TEA PARTY REPORT - 94 PAGES

The report titled

"Tea Party Nationalism:  A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions"

was written by Leonard Zeskind and Devin Burghart of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.

This is a 94-page report released, October 20, 2010.  Below are three paragraphs of the “Foreword” by 

Ben Jealous, President/CEO – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-NAACP

We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will.  That is why the NAACP—an organization that has worked to expose and combat racism in all its forms for more than 100 years—is thankful Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind

and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights prepared this report that exposes the links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States. These links should give all patriotic Americans pause.

I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party movement will read this report and take additional steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are formally affiliated with white supremacist organizations. In our effort to strengthen our democracy and ensure rights for all, it is important that we have a reasoned political debate without the use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies.

This July, delegates to the 101st NAACP National Convention unanimously passed a resolution condemning outspoken racist elements within the Tea Party, and called upon Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use white supremacist language in their signs and speeches, and those Tea Party leaders who would subvert their own movement by spreading racism.

Click here to read the report (.pdf)