At a speech by Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel in Mankato's private City Center Hotel on Tuesday night, the organization's Minneapolis Chapter Leader Debra (Debbie) Anderson handed out copies of four different items, according to a source who sent examples of each to Bluestem Prairie.
One, an email exchange aggressively initiated by Anderson when she contacted Lori Sayora, executive director of the Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN), appears to have been blast emailed by the local ACT! leader and has been posted on at least one anti-Muslim blog.
The blogger appears to believe that CAIR-MN had objected to the Mankato event; in fact, the organization had objected only to the Little Falls event taking place in a public school building.
Perhaps more disturbing than Anderson's aggressive email browbeating? A six-page typescript into which articles about Somali-American citizens' engagement in Minneapolis municipal politics are offered as evidence that:
Radical Islamists seek to impose sharia over Minnesotans. It is a religious mandate. It is what they have done for 1400 years.
On the document's first page, Anderson writes of "Islam's 1400 year history of Imperialism, land appropriation, genocide, cultural annihilation, and enslavement" while deploring any effort to brand Islam as a religion of peace. (Sounds like at least one of my neighbors in the Yellow Medicine Dakota Community talking about European Christianity, but that--as they say--is a different story).
Anderson follows that statement--in enlarged bold type--with excerpts from the StarTribune's Changing face of Minneapolis is evident in caucus attendance, Twin Cities Daily Planet's Minneapolis mayoral candidate Betsy Hodges asks Minneapolis Somalis for support, votes, Bring Me The News' Somali immigrant readies run for Mpls. mayor if Rybak decides against seeking 4th term, and a Strib article about Abdi Warsame running for Minneapolis City Council.
A scan of the handout is embedded below.
Anderson's position on Muslims is at odds with statements made to media by the sponsors of Tuesday night's presentation, the Southern Minnesota Tea Party. Before the event, a tea party organizer told the Mankato Press in Radical terrorism expert to speak:
Her critical statements about Islam have stirred up controversy in the past. But the area Tea Party "considers the vast majority of followers of Islam to be good and decent people," said Andy Johnson, a local Tea Party organizer.
Covering the speech, New Ulm Journal staff writer Josh Moniz reported in Tea Party hosts speaker on radical Islam:
Tea Party organizers said representatives from CAIR's Minnesota branch attended the speech until Gabriel started accusing CAIR, and they had cordial conversation with the organizers about their concerns. The organizers said they would be open to host an event on moderate Muslims, but would need to know they could get a big enough turnout.
Moniz's coverage also calls one of Anderson's claims about CAIR, repeated by Gabriel, into question:
To prove her point, she pointed to documents from 1982 and 1991 that were claimed to have been mentioned in the successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for financing terrorist organizations. She said it showed a coordinated plan across all radical Muslims to have schools teach "Al Qaeda talking points" and to undermine Western governments.
However, these documents have never had an official verification of authenticity, and their implementation has not been proven. Additionally, several tangential items in the Holy Land case, such those accused of being unindicted co-conspirators, were ruled by later courts to be "simply an untested allegation of the Government."
Here's the handout distributed by Anderson in Mankato on Tuesday night:
Act! for America Minneapolis Chapter Anti-Muslim Handout compiled by Debbie Anderson
As a resident of Greater Minnesota, Bluestem finds this sort of behavior on Anderson's part to be fairly annoying, like Minnesota for Marriage flying in a woman from San Diego to tell us in Chippewa County how we better not trust people in the "metro." Why do these groups need to exploit differences to pull Minnesotans apart?
Photo: Via the MN Daily: Minneapolis mayoral candidates, former Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Andrew, City Council members Gary Schiff, Don Samuels and Betsy Hodges, and former City Council President Jackie Cherryhomes listen to an introduction at a forum hosted by the Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis Friday, May 31, 2013. (Photo by Emily Dunker).
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