Activist known for contentious views

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- Martin H. Millard, after Councilman Chris Steel, could

well be the most vocal advocate for improvement on the city’s Westside.

Millard speaks his mind at nearly every City Council meeting,

contributes at least a dozen e-mails to the Citizens for the Improvement

of Costa Mesa e-mail group each week and regularly sends letters to the

Daily Pilot editor.

While Millard does not belong to the Citizens for the Improvement of

Costa Mesa, he does wield considerable clout among members of that group,

which has claimed responsibilityfor getting Steel elected in November.

His views that charities are magnets for illegal immigrants and that a

steady stream of illegal immigrants and low-income families have

overcrowded apartments and schools, overtaxed city services and increased

blight and gang activity strike a chord with supporters and nerves with

his detractors.

David Martinez and Gladys Olmedo are part of the latter group who

claim to be offended by some of Millard’s writings.

Although Martinez said he agrees that illegal immigrants “can and

should” be faced with deportation, as the law dictates, he wrote in a

Citizens for the Improvement of Costa Mesa chat group e-mail message that

Millard “incorrectly and constantly implies that a particular ethnic

group of people are solely responsible for all crimes being committed and

that all criminal acts are being committed by Hispanics.”

But while Millard faces limited controversy in Costa Mesa, his views

on race caused an uproar on a national level 2 1/2 years ago.

In December 1998, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization

that keeps tabs on hate groups and fights civil rights injustices,

published an analysis of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group

that regularly publishes Millard’s work. The analysis is part of the law

center’s annual Intelligence Report, which chronicles the activities of

extremist hate groups.

In the 1998 analysis, the Intelligence Report excerpted one of

Millard’s essays against intermarriage: “‘What will emerge will be just a

slimy brown mass of glop. The genocide being carried out against white

people hasn’t come with marching armies; instead, it has come with

propaganda that is calculated to brainwash whites into happily and

willingly jumping into the Neo-Melting Pot, and to their destruction . .

. . Genocide via the bedroom chamber is just as long-lasting as genocide

via the gas chamber.”’

The original column is no longer listed on the Council of Conservative

Citizens Web site.

In a telephone conversation, Millard said he couldn’t remember if he

had written the excerpt. He acknowledged, however, in an earlier

interview that he sells his work to various Web sites.

Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty

Law Center’s magazine, said the center has confirmed that H. Millard and

Martin H. Millard of Costa Mesa are the same person.

The quote from Millard “helped make it clear more than any other item

that the council was a racist group.”

“When he is saying that the population of the U.S. is turning into a

‘slimy brown mass of glop’ because the population is darkening, that

makes it pretty clear what he thinks of people with brown skin,” Potok

said. “Did he think America used to be a slimy white mass of glop? I

don’t think so. He’s one of the people who seems to think the white race

is sullied by interaction with other people. In America, we usually call

that racism.”

But Millard, who also writes under the byline, M.H. Millard, said his

writings are not racist, just misunderstood and should not be taken out

of context.

“I like to take on the sacred cows,” he said. “Anybody who wants to

get into free speech issues really needs to take on the sacred cows of

the day. The big ones that are handled poorly by people today is race and

ethnic issues, which have to be handled head on. If you do, everybody

runs to the tall grass screaming, ‘Hate! Hate!’ But if you read [my

writings] honestly, and you read the entire body of work, you will find

that it is not racist. I use some provocative ways of getting people to

read the stuff, but when you get down to it, you’ll find it is different

than what people think it is.”

But several H. Millard essays similarly opposed to marriage between

different races are still available, including “Survival of the Most

Fecund -- In Praise of the Cockroach,” a column copyrighted in 2000.

In the column, Millard wrote that “the little brown people” -- whom he

also refers to as “brown invaders” -- know that having children is

important, while white people produce fewer children.

The result will be that white children will have fewer white dating

choices and may marry nonwhites and produce more “little brown children”

until the white race is annihilated, Millard wrote.

“In a world where 90% of humanity is nonwhite and where modern mass

transportation can bring thousands to those pockets of the planet where

whites are in a local majority and where these pockets of white humanity

are generally better off -- due ultimately to genes -- than the rest of

the world that is nonwhite, there is a natural desire of nonwhites to

invade (they call it immigration, but it is really an invasion without

guns) these white pockets to take advantage of the better conditions

brought about by the whites,” he wrote in one essay.

“Of course, at some point the genetic recipe that made the white

pockets desirable is changed genetically, and those formerly nice areas

become not so nice, and become like whichever group then dominates the

area. In other words, the white pockets can only absorb so many

genetically different peoples before they themselves are absorbed and

become a reflection of the genes of these other people and become like

the very places that these other people fled.”

Potok said Millard’s columns are detrimental to society because they

feed a “race-based paranoia” about what is happening in the country.

