CCIR's Greatest Hits: The Reconquista Rant Audio Clips

California voters passed Proposition 187 by a 59% to 41% landslide in November, 1994. The proposition, which was slowly strangled to oblivion in federal district court over the subsequent four and a half years, would have eliminated most state-funded public benefits for illegal aliens in California.

(For a refresher on Proposition 187's substance and tortured history, see Tom Shuford's [1] review here [2]. Note for politics junkies: the electorally-triumphant proposition's "coattails" also rescued the re-election campaign of Governor Pete Wilson [3], who came from far behind to beat state treasurer Kathleen Brown—so much for the myth that it the GOP. In subsequent years, the GOP ran away from the immigration issue and got clobbered because it failed to mobilize its base [4]. Note for immigration aficionados: Some years ago, American Patrol's [5] Glenn Spencer discovered that at least part of Proposition 187 is actually on the books [6] in California! Of course, it's not being enforced. )

In response to 187's passage, Armando Navarro [7] [Email him [8]], Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, organized the "Latino Summit Response". It was held on the Riverside campus over two days in January, 1995, with the university's chapter of MEChA as host. The conference's theme: encouraging massive non-compliance with Proposition 187.

(For those new to the fray, MEChA [9] is the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, which translates as the "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán," Aztlan [10] being the homeland, perhaps mythical, of the Aztecs. The sentiment most frequently associated with MEChA, which has hundreds of chapters in high schools and colleges across the U.S., is their statement "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada", meaning "For the Race, everything, outside the Race, nothing.")

Probably the most famous "product" of the UC Riverside meeting was a line in one Art Torres's speech to the throng:

"Remember, 187 is the last gasp of white America in California. Understand that."

That smoking howitzer of an utterance by Torres is no mere urban legend. If the computer you're using has sound capabilities, you can hear it for yourself right now [11].

But you may object: "So a Hispanic man said something both frank and inflammatory about illegal immigration and California. So what?"

Well, Torres isn't just some obscure Joe Shmoe or even Jose Shmose. He is [12]—and was, at the time he spoke—Chairman of the California Democratic Party [13]. [Send him mail [14]] He'd previously spent 20 years in the state's legislature. [15]

So how did the world learn of Torres's blaring case of ethnocentric foot-in-mouth [16]? For that we can thank the derring-do of Evelyn Miller.

Evelyn, whom I know personally, is one of the long-time pillars of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform [CCIR [17]]. She signed on during the signature-gathering campaign that propelled Prop. 187 onto the ballot.

CCIR was founded and is headed up by the formidable Barbara Coe [18]. (In the linked Wikipedia article, the photo is definitely not Barbara!) I think of Ev as one of Barb's "lieutenants," along with Elaine Proko [19] and Lupe Moreno [20], whom you can see in action here [21]. (Dan Sheehy [22] discusses the "lieutenants" in the chapter about Barb in his book Fighting Immigration Anarchy: American Patriots Battle to Save the Nation [23].)

Ev's productive foray behind enemy lines started with a directive from Barb: "Pack your bags. You have hotel reservations in Riverside for two days."

Why Ev? "Barb probably thought I was brazen enough to do it," she tells me. Maybe Ev's background as a certified bilingual [24](Spanish/English) teacher in the Los Angeles public schools [25] from 1959 to 1978 also figured into Barb's choice, although it turned out that the conference was conducted almost entirely in English.

As Ev recounted her first undercover assignment to me in a phone interview:

"I took my little hand-held tape recorder. There were about 500 people at the conference—elected officials, media, academics, and students—filling a huge auditorium. There were Brown Berets all over the place, in uniform. [VDARE.COM note: The Brown Berets [26]are a Chicano paramilitary group [27]modeled on the Black Panthers. [28]]

"I was the only non-Latino, and they asked me, 'Why are you here?' I told them that I was a socialist and didn't like borders [29], so they liked me.

"The conference had many breakout sessions, ones for lawyers [30], medical people, media, and so forth. I attended as many of those as I could."

So Evelyn then just traipsed out of the conference with a fistful of explosive recordings, including those I highlight below? Not quite!

When she got home, Ev discovered that her tape recorder hadn't been up to the task (perhaps due to her vantage point out in the audience?)—the sound quality of the recorded speeches was too poor to be usable.

So, undaunted, Ev later found her way to Prof. Navarro's office at the Riverside campus and brazened it out, requesting copies of the event's official recordings.

" 'You know, people need to hear these,' I told them. " 'I want to spread them around to help with this terrible Prop. 187.'

"They gave me everything, every syllable of every speaker. I had to go there three times, because the tape cassettes weren't all ready at once."

Back home with her treasure, Ev condensed the cassettes' contents into their essentials. For example, the sound clip of Art Torres linked above includes his infamous "last gasp of white America" prediction followed immediately by a wise-guy remark about whites' impending need for affirmative action, but it's clear that these weren't contiguous passages in his speech. (You'll also hear Torres blithely liken [31] Prop. 187 to the Nazis' extermination camps.)

Excerpts from five speeches given at the Riverside conference constitute the nucleus of CCIR's audio clips medley, all of which are accessible through this [32] web page. The linked page has the verbatim transcripts for, altogether, 19 sound clips, with the links to the clips themselves embedded in that page.

