“After North Carolina’s largest counties cut ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency said it’s been forced to adopt a “new normal”: one that resulted in the arrest of hundreds of immigrants living here illegally this week.
“This is the direct conclusion of dangerous policies of not cooperating with ICE,” said Sean Gallagher, who oversees the agency’s operation in the Carolinas and Georgia. “This forces my officers to go out onto the street to conduct more enforcement.”
Since December, newly elected sheriffs in the state’s two most populous counties — Mecklenburg and Wake — have reversed a policy that notifies ICE about the legal status of inmates in county jails. The Durham County Sheriff’s Office also ended the practice of honoring ICE detainers.
Calling it ‘the new normal,’ feds arrest 200 undocumented immigrants in NC this week
I am a friend of D.A. King and have been a neighbor of his for the last thirty-five years here in Marietta. I have learned that you have passed on an absurd Southern Poverty Law Center “report” that D.A.’s non-profit group is somehow a ‘hate group” and attacks immigrants. Passing on false and slanderous attacks from the SPLC is no way to run a news outlet.
As a black American, I am disgusted with the SPLC’s endless race baiting and their shameless attacks on honest, patriotic Americans like us who want secure borders and to see our immigration laws enforced. I have been on the board of advisors of the Dustin Inman Society since its creation in 2005 and am proud to see D.A. fight against illegal immigration. I am amazed to learn that you never even interviewed D.A. King before you spread the SPLC smear.
It seems that you may be working on the same agenda as the SPLC.
Everett Robinson
Marietta
Board of Advisors
D.A. King (President)
Billy Inman
Kathy Inman
Inger Eberhart
Fred Elbel
Francisco Jorge
Lupe Moreno
Everett Robinson
John Litland
Maria Silvia Montoya
Mary Grabar
Catherine Davis
The loony left has published several hit pieces on me claiming I wrote the following parody:
“Damned right. I hate ‘em all – Negroes, wasps, spics, eskimos, jews, honkies, krauts, ruskies, ethopians, 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.”
The immigration sanity position was subject to heated attacks on the discussion list, and a little humor went a long way toward diffusing the idiocy of the open borders Marxists.
The loony Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and their leftist minions latched on to the parody and quoted it out of context in several hit pieces. Of course, if my complete post had been quoted, my humor would have stood out for what it was – that is, humor mocking idiots trying to accuse me of being a racist.
That’s how ad hominem attacks work: those with no rational grounds upon which to base their arguments resort to personal attacks to try to discredit their opponents. According to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals Rule 13:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
Yet name calling ultimately falls flat under the light of reason. Especially something as weak as using 15 year old parody out of context.
The rest of the story
The source of the attacks appear to originate with this 2009 article:
Guess what? That reference link goes to a nonexistent Center for New Community website. Dead. Defunct. Kaput.
The Wayback Machine does have archives of the website. It has archives from June 10, 2009, as well as from dozens of other dates.
But nothing about me. So I did a web search on my parody paragraph, and found another hit piece: “Apply The Brakes – Anti-Immigrant Co-Optation of the Environmental Movement,” by Jenny Levison, Stephen Piggott, Rebecca Poswolsky, and Eric Ward, The Center for New Community, 2010
It was a hit piece on the environmental organizations Apply The Brakes and SUSPS. I had been chair of the SUSPS Steering Committee at one time, so the hit piece took a few potshots at me:
“Elbel is a founder of Defend Colorado Now who, when challenged about statements blaming impoverished people of color for environmental problems…”
I can state emphatically that the article’s defamation of Defend Colorado Now is hogwash. Check out the website.
That hit piece included a footnote:
“25 Fred Elbel email message, “RE: Club secrecy governs Club democracy,” July 16, 2004 1:49 PM”
During the 2003-2004 timeframe, I engaged in discussion of population issues on a few of these lists: a national Council of Club Leaders Discussion forum, a national population discussion list, and a Rocky Mountain Chapter population discussion list. I don’t have archives of those distant discussions. Indeed, the Sierra Club appears to have taken down the Council of Club Leaders Discussion forum, and has purged relevant threads from the national population discussion list.
I do recall that one person, Erik K. Ward from Center for New Community was particularly rabid in pushing his agenda (bio, photo, and video). To my knowledge, he was certainly not a Sierra Club leader, and likely not a Club member.
In specific discussions about immigration, SUSPS, and the environment, Ward and other leftists kept pushing the envelope in order to goad their rational opponents into saying something offensive. I reasonably replied with population projections and immigration facts, interspersed with a bit of humor to try to diffuse the intensity of the attacks.
