www.irehr.org

There are many different organizations out there. Not sure they appreciate why there are those in the Tea Party who support them (and they have obvious blindness when they associate the Tea Party as "Tea Partiers and other racists are doing") but there is a lot of good in many different views and approaches.  With that in mind, read the following and see how the left and right have places they come together.

Dear Friend,

IREHR makes a difference, and please let me take a minute to tell you about it.

Just last Thursday, at the Alliance for a Just Society conference on rural issues attended by 100 organizers, Devin Burghart gave the keynote address. He focused on how the Tea Party had brought differing currents of the right-wing under one umbrella. He described the six different national Tea Party factions, and the organizational personality of each one—including their strength and points of vulnerability. His talk was well-received and stimulated a larger discussion on the necessity of fighting the racist right-wing. It prompted Niel Ritchie, the executive director of the League of Rural Voters who has long paid attention to IREHR's work to conclude, "Any strategic decisions progressives make about what they are going to do must take account of what the Tea Partiers and other racists are doing, and IREHR has been consistently ahead of the rest of us on this critical point. We ignore their analysis at our peril."

[Strike through my editing]

I made points similar to Devin's during a three-hour education session I did at the Atlanta Mother House of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. SisterSong's national coordinator, Loretta Ross, wrote me a nice thank you note and said, "Folks are still buzzing about your presentation…You are still the consummate teacher!"

There is more. Occupy Kansas Citiers appreciated our help when they needed to separate themselves from the anti-Semitic ranting of a small group that was using their name. Dissident Tea Partiers are paying attention to what we do and one wrote in that, "You actually brought up some good points." And in the months since we released Beyond FAIR, we have changed much of the discussion about the anti-immigrant movement.

Not everyone appreciates the work we do. The response on the Stormfront website—a white nationalist communications center which claims over 240,000 members internationally—simply described us an "anti-white mouth piece" in nine pages of chatter over our analysis of the Trayvon Martin situation. Another white nationalist outfit lamented that, "the IREHR report was picked up by CNN and blasted across local media."

We do not expect any support from Stormfronters, of course. They do not like the difference we make. But if you believe that racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry must be exposed and opposed, and if you like the difference IREHR makes, then we need your support. I wrote a fund raising appeal in February, and we were heartened by the response. But if you did not send us a check then or hit the DONATE button on our website, we most definitely need you to do that now.