TEAM Westport: A Case Study in anti-White Activism

“This is an exciting moment to be working on this. There are more non-white kids being born now than white kids.” TEAM Westport, October 7 2014.

“We should continue working with the Board of Education here in Westport to prepare students for the world from a multicultural point of view.” TEAM Westport, May 3 2011.

Introduction

Westport, Connecticut is a pleasant coastal town with a population of 26,000 that boasts above-average incomes and is 92.6% White. It has a busy library, a number of successful and respected schools, several pristine public squares, an observatory, a natural history museum, and a number of independent news outlets. Unfortunately, since 1994 the town has also been home to a rather innocuously named organization called TEAM Westport. Its purpose is anything but innocuous. TEAM is an acronym for: Together Effectively Achieving Multiculturalism, and for over 20 years this group has been insidiously poisoning the socio-cultural well of its surroundings with a persistence that is as remarkable as it is sickening. For more than 20 years its efforts have attracted little attention beyond the precincts of the town. This changed a few weeks ago when one TEAM project caused the briefest of blips on the national radar, which in turn brought it to my attention.

The project in question was TEAM’s annual essay contest, now in its fourth year. Although TEAM is not an official part of the school district, or indeed the school system, its network of influence has allowed the essay contests to be promoted among children via the schools and other educational avenues. The annual contest has always engaged in race-baiting among the young. However, this year’s contest was presumably a step too far, or too soon, for those behind it. The prompt, unveiled in January, reads:

In 1,000 words or less, describe how you understand the term ‘white privilege’. To what extent do you think this privilege exists? What impact do you think it has had in your life — whatever your racial or ethnic identity — and in our society more broadly?

The subversive nature of the question wasn’t lost on the growing number of Whites who, in the Trump era, are becoming increasingly sensitive to such manoeuvres, and less hesitant in expressing their opposition. In its predictably biased reporting of reactions to this year’s essay contest, the New York Times reported that “merely mentioning white privilege seems to have struck a nerve, with much of the criticism coming from out of town.” This was presumably in response to comments appearing on TEAM’s Facebook page, which included the astute observation: “This is nothing more than race baiting. You are a joke.” The New York Times, like TEAM Westport representatives, dismissed such reactions as “hand-wringing among adults,” while focussing on the more susceptible and intellectually and ideologically vulnerable children, who, in the words of the New York Times, “appear to have greeted the essay contest and the resulting uproar with a shrug.” Journalistic investigation into the history and activities of TEAM Westport both began and ended at this single essay contest, and the story appears to have been mentioned only in order to sneer at those who objected to the concept of “White guilt.”

I found this slanted and superficial coverage profoundly dissatisfying, and resolved to conduct my own investigation into the deeper roots of this affair. As a White ethno-nationalist, I have certain beliefs about multiculturalism and its advance in recent decades. In particular, it is my belief that multiculturalism is both an ideology and a deliberate process. By the latter, I mean that multiculturalism is not something that occurs “naturally,” but is rather a process advanced with programmatic design.  Although I have tested and confirmed these beliefs many times previously, the career of TEAM Westport would provide an opportunity to test these beliefs once more in the form of a case study. In light of my pre-existing understanding of multiculturalism, a number of questions presented themselves immediately: Who are the members of TEAM Westport, and what is their ideological and cultural background? Is there any evidence of Jewish influence in and around this organization? How and why has the group been given extensive access to the local educational establishment? Where does this group get its funding, and what does it use this funding for? What does the group mean by “achieving multiculturalism,” and what are the chief methods by which this group seeks to achieve it? What role, if any, does pathological altruism play in the activities of the organization?

Methodology and Theory

In terms of methodology, my main source material for this investigation was the online archive of the minutes of TEAM’s monthly meetings stretching back over the last several years. The fact that the group is part of local government was helpful in ensuring that such records would be publicly available and readily accessible. These minutes are sufficiently detailed to afford a relatively rare glimpse inside the operations, self-conceptions, and ideological positions of an organization actively working at a local level for the demographic decline of those of European descent. The documents are also useful in that they afford us the opportunity to quote TEAM in its own words. While the arguments and conclusions presented here may be disputed by interested parties, the raw evidence presented here is difficult to assail and impossible to refute. This is an organization that is blunt in its determination to bring to an end the story of European man in North America. In addition to the minutes of TEAM Westport, I have used available online information to determine biographical information about the individuals involved, and I have conducted as much research as possible on its more distant affiliations to national bodies. Some of these, like the ADL, will be familiar to TOO readers.

