Jesse Lee Peterson Leads Tea Partiers' Protest Of NAACP Convention -- With A Side Order Of Nativism

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]


Leonard Zeskind covered the meager Tea Party protest outside the NAACP Convention in Los Angeles this past weekend led by the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. And as he notes, there was little mention of any fiscal issues:

Almost 100 Tea Partiers and anti-immigrant activists mounted a small and sometime languid protest of the NAACP, at the venerable civil rights organization’s 102nd national convention in Los Angeles on Sunday, July 24. The dress for the day was Tea Party casual: No colonial era garb and wigs. Several Surf City Tea jackets and some yellow “We the People” t-shirts. One large Gadsden flag, three large American flags and smaller individually hand held flags for anyone who wanted one. From the speakers there was little patter about the Founding Fathers, and just a tad more discussion of taxes and debt. The topic of the day was the NAACP, how it might once have had a “noble” purpose, but its failure to stop violence by black mobs and Latino gangs rendered it just another cog in the Obama liberal-socialist-communist machine. The principle organizer of the event, Jesse Lee Peterson, told the crowd he wanted to “end the NAACP.” He received great applause.

He also compared the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan, as you can hear in the video above:

PETERSON: The NAACP is no different than the KKK in that the KKK harmed black Americans by their physical bodies, but the NAACP steals their hearts and minds and souls. And they kill black Americans by making black Americans or causing black Americans to hate their country, to hate what's right, to depend on the government rather than depending on themselves.

This largely in line with what Peterson told a writer for the Grio:

"That's' the problem I have with the NAACP," said Peterson in an exclusive interview with theGrio. "Their a political pawn of the liberal-elite, white, racist Democratic Party and not really for the people."
He hopes black Americans (he views the term "African-American" as a "dumb" title and unpatriotic), stop supporting the NAACP financially and with their manpower. For decades, Peterson argues, the organization has supported left-wing policies, which have created dependency on government and destroyed black families and hurt race relations. Peterson also said the NAACP is not needed and until black people stop hating "the white man", they won't be free.

Zeskind sizes Peterson up about right:

Making apologias for racism and white supremacy are his trademark response to all issues.  And this Tea Party protest was no exception.

As the SPLC notes, Peterson has quite the colorful history, including the time he thanked God for slavery:



One thing you'll note about the video from the protest: Not only are the fiscal issues that are supposed to be the Tea Parties' focus almost completely unmentioned, the hottest topic for many of the speakers -- afer abortion -- was immigration. Peterson himself cites one of the event's speakers, Barbara Coe, who is a well-known piece of work:

Vitriolic, conspiracy-minded and just plain mean, Coe routinely refers to Mexicans as “savages” and “invaders” out to destroy America. In 2003, for instance, she responded to the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, which sought to open a road to citizenship for all immigrant workers, by writing her CCIR members an urgent “Action Now!” message urging them to flood Congress and the White House with calls demanding the arrest of the riders. “These people are criminals,” said Coe. “As such, they have NO ‘RIGHTS’ other than emergency medical care and humane treatment as they are being DEPORTED! We can only wonder how many in this group of foreign invaders have robbed, raped and possibly murdered law-abiding American citizens and legal residents.”
Coe claims to have exposed a secret Mexican plan (the “Plan de Aztlán”) to reconquer the American Southwest. In May 2005, at a “Unite to Fight” anti-immigration summit in Las Vegas, she launched the kind of defamatory — and just plain unhinged — rant for which she has become infamous. “We are suffering robbery, rape and murder of law-abiding citizens at the hands of illegal barbarians,” she warned her audience, “who are cutting off heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos.” She offered no proof for this wild-eyed assertion, as is her wont when attacking immigrants from Mexico. After his election in 2005, Coe attacked the Latino mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, accusing him of seeking to return Southern California to Mexico.
In 2004, Coe confirmed her membership in one of the crudest white supremacist groups, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), while being interviewed by the Denver Post for a profile of her close friend and nativist ally, then-U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). The CCC is the modern reincarnation of the White Citizen Councils that were formed in the South in the 1950s and 1960s to resist school desegregation ordered by the Supreme Court.

Of course, these same people find it ludicrous that most people can see through the black facade being offered by Jesse Lee Peterson to see the rivers of xenophobic fear and loathing coursing through the Tea Parties.