There Goes the Neighborhood is a weekly series from Imagine 2050 staff highlighting upcoming nativist events.
This week, events in Illinois, California, Idaho, and Washington, D.C.
Today, August 18, and Saturday, August 19, several nativist activists will speak at a conference organized by West Suburban Patriots in Elmhurst, Illinois. Announced speakers include Catherine Engelbrecht of the voter suppression outfit True the Vote, and far-right former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS).
On Sunday, August 20, the American Freedom Alliance will host a conference featuring nearly 20 nativist activists and spokespeople in Los Angeles, California. Titled, “From Gold to Dust: the Destruction of California,” the day-long conference will feature anti-immigrant speakers including Robin Hvidston and Raul Rodriguez, of anti-immigrant group We the People Rising, Jesse Lee Peterson, and former border vigilante and failed California gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly. Christopher Harris, a representative of the National Border Patrol Council, is also slated to speak. Last year, the American Freedom Alliance hosted an anti-Muslim conference featuring some of the country’s most prominent anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists and bigots. Several speakers at the event are featured in a recent report published by the Center for New Community.
READ MORE: The anti-immigrant lobby in California: A vocal fringe emboldened
On Tuesday, August 22, the local chapter of anti-Muslim grassroots group ACT for America will host a presentation by Shahram Hadian in Boise, Idaho. Hadian, a self-proclaimed former Muslim who travels the country giving paranoid, apocalyptic, and outright bigoted talks about Islam, will be in Idaho delivering a presentation titled “Sabotaging America - Islam’s March Towards Supremacy.” Hadian gave a similar presentation to an ACT chapter in Montana last year. And as Bluestem Prairie reports, he will give several presentations in the Upper Midwest next month.
Finally, also on Tuesday, August 22, the anti-immigrant think tank Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) will host a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Panelists will discuss a recent paper CIS published on the backlog of immigration court cases. CIS events have previously attracted white nationalists, an expected occurrence given the group’s immense record of distributing white nationalist content online. CIS last hosted an event at the National Press Club in May.
Additional information on these events and others can be found in the map below. A red star indicates events scheduled for next week.
Know of any nativist events not located on this map? Please contact us or fill out this form: