MCDC; MINUTEMAN GROUPS IN A NUTSHELL

MCDC Minuteman Local Workshop Planned

[these comments are published in the hope that they will make a small contribution toward understanding and struggling for social justice.]

Well, if you haven't seen it the agenda for the the so-called Minuteman events of February 1^st and 2^nd here in the Kansas City area you can find it at www.minutemanhq.com. It is also directly below these comments.

Minuteman Civil Defense Corp (MCDC) will charge fees for both events and are selling merchandise.

The first day is at the historic Uptown Theater and is purportedly open to the public. The second day, they hope to carry on at a secret location. MCDC claims they have security concerns but they have not really been challenged to explain what they are.

This doesn't mean that the event is likely to be anything like the often announced “first only national convention”. Dos Mundos recently referred to the event as a “regional conference” suggesting that expectations are way down. National MCDC refers to the event as a “regional retreat”. When you think about it, it is something of a retreat. Yet, somehow the media takes MCDC claims of success and popularity at face value with little scrutiny. So the once ballyhooed national convention was uncritically reported as going to happen by the local media. Now Dos Mundos and others should be asking, “Where is the national conference now?” It may not be the the most important or sexy story but it is still the story, a story of faltering efforts and lower expectations. This story of faltering efforts also has the merit of conforming to the facts.

The workshop personnel listed suggests more of a local workshop with the national MinutemanHQ staff pulling triple duty as attendees, trainers and speakers. After firing a dozen or more chapter heads back in the Spring of 2007 Chris Simcox has had a relatively low profile. Simcox has had trouble speaking at a dozen or so public venues due to protests. He also continues to be engaged in a long term vendetta with his rival and former minuteman ally Jim Gilchrist. Gilchrist organizes under the name www.minutemanproject.com .

[This local KCMO workshop can be seen as an effort by Simcox to rally those MCDC folks who have not defected to the Gilchrist minuteman faction.]

Of course we have no firm idea as to how many folks might be sympathetic to this MCDC event. While anti-immigrant fervor may be a majority view in some isolated areas of the nation I think we can agree that the MCDC view is actually a minority view even within the Anglo or white community. Only something like twenty five percent of all Americans are disturbed about the current immigration situation. Yet politicians and the corporate media seem to be relatively

prone to exaggerate the amount of support anti-immigrant activists really have. Of course there are enough unhappy folk to makes fertile ground for groups like MCDC. MCDC has simple solutions and even simpler explanations for the difficult problems in a stunningly complex and interdependent world.

The first day's events will be drenched in both patriotic fervor and religious devotion. A fee will be charged according to the MCDC

website. Maybe they think they can create a state of collective passivity by saying the pledge of allegiance and offering up a prayer

to a presumably non-Catholic deity. Then Ed Hayes of Olathe will try to pick out the trouble makers in the audience. Chris Simcox will once again grind his organ and ultimately the entire MCDC staff will dance around the “little Prince” (ie. Simcox) spinning tales of disease ridden immigrant terrorists murdering and raping our young women. They will also condemning all who disagree with them as “traitors”. Moderat republicans, President Bush, Anarchists, La Raza, other minutemen leaders and groups, anyone not MCDC are and will be called “traitors”.

MCDC and other border patrol groups have a habit of “deputizing” themselves as volunteer cops while being very critical of actual border patrol efforts, officials and policies. When near the border, MCDC's location is apparently transmitted by the U.S. Border Patrol to the Mexican government. In short, while MCDC may be able to work sometimes and in some ways with some property owners and some law enforcement officials it is generally a sideshow unable to significantly influence the flow of those illegally entering the United States.

MCDC will put itself forward as having the answer to immigration problems. Indeed, MCDC try to persuade us that other problems are really just immigration problems. If we just deal with the “illegals” all will be well in America they say. It is a rather flimsy theory of how to improve our social health. Dividing our nation and fomenting

a sort of racial anti-immigrant hysteria seems like a very evil goal to me. Yet the written and spoken words of virtually all MCDC officials suggests either precisely such malevolence or a pathological level of gullibility.

