Alt-Right Turning Points USA is having a two-day conference in Rosemont, Illinois, on April 14 and 15. If you’re interested in helping shut them down, contact ChicagoGDC@iww.org and petition the venue hosting them: https://goo.gl/forms/48XTVGnv6pG6J99h1 Full text of the petition is below.
In Solidarity,
NYC GDC
Dear Christopher Stephens and Grant Bailey,
We, the undersigned, are bringing to your attention the unsavory character of Turning Point USA, a neo-fascist conservative student group slated to have its conference at your fine establishment on April 14-15. The TPUSA conference webpage says they intend to attract 1000 right-wing students across the midwest, whom may include white supremacist Proud Boys members.
Before we delve into who the Proud Boys are, let’s focus on what the New Yorker and other news organizations have published about Charlie Kirk and his TPUSA organization: “Internal documents that I obtained, as well as interviews with former employees, suggest that the TPUSA may have skirted campaign-finance laws that bar charitable organizations from participating in political activity. Former employees say that they were directed to work with prominent conservatives, including the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in aid of Republican Presidential candidates in 2016. Perhaps most troubling for an organization that holds up conservatives as the real victims of discrimination in America, Turning Point USA is also alleged to have fostered an atmosphere that is hostile to minorities. Screenshots provided to me by a source show that Crystal Clanton, who served until last summer as the group’s national field director, sent a text message to another Turning Point employee saying, “i hate black people. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story,” reported by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-conservative-nonprofit-that-seeks-to-transform-college-campuses-faces-allegations-of-racial-bias-and-illegal-campaign-activity
Furthermore, “the culture of ‘exposure’ that TPUSA intends to bring to college campuses is patterned after identifying specific people, often students or adjunct faculty, and then spurring them on with erroneous claims that leave them personally and professionally vulnerable,” says Kristina Khan and Shane Burley of Truth-out.org, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43419-young-fascists-on-campus-turning-point-usa-and-its-far-right-connections. These styles of attack are bolstered by Dan Lierberman’s CNN article, Death Threats are Forcing Professors Off Campus: “In the past year, more than 100 incidents of targeted harassment against professors have been reported on college campuses, according to the American Association of University Professors:
— A California professor at Orange Coast College who was captured on video in the classroom criticizing President Donald Trump got death threats, according to The Washington Post.
— CBS News reported a Princeton professor received death threats after giving a commencement speech in which she called Trump a “racist and sexist megalomaniac.”
— A University of Iowa professor was targeted after discussing white supremacy in the context of ancient statues and their use of white marble, InsideHigherEd.com says. “There’s an entire cottage industry for reporting on controversial things that faculty members say, which then riles up Internet outrage mobs, who then start to tweet at schools, or post on Facebook, and try to get schools to get rid of people who they disagree with,” Cohn says.
One of the websites, called Professor Watchlist, was started by Charlie Kirk.” in https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/us/university-professors-free-speech-online-hate-threats/index.html
In another instance of violent rhetoric, Gavin McInnes, founder of Proud Boys, one of the groups with overlapping members and interests of TPUSA, featured TPUSA members on his radio show during the targeted harassment of a US Air Force veteran graduate student at UIUC, “Why did you not punch him in the face?” According to Southern Poverty Law Center, McInnes has become a leader in the ‘civic nationalist’ contingent encircling the alt-right: “Proud Boys appear to be following paths into hate groups after a gestation period in McInnes’ group, just as the hosts of [neo-nazi podcast on The Right Stuff network] The Daily Shoah suggested: for some with far-right beliefs, the Proud Boys are simply a stopover before committing to, in [The Daily Shoah host Mike ‘Enoch’] Peinovich’s words, actually difficult things — such as joining a hate group. Such plausible deniability, coupled with the ready-built defense mechanism of a thin-skinned McInnes, is why his “Nazi-or-not” binary collapses under scrutiny. The Proud Boys phenomenon is far more complex than McInnes wants to admit, and that appears to be benefiting — and delighting — the leaders of the Alt-Right,” Hatewatch Staff at SPLC https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/10/do-you-want-bigots-gavin-because-how-you-get-bigots
We, the undersigned community, ask that as administrators of Donald E Stephens Convention Center to demonstrate that your organization does not support the policies and conduct of TPUSA, specifically their treatment of people of color, their targeted harassments, their Nazi connections, and their glorification of violence.
Will you cancel the reservation of TPUSA national conference on April 14-15, 2018?
Best,
Chicago General Defense Committee, Local 3
kelleybrannonprojects 