A common source of comfort for many in our movement is the consolation that there still remain, in several of our nations, areas which are, to a very large extent, ‘healthy’ or untouched by the progression of multiculturalism. These are areas which are still, almost miraculously, more or less ethnically homogeneous. Westport is, for the time being, one of those areas. Before we begin in earnest, I wish to state that the investigation presented here is not intended to dishearten, or ‘Black Pill,’ the optimists among us. Rather, it should act as a corrective and a warning, and also as a call to remedial action. The cancer that we are confronted with is everywhere, and it is extremely belligerent. The case of TEAM Westport is novel only in its specifics, but not in the more general features of the disease that lies at its heart. We know these features well: the importance of ideologies and forms of activism that are demonstrably Jewish in origin; the pervasiveness of White pathologies regarding morality and social mores; and the inherent vulnerabilities and foreign-induced distortions of modern Christian thought. We also know the preferred pathway of this disease, in that it is intended to spread most virulently among the young. All of these aspects are present in the following analysis. However, one of the chief benefits of a case study is that it offers insight into more specific characteristics and, in doing so, may afford the crucial opportunity to slow, interrupt, or even arrest decline. This is our task, and each of us has a role to play.

TEAM Westport

TEAM Westport styles itself as a municipal “diversity committee” that seeks to “to achieve, extend and celebrate a more multicultural community.” It is formally composed of a committee of around ten, although attendance at meetings hovers at around eight. In addition to the formal committee, there are a number of regularly affiliated individuals who interact quite intensively with TEAM Westport but, for reasons that may be surmised, have attempted to remain out of the spotlight. They will not evade the spotlight of the present investigation. The committee itself is, and always has been, composed almost entirely of African-Americans and Jews. TEAM regulars have included Harold Bailey, Bernicestine McLeod, Dolores Paoli and Judith Hamer (all Black), while Brett Aronow, journalist Mary-Lou Weisman, Norwalk Community College President David Levinson, and Zoe Tarrant are all Jewish.

Committee leader Bailey is often the most vocal spokesman for the group, but my investigations determined that Jewish members of the committee possess greater influence and social reach. For example, Aronow, who was lauded by the ADL a few months ago, was named to the school board in September 2012 and appears to have used her influence there to advance TEAM goals via the school system. In particular, Aronow appears to have worked with co-ethnic Julie Horowitz on an “Open Choice” program which enabled an influx of Black students from Bridgeport to enter the predominantly White schools of Westport, Fairfield, and Stratford. In fact, if one takes into account the involvement and input of key players outside the formal committee, TEAM Westport quickly emerges as an organization dominated both numerically and strategically by Jews. As someone familiar with the heavy Jewish presence in the multicultural ‘engine,’ little surprises me any more in this regard. However, as my research into TEAM Westport progressed, the Jewish presence in and around this organization appeared nothing less than stunning.

Just to begin with, the vast majority of the winners of the organization’s ‘Diversity Trailblazer Award’ (for those working “for an increasingly pluralistic society”) were Jewish, including notable local activists Andy Boas, Claire Gold, and Tracy Sugarman. Preceding and mirroring the actions of Aronow and Horowitz, Boas received his award for establishing a fund to enable the entry of Black students from the nearby, and significantly less desirable, town of Bridgeport to enter Westport’s predominantly White schools. Similarly, Gold was given her award for ushering in “desegregation” in Bridgeport’s schools in the 1980s. The Connecticut Post reports that “In 1986, the state Supreme Court decision in the Sheff v. O’Neill case declared the school racial segregation that existed in the Hartford region to be unconstitutional. Gold remembers being so excited hearing the news on the radio, she locked herself out of the car.” Gold, a psychologist from New Jersey, established herself in Connecticut with the task of extending the “desegregation” program, a goal she achieved by becoming schools superintendent, and by working with the district grants writer and co-ethnic, Terry Dworkin. Though now retired, Gold’s legacy appears to be more than secure in the hands of her successor, and yet another fellow Jew, Fran Rabinowitz. Tracy Sugarman, who died aged 91 in 2013, had been one of the so-called ‘Freedom Riders’ in the 1960s, and was apparently part of a contingent of Westport’s Temple Israel who went to the South to agitate against the racial status quo.

