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A Minuteman Project volunteer
(http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/25966.php)
By HC116, April 21, 2005
Minuteman Project leaders are spreading their activity to shut the Mexico border with vigilante action. Starting with Arizona, Minuteman Project has now spread to other $tates. "James Gilchrist would be taking the Minuteman Project name and some volunteers to California to protest businesses that employ illegal immigrants. . . . Minuteman leaders say their organization is gaining momentum and will spread to more states, including those border states as well as Michigan and Idaho. . . . Reports have Minuteman volunteers on videotape talking about other volunteers with shotguns, which are disallowed by project organizers, and some border-watchers, disavowed by the Minuteman Project leaders were pictured detaining immigrants."(1) Other news stories report independent mobilization and fascist activism to secure the border in the interests of smaller exploiters:
"The Minuteman Project border vigil, which has nearly shut down a 20-mile corridor of the U.S.-Mexico border to illegal aliens, has spawned the creation of similar civilian patrols from California to Texas. . . . Other new civilian patrols, not affiliated with the Minuteman Project, are preparing to be up and running over the next several months in California, New Mexico and Texas. Officials familiar with the California effort believe volunteers will be patrolling the border in San Ysidro, Calif., by June."(2)
There were vigilante groups in these States before the Minuteman Project, and Civil Homeland Defense Corps isn't the first group in Arizona to detain undocumented migrants while carrying firearms.
The Minuteman Project, which includes pilots and aircraft, has more people and resources than ninety-nine out of a hundred distinct anti-imperialist organizations in the united $tates. The MMP and similar organizations are collectively a movement of a reactionary class, the Euro-Amerikan labor aristocracy, and must be defeated. It is a movement allied with the most reactionary elements of finance capital, which through the Border Patrol has violently detained, beat and killed undocumented migrants. The labor aristocracy fascist movement to "close the border" / "seal the border" seeks to step up this repression. "Arizona has become a crossing point for hundreds of thousands of migrants annually, and the flood of undocumented people has drawn several armed civilian groups that act as self-appointed border watch organizations. . . . The groups have come under increasing scrutiny. One member of Texas-based Ranch Rescue was arrested near Douglas on suspicion of felony flight to avoid prosecution, accused with another person of unlawfully detaining and beating a Salvadoran couple in Texas."(3)
Previous MIM articles have pointed out that the Minuteman Project was led in large part by Chris Simcox's "militia," Civil Homeland Defense Corps. An Associated Press article recently implied ex-Marine, Kalifornian Jim Gilchrist led the Minuteman Project as its chief organizer.(4) Yet, the same article reveals that Civil Homeland Defense has always played a large leadership role in the Minuteman Project: since Jim Gilchrist was going to leave Arizona on Wednesday, "[v]olunteers [of the Minuteman Project] now in Arizona or coming through April 30 will fall under the auspices of Civil Homeland Defense, another illegal immigrant monitoring group that Simcox has operated in Arizona for years, Gilchrist said."(4) The Minuteman Project itself says on its Web site:
"The volunteers who have led the way are the good citizens who have joined the efforts of Civil Homeland Defense and who have succeeded in assisting the Border Patrol with locating over 5,000 people entering our country illegally. . . . Experienced volunteers of Civil Homeland Defense (CHD) will be mentoring groups of novice border watchers who are here for the first time. CHD volunteers will consult, guide and share experience with new volunteers. CHD volunteers will continue to work in every way possible that will support the mission" (http://www.minutemanproject.com/SOP.html).
The Minuteman Project has admitted that at least one of Chris Simcox's organizations, the newspaper Tombstone Tumbleweed, has materially supported the MMP by providing electronic equipment (http://www.minutemanproject.com/Donations.html).
Minuteman Project organizers claim that the MMP has been a success: "Gilchrist pointed to a drop in Border Patrol apprehensions in the area as proof: The agency caught about 2,500 illegal immigrants in the Naco area during the first half of the month; agents apprehended nearly 7,700 during the same period last year."(5) Yet, the Border Patrol in Tucson "attributed the drop to U.S. agents and the increased presence of Mexican police and members of Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored organization that tries to discourage people from crossing illegally and aids those stranded in the desert."(2) MIM is not going to disagree with the Minuteman Project on that point. They have indeed successfully terrorized undocumented migrant proletarians from even stepping foot over the border. The proletariat of the oppressed nations will condemn the Minuteman Project as murderers for supporting the policing of the u.$.-Mexico border , which already kills migrants, heightening the repression at the border, and forcing oppressed nationalities to delay crossing the border into the desert until the summer when the risk of heat stroke is even higher.
Like fascists do, Jim Gilchrist himself has paid lip service to anti-capitalist sentiments, but does not oppose the repression of undocumented migrant proletarians:
" 'I blame it on the corporate barons,' Gilchrist thunders. 'Not just the huge ones, but the smaller corporations who know they can get desperate workers to work for literal peanuts to do the same work American citizens would want twice the salary for. They laugh all the way to the bank. They're professional slave traders, just like in the Southern states back to the Civil War....I do not like these capitalistic pigs.' "(6)
The comparison OC Weekly makes between Gilchrist and so-called anti-capitalist Leon Trotsky, as opposed to Stalin , is more apt than Gustavo Arellano realizes. Trotskyism, rife with opportunism and subjectivism, has the potential to degenerate into openly fascist politics. Gilchrist and Simcox are both "Trotskys." The media portrays undocumented migrants at the u.$.-Mexico border as terrorists, but the labor aristocracy knows what's really going down. The social-democrats and social-imperialist theorists do the spade work of theory to protect the white so-called working class and the Minuteman Project is the practice.
Notes:
1. Mark Poepsel, "Minuteman Project Organizers Say Effort's Spreading Not Splitting," April 18, 2005, http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=3227965
2. Jerry Seper, "Movement spreads for civilian patrols on U.S.-Mexico border," April 16, 2005, http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050416-103527-3721r
3. "Retired California man seeks volunteers for Arizona civilian patrol in April," Associated Press State & Local Wire, January 17, 2005.
4. Arthur H. Rotstein, "Minuteman founder leaving post at Mexico border early," April 18, 2005, http://www.whittierdailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,207~12026~2823695,00.html
5. Arthur H. Rotstein, "Organizers: Minuteman Project successful," April 21, 2005, http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/11453317.htm
6. Gustavo Arellano, "The anti-immigrant movement's Trotsky," OC Weekly, February 11, 2005.