The OC Community Center That Launched a National Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
This low-slung building is the home of the Women's Civic Club of Garden Grove, a community group that's been around since 1921. Once a month for nearly 20 years, it was also home to meetings for the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), one of the influential voices in the anti-immigrant movement during the 1990s and 2000s, and one whose legacy is still felt today.
The group originally started as Citizens for Action Now, headed by Barbara Coe, a former civilian employee for the Anaheim Police Department who was asked in the early 1990s to not focus so much on undocumented immigrants and — depending on which story you believe — was fired or resigned because of the request. Soon after, she and other Orange County residents got together to form what would become Proposition 187, a 1994 California ballot initiative passed by nearly two-thirds of voters that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented immigrants and their children. Though a judge eventually ruled Proposition 187 unconstitutional, its ideas sparked a wave of copycat local, state and national legislation— and Coe became a guru of sorts for interested politicians and citizens alike.
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CCIR's main meeting place was the Women's Civic Club, where it hosted a parade of far-right speakers including Michelle Malkin, former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and others who railed against undocumented workers, Muslims, and other minorities. Its own members, meanwhile, began to launch initiatives that received national attention. One, Anaheim Union High School District trustee Harald Martin, sought to make his district sue Mexico for $50 million for educating the children of undocumented immigrants. Another, Jim Gilchrist, created the Minuteman Project in 2005, which organized civilians to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border for any immigrants attempting to cross over. And then there was Orly Taitz, a Laguna Niguel dentist who helped popularize the so-called Birther movement, which posited that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and thus was ineligible to become president.
CCIR meetings became frequent sites of protests. The group effectively dissolved when Coe passed away from lung cancer in 2013. The Civic Club has been peaceful ever since.
