On Monday, July 26 at 2:00 p.m., Sistas and Brothas United (SBU) and Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) will protest in front of the Weeden Foundation at 747 Third Avenue and 47th Street. On the week that SB1070 goes into effect in Arizona, SBU and NWBCCC expose the anti-immigrant think tank behind this racist law.
150 community members will be joined by local elected officials and clergy members to protest the Weeden Foundation’s funding groups that scapegoat immigrants for ecological problems. Weeden has a history of attempting to inject anti-immigrant agendas into the environmental movement, and also supporting anti-immigrant hate groups.
The New York-based Weeden Foundation actively funds the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the anti-immigrant organization responsible for crafting racist law S.B. 1070 in Arizona. Weeden also supports anti-immigrant organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, Californians for Population Stabilization, and NumbersUSA. The Weeden Foundation works closely with the white supremacist Pioneer Fund, a foundation that has a history of promoting the genetic superiority of white, European-Americans, and is also a previous funder of FAIR.
The members of the Northwest Bronx demand an end to attacks on immigrant communities, and claim that they are being treated as the new slaves in this country under the efforts of the Weeden Foundation. They perceive SB 1070 as a new form of the Fugitive Slave Act for criminalizing undocumented workers and forcing them to live in fear and exploitative conditions.
NWBCCC denounces the Weeden Foundation’s efforts to spread anti-immigrant hatred. As representatives of diverse immigrant communities, Northwest Bronx community members instead call for an immigration reform that provides all immigrants with full civil rights and a humane pathway to legalization, and an end to racial profiling, raids, mass detentions, deportations, and government programs that criminalize immigrants.
What: Press Conference at the Weeden Foundation
When: 2:00 p.m., Monday, July 26, 2010
Where: 747 Third Avenue and 47th Street
Speakers: Community members and SBU youth leaders
Visuals: STRANGE FRUIT TREES – Huge painted cardboard trees bearing racist Strange Fruit: SB1070, Secure Communities program, Mass Detentions, Deportations, and Incarceration. The fruit hanging off the tree will be spouting blood and hate, representing the criminalization and scapegoating of immigrants. A big globe with immigrant workers holding it up and signs saying “Weeden: Stop recycling hate and racism, Stop funding the New Fugitive Slave Act.”
