How is the Right organizing to build power in the U.S.?
What are the ramifications for the peace and social justice movements?
How do these trends affect us in Hawai‘i?
Obama, Tea Party Populists, and the Progressive Response
Speaker: Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates
Friday, February 5th, 2010
6:30 – 8:00 pm
Honolulu Friends Meeting
2426 O‘ahu Avenue
Free admission
The Right-Wing Populists who spawned the Tea Bag and Town Hall protests against Obama are a growing force and working to take over the Republican Party. Meanwhile, centrist Democrats are dominating the Obama Administration and dismissing populist anger at government bailouts that feed the wealthy and starve the poor.
Now, Ultra-Right activists are recruiting from among the angry Tea Bag Populists and targeting immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Arabs, reproductive rights activists, and lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered persons. And they are spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories about economic woes & foreign policy.
Chip Berlet spent over fifteen years as a radical journalist and organizer with student, community, and labor groups before joining Political Research Associates as Senior Analyst in the 1980s. He is co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, and penned the cover story on this topic in the current issue of the Progressive magazine.
Sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee – Hawai‘i, World Can’t Wait Hawai‘i, MANA UH Manoa chapter, and Truth 2 Youth. For more information contact: 808-988-6266
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