for the Journal of Historical Review, the Holocaust denial journal founded by Willis Carto. [4] Tanton has consistently supported Lutton, despite his continued involvement with unabashed white nationalist groups.

The ideology of The Social Contract Press is probably best described as nativist, or nativist with white nationalist leanings. The cover blurb printed on the inside of each issue of TSC lists the following as key topics of interest: human population, immigration, national unity (language, assimilation, culture), individual rights vs. civic responsibilities, and what other nations are doing with respect to these issues. TSC uses a variety of arguments, including economic self-interest, environmental sustainability, and cultural cohesion to support its positions on immigration.

There is also, however, a thread of race-based fear-mongering in TSCP/TSC, based in consistent attacks on civil rights organizations that represent the interests of Latinos. Subtly and not-so-subtly they implicate non-white immigrants as criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists. Nor do TSC’s principals avoid making overtures to explicitly racist organizations.

DEFEND COLORADO NOW PRESIDENT FRED ELBEL

 The President of Defend Colorado Now, Fred Elbel, is the principle force behind several organizations closely linked to the extreme end of the “population control” wing of the anti-immigrant movement, and is the webmaster for a number of anti-immigrant websites.

Elbel & SUSPS

Fred Elbel is a leader and spokesperson in SUSPS (formerly known as “Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization”), a network of anti-immigration Sierra Club activists who have attempted to take over the national environmental group. SUSPS remains an unincorporated organization that has refused to divulge either its leadership or its funding, in spite of repeated requests from Sierra Club members. SUSPS is led by Elbel and Brenda Walker, each of whom has been instrumental as a bridge to outside anti-immigration groups.

In 2004, SUSPS ran a slate of anti-immigration candidates, including DCN leader Richard Lamm, to take over the Sierra Club board of directors. [5] They were resoundingly defeated. In the aftermath of the failed takeover attempt, when confronted over his statements blaming poor people of color for environmental problems, Elbel wrote:

Damned right. I hate 'em all - negroes, wasps, spics, eskimos, jews, honkies, krauts, ruskies, ethopans, pakis, hunkies, pollocks and marxists; there are way too many of them. I'm all for trout, elephants, bacteria, whales, wolves, birds, parrot fish, deciduous foliage and mollusks. Time to rebalance the planet, bleeding heart liberals be damned. [sic]  [6]

Through SUSPS, Elbel has worked closely with avowed white nationalists, such as Brenda Walker. Elbel maintains the SUSPS website and sends out email reminders to Sierra Club members to vote for anti-immigrant candidates, while Walker is in charge of the Berkley, California P.O. Box mailing address.

Walker is involved in a number of web-based anti-immigrant efforts including www.limitstogrowth.org and www.immigrationshumancost.org, as well as a regular contributor to The Social Contract journal and the VDARE nativist/white nationalist website.

Walker’s record suggests a strong affinity for an extreme variety of nativism and xenophobia. For example, she has stated that Hmongs in America are “drug-addicted polygamists.” [7]

In an article in The Social Contract, Walker makes the statement that “The belief that all cultures are equal—the central tenet of multicultural society—does not bear even the most cursory examination.” [8] In another piece (a book review) she denigrates the efforts by some media outlets to make the news more inclusive. She writes, “Hint: average Americans are not represented in those newly favored demographics.” [9]

On her own website, www.limitstogrowth.org, she has written, “Our country appears to have lapsed into one of its occasional periods of hysteria over a stubborn social problem. The residue of racism has created some unfortunate reaction in very inappropriate directions. Those of us who have been involved in immigration reduction have grown accustomed to shrieks of ‘racist’ from excitable people convinced that they are on the side of virtue—or from professional ethnics who play the race card like a drum.” [10]

Despite such overtly racist statements, Elbel has repeatedly defended Brenda Walker. 

Under the leadership of Elbel and Walker, SUSPS acts as a crucial bridge from the venerable environmental organization to the new-style nativists and white nationalists, as well as the hard edge of the population control movement.

Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club, noted, “while SUSPS has on its web site an announcement that it doesn't support hate, its leaders spew hate, in the case of Brenda Walker, condone hate, in the case of Fred Elbel , and disseminate hate, in the case of the email forwarded by Director Zuckerman.” [11]

Elbel & CAIR 

In addition to his activism with SUSPS, Elbel is also spokesperson (and former director) for the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR).

