Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) is one of the oldest and best funded anti-immigrant groups in the state. Since its founding, CAPS has maintained strong ties to white nationalists. In fact, the group has routinely hired white nationalists and other extremists, including a known neo-Nazi. CAPS once received funding from the notorious Pioneer Fund, a group set up in the 1930s to pursue “race betterment.”
About
- CAPS was founded in 1986. One of its co-founders was white nationalist Garrett Hardin, a friend of John Tanton’s who helped Tanton build the established anti-immigrant movement we see in the U.S. today. Hardin, like Tanton, was concerned with environmental degradation and today, CAPS positions itself as an environmental organization troubled by California’s rising population.
- Hardin served on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) for several years and since its founding, CAPS has worked closely with a number of national anti-immigrant groups. Tanton-founded group U.S., Inc. has donated thousands of dollars to CAPS since its founding.
- CAPS claims to be “pro-immigrant” and the “About Us” page on its website reads, “Don’t Blame Immigrants. Blame Our Government’s Antiquated Immigration Policy.” Statements by CAPS’s staff and board over the past four decades prove that this claim is patently false.
- CAPS staff and board are regulars at annual anti-immigrant gatherings such as the Writers Workshop put on by The Social Contract Press and FAIR’s Hold Their Feet to the Fire event.
- CAPS is also one of the best funded state-based anti-immigrant groups, allowing it to routinely run radio and television ads attacking immigrants. CAPS’s most recent ad in March of 2019 criticized President Trump for calling for increases in immigration.
- Because of CAPS’s large budget, the organization’s activities are not confined to just California. In fact, for a number of years, CAPS has actively fought immigration reform efforts at the federal level, notably airing ads in other states in opposition to elected officials there who have come out in favor of immigration reform, such as Lindsay Graham in South Carolina, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.
- CAPS board member Ben Zuckerman was directly involved in a hostile takeover attempt of the board of the environmental organization Sierra Club by anti-immigrant activists in the late 1990s. Zuckerman was one of the anti-immigrant activists who unsuccessfully ran for a position on the Sierra Club’s board in an attempt to push the organization to take an anti-immigrant stance. Back in 1986, Tanton encouraged anti-immigrant activists to target the Sierra Club.
- In late 2012 and early 2013, CAPS helped to create another anti-immigrant group attempting to coax environmentalists into joining the anti-immigrant movement called Scientists and Environmentalists for Population Stabilization (SEPS). SEPS was created after CAPS spent the previous few years attending major scientific conferences in an attempt to convince attendees that population control should be a priority.
- Many CAPS projects often harken back to California in the 1960s and prior and blame “out-of-control population growth” for environmental degradation and longer commute times in the state.
Anti-immigrant Views
- CAPS co-founder, white nationalist Garrett Hardin, stated in a 1997 interview, “My position is that this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster. That’s what we’ve got in Central Europe, and in Central Africa. A multiethnic society is insanity. I think we should restrict immigration for that reason.”
- Before the founding of CAPS, its current board chair, Ben Zuckerman, co-authored a book with another white nationalist, Michael Hart. Hart has been a regular at a number of racist events over the past few decades. According to an email exchange obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Zuckerman gave no indication that he was concerned about Hart’s views when they were pointed out to him.
- In 2017, San Francisco-based newspaper El Tecolote revealed that CAPS had hired a known neo-Nazi, Parker Wilson. CAPS fired Wilson after the exposé, but it was later revealed that CAPS had given Wilson an award back in 2012. A year prior, a search of Wilson’s home by law enforcement uncovered, “numerous White Pride paraphernalia, firearms, ammunition and components to make a pipe bomb.”
- For at least six years, anti-immigrant extremist Frosty Wooldridge served as a contributor to the CAPS blog. Wooldridge writes for a number of outlets and has a particular animus towards Muslims. In 2015 he wrote in a guest editorial for the Sonora News, “At some point, we must shut down all Muslim immigration before we lose control of our own country. They prove relentless, uncompromising and unyielding. No such thing as a ‘moderate Muslim!’” Wooldridge also served as a FAIR advisory board member.
- CAPS also hired John Vinson as a senior writing fellow in 2013. Vinson is one of the founding members of the neo-Confederate League of the South, and, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Vinson is credited with penning the “Kinism Statement,” a set of guiding principals for Kinism, “a modern white supremacist interpretation of Christianity.” Both Vinson and Wooldridge left their positions at CAPS not long after the Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out their racist pasts.
- Rick Oltman worked at CAPS for a time as its national media director in the mid-2000s. Oltman has spoken at multiple events put on by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the group Charleston shooter Dylann Roof cited as his gateway into white nationalism. Oltman also previously worked for FAIR.
- In a 2013 interview with CAPS board chair Marilyn DeYoung, she told the immigrant rights group Cuéntame, “A baby can join a gang and commit a crime. A baby can drop out of school and become a criminal. A baby grows up.”
Anti-immigrant Activity
- Over the past two years, the anti-immigrant movement has focused largely on attempting to dismantle so-called sanctuary cities and states. In California, a number of cities have taken steps to reject California’s sanctuary state law, SB54. CAPS is one of the loudest voices in the anti-sanctuary movement. The group created the website StopSanctuary.com in opposition to SB54.
- In 2014, CAPS sent an email to its supporters attempting to make a link between ISIS and immigration, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
- After the 2010 census results were released, CAPS senior writing fellow Leon Kolankiewicz lamented the focus by some observers on the increase in America’s Latinx population and not, “the implications of continuing aggregate population increase with no end in sight.”
- In 2014, an ad produced by CAPS during the height of the drought in California caused outrage because it blamed immigrants for the water shortage. The ad begins with a boy asking, “If Californians are having fewer children, why is it so crowded? If Californians are having fewer children, why isn’t there enough water? “If Californians are having fewer children, where are all the people coming from?” A man responds by claiming, “Virtually all of California’s population growth is from immigration.”