MCDC members pretend they are members of a “border patrol”, a “civil defense corp” or a super-duper “neighborhood watch group”. When they go to the border they seem to be in something like hunting mode. Sometimes it seems silly to me and other times it seems pretty scary. Imagine a right-wing group like MCDC or a private contractor like Blackwater developing a surveillance capability and then turning it on the overwhelming majority of Americans so they can carry out a pogrom against undocumented workers and Hispanics in particular.

If not MCDC then their close friends in just about any other minuteman or border group seem like the kind of folk who would love to ethnically cleanse this or that part of the United States. You can bet their targets would broaden with time. After all, they think just about everyone is a traitor anyway! I think that while they are saying that they are loyal and patriotic they are really defining those terms racially and in terms of anglo-culture. They think that whites who don't want to ethnically cleanse America are traitors. When they say traitor more than a few mean “race traitor”.

It seems to me that any narrow nationalism is going to produce a lot of unnecessary pain and injustice.

All the MCDC efforts up to this point have very limited if any documented effect on immigration flow. I know of no peer reviewed study that establishes an actual increase in apprehension of border crossers due to MCDC interventions.

A very jaundiced framework for thinking about illegal immigration will be established by Chris Simcox and other MCDC leaders. Appealing to the Walter Mitty in everyone Simcox will convince a bunch of overweight men and women that they can become youthful rangers on the wild frontier bringing back an America familiar to Ward Cleaver and the BEAVE!.

While MCDC makes superficial criticisms of individual employers it seems to have lackluster employer boycotts and piecemeal employer watch projects. While there is some surveillance of those who are believed to be hiring undocumented workers, the overwhelming emphasis in MCDC rhetoric and propaganda is on demonizing Hispanic immigrants, anyone who disagrees with them and often rivals in the border patrol racket.

MCDC somehow fails to see that the entire migration situation is part and parcel of capitalist development and long term trends in the world economy. It is quite complicated, but the current situation starts with “Nixon goes to China” more than thirty years ago and the rapid development of huge economic changes throughout the world since that era. It doesn't make much sense to blame immigrants for NAFTA, the Superport and all that, does it?

Border patrol groups seem to be critical of NAFTA, and the movement of so much production abroad. Progressives are also concerned about such things. Only progressives don't see immigration as the primary concern of our time. Nor is immigration seen as the cause of itself. Something else has caused immigration on this scale. Those real world factors increasing immigration may far exceed the influence of immigrants on anything but they aren't convenient scapegoats.

Of course we scapegoat others at our peril in this interdependent world. The whole machine is disturbingly complex and there is more than one way to break it. More than one group could mess up our Rube Goldberg socioeconomic systems. Actually we are already ruining our planet and need to focus on undoing that unfolding catastrophe. Peace is, therefore, most practical.

Rather than turning on other citizens and persecuting immigrants we need to see that the problems of immigration do deserve a great deal more concern than we have given them. We are nonetheless unlikely to conclude that immigration policy is the focal point of world or national history. We need to look to the facts to determine what those factors are that cause this kind of immigration problem or immigration opportunity. I guess it could be looked at as an opportunity for some better Mexico and United States cooperation for the benefit of workers and small business in both nations.

If progressive labor and small business groups could have sovereignty over some of these immigration and trade matters we would get economic results more friendly to the average family in both the United States and Mexico. Perhaps our task should be to bring about progressive worker and small business unity so that we can address what are essentially class, not national issues. MCDC sees things more nationalistically. They deny the essential unity of the Mexican and United States working class. They oppose the unity of the working class nationally and internationally. They seek to direct one section of the working class to wage war upon another section of that same working class!

MCDC sees immigration as undermining national sovereignty. Sometimes MCDC types raise economic issues but they have no real database to substantiate their many economic and labor claims. Most MCDC and the border patrol movement trace job loss, lower wages , crime, and infectious disease to the flow of economic migrants into the United States.