Until recently CAIR’s advisory council included Virginia Abernethy. [12] A self-proclaimed white “separatist,” Abernethy is also on the editorial advisory board of two different white nationalist organizations.

Abernethy sits on the editorial advisory board of the racist and anti-Semitic journal, The Occidental Quarterly, she also sat on the editorial advisory board on the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) publication, The Citizens Informer, and has contributed articles, advertised in the publication, and even spoken at CCC conferences.  

The CCC is the literal reincarnation of the white Citizens Councils. Today, the CCC remains the largest white nationalist organization in the country. All of the Council of Conservative Citizens’ core issues are racially charged: official recognition of Confederate battle flags, preserving monuments to the Confederacy, attacks against non-white immigration, and the undermining of affirmative action. As founder Robert Patterson wrote in the group’s flagship publication, the Citizens Informer, “Western civilization with all its might and glory would never have achieved its greatness without the directing hand of God and the creative genius of the white race.” He continued, “Any effort to destroy the race by a mixture of black blood is an effort to destroy Western civilization itself.” [13]

When asked about Abernethy’s involvement with CAIR, Elbel curiously chose to defend her. “CAIR in the past has periodically asked the advice of Dr. Abernethy on population matters; Dr Abernethy is a recognized expert in that area. CAIR alone will decide from whom to solicit advice on population matters." [14]

In addition to running the Defend Colorado Now, SUSPS, and CAIR websites, Elbel is the webmaster for twenty other nativist websites. [15]

DCN SPOKESPERSON RICHARD LAMM

Richard Lamm is a career politician.  He was the Governor of Colorado from 1975 to 1987, and before that a Colorado State legislator. Lamm’s books include the widely-distributed The Immigration Time Bomb: The Fragmenting of America, with Gary Imhoff (Dutton and Company, 1985). He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Christian Science Monitor’s Peace 2020 award, and serves on the board of the Conservation Foundation.

 Lamm & FAIR

Lamm has also been involved with the new nativism since its beginnings in the 1970s. Lamm became intimately involved with the Federation for American Reform (FAIR), founded by John Tanton in 1979.[16] According to Lamm, “I was a Board member for 18 years, since its inception.”  He continues to be listed on FAIR’s website as the current Chairman of its National Board of Advisors. [17] 

During Lamm’s tenure on the FAIR board of directors, between 1982 and 1994 FAIR accepted $1.28 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist foundation that specializes in funding “science” dedicated to demonstrating white intellectual and moral superiority. [18] (FAIR stopped accepting grants from the Pioneer Fund after doing so became a political liability during 1994’s Proposition 187 campaign.)

Lamm’s continued involvement with FAIR comes midst continuing controversy facing the organization. FAIR has continued to work with white nationalist groups: its staff have spoken at Council of Conservative Citizens events and shared the stage with CCC leaders. At least one FAIR staff person is reported to be a CCC member. [19]

Lamm & CAPS

Lamm is also on the Advisory Board of the Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). [20] Like FAIR, CAPS has received funding from the white supremacist Pioneer Fund. [21]

While FAIR has dismissed the controversy over Pioneer Fund grants by suggesting that because it happened in the past it doesn’t really count, the same excuse cannot be used by CAPS, which received its grant in 2002 – nearly a decade after the FAIR controversy and as Lamm served on its Advisory Board. 

Lamm & Nativist Publications

Lamm’s writings have also appeared in the pages of the social science journal Population and Environment and in The Social Contract.

Population and Environment is edited by Kevin MacDonald, a California State University, Long Beach professor of psychology who has written a book detailing an “evolutionary” explanation for anti-Semitism. Its former editor—during the period when Lamm’s three articles were published—was Virginia Abernethy, another academic closely associated with racist and white nationalist ideas, and the self-avowed white “separatist.”

The Social Contract (TSC) has published or reprinted at least ten articles by the former Governor, including the complete text of a letter he received, allegedly from an impoverished Bangladeshi student begging for his help in immigrating to the United States, along with Lamm’s response. In said response Lamm patiently explains that however moved by the appeal and impressed by its author, he must stand on principle—namely that there are already too many people in the United States and we don’t want any more. [22]