I received an email regarding a class a member of SaveOurState.org had to attend on hate crimes. To his amazement they lumped SaveOurState.org, a group in California that wants immigration reform implemented, as a hate crimes extremist group.

I covered the rally on January 15th, 2005 in Redondo Beach which went off a a peaceful demonstration of supporting reform. There are pictures and a description of the event at my entry "Rally Against Illegal Aliens In Redondo Beach A Success"

SaveOurState.org

Hello All-

I attended a work sponsored Hate Crimes lecture today, administered by the Anti Defamation League. The recent Redondo Beach rally was addressed by the speaker, Joanna Mendelson (I do not have immediate address to her contact info, as I left it on my desk at work; hopefully the spelling is correct).

At any rate, she lectured in the afternoon session of the class and attempted to classify the Redondo Beach demonstration as an extremist hate group activity. She reported there were approximately 20 extremist demonstrators who attended the rally. She implied there were racist undertones and cited the rally being advertised on an extremist webiste named "stormfront." (In reality, approximately 75+ turned out!!! )

She indicated that such websites and activities are closely monitored by the ADL, and I gathered they might have been the organization who was videorecording the demonstration.

When she concluded her statement about the rally, I raised my hand and advised her of her inaccuracies. I reported it was a politically motivated rally and not an extremist hate group event. Despite mention on radical websites, I stated I felt it was unfair to lump saveourstate.org into this umbrella. She was familiar with the website, and immediately noted "Mr. Turner" was associated with saveourstate.org and spearheaded the Redondo rally. I stressed that because the two groups might have overlapping interests, it in no way meant they shared the same ideologies, across the board. I redirected the topic and stressed that it was purely a rally in regard to illegal immigration and controlling our borders.

She did retract her initial account and apologized for being misinformed. She expressed dissatisfaction with Mr. Turner's previous signature line, in regard to baseball bats. She was told he acknowledged the inappropriateness of the signature, and has since removed it. I thought this might prove to be an interesting topic around here. Granted misinformed publicity is not desirable, it was impressive to hear that the Anti-Illegal Immigration movement is picking up some more steam. I wanted to further credit Mr. Turner with making such a solid impact in a relatively short period of time. Keep up the good work!

Since when is wanting immigration reform and peaceful protesting an extremist act. This is outrageous!