Luke Ford

This past Wednesday in the Wisconsin State Assembly, Reggie White, a Black defensive end for the Green Bay Packers made an offensive and bigoted comment concerning Hispanics that was broadcast nationally. His statement that "Hispanics are gifted in family structure because they can put 20 or 30 people in a house" was picked up by certain radio commentators of a "racist bent" and utilized to further insult La Raza.

One particular bigoted commentator that concerns us because of his

pattern of anti-Mexican programming is a Dennis Prager who hosts a talk show on Disney owned KABC Radio that broadcasts on 790 AM frequency band throughout southern California. His show airs Monday through Friday from 12 noon to 3:00 pm and and recently his commentary has taken a more anti-Mexican bent.

Yesterday, Thursday March 26, he repeatedly played the taped anti-Hispanic commentary by Mr. White and poked fun at our large Mexican population here in Los Angeles County. Each time he played the commentary, Mr. Prager said "I do not understand why the Mexicans feel so insulted. Reggie was only complimenting the Hispanics for their "gift" of family structure" and would act ignorant on the "20 to 30 people in a home" part of the statement.

Mr. Prager, a fanatical opponent of Bilingual Education, has a history of "putting down" our Mexican Community and at the same time practices the "screening out" of Latinos who call in to respond to his racist anti-Mexican commentary.

The Nation of Aztlan strongly believes that it is time to put a stop to all the negative stereotypes and images being projected over the airwaves against Mexicans. This continuing "bigotry" over radio against our community is more serious than is readily apparent. It has a very detrimental affect, over time, on our quality of life her in the United States. It affects how we are seen and treated in our work places and how our children are treated in the schools.

Some of us might excuse Mr. Reggie White because it is obvious that he has a very low I.Q., but should we excuse Mr. Dennis Prager and the Disney Company who employs him? This is not the first time that we, as a community, have experienced consistent attacks by a Disney owned radio station here in southern California. In 1996, KMPC Radio, which is also runned by the KABC management team, was airing a white supremacist by the name of Bob Heckler who undertook a vicious attack on Mexican immigrants during his campaign for Proposition 187. He was advocating "shooting the illegals at the border by militias" and one time he made a comment that he had observed in the San Ysidro/Tijuana hills "hundreds of Mexican wetbacks coming over the border like a bunch of cockroaches!" Mr. Heckler has since been fired through pressure from our community but now we have the bigoted Dennis Prager to contend with.

There is an excellent report on Bob Heckler and the Disney Company at http://www.serve.com/Impacto/heckler.html

We are asking that we undertake a strategy to stop the anti-Mexican programming by the Disney Company once and for all. We believe that we can focus on a strategy similar to the one we successfully utilized to rid us of Heckler and that is to concentrate on the businesses that pay advertising dollars to KABC and other Disney owned radio stations that have a consistent anti-Mexican bent to their programming. We are compiling a list of businesses that advertise during the Dennis Prager show along with their telephone numbers and will publish them on the Impacto 2000 website. We need volunteers to call these businesses to convince them that is is bad business to continue supporting the anti-Mexican programming on KABC. We also need to contact Michael Eisner in New York, the Disney executive, to let him know that the type of programming against Mexicans goes against the family values that the late Walt Disney intended to project. We will publish his contact information on the Impacto 2000 web site above.

Meanwhile, for those of us in the Los Angeles area, we should call or write to the KABC General Manger Bill Summers to complaint. The radio station is located at 3321 S. La Cienega Blvd.,Los Angeles, California 90016 and their general telephone number is (310) 840-4914. Also, if you wish to contact Mr. Prager personally to discuss the problem, he may be contacted at the Prager Perspective Center at (310) 558-3958 or at the Micah Center at (310) 287-0394.

Also, if you have "monitored" the anti-Mexican bigotry by Dennis Prager on KABC Radio, please E-mail Impacto 2000 at Impacto@mail.serve.com and we would appreciate the details.

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HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE

Cuauhtli

Minister of Information

NATION OF AZTLAN

http://www.aztlan.org