“It is true the U.S. is becoming less white; that’s a demographic

fact,” Potok said. “Most people don’t see that as a cause for alarm,

terror or action, but many do, and Millard is the voice of many of those

people. He is injecting poison into the area of already difficult race

relations in the country, stirring the hate pot and unleashing poison

into the minds of a lot of people. I’m not saying that a nice boy who

reads one of the columns turns into a Nazi. But a lot of people aren’t

quite clear what they think of all this, and Millard saying, ‘The country

is being destroyed, the land your forefathers created for you is being

wiped off,’ could give them the background they need to say, ‘Yes, it

must be the fault of the brown people.’ It is convenient to blame

dark-skinned people.”

Potok said the Council of Conservative Citizens, as well as Voices of

Citizens Together, another group that buys and exhibits Millard’s columns

and is identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center,

characterizes a group of people as “somehow less.”

“You don’t hear people like Millard protesting Irish immigration,

legal or illegal,” Potok said. “You don’t hear [them] complaining about

Western European students overstaying their visas. . . . The bottom line

is the immigrants these people hate and fear are without exception

dark-skinned immigrants. I’m not saying that somebody has to be

pro-immigration to not be a racist. I’m saying that the arguments people

like Millard make are racist.”

In Costa Mesa, the racial tensions are mainly associated with the

debate about whether illegal immigrants are the cause of problems on the

city’s Westside.

Many Westside activists have bemoaned conditions that they say are

worsening in parts of the Westside, including the potholes, rundown

shopping centers, liquor stores and bars that line some of the major

streets.

While many different ideas exist about the source of the problems,

some residents -- including Steel and members of Citizens for the

Improvement of Costa Mesa -- have said a steady stream of illegal

immigrants and low-income families have overcrowded apartments and

schools, overtaxed city services and increased blight and gang activity.

The view has started a new racial debate in the community, since some

have said the view unfairly targets Latinos.

Officials from the city of Costa Mesa, as well as the Immigration and

Naturalization Service, say they don’t keep track of the number of

illegal immigrants in Costa Mesa.

Still, Millard has often accused the city’s job center and charities

of serving mostly illegal immigrants.

“We are subsidizing illegal aliens,” Millard said at a City Council

meeting last month, when the council was deciding how to distribute

federal grant money for this year. “I’ve heard more English spoken in

Tijuana” than at these charities.

Other Westside activists are divided in their opinions about Millard

and his columns.

Steel said he has not seen any of the Web site columns.

“I don’t know how he feels, what he’s said, what’s been attributed to

him,” he said. “I know [Millard] is not a hater, but if he’s made

inappropriate remarks, well, I certainly wouldn’t agree with those

remarks described to me. He’s a supporter of mine and I appreciate that,

but that doesn’t mean that I support everything -- the attitude and

statements -- of anyone who supports me. I don’t think he’s a racist, but

I don’t know the situation.”

Janice Davidson, chairwoman of Citizens for the Improvement of Costa

Mesa, said she believes people are using allegations of racism as a

political tool to make others who don’t agree with them look bad, she

said.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t think those groups are

racist. The only people who seem to be bringing this up are Hispanic

people. There are no white people doing this. We are just saying that

there are too many people here; we’ve never said anything about race. I

would protest racism wherever I found it, but this is not it. We don’t

have time to bother with this when we are busy trying to improve the

city. This issue has become race-related, but not by us.”

Davidson said learning the differences between Mexican and American

cultures could help improve the Westside.

“Part of the Latino culture is to listen to radios louder than we do,”

she said. “They are also more likely to throw trash on the ground. If we

teach them that littering is not acceptable here, that will help reduce

litter on the Westside. If we ask our neighbors to turn down their

radios, that will take care of the noise problem.”

Bill Turpit, secretary for both the Latino Business Council and the

Latino Community Network, said some stereotyping -- such as thinking that

Latinos litter more -- is caused by misinterpretations of different

situations.

“Rather than a racial problem, I think we have a racial gap,” he said.

“People don’t understand what it’s like to be an immigrant family or what

it’s like to move here. The gap is something I think we can work on. I

don’t personally see -- outside of a few outspoken people -- a race

conflict at all, although there are some who may want to accentuate that

as a means of reaching a goal. There are misunderstandings. For example,

the Westside is a highly pedestrian community. With high pedestrian use

and youthful pedestrians, it is not unusual for there to be a situation

with litter, regardless of race,” he said.

Paty Madueno, a Latino activist, said a lot of people in the

community, including Millard, are afraid of change, especially the

demographic change of an increasing number of Latinos in the city.

“Because of the civil rights movement and everything we’ve done to

make a difference, it is so sad to see this kind of environment here,”

she said. “It is incredible that these things still happen in America. I

hope and pray that we never become like Yugoslavia, with its ethnic

cleansing. When I see [Millard’s letters] and behavior, it makes me sad

and I pray for him. In church, everybody talks about the letters he sends

everywhere -- such as to charities -- with comments directed at immigrant

families. A lot of people are praying for this man.”