For the second year in a row, the American Telephone and Telegraphic Co. has overwhelmingly defeated a proposal by the neo-Nazi National Alliance that urges the company to eliminate its affirmative action programs.
The white supremacist organization purchased 100 shares of AT and T stock in 1986, which enabled it to present its resolution on a ballot at the annual shareholder’s meeting April 24 at Radio City Music Hall.
Preliminary counts from proxy returns, prior to the vote of the 2,360 people, show that 91.9 percent opposed the National Alliance proposal and 8.1 percent were in favor.
Though AT and T management has gone on record as opposing the National Alliance motion and defeated the proposal last year by a 91.4 to 8.6 percent margin, the company has twice failed attain the 94 percent “no” vote needed to prevent the recommendation from appearing on the next meeting’s agenda.
The motion would need support of at least 10 percent of the participants next year to be proposed again the following year, or else it will be barred from the ballot.
In this year’s vote, at least six participants spoke against the group’s motion, according to Michael Riff, associate director of the New York regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Only one shareholder spoke for the proposal, Riff said, but his contribution was “weak and faint-hearted,” since the crux of his argument weighed on an accusation that productivity has decreased because of the minorities employed through the affirmative action plan.
Riff described the meeting as low-key, with most of the debate centered around a proposal by one AT and T employee, Alex Tillman, to expand the affirmative action program to ensure proper representation of women and minorities in the upper echelons of management.
That proposal was defeated as well, 95.3 percent to 4.7 percent, thereby failing to attain the 6 percent support needed to be eligible for next year’s ballot.
CELEBRATING HITLER’S BIRTHDAY
National Alliance distributes a wide variety of Nazi propaganda, including Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and a book entitled “Imperium” that advocates the preservation of Western culture through Hitlerian racism.
This month’s front cover of the group’s publication, National Vanguard, features a portrait of Hitler in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth on April 20.
National Alliance is led by William Pierce, author of “The Turner Diaries,” which he published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.
The book is a fictionalized memoir of the overthrow of the American government by “super patriots” who kill Jews and non-whites, destroy Israel and establish an Aryan regime throughout the world.
Pierce, a one-time physics professor at Oregon State University, left the academic world to join the American Nazi Party, then led by George Lincoln Rockwell, subsequently launching his own neo-Nazi splinter group.
National Alliance began in 1968, joining with the Youth for Wallace movement as the National Youth Alliance.
Run behind the scenes by Willis Carto, the head of Washington’s Liberty Lobby, it was described as a “fighting movement” determined to “liquidate the enemies of the American people.” Pierce later took the organization’s helm.
The ADL has been providing AT and T with material about the National Alliance and Pierce.
Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, and John Jacob, director of the National Urban League, both called the proposal a “smokescreen by which the National Alliance hopes to use a highly visible corporate forum to insinuate its anti-black and anti-Semitic views into the business world.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