At one point, I was asked if I hated blacks. I replied no, but there sure was a lot of human pressure on our supporting ecosystems. I pointed out that all races were all culpable in impacting our natural environment. After a few rounds of this, I included my humorous parody paragraph in the discussion thread.
After the fact, I analyzed Ward’s writing style and concluded that his material sure seemed to be ghost written by Mark Potok of the SPLC. Ward was also one of the authors of the Apply The Brakes hit piece.
I am honored that the radical leftists consider my work to be so important that they feel the need to try to discredit me – even with 2004 parody taken completely out of context.
“And the SPLC is highly selective in who it seeks to “destroy.” While the SPLC’s original focus was on racial hate groups that promote or engage in violence, it has now included nonviolent, peaceful individuals or groups based on ideological disagreement.. As Potok admitted in an interview, “Our criteria for a ‘hate group,’ first of all, have nothing to do with criminality or violence or any kind of guess we’re making about ‘this group could be dangerous.’ It’s strictly ideological.”
Mark Potok, the SPLC Intelligence Report’s former editor-in-chief, once admitted in a speech, “I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”
After 16 years in the Atlanta area my family recently returned to Texas where I grew up in a border town. We still monitor Georgia politics, especially immigration issues. Our friend and founder of the Dustin Inman Society, DA King, has been committed for many years in helping people understand the truth about immigration and the law.
He correctly points out that Georgia has more illegal immigrants than Arizona; and, amazingly, more illegals than green card holders. I assure you, this fact is not helping middle-class or low-income Americans in Georgia of any description.
As a proud Latina donor and board member of The Dustin Inman Society, I was stunned that you passed along the preposterous “hate map” listing from the defamatory and dishonest SPLC. None of us at the Dustin Inman Society attack immigrants – or Hispanics. Using the SPLC as a reliable arbiter of ‘extremism’ and “hate” is repugnant and reckless, especially for a large, TV newsroom. I see your standards have declined since we lived in the Atlanta area.
Note: Mary tells me her letter resulted in a phone call from WSB Executive Producer Brad Stone who apparently indicated there would be a future report on SPLC/DIS. In May.
“It is also my understanding that responsible news organizations will contact individuals under discussion.” Mary Grabar, American citizen and proud immigrant.
I write in outrage over WSB TV’s news report that repeats the smears of the SPLC’s latest list of what they call “hate groups” and the inclusion of the mainstream Dustin Inman Society.
As a news organization, you should know that the SPLC has repeatedly been found to target groups with which it has ideological disagreements as “hate groups”—with no evidence to back up the charges. For this reason, they are being sued by numerous individuals and organizations.
It is also my understanding that responsible news organizations will contact individuals under discussion. I learn from D.A. King that you have not even bothered to contact him, and after linking to a report that profiled him (with lies) at length.
The SPLC has been exposed countless times as a scam. They actually lobby at the Gold Dome against legislation that would require reporting illegal aliens that have already been convicted of crimes to ICE. Is there a mention of this fact in your “reporting”?
The false headline from the SPLC hit piece on the Dustin Inman Society tells readers that DIS “focuses on vilifying all immigrants.” As a proud immigrant and a member of the board of advisors of the Dustin Inman Society for years, I can testify that this is a whole cloth and easily disproved lie.
I went to hear D.A. King speak just last week and listened to him tell the packed room that the media will paint anyone who supports secure borders, immigration enforcement and sanity in the number of legal immigrants we allow in to the USA as somehow “anti-immigrant.” I can tell you that D.A. won resounding applause from the multi-racial and multi-ethnic audience.
You should report those kinds of facts rather than the libelous smears from the SPLC.
“I will never look at WSB TV the same again.” – John Litland
Our friend and board member John Litland just copied us on a note he sent to WSB-TV News about the SPLC hate-for-profit smear this news outlet passed on. Great letter, John, thanks!
—
To the producers and management of WSB TV News,
You posted a story recently about the SPLC listing the Dustin Inman Society as a “hate group.” It is impossible to explain to you my outrage at this journalistic malpractice and lazy ignorance.
The SPLC headline is “The Dustin Inman Society, led by D.A. King, poses as an organization concerned about immigration issues, yet focuses on vilifying all immigrants.” This is a lie.
I am a member of the board of DIS and my wife is a proud immigrant. D.A. King has been a family friend for fifteen years. He has been attacked by the SPLC for about the same amount of time. It is incredible that WSB TV would pass on the hateful, for-profit smears from the integrity-free SPLC that most people paying attention recognize to be hate-mongers and frauds. The SPLC lobbies against immigration enforcement and rakes in millions of dollars each year doing so.
