ANTI-IMMIGRANT HATEMONGERS FUNDED FAILED 'ENGLISH ONLY' ATTEMPT IN NASHVILLE

There are some curious winds blowing these days. People have finally started to get fed up with the hatred created by the whole Minuteklan/Lou Dobbs anti-immigrant campaign. Folks have started taking a closer look at who it is that are pushing such efforts and quite frankly, they dislike them more than the undocumented workers. The anti-immigrant scum in Nashville just learned that the hard way when a voter initative to require all city business to be conducted in English went down in flames last week. Now that does our hearts good to begin with, but Nashville is still pissed because ProEnglish, the group that was pushing this effort is connected to the ever-present but never seen John Tanton who is responsible for most of the anti-immigrant groups out there, and in some cases gets his money from hate groups like the eugenics-promoting Pioneer Fund. Two years ago ProEnglish worked with Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce to get a similar law passed. Pearce counts among his friends a guy named JT Ready who activities involve hanging out with the National Socialist Movement. Tennessee does itself good in beating this latest effort back, given they had a governor and a professor at Vanderbilt University among others that are tied to the Council of Conservative Citizens. If people are looking this hard into Tanton and everything connected to him, you can plan on more of these defeats further on down the line.

Bizjournals.com

An organization that allegedly has ties to hate groups provided 92 percent of the money for the failed “English only” campaign, its campaign financial disclosure statement shows.

ProEnglish, whose founder John Tanton has financially supported white supremacist groups, gave $82,500 to fund the Nashville effort to require all government business to be conducted solely in English, with limited exceptions. Metro Councilmember Eric Crafton led the charge, which resulted in a special election last week. The proposed amendment was defeated Thursday by more than 9,000 votes.

Other donors included auto dealer Lee Beaman, who gave $6,000, and seven others who gave smaller amounts. One of those, Legends Corner, a music club on Lower Broadway, is listed as having given $100 to the effort.

The campaign listed its total contributions at $89,722.76.

Nashville For All of Us, the campaign that worked to oppose the English-only measure, raised $286,025. Its donors included Mayor Karl Dean, Vanderbilt University, Gaylord Entertaiment Co. and HCA Inc.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which works to investigate and prevent hate crimes, has named Tanton, a Michigan activist, as the funder and founder of Pro English and has tied him financially to three groups it designates as hate groups.

Tanton, a retired opthalmologist and central figure in the movement to restrict immigration, has long said he is not a racist and condemns those with racist views on his ProEnglish Web site. But the law center points to letters stored at the University of Michigan that show Tanton’s correspondence with Ku Klux Klan associates, Holocaust revisionists and other sympathizers with the notion of white racial superiority as evidence that he has long been involved in the white nationalist movement.