“LOL!! Look at the flag behind us…so appropriate!”
Those words were the reaction Maria Espinoza had to a photo of her and a well-known anti-immigrant activist in front of a Confederate flag.
On March 5, Espinoza of The Remembrance Project addressed members of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots during a meeting in Mentone, California. Espinoza later uploaded several photos from the event onto Facebook including one of herself with Robin Hvidston of We the People Rising in front a Confederate flag. Hvidston also serves a California state director for The Remembrance Project.
When it comes to public displays of organized bigotry, few do it better than Robin Hvidston and her nativist colleagues in California.
Both Hvidston and Espinoza have collaborated with larger anti-immigrant groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and have previously attended larger profile anti-immigrant events like FAIR’s annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” in Washington, D.C.
When it comes to public displays of organized bigotry, few do it better than Robin Hvidston and her nativist colleagues in California.
Hvidston expressed her approval of the photo of her and Espinoza near the Confederate flag by giving it a “Like” – which, as Espinoza may say, is “so appropriate” given her history as a virulent anti-immigrant activist and one of the most prominent voices for organized nativism in California.
As part of the far-right southern California coalition Unite Inland Empire, Hvidston, among others at last week’s Tea Party meeting, were actively involved in organizing and participating in the dangerous and despicable Murrieta, California, protests of children fleeing violence in Central America that garnered so much media attention last year. At the time, Imagine 2050 noted that the Murrieta protesters did not limit themselves to tormenting migrant children. Activists have also protested mosque developments and harassed area Muslims.
When it comes to public displays of organized bigotry, few do it better than Hvidston and her nativist colleagues in California. However, such actions are certainly not limited to the Sunshine State.
Take, for example, 2013’s “Vigil for Justice” FAIR and The Remembrance Project organized in Omaha, Nebraska. Both Maria Espinoza and FAIR National Field Director Susan Tully spoke at the event. The latter of whom admitted the purpose of the event was not to honor the life of a murdered woman and instead take the heinous actions of one individual and present them as being exemplary of an entire segment of the immigrant population.
Recently, Tully has criticized State Department efforts to protect LGBT rights – claiming the Obama Administration is replete with “Communist/Marxists” in the process – and outlandishly suggested that President Obama is doing “everything to hurt us.”
One doesn’t need photographs of all those involved in circles of organized nativism posing in front of a Confederate flag to reveal the bigoted motivations of this movement. However, we won’t disagree with Maria Espinoza when she claims posing in front of the most notorious symbols of bigotry and intolerance in the history of our country is “so appropriate” either.