The other gleanings from the conference are of Navarro himself (Clip #1 [33]), Jose Angel Gutierrez (#3 [34]), Joe Baca (part of #8 [35]), and Fabian Nunez (#15 [36]).

Arguably, all four of these characters are doofi [plural of "doofus"]. But at least two of them can't be dismissed as Jose Schmoses.

• Joe Baca [37] [Email him [38]]is now a Congressperson from California's "Inland Empire", east of Los Angeles, who probably brags about his career grade [39] of F-minus from NumbersUSA.
• Fabian Nunez [40] has just completed a six-year stint in the California Assembly, having been Speaker of the Assembly for the last four of those years.

That's Evelyn you'll hear at the start of Clip #15, introducing Nunez and recounting his role in the October 1994 "Gran Marcha" in downtown Los Angeles against Prop. 187, just a few weeks before the voters resoundingly approved it. (You can also see some of the Gran Marcha proceedings, including Nunez's doings, in this video [41] narrated by Hal Netkin [42].)

In his UC Riverside speech, Nunez touted "the power of the masses"—a very Latin American [43] approach to determining public policy, quite consistent with the Gran Marcha—and proposed a 1996 million-person march in Washington, DC so that "those rednecks that are out there making decisions for the betterment of their communities will think twice before they push forward anti-immigrant legislation against our community."

• Jose Angel Gutierrez [44], [Email him [45]] a professor at the University of Texas in Arlington, has had persistent visibility [46], having tangled in a 2006 debate there with Jared Taylor [47].

But, judging from the transcript [48], Taylor scoured the floor with Gutierrez. At about the same time, Gutierrez debated [49] David Horowitz on Sean Hannity's show and further displayed his apparent inability to make a lucid argument.

Those sound clips from the 1995 conference don't exhaust the items of interest in CCIR's online collection. Far from it! Over the years, until she could no longer do it incognito, Evelyn slipped into several other fifth-column functions to make recordings. Plus, always ready with an itchy finger on her tape recorder, she captured other anti-gems from radio broadcasts.

For example, in Clip #5 [50] we hear Mario Obledo, [51] on the radio, urge whites to go back to Europe. By the date of this broadcast, Obledo had already received the Presidential Medal of Freedom [52] from Bill Clinton. He had also been California's Secretary of Health and Welfare during the 1970s, in Jerry Brown's administration [53]. No Jose Schmose, he!

And former Secretary of Commerce designee Bill Richardson [54] complained [55] on the radio that "illegal and legal immigration are being unfairly attacked," lumping the illegal and legal varieties of immigration together as does Center For Immigration Studies' Mark Krikorian [56], but with different intent [57].

So where is all this going? Well, I'm not providing the history and these details on the sound clips merely for the entertainment of VDARE readers. We all need to be using them.

Why? Because, for example, John McCain was the Republicans' presidential candidate [58]this year, illustrating the nation's short attention span. Despite the patriotic immigration reform movement's prominent defensive successes [59] against 2007's attempts at mass amnesties [60], a huge, naive national audience out there still doesn't comprehend our civilization's mortal peril under the immigration onslaught nor the fact that the fifth column among us isn't really motivated [61]by an idealistic love of "diversity [62]".

Oblivious Republican primary voters, especially in Florida, were actually able to think that illegal-alien-doormat McCain is an enthusiast for border security [63]!)

The CCIR clips, if played widely enough by patriots also able to provide the clips' context, could provoke legions of our still-uninvolved fellow citizens into recognizing reality—and then joining the patriotic immigration reform movement.

CCIR sells [64] a CD containing all 19 clips for $7, postpaid, convenient if you'd like to play the clips "on the road" before a large audience. Evelyn Miller and other CCIR stalwarts have hand-delivered copies of the CD to legions of Congressional offices on Capitol Hill, and Ev has also mailed them to several hundred radio hosts.

Terry Anderson [65] routinely plays CCIR clips just before the 9:30 pm (Pacific Time) break on his 9 p.m.-to-10 p.m. Sunday night radio show, which can be heard [66] over the internet. Terry seems especially partial to playing Clip #14 [67], featuring Brown Beret Augustin Cebada, who says, in part:

"We're here in Westwood, this is the fourth time we've been here in the last two months, to show white Anglo-Saxon Protestant [68]L.A., the few of you who remain, that we are the majority, and we claim this land as ours, it's always been ours, and we're still here, and none of the talk about deporting. If anyone's going to be deported it's going to be you! Go back to Simi Valley, you skunks! Go back to Woodland Hills! Go back to Boston [69]! Go back to the Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims [70]! Get out!"

I've used several of the choicest clips a number of times before naive audiences, always to productive effect. When I participated, in-studio, on a radio talk show here in my hometown of Bozeman MT,  and we played some of the tracks from the CD, the shocked host referred to them as "Hispanic fatwas."

So, in public venues, try provoking the enemy into falling back on their dead-end charges [71] of "Racism!"

And then fire-up the best of CCIR's Reconquista Rant sound clips!

Paul Nachman [email [72] him] is a retired physicist and immigration sanity activist in Bozeman, MT. Read his VDARE.COM blogs here [73].