March 30, 2004

Immigration Enthusiast Goon Squad Wrong To Besiege Karl Rove’s Home. Really!

There is a guerilla group on the loose in this country. But you wouldn’t know it from the liberal media, which portrays the group’s members as harmless activists with good hearts.

The group is called "National People’s Action." The Washington Post described NPA this week as a "coalition of neighborhood advocacy groups based in Chicago." A more accurate description is left-wing goon squad. This nationwide organization is made up of professional grievance-mongers from the Bronx, N.Y, to Santa Monica, Calif. They warn: "We are black, we are white, we are Latino, we are Asian. We are old, we are young and we are in your neighborhood!!!!!" [Demonstrators Swarm Around Rove's Home, By Steven Ginsberg, Washington Post, March 29, 2004]

NPA members are funded by the usual suspects—"progressive" charities such as the Tides Foundation, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, and the MacArthur, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. But they are also funded by your tax dollars. My research shows that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, and Massachusetts Department of Education have given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to NPA members. Their agenda is the usual big government, race card-playing, entitlement mentality claptrap: "homeowner security" (more government minority home loans), "workplace rights and training" (more government job programs), "good policing" (a ban on racial profiling), and "promoting security and opportunity for immigrants" (more benefits for illegal aliens).

But what distinguishes NPA from other liberal advocacy groups is its tactics. The group engages in what it calls "direct action"—publicizing the home addresses of business leaders and government leaders it wants to shake down and then busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families.

The NPA song explains:

Who's on your hit list NPA?
Who's on your hit list for today?
Take no prisoner, take no names.
Kick 'em in the [a--] when they play their games.

After meeting in Washington for its annual convention this weekend, NPA members descended on the Washington, D.C., homes of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and White House advisor Karl Rove. NPA targeted Chao after the Department of Labor refused to meet with the group and acquiesce to its demand to "form a partnership" to "improve opportunities for low-wage workers."

In other words, the gang didn’t get a government contract through legal channels. So it’s going to bully its way into the public coffers.

An estimated mob of 800 protesters trampled on Rove’s lawn to demand passage of Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s abominable "DREAM" Act granting amnesty to illegal alien college students and allowing them to receive in-state tuition discounts.

The Washington Post reported that after chanting and knocking on Rove’s door, the "crowd then grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read ‘Say Yes to DREAM’ and pounding on the glass."

An angry Rove called the authorities and berated the protest leaders for driving the children inside his home to tears.

As a vocal critic of Rove’s idiotic pro-illegal alien policies, I am not all that sad to see Rove come face to face with the consequences of his politically expedient ideas. (Rove is the one who declared that Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the nation’s leading advocate for secure borders and immigration enforcement, would "never darken the White House door.")

Now Rove knows how millions of ordinary Americans—who don’t have Secret Service protection— feel when illegal invaders overrun their homes and darken their doors.

That said, NPA’s militant tactics cross the bounds of decent political debate. (Aren’t liberals always the ones moaning about the need for civility?) Grievance-mongering belongs on the Capitol steps, not private doorsteps.

If NPA’s agenda were the protection of unborn life or Second Amendment rights, the New York Times would be calling for the arrest of its leaders. Sen. Hillary Clinton would be barking again about the vast right-wing conspiracy. Civil rights leaders would be demanding that President Bush condemn NPA’s extremist tactics. And crusading lawyers would be lining up to find clever ways to use federal anti-racketeering laws to shut NPA down.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website.