Undocumented workers who get jobs are not always displacing other citizen workers. Of course some times they are. Much is said in this area with little empirical evidence to back up typically broad generalizations about the effect of immigrant labor on wages.

Of course labor has a point in seeking to avoid a race to the bottom in

terms of hourly wages, our U. S. wages and our Mexican wages. How do we improve the wages of both or perhaps abolish wage labor altogether. Just a wild idea? Or is it what we need in an era of substantial automation, mechanization and a wasteful economy that has to be reconfigured but also, largely shut down just to prevent a terminal global warming scenario. MCDC is stuck on enforcing more restrictive immigration laws as a panacea for America's problems.

It is a simple idea that is simply wrong.

People need useful nondestructive work whether they are officially employed or not. Surely there is plenty of work to be done if it is only
facilitated by reason and common interest.

MCDC has no coherent theory of history. It looks back to a short lived period when immigration was more restricted. The KKK apparently was able to get anti-immigrant legislation passed in the post WWI period. Obviously, MCDC follows in the KKK's footsteps as they seek to recreate a United States that reflects a terrible period of racial strife when lynchings swept the South and racial intolerance was a lash to every person of color. Hopefully MCDC will not get the widespread support the KKK once had.

Of course we already have Governor Blunt of Missouri sentencing poor children to death because he doesn't want to finance their health care anymore. I wonder how many kids can't get health care in Missouri now. Oklahoma has made itself a pariah to the civilized world by denying services to undocumented workers on an unprecedented scale. Even our favorite city, Kansas City has become infected with a peculiar variety of white supremacy, the Funkhouser-Semler tango.

MCDC and most border patrol groups have an cluster of beliefs that bias them against economic migrants. Economic migrants of the sort who have gone back and forth over the Mexican border for time immemorial are suddenly labeled “illegal”. While certain laws are broken entering the country illegally the MCDC seeks to overgeneralize and further characterize these economic migrants as “criminals” when we all know that more than 95% are just trying to make a couple bucks in a hard world.

So there is the escalation of the demonization of undocumented workers, first from labeling these migrants as “illegal”, and then another intensification of that demonization as the “illegal” immigrant becomes the “criminal” immigrant. MCDC types want to create a lot of new criminal laws to charge and further criminalize the immigrants who enter without appropriate documentation. They want to further criminalize undocumented workers and thus fulfill their view that they are dastardly criminals.

Then MCDC wants to paint undocumented economic migrants,
not only as criminals but also as invaders who want to steal the
Southwest United States back for Mexico! You have to look at their web site and materials to see that I am not kidding about this Aztlan conspiracy thing. It is as if many border patrol activists have no active bullshit detector.

Most unfortunately the economic migrant is finally said to be either a terrorist from an terrorist base in Mexico or some other such incredible and unsubstantiated story. Border patrol web sites, information conduits and leaders spin the tale that all immigrants need to be tarnished with the term “ terrorist suspect” if not immediately targeted as “terrorists”. So MCDC seeks to transform the discussion about economic migrants and American jobs into a Nativist crusade in the case of MCDC and a more openly white supremacist movement beyond the confines of MCDC.

Yes we can count on the wise heads of MCDC and the local Minuteklan to take us from “undocumented economic migrant” to “terrorist invader”. Juan Valdez is no longer picking coffee or cutting your lawn, he is Osama bin Valdez, scarry eh? Not very credible you would think, but they believe this stuff with considerable fanaticism.

Last but not least is the specter of infectious illegals slipping across the border bringing leprosy or tuberculosis to the United States. Lou Dobbs has been notorious for portraying undocumented migrants as “infectious agents”. But in an interview on Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org/2007/12/4/fact_checking_dobbs_cnn_anchor lou ) Dobbs was unable to substantiate his extreme claims about infectious immigrants.