Andy Boas and Claire Gold — ‘Diversity Trailblazers’

In terms of local activism, one of the organizations most closely affiliated with TEAM Westport is the local Unitarian Universalist Church. The Unitarian Universalist Church is a strange kind of ‘anti-religion’ which has attracted large numbers of Jewish ‘progressives’ into its ranks since the 1960s (for examples, see here, here, and here). Indeed, the ‘denomination’ may today be regarded as a more extreme form of Reform Judaism (as a strategy) in that it superficially ‘waters down’ Jewish identity and thus acts as a vehicle for the cryptic pursuit of Jewish interests under the banner of universalism — while at the same time welcoming deracinated Whites into the fold. This phenomenon of strongly identified Jews making alliances with deracinated Whites is a general phenomenon on the Jewish left.

The Westport Unitarian Universalist Church has been headed in recent years by Reverend Roberta Finkelstein, who describes herself on Twitter as a “passionate Unitarian Universalist minister committed to social justice.” She has previously stated that her greatest accomplishments in certain parishes have been officiating at the ‘civil unions’ of homosexuals. Finkelstein is named in the TEAM minutes, and appears to have had strong ideological and activist links with the group, as reflected in the committee’s gleeful reporting of activities at the ‘church.’ These have included the forming of a “social justice group,”[1] the screening of ‘White guilt’ propaganda like Spielberg’s Amistad and several ‘Holocaust films,’[2] Martin Luther King celebrations,[3] a Black Lives Matter rally,[4] and most recently the flying of a Black Lives Matter banner from the ‘church’ itself.[5]

Aside from the Unitarian Universalist Church, the organization that has played one of the largest roles in advancing TEAM Westport’s goals has been the local library. The Director of the Westport Public Library, Maxine Bleiweis, is also Jewish and worked very closely with TEAM Westport on promoting ‘diversity’ and multiculturalism in the town. Although a number of ‘diversity promoting’ programs appear to have been run from the library, one of the more interesting appears to have been a drive to get more multiculturalism-promoting books geared towards children (I have written previously on how our children are being targeted on a national level by organizations like the ADL). According to the minutes of TEAM Westport, this initiative not only originated with the group, but also seems to have been a constant obsession.

The vigor with which this obsession seems have taken hold appears to have been due in part to the appearance in May 2014 of a letter in the Westport News. A local White resident, evidently annoyed at the latest essay contest, argued that “Westport does not need to be more diverse; it is fine the way it is.” The letter is mentioned explicitly, and with annoyance, in the TEAM minutes. TEAM’s response? To urgently discuss how to get more children’s books promoting diversity into the local library.[6]

After TEAM contacted Bleiweis about the matter, Bleiweis responded that “there is an issue nationally” regarding the ‘task’ of getting more diversity-promoting books into public libraries.[7] In July 2014, a consensus was reached within the group that libraries could only afford to purchase those books that would be checked out most. Since demand for ‘diversity-promoting’ books would be low, TEAM Westport assigned itself the task of artificially increasing demand. In order to increase the volume of diversity-promoting books being checked out locally, and thus to justify the purchase of more such books, the committee asserted that children needed to be “exposed to them as a natural, normal part of library programming.”[8]

This quite small and specific instance is the perfect illustration of the fact that multiculturalism is not a ‘naturally occurring’ part of human life but is instead something that is cultivated, directed, and manipulated into existence.

