Disgraced Former Tea Party Leader Calls On Right-Wing Activists To Pose As SEIU Organizers

By Alex Seitz-Wald

National tea party groups like Americans for Prosperity have been bussing conservative activiststo Madison, WI to confront protesters there standing up to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) union busting. But Tea Party Nation and Mark Williams, the disgraced former chairman of Tea Party Express, who was forced to resign after making offensiveracial comments, are calling for a more radical approach. In an email alert to supporters sent last night, Tea Party Nation promotes Williams’ “great idea” to impersonate SEIU organizers at upcoming labor rallies in an attempt to embarrass and discredit the union.

Williams lays out a highly dishonest and fairly involved scheme to have “plants” sign up on the SEIU website to be organizers for an upcoming rally, dress up in SEIU shirts, and to then make outrageous comments to reporters covering the events in order to “make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is”:

That link will take you to an SEIU page where you can sign up as an “organizer” for one of their upcoming major rallies to support the union goons in Wisconsin. Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday: (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in” (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don’t have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there) (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us. [...]

Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

Williams is even hoping to make a few bucks off the idea, asking readers to “Please contribute!!!” as “I need to travel beyond Sacramento to the other SEIU rally cities and then Madison, and in short order!”

And Williams has no qualms about employing this treachery, telling his “plants”: “Chances are that because I am publishing this they’ll catch wind, but it is worth the chance if you take it upon yourself to act.” In an update, Williams say activists in Iowa, Colorado, Massachusetts, “and several other states” were already on board, and he said “Tea Party Patriot groups and individuals are flooding me with emails vowing to participate and come up with their own creative ruses!”

Williams’ plan appears to have been taken down from both Tea Party Nation and Williams’ own site, suggesting they perhaps realize this plan is entirely in the wrong, but view a cached version here, and screen grabs here and here.

UPDATEIn a statement to ThinkProgress, SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette condemned Williams' plot, saying: "At a time when Americans are standing up and courageously speaking out, these guys are playing the same old dirty tricks. Last week we learned about the Chamber trying to create phony research to debunk and hack into our computers, this week the Tea Party dons purple. It's like the emperor has no clothes: they have to rely on subterfuge because they do not really represent the majority of people."

Bigoted Tea Party Leader Mark Williams: ‘It’s Impossible For There To Be A Racist Element In The Tea Party’

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Mark Williams, the former chairman and current spokesperson of Tea Party Express, went on MSNBC today to again deny that there is any racism in the tea party, and to bash the NAACP for daring to point out the obvious examples of bigotry within the movement. When host Tamron Hall asked why not “move forward” by condemning extremism in both camps, Williams instead pointed fingers, blaming all cases of racism on agent provocateurs Crash the Tea Party. Even more absurd, Williams said it is “impossible” for the tea party movement to contain racist elements:

HALL: Do we move forward by either side calling out extremism in their party? [...]

WILLIAMS: It’s impossible — it’s impossible for there to be a racist element in the tea party, you don’t get it! The tea party is about human rights, it’s about the United States constitution. The United States constitution mankind’s foremost human rights document.

HALL: What about the signs of the president as an African with a bone in his nose? What is that? Is that about the constitution?

WILLIAMS: Those signs were brought by Crash the Tea party, the coalition of anti-tea party groups, google crashed the tea party. You will find it all there. … Buy my book!

Watch it:

Of course, as ThinkProgress has documented, Williams needs to look no farther than himself to know that it is not “impossible” for the tea party movement to contain racist elements. Moreover, William’s pathetic attempt to dismiss every single example of tea party racism as the work of Crash the Party is complete nonsense. If he took his own advice and googled Crash the Tea Party, he would see that the group didn’t even exist until April of this year — a year after racist and bigoted signs began appearing at tea party rallies. Beyond this, the counter-protesters never really materialized, and basic common sense should tell Williams that the group couldn’t possibly be responsible for every single racist sign.

Yesterday, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous called out tea party leaders, like Dick Armey, saying, “Dick we don’t think your racist, we’re just disappointed that you’re being silent in at the racism amongst your ranks.” A good place for Armey to break that silence would be with Williams.

Tea Party Leader Condemns NAACP For Making ‘More Money Off Of Race Than Any Slave Trader Ever’

By Alex Seitz-Wald Yesterday, the NAACP approved a resolution condemning “racist elements” within the tea party movement, with its president Benjamin Jealous challenging activists to “expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take full responsibility for all of their actions.” In spite of the indisputable evidence that racist signs and slogans have been allowed to be displayed at tea party rallies, conservatives have feigned outrage at the resolution, and attacked the country’s leading civil rights organization for daring to speak out.

Mark Williams, the spokesperson for Tea Party Express — a leading tea party group, which has been instrumental in Sharron Angle’s Senate campaign in Nevada, among many others — launched into a particularly hateful attack on the NAACP, accusing the group of being “professional race baiters” who deserve to be sent to “the trash heap” with “all the other vile racist groups”:

WILLIAMS: You’re dealing with people who are professional race baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.

Listen to the interview here.

Williams should know about professional racial baiting. Last year, he called called President Obama an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.” And in February, he called Obama “our half white, racist president.”

In May, while serving as chairman of Tea Party Express, he called the Muslim god Allah a “terrorists’ monkey-god” while fighting the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero. Despite universal condemnation for his comments, Williams refused to apologized to Muslims. “In the course of the article I described the ‘god’ worshiped by terrorists as ‘a monkey god.’ I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God,” Williams wrote in a follow-up blog post. He also called a Jewish developer involved in the project a “Jewish Uncle Tom who would have turned rat on Anne Frank.” In a blog post from last year that has since been deleted, Williams further explained his theory on Islam:

[R]epeat after me: Islam is a 7th Century Death Cult coughed up by a psychotic pedophile and embraced by defective, tail sprouting, tree swinging, semi-human, bipedal primates with no claim to be treated like human beings or even desirable mammals for that matter.

But none of this seemed to concern Tea Party Express, which allowed him to stay on as chairman, and then spokesperson. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the Tea Party Express and the issues addressed by the tea party movement,” the group’s Joe Wierzbicki told TPM of the “monkey god” comments. Williams was the leader of one one of the most powerful tea party groups in the country, which has been instrumental in Angle’s election, along with dozens of others, and attracted top conservatives like Fox News contributor Sarah Palin as repeat guests to their rallies. The fact that the group hasn’t condemned his bigotry, or even asked him to step down, shows why the NAACP’s action against the tea parties is justified.

M.C.L Comment: Like I said it last night and I'm going to say it again you gotta understand right wing logic, since they know they're a mostly white and mostly racist organization therefore the tea party assume the NAACP are the same way. And I would like that hot pile of dinosaur shit Mark Williams for proof to back up this claim of the NAACP has been making money off race, but then again asking a right winger for facts to back up their claims is like asking Godzilla not to step on Tokyo.

So instead of trying to stop that racist element of the tea party piss ants like Mark Williams decided it's better to reinforce that racist image of the tea party, and you wanna know why? Because the tea party is a racist movement from the standpoint they didn't care about debt when Bush was president, they didn't care about government spending when Bush was president, they didn't care about how the debt could impact future generations when Bush was president, they didn't care about corporate bailouts when Bush was president and they certainly didn't care about civil liberties when Bush was president.

Yet they waited three months after the black guy with the funny name got swore in as president to voice their displeasure at things they supported when the last president was white and had (R) after his name.