Do-it-yourself border patrol culture continuously gossips about a combination of real and imagined outrages that stem from the evil of
undocumented migrant workers. The demonizing themes already mentioned are supplemented by a focus on crimes often actually committed by undocumented alien criminals. These crimes are ranted about and ruminated upon. The evil of illegal immigration is said to be behind the whole thing and of course it is in the obvious sense. I don't know how well most groups would fare if kept to this standard, ie. have no despicable criminals in the group. This sort of narrow focus and obvious bias can foster paranoia and hate. It seems like that is the product if not the purpose of criminalizing a whole group. It makes it easier to treat them as less than human.

In fact undocumented immigrants commit about the same number of crimes per thousand as the U. S. population. Yet if you look at the crimes the bad guys from any broad group you are going to get a really negative view of the broader group unless you keep your thinking cap on.

Border patrol types tell each other fantastic stories about Hispanics such as the so-called “Aztlan” conspiracy to steal the Southwestern U. S. , merge it with Mexico and expel United States citizens. While this sounds like the mother of all urban legends from the get go most border patrol activists are obsessed with the “terrorist invasion” to reconquer “Aztlan”. Ed Hayes of the local MCDC chapter has this whole Aztlan myth on his website www.kansasminutemen.com.

Who said it, “If you can get people to believe ridiculous things you can get them to do anything.” ? That is precisely my fear, misguided people doing foolish things.

MCDC money will be collected or will have already been collected in order to spread these twisted misunderstandings to the public by the mechanism of a lackadaisical and uncritical mass media, a media firmly controlled by more refined white supremacists. Only this time the whites that own and operate media empires, are people as unlike the Minutemen as you can get. Maybe the minuteman types should get involved with other working people, organized labor and such. Right now MCDC seems to be in the back pocket of eccentric Republican, Alan Keyes and Alan Keyes is no friend of labor. Of course Keyes is the one trounced by Obama when Obama ran for Senate.

Yes, look at their national website www.minutemanhq.com . MCDC is a project of Declaration Alliance, a front group for Alan Keyes Republicans. Somehow cult-like organizations, like the Declaration Alliance, are funneling their resources into promoting these big lies, lies meant to foment hatred and hysteria against Hispanic immigrants and anyone who disagrees with these self-appointed patriots.

Only MCDC initiates will be allowed to attend the second day's events at a secret, location.

It is interesting that they are apparently having some sort of workshop on sanctuary cities.

AGENDA FOR OPEN MEETING

Welcome to all to Kansas City – Richard Fatherley

Pledge of Allegiance – Richard Fatherley

Prayer – Missouri and Kansas Chaplin, Rev. Bill Cain

Ed Hayes – Welcome & Rules of Behavior during Meeting

Chris Simcox – What is MCDC?

Panel Q&A: Chris Simcox, Carmen Mercer, Al Garza, Ed Hayes

Meeting adjourned. Attendees invited to stay to watch border movie.

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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

For security purposes, the location of the workshop will be given to volunteers as they register.

The agenda for the workshops is as follows:

8:00 – Continental breakfast (provided by MCDC) & Introductory Comments by Chris Simcox, Carmen Mercer & Al Garza

8:30 – Effective state leadership

9:00 – Effective chapter leadership

9:30 – Sanctuary City Project & Dealing with sanctuary cities – Al Garza

10:00 – Accounting procedures – Carmen Mercer

10:30 – Volunteer Facilitator

11:00 – Day Labor Watches & Surveillance – Carmen Mercer

11:30 – Lunch (provided by MCDC)

12:30 – Rallies & Protests – Carmen Mercer

1:00 – IRS 990

1:30 – Working with local law enforcement

2:00 – Dealing with the media – Ed Hayes

2:30 – Reaching the community

3:00 – Working with local government & state legislative issues

3:30 – What to expect from MCDC National

4:00 – Q&A

Additional Contact Information

For more information, contact:

Locally (KC): Roger 816-289-6293

Roger 913-780-2547

Ed Hayes 913-620-0771

Nationally: Carolyn Crouch 254-623-4702

mcdc.rsvp@yahoo.com

2008-01-03 04:55:54