I will never look at WSB TV the same again. D.A. tells me that you never even contacted him before you posted this absurd smear. The Dustin Inman Society works with donations – including from our house – to educate people on illegal immigration and toward some semblance of sanity on our immigration system.
You owe King and your trusting (audience) an apology. I no longer trust and will no longer watch WSB News.
UPDATE: Comment on the MDJ letter (thanks to Rhonda for sending it):”If the immigration systems was streamlined, those who come here as undocumented would not be illegal. It takes years and thousands of dollars to get here legally, the wide majority don’t have the time or money.” Charles Towne
Marietta Daily Journal
January 31, 2019
Letters to the editor
Illegal immigration is problem No. 1
DEAR EDITOR:
I write to thank MDJ letter writer Bill Buckler for saying pretty much exactly what my wife and I have been saying about Georgia and Cobb County regarding illegal immigration. It is problem No. 1. I did not realize that Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than green card holders. My wife is a green card holder. This should be front-page news, but it is kept quiet except by patriot D.A. King.
The same stats show that Cobb County is the No. 3 county in the state for its high population of the “undocumented.”
And we agree with him that D.A. King is an expert on the issue and that the MDJ seems to have adopted a policy of using the uber-liberal Associated Press stories as a substitute for real coverage of what we can all see here in Cobb County: Illegal immigration affects every part of our lives, including our schools, health care, taxes and public safety. Our friends Billy and Kathy Inman lost their only child nearly 19 years ago because we don’t enforce our immigration laws. Kathy can be seen still in her wheelchair as a result of the actions of the illegal that killed her son.
Recently, a California police officer was murdered by an illegal alien who should never have been allowed to walk American streets. The cop was a proud, legal immigrant and naturalized American with a young family. Somebody gave the illegal alien a job.
The liberal news is all a-flutter with glee about Cobb “going purple.” If the Republicans who currently hold power on the Cobb Commission do not require the county contractors we pay for to use the same IMAGE system to weed out illegal employees, used by the county itself, they will have a very hard time getting re-elected.
The same goes for the Republicans who we elected to the Gold Dome. Most people don’t know that Georgia is giving the exact same driver’s license to illegal aliens who have won the Obama jackpot of delayed deportation as we give to legal immigrants. Giving them official Georgia documents serves to document the illegals. This is madness. If the new governor will not order that to be changed, the legislature should pass a law to do it.
Then, we voters can only sit back and hope it is one of those laws that is actually enforced.
Transcription by Rev.com from Hannity’s podcast Jan 29, 2019
When I heard this on the radio today while driving, it sounded a lot like there was an effort to separate a path to citizenship from “amnesty.” I may be way too cynical and burned-out suspicious after hearing the insulting word games on this since 2005.
Make up your own mind.
“… asking for an opportunity to fix it themselves. I’m willing to compromise, as he has shown throughout this process. I’m willing to meet with anybody about a potential compromise, that’d be TPA and, and DACA Dreamers, whatever. As long as it doesn’t entail a path to citizenship and it doesn’t entail amnesty, and the president gets his money, I think he’d take any of those deals. And … But if he goes the national emergency route, well then Democrats get nothing. Anyway, joining us now Pollsters, John McLaughlin, McLaughlin and Associates, and Doug Schoen-…”
*UPDATED: Again, transcription Rev.com this AM. (expanded context, longer out take)
“Well, I think the president, if you look at it, is winning on the issue. The issue of protection our borders, you know is a, a issue. The issue of the shutdown, when it starts impact air travel, when it starts impacting … you keep hearing about TSA going out on the blue flue, meaning that they just … they’re going to make a statement. Air traffic control is going to make a statement. The president said, “All right, I’ve pushed that strategy as far as I can, these guys are asking for an opportunity to fix it themselves, I’m willing to compromise,” as he has shown throughout this process. “I’m willing to meet with anybody about a potential compromise,” that be TPA and, and docker, dreamers, whatever, as long as it doesn’t entail a path to citizenship, and it doesn’t entail amnesty, and the president gets his money, I think he’d take any of those deals.”
And … but, if he goes the national emergency route, will then Democrats get nothing. Anyway, joining us now Polster’s John McLaughlin, McLaughlin and associates. And Doug [inaudible 00:01:00]
Path to citizenship…amnesty…
I think some people may be confused on the context here. Hanity was speaking in hypothetical in the president’s voice. Below (on top) is a longer version of the outtake. UPDATED Jan 30, 8:00 AM.
