Trying to keep racism at arm’s length

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Trying to keep racism at arm’s length
Save Our State anti-illegal immigration group seeks to distance itself from white supremacists
By Jonathan Randles
Signal Staff Writer

The organization opposed to illegal immigration that has held two rallies in Santa Clarita in less than two months has struggled with an image problem since 2005: Members or others sometimes post racist comments on the group's message boards and occasionally show up at protests with racist messages.

Organizers for Save Our State said racism is not what their group is about, and they fear white supremacists harm the group's reputation.

"We got a lot of people in (SOS) of mixed races, or full-blooded races, that pass off as minorities these days," said Davi Rodriguez, who leads SOS out of Sacramento.

Trying to figure out who is racist on SOS' many message boards is often difficult, he said.

"You get these people who join the organization, they don't tell you who they are," Rodriguez said. "But then you strike a nerve with them and they would blurt something on the message boards."

Weeding out SOS members who could be white supremacists is a challenge, Rodriguez said.

"You don't want to go on a Nazi hunt in your own organization," Rodriguez said.

Save Our State has a set of rules and guidelines that clearly state it does not allow racism on message boards, but those rules don't always appear to be followed.

"Although we allow people to discuss race issues (on the message boards), we don't condone the white supremacist stuff," said Jean, a Fillmore resident who has organized two SOS rallies in Santa Clarita, including Saturday's rally.

She declined to provide her last name, citing concerns about personal safety.

SOS does its best to distance itself from racist organizations, but it must respect free speech rights, Jean said.

"We don't want to ban people as long as (what they're posting) is not real racist," she said. "We try to keep an eye on them. We put them in a restricted area so they can only go in that area and post."

Jean said she has been to several SOS rallies and only saw white supremacists at one, held in Simi Valley. SOS members tried to distance themselves from the skinheads at the rally by having them move into a parking lot across the street during the protest, she said.

Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said some of the posts on SOS message boards - not all of them in the restricted posting area - expand on white supremacist ideology.

An SOS member posted this message describing illegal immigrants in his community on Nov. 30: "From my personal observations and experience living in the trenches with them, the majority of them are brain dead ignoramuses coming here for as many freebies and subsidies they can get and will use any criminals means they can to get what they want. They're violent, arrogant, dishonest and anti-American."

Beirich said that post, like several others on the site, is blatantly racist.

"This comment is just plain old racism," Beirich said in an e-mail. "Ascribing slurs and demonizing adjectives to an entire population is simply that: racist."

The organization's site has thousands of posts that cover a wide range of topics - including one thread about the NFL. Members of SOS often disagree whether a post is appropriate or racist.

"People will see what they want to see. I don't pigeonhole people in certain categories," Jean said. "The idea that we are all right-wing religious nuts is wrong. We are a wide swath of what the country is."

Several other SOS posts say illegal immigrants could overwhelm native Californians - something similar to white supremacist ideology, Beirich said.

"White nationalists like to argue that immigration from Latin America is leading to white racial suicide and therefore should be stopped," Beirich said in an e-mail.

The goal of the rallies is not to get people talking about race, Rodrguez said, but to get people talking about illegal immigration and to bring new members into the organization.

"We look for people who feel the same way we do," Rodriguez said. "We want to gather up like-minded people and teach them before people on the other side teach them wrong."
http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/25310/