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Graffiti attack on New York billboard
ProjectUSA questions Wall Street Journal on role
By
CRAIG NELSEN
ProjectUSA director
Permanent link: http://projectusa.org/ezine/2004/10-13-erase_racism.html
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The ProjectUSA
billboard at 499 Englewood in North Buffalo
was defaced within days of going up. The
Wall Street Journal's editorial page
has denied responsibility.
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The billboards
in Buffalo at 612 Sheridan Dr., 3684 Delaware,
and 3670 River Rd have avoided any damage
so far.
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The ProjectUSA voter
awareness campaign in New York’s 26th congressional
district was barely underway before someone ruined one
of our billboards by scrawling the words “erase racism”
across its face.
The billboard carried the factual statement, “Congressman
Tom Reynolds supports amnesty for illegal aliens,”
and was one of four located in the northern and eastern
suburbs of Buffalo.
The $800 we spent on the billboard may seem like nothing
compared to the more than $1.6 billion contributed to
national campaigns so far this election season, but
that $800 means something to the average Americans of
average means whose contributions paid for it.
But on the immigration issue, it isn’t only some
vandal with a can of spray paint trying to silence the
voices of typical Americans. When industry-funded Congressman
Chris Cannon of Utah faced a voter revolt this summer
over his globalist immigration policies, the Wall
Street Journal’s editorial page rode to his
rescue with the journalistic equivalent of a spray-painted
slur.
Trading on the reputation for integrity established
by the paper’s journalists, the editorial page
ran, not one, but two vicious pieces in the crucial
period just before the primary election asserting Cannon's
primary opponent, Matt Throckmorton, along with ProjectUSA
and others, were allies of a white supremacist conspiracy
to halt immigration, sterilize the Third World, and
so on.
Some political insiders in Utah credit those editorials,
mailed by the Cannon campaign to every registered Republican
in his district, as making the difference in a race
Rep. Cannon eventually won.
On Tuesday, I called the author of the editorials,
Jason Riley, and asked him whether he would admit any
responsibility for the attack on our billboard for having
made similar attacks on immigration critics in the Wall
Street Journal.
He refused to take any responsibility, claiming his
editorials do not broadly paint all "anti-immigrant"
organizations as racist, only some of them.
I disagreed, arguing that the average reader would
be more likely, after reading one of the editorials
he had written on behalf of Chris Cannon, to believe
it is racist to oppose current immigration policy.
We argued for a while, but neither of us would budge,
so I told him ProjectUSA would be willing to co-sponsor
an experiment with the Wall Street Journal. We
would ask a group of randomly chosen voters their opinions
of immigration critics both before and after reading
his editorials, and let the results decide our disagreement.
Mr. Riley wouldn't agree to that, either, making me
suspect he feels more responsibility for the attack
on our billboard than he is letting on.
On top of that, during our conversation, Mr. Riley
unexpectedly admitted to me that he is actually from
Buffalo, New York. But after throwing that bit of information
on the table, he pointedly failed to divulge his own
whereabouts on the night our billboard was spray painted.
If you are as convinced of Mr. Riley's culpability as
I am, you should call the Wall Street Journal at
212 416-2000 and ask to be mailed a list of the names
and addresses of all the Journal's subscribers
in the Buffalo area. If we can get the list, we can begin
establishing where everyone who may have been influenced
by a Riley editorial was on the night our billboard was
attacked. If we eliminate suspects until the only one
remaining is Mr. Riley (who, in one of his editorials,
called the decent and talented staff at the Center for
Immigration Studies, "repugnant"), we'll have
our man.
+== QUOTE OF THE WEEK ==+
If you heard a crackling sound last week, it just may
have been hell freezing over. You see, yours truly,
Mr. Conservative Republican, put up a sign in his front
yard encouraging fellow Utahns to vote for a Democrat,
Beau Babka.
"Cannon undeserving of conservative Republicans'
vote"
Arthur Nifong, Jr., Provo, Utah
(On: America
First Radio)
+== EMAIL OF THE WEEK ==+
George Bush is worse than bad on the immigration issue,
as he is on every environmental issue. But Kerry is
no better. He has promised La Raza that he will sign
an illegal alien amnesty within 100 days of entering
office. He also backs the AgJOBS bill. I have decided
to write in [Congressman Tom] Tancredo even though he
has specifically asked for people not to.
The immigration issue is not a split between Democrats
and Republicans. It is a split between ordinary Americans
and the Republican and Democratic leadership, the mass
media, the big corporations, and the large foundations.
Bob Wilber
Westbury, NY
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