The National Council of “The Race”

By Duane Lester • May 13th, 2008

The National Council of La Raza is literally means the National Council of the Race. It started in Phoenix in 1968 as the Southwest Council of the Race, funded by Ford Foundation, the National Council of Churches, and the United Auto Workers. In 1973, it went national, moved to Washington, D.C. and renamed itself the National Council of La Raza.

At first, the organization focused solely on the advancement of Mexicans in America, but in 1975 it expanded its focus to include other Latinos. By 1979, it became policy. At this time, the NCLR was almost completely federally funded. The Reagan administration slashed social funding, resulting in the Council to narrow its focus to national issues, with its work done mainly in D.C. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act gave the states more influence over the distribution of welfare funds. The NCLR responded with its Field Advocacy Program. This helped NCLR to have input in state and local levels.

Today, The National Council of La Raza calls itself “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.” According to the “About” page on The Race’s website, NCLR “works to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.” That is very vague, and leads me to wonder how exactly they go about doing this. What policies do they advocate?

The late Rep. Charles Norwood wrote what is considered the most scathing article on La Raza back in 2006. Almost every article I read while researching mentioned this piece, and for good reason. It is the most damning article on The Race I have read.

To most of the mainstream media, most members of Congress, and even many of their own members, the National Council of La Raza is no more than a Hispanic Rotary Club.

But the National Council of La Raza succeeded in raking in over $15.2 million in federal grants [in 2005] alone, of which $7.9 million was in U.S. Department of Education grants for Charter Schools, and undisclosed amounts were for get-out-the-vote efforts supporting La Raza political positions.

The Council of La Raza succeeded in having itself added to congressional hearings by Republican House and Senate leaders. And an anonymous senator even gave the Council of La Raza an extra $4 million in earmarked taxpayer money, supposedly for “housing reform,” while La Raza continues to lobby the Senate for virtual open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.

They are doing more than lobbying for virtual open borders. They are lobbying for actual open borders. From their website:

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) expressed their disappointment that President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law today.

Noting that the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border will do little to fix our broken immigration system or deal with the 12 million undocumented immigrants who live and work in this country, the leaders of the nation’s leading Latino organizations made the following comments:

Janet Murguía, President and CEO, NCLR
“This law doesn’t solve the immigration issue, it makes it worse. By authorizing 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border without appropriating any funding, this law reflects everything that is wrong with the immigration debate. It is a symbol of Congress’s and the Administration’s failure to achieve meaningful immigration reform.”

The mere authorization of a fence was enough to spark outrage from the group.

Also from The Race’s website:

• NCLR believes that a state-issued driver’s license should be reliable proof of an individual’s identity and proof of authorization to drive a motor vehicle; it should not be tied to an individual’s immigration status.
• NCLR urges passage of the “DREAM Act” and the “American Dream Act.” (give illegal aliens in-state tuition to colleges and universities)
• NCLR strongly opposes efforts to make state and local police responsible for the enforcement of federal immigration laws. State and local law enforcement agencies should not enforce federal immigration laws, and these bills would be detrimental to the Latino community.

NCLR also has ties to Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), a radical, nationalist group that Michelle Malkin describes as “a racist, anti-American separatist hate group, and actually shares much in common with such groups as Aryan Nations, and the White Aryan Resistance, another California-based organization.”

Note the use of the term Aztlan in the title of the group. Aztlan is “the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. ‘Azteca’ is the Nahuatl word for “people from Aztlan.” A MEChA document says “Aztlan was the legendary homeland of the Aztecas … It became synonymous with the vast territories of the Southwest, brutally stolen from a Mexican people marginalized and betrayed by the hostile custodians of the Manifest Destiny.”

MEChA’s goal is the liberate this territory. And they aren’t afraid to make that goal clear:

“In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. … Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. … We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.”

That closing two-sentence motto is chilling to everyone who values equal rights for all. It says: “For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing.”

What is the plan once the Reconquista is successful? Ethnic cleansing:

As Miguel Perez of Cal State-Northridge’s MEChA chapter has been quoted as saying: “The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled — opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power.”

MEChA has been organizing pro-illegal immigration rallies across the United States. They are very active in the Reconquista efforts in America and according to tax reports from 2003, La Raza was funding this group.

Political Clout

You would think that an organization called The National Council of the Race would repel politicians, but instead, they flock to it. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both spoke before the group in July 2007. Hillary has a former La Raza president, Raul Yzaguirre, on her campaign team. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was “president of the UCLA chapter of MEChA.” California’s Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante was also a member of MEChA. He also spoke at the 2002 La Raza Convention, giving the keynote sppech.

It isn’t just Democrats either. Sam Brownback, current Senator from Kansas and one-time presidential hopeful, won an award for his open borders efforts in 2002.

The Architect, Karl Rove spoke to La Raza in 2006 at their four day conference in Los Angeles. Another member of the Bush administration with ties was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He was a member of La Raza.

RINO Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke before the group in 2006, saying, “I just want to say that it is really great to be here today at the National La Raza Conference. And La Raza has been doing a terrific job for the last 40 years…”

Imagine an Austrian telling an Austrian group called the National Council of the Race the same thing.

On May 5 of this year, John McCain announced the Republican presidential candidate “will attend the La Raza Annual Convention in San Diego on July 14, 2008.”

Who’s Picking Up the Tab

The National Council of The Race has a lot of money coming in from a lot of different places. In 2003, General Motors gave the group $2.5 million “to purchase a centrally-located building in Washington, D.C.”

A list of companies that has already agreed to “multiyear, multimillion-dollar commitments” are found at the NCLR website. They include:

• Ford Motor Company
• PepsiCo Foundation
• MBNA Corporation
• The Allstate Corporation
• Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

There is a long list of private sector contributors to this group.

So why do they need this:

Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars soon could be flowing into the National Council of La Raza, an organization that advocates for civil rights for Hispanics and has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest of the nation.

The proposal has been made by U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, and it would give the organization that describes itself as “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States – [working] to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans” $5 million annually starting in 2008, with the funding to double the next year and then continue at that level “for each fiscal year thereafter.”

…

The organization’s latest available financial report confirms that it already gets $5 million a year in federal grants, and nearly another $14 million a year in other grants, making up a majority of its $30 million annual budget. The future $10 million annual grants would provide a substantial boost to its budget.

The legislation allows the money to be spent by the National Council of La Raza or its development fund and leaves the door open for funding “such other activities as may be determined by the Secretary and the National Council of La Raza.”

Millions of federal tax dollars are being given to a group that funds a group with plans for ethnic cleansing following the Reconquista. Millions of federal dollars are being given to a group with a list of million dollar donations from the private sector, already committed to multi-year donations.

La Raza is racist to the core and has been from its creation in the 1960s. The legitimacy given to it by pandering politicians, trying to capture votes from the fastest growing demographic in America is outrageous. This group should not be embraced, it should be repudiated, as all racist organizations should be. Once again I turn to TR, who so long ago said what today’s politicians refuse to accept:

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

Instead of all being Americans, we are being divided into groups by race. We, as Teddy feared, are becoming “a tangle of squabbling nationalities” and it is groups like La Raza that are “bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all.” And it’s being subsidized.

Duane Lester A one-man political wrecking machine, Duane was not always such a strong conservative. He did not always see things from through the filters of a right wing/libertarian belief system. Now he does. Duane grew up in the midwest, the son of two staunch Democrats. He served in the military overseas and has since moved back to the Midwest after touring around the world. He has a wife and four children. He has a big head. I’m tired of writing in the third person. God bless America.
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