Freedom of Assembly for conservatives Under Fire

Michelle Malkin

In spring 2017, award-winning journalist and former Hoover Institution media fellow Peter Brimelow and his educational nonprofit VDARE reserved the Cheyenne Mountain Resort for a conference on immigration and sovereignty issues. A local far-left gadfly who bragged about wearing her “pink p—y hat while driving [her] Prius” launched an online petition condemning Brimelow’s organization as a “hate group.”

The petition threatened both the resort and the mayor, bellowing that “the residents of Colorado Springs will not support businesses that profit from hate groups and will not re-elect politicians hospitable to those hate groups!”

What exactly is “hateful” about VDARE’s work? You can visit VDARE.com and read its wide variety of news and opinions yourself. My syndicated column, published in the Colorado Springs Gazette and hundreds of other mainstream newspapers over the past 25 years, is also published by VDARE. So are Ann Coulter’s and Pat Buchanan’s.

VDARE has never advocated violence or any illegal activity. The group counts foreign nationals, immigrants, and members of racial and ethnic minorities among its strongest supporters, donors, and contributors.

In mid-August 2017, obviously spooked by the violent outcome in Charlottesville, Virginia, where “alt right” protesters and violence-provoking Antifa agitators clashed as local police refused to intervene as a result of a disastrous stand-down order, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers issued a chilling statement regarding the planned VDARE conference.

While paying lip service to “freedom of speech,” Suthers rather unsubtly used his executive authority as the city’s top elected official to pressure local businesses against engaging with VDARE, its speakers, and its supporters.

Immediately after the mayor’s ominous decree, the Cheyenne Mountain Resort canceled VDARE’s contract. The liberal heckler’s veto won. The Republican mayor, a purported constitutional conservative, blithely threw the First Amendment under the bus.

VDARE is fighting back against what Brimelow calls the “Totalitarian Left” (and its surrender-ist GOP enablers). Colorado conservative lawyer Randy Corporon, who represents the group in its civil rights lawsuit against the city, told me:

Mayor John Suthers’ statement made clear that Colorado Springs would not provide police protection to VDARE’s lawful gathering in a private facility because of his disagreement with the participants’ views. His statement led Cheyenne Mountain Resort to cancel VDARE’s long-contracted event in spite of significant lost profit and cash damages paid to VDARE by the resort. Meanwhile, violent, disruptive protest groups like Antifa receive police protections as they threaten, injure, and maim.

“I accepted this case,” Corporon said, “in order to expose the hypocrisy and in an effort to determine whether these precious First Amendment rights now only apply to groups and ideas favored by government.”

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