The committee immediately outlined its plans for the ‘diverse books’ project. More diversity books would be purchased and forced into the libraries. The committee recorded in its minutes: “Although there is a dearth of diverse books in the market place, we can start with what has been published and purchase these books.”[9] Discussing the proposed programs for the White children of Westport, the committee added: “We will include books and films with protagonists of color as a natural part of story time and film programming.”[10] Lest their efforts attract the attention of parents or those like the Westport News letter-writer, stealth was insisted upon: “Any programmatic inclusion should be on a natural, ‘matter of fact’ basis.”[11] In all such matters, the committee would, in its own words, “work jointly with Maxine Bleiweis and the Westport Library.”[12]

A few months later, in September 2014, the book issue remained an obsession. The committee asserted in their meeting that month that “all children need to read, to be exposed to, and to have books with diversity,” and that the library “should have as many books with kids of color as possible.”[13] In October the committee reported on the ‘diversity books’ project:

Our committee has been meeting, has made a great start, and is working toward setting a mission and strategy. … This is an exciting moment to be working on this. There are more non-White kids being born now than White kids. Progress is being made by the library with regard to identifying diverse children’s books.[14]

After an un-named donor came forward to supply the group with “diverse books” in late March 2015, the committee discussed establishing “a diverse book club and discussion group for teens at the library.”[15] Teens were also to be engaged on diversity via an organization called Neighborhood Studies, which “shapes the arts for young people.” TEAM Westport recorded that their contact at the organization was one Harold Levine,[16] while their contact for CONECT (Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut), another ‘youth engagement’ front, was one Rabbi Michael Friedman.[17] In June 2016 the committee discussed setting up a version of TEAM for White teenagers, with the aim that the teens would work on “anti-racism” projects.[18]

In July 2016 the committee articulated a more complete vision for children in schools. They recorded: “TEAM Westport works to make sure that diversity is a part of programming in all organizations within the town. One issue in town is ‘the bubble,’ where race and ethnicity are not part of the experience students receive. Students, teachers, and administrators of color are very much underrepresented in our schools. How do you get it to be different?”[19]

The committee didn’t care that these children and these schools were successful. The ‘problem’ was that they were too White. In discussing how they could “get it to be different,” the committee essentially asserted its ongoing commitment to the efforts of Aronow, Horowitz, Boas, Gold, and others like them, to continue bringing Black students from neighboring towns into Westport. It was also asserted that every effort should be expended to bring Black teachers into the Westport school system, to encourage out of school interaction between Black and White students, and to “incorporate diversity in literature.” This was in addition to an earlier TEAM Westport demand that there be “programming in the curriculum about gay children.”[20] Above all, White children were to be subject to the promotion of values of “humility” and “curiosity.”[21]

Concerns about parental reaction were always present. It had been remarked by committee members in November 2013 that Whites in the age group 30–45 (the age bracket into which most parents fell) “don’t see discrimination and racism as problems. … Parents are focussed on making sure their kids get ahead, and their time is filled with these concerns. Consequently, there is no room to consider diversity as an issue of any kind.”[22] The emphasis was therefore on keeping diversity programs intensely directed at the young, and yet also, as they had already stated, somehow low key or ‘matter of fact’ so as not to attract too much attention. In April 2015 the committee recorded: “We could look at ways to introduce diversity discussions even among young children. A puppet theater, for example, might be a way to engage them.”[23]

This is not to say that TEAM Westport has refrained entirely from propaganda aimed at local adults. In May 2015, after White Lives Matter pamphlets appeared in Westport, TEAM Westport responded by unfurling a large Black Lives Matter banner at the town’s Memorial Day parade.[24] The group has also organized the local staging of plays on themes like Medieval England (e.g. Camelot) featuring multiracial casts,[25] the running of programs and exhibitions on slavery and ‘Black history,’[26] the distribution of leaflets across the town explaining “why the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is important and why we celebrate it,”[27] and the organized showing of pro-LGBT propaganda in local movie theaters.[28]

Another way in which TEAM Westport has influenced local life has been its regular meetings with police chiefs. These meetings often reflect the skewed worldview of TEAM on political matters. This is illogical to say the least, and often betrays a deep-seated suspicion of the White population. A particularly good example was the committee’s reaction to local celebrations on reports of the death of Osama Bin Laden – the committee found the celebrations “unseemly.”[29] In terms of policing, TEAM Westport has been keen to influence the local force with a politically correct, and highly apologetic, interpretation of Black and Islamist violence. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, the committee fretted that “religion was conflated with violence, and terrorism was attached to being Muslim.”[30] The committee thus resolved to “educate” the local police and public on Islam.

