Tea partiers are planning to protest the United States’ membership in the United Nations next week in Tallahassee.
Tea Party Manatee has announced that “conservatives and Tea Party groups” will convene at the state capitol “on the day the United States celebrates the United Nations – October 24th.”
“Taxpayers, citizens and parents need to demand that the U.S. stop funding the UN and the UN gets out of the US,” the announcement says.
Behind the event is Agenda 21 Today, a group that wants to eliminate the reach of a United Nations initiative called Agenda 21, which the right-wing views as particularly nefarious.
“Agenders” view the U.N.’s “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” and its “Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests” — also known as Agenda 21 — as a plot by the U.N. to take away the United States’ sovereignty and citizens’ property rights.
The initiative is a non-binding program that provides local communities that seek to grow in a manner that is kind to the environment with resources provided by the International Council for Local and Environmental Initiatives, known as ICLEI. ICLEI provides information such as grant and conference announcements. Members of ICLEI describe it as simply an “information service.”
However, right-wing activists see this as something to fear.
Glenn Beck said on his now-canceled Fox News program that Agenda 21’s plan for sustainable development is really just a means of instituting “centralized control over all of human life on planet Earth.” Beck said the plan “is a massive movement, and its real intentions are being masked with environmental issues.”
In Florida, these theories have entered the GOP mainstream. At a tea party-hosted debate, Senate candidates George LeMieux, Mike McCalister, Craig Miller and Adam Hasner stood behind the tea party’s anti-sustainable growth stance, because they say they want to protect the country’s “sovereignty.”