In September 2014, in the aftermath of Ferguson, TEAM asserted that “Ferguson is not really a Black issue, but a societal issue. Black men are perceived to be more dangerous than others. … We are seeing a new Jim Crow.”[31] In May 2015 the committee remarked that Baltimore had “exploded” with Black violence only because of “community conditions resulting in rage and pent up hopelessness.”[32] And just a couple months ago, TEAM Westport was busy arranging a “town-wide conversation on policing” to include “exploring the dynamic tension of stereotyping, Black Lives Matter, and current cases in the news involving the shootings of African-Americans by the police.”[33]

Much more could be written on the trials of little Westport. Perhaps symbolic of White America, it lies prostrate upon the cross of multiculturalism and ‘White guilt,’ primed for its erasure. We need not torture ourselves with further intricacies, but turn instead to reflection.

Conclusion

I am often amused by those figures in the so-called Alt-Lite or New Right, who profess to acknowledge every racial reality but that touching on disproportionate Jewish influence in the advance of multiculturalism. I don’t know whether they recoil from it out of fear or ignorance, but I wonder nevertheless how they would confront the coincidence upon coincidence at every turn in Westport’s busy ‘diversity’ industry. Any clear-thinking observer should agree that there is at least a ‘question’ as to why Jews have congregated so heavily in this field of ‘social’ activity, and with such vigor. And this is all publications like The Occidental Observer seek to achieve — to promote honesty about the question. By their own admission, Jews are predominant among the “Diversity Trailblazers.” Why, then, do so many Whites reject that very boast?

I’ve often heard the formulation “Murder or suicide?” when discussing the decline of the White man in his own nations. In this regard, the only evidence of White pathological altruism in Westport (to the extent it might involve ‘White guilt’ etc.) appears to have been induced, rather than to have spontaneously arisen within the European breast. The case of Westport confirmed to me, if such confirmation were needed, that multiculturalism is a program and a system, as well as an ideology. Multiculturalism requires effort and calculation to be brought into being. Populations are being intentionally mixed, and then told what to think about each other – often in opposition to the overwhelmingly negative reality of their interactions. This is the essence of our current predicament, and a prescription for future disaster.

TEAM Westport ultimately knows that a homogeneous society would work best. In June 2011 it even remarked that “racial bullying is not particularly an issue in Westport because it is so homogeneous here.”[34] But multiculturalism is not about making societies better. It is about bringing the story of the White man to a close. In one form or another, this realization will be the defining idea of this century. Goethe once wrote “What you inherit from your father must first be earned before it is yours.” We have mostly lost our past, and our present is crumbling. We will have to earn our future.

 


[1] TEAM Westport Minutes, Oct 2013.

[2] TEAM Westport Minutes, Jan 14 2014 & April 7 2015.

[3] TEAM Westport Minutes, Jan 6 2015.

[4] Ibid.

[5] TEAM Westport Minutes, Nov. 1 2016.

[6] TEAM Westport Minutes, May 16 2014.

[7] TEAM Westport Minutes, June 3 2014.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] TEAM Westport Minutes, September 9 2014.

[14] TEAM Westport Minutes, October 7 2014.

[15] TEAM Westport Minutes, April 7 2014.

[16] TEAM Westport Minutes, November 5 2013.

[17] TEAM Westport Minutes, March 1 2016.

[18] TEAM Westport Minutes, June 7 2016.

[19] TEAM Westport Minutes, July 12 2016.

[20] TEAM Westport Minutes, Feb 7 2012.

[21] TEAM Westport Minutes, July 12 2016.

[22] TEAM Westport Minutes, November 5 2013.

[23]TEAM Westport Minutes, April 7 2014.

[24] TEAM Westport Minutes, June 2 2013.

[25] TEAM Westport Minutes, Oct 4 2016.

[26] TEAM Westport Minutes, March 3 2015.

[27] TEAM Westport Minutes, January 14 2014.

[28] Ibid.

[29] TEAM Westport Minutes, May 3 2011.

[30] TEAM Westport Minutes, May 7 2013.

[31] TEAM Westport Minutes, September 9 2014.

[32] TEAM Westport Minutes, May 5 2015.

[33] TEAM Westport Minutes, Dec 6 2016.

[34] TEAM Westport Minutes, June 7 2011.

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