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By HC116, April 13, 2005
The Associated Press reports that an Army Reservist and Iraqi veteran sergeant Patrick Haab has been charged with seven counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, against undocumented Mexican persyns in Arizona, hundreds of miles away from Minuteman Project activity on the Arizona-Sonora border.(1) Haab claims that, while one man walked past him to a vehicle, six other men, wearing backpacks, "rushed" him. Supposedly, they were standing around wearing their backpacks, thought that the sergeant was a Border Patrol agent, and attacked him; the sergeant was just acting in self-defense when he detained them. The sergeant claims he did not engage the group, but he commented: "It would be nice if, when people come to the country they would come in the right fashion, legally." The sergeant gave a gun to another, helpful motorist to hold while Haab questioned the Mexicans in Spanish.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio doesn't believe Haab's story. Apparently, not even Minuteman Project co-founder and leader Jim Gilchrist does either, saying that Haab's "weapon should have been his cellphone."(2) The undocumented migrants are now being detained by the Border Patrol in Yuma. However, three Minuteman Project volunteers themselves were implicated in a possible illegal detention of an undocumented migrant on Wednesday, April 6. The undocumented migrant was photographed holding up a mocking T-shirt reading: "Bryan Barton [one of the Minuteman Project volunteers] caught an illegal alien and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" among other things. Minuteman Project organizers admitted Barton violated their own Standard Operating Procedure. This may not be the first time Minuteman Project volunteers have violated their own Standard Operating Procedure . The Minuteman Project has admitted to "handing" over a Guatemalan migrant to Border Patrol after the migrant went to a bible college looking for food and water, but unwittingly ran into a Minuteman Project base of operations. Due to their undocumented status, undocumented migrants typically are unwilling to cooperate with the pigs in investigations generally.
Minuteman Project founder Chris Simcox's Civil Homeland Defense Corps has been accused of detaining undocumented migrants before.(3) Civil Homeland Defense leads the Minuteman Project. The Associated Press reported that "[i]n the six months the militia has operated, Simcox claims 600 to 700 people have been turned back from illegally entering the United States or have been detained and turned over to U.S. Border Patrol agents."(4)
The Minuteman Project organizers' pretense of opposing the use of force is a farce. In their own Standard Operating Procedure, they say that "Future efforts will likely involve the tracking and containment of groups of people who have entered our country illegally. For this mission, you will resist in every way confronting or attempting to make contact with illegals" (italics in original).(5) The Minuteman Project openly encourages types like sergeant Patrick Haab to volunteer: "Due to their proven ability to handle stressful situations current or former members of any law enforcement or U.S. military organization are enthusiastically invited to join this mission."(6)
The Associated Press reported, April 12, that the Mexican government was investigating reports that u.$. volunteers illegally detained thirteen Mexican migrants.(7) Minuteman Project spokespersyn Fred Ebel denied knowledge of the accusations. However, Minuteman Project organizers have been tightly controlling volunteers' communication with the media.
"Anita Randall, a second-grade teacher from Norco, Calif., said it had crossed her mind that she and her husband [Minuteman Project volunteers] could be shot at along the border. . . . 'But I believe in this,' she said. 'This is important. And it's important to take a stand.' "(8) MIM has to hand it to these petty-bourgeois so-called workers: they know what their priorities are. They are willing to die for--and some have even armed themselves--out of patriotism for militarist and genocidal u.$. militarism, and the Amerikkkan people.
The Minuteman Project will supposedly end in May. Although the Minuteman Project, whose registered and trained volunteers closely coordinate with each other and are a source of recruits for the Civil Homeland Defense Corps, is a cross between an organization and a campaign, the vast majority of distinct anti-imperialist mass organizations in the united $tates are smaller than the Minuteman Project by any estimate of the project's number of volunteers.
Mao taught us that when we encounter a movement of a class we should not prejudge it. The Minuteman Project is a kind of rebellion against the government with a very strong class element behind it, one of the labor aristocracy rejecting the imperialists' desire for migrant labor. Yet ironically, the organizations organizing for labor aristocracy demands are sometimes rejecting the Minuteman Project at least verbally. It's a case where the class is not confused in action, but where some of the people calling themselves "Marxist" in small organizations are confused.The distinction between detaining alleged undocumented migrants and phoning Border Patrol to have them detain suspected undocumented migrants is almost trivial, but if the Minuteman Project has been particularly effective, it is from the organization of violence. Minuteman Project organizers have admitted this, saying they don't object to scaring potential migrants from even crossing the border in the first place. In a way, the Minuteman Project benefits from the media's portrayal of the organization as armed and unstable vigilantes, and this fact may be a factor in its strategy.
The detention and deportation of undocumented oppressed-nation migrants is intrinsically violent, and it targets a large section of the proletarians who actually exist within u.$. borders. On the other hand, the non-fascist imperialist class dictatorship is also repressive toward the oppressed classes in particular.
The proletariat is such a small proportion of the population inside u.$. borders that the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of finance capital, if it were to coalesce today, would in the united $tates concentrate first in the margins of society--socially and also geographically at the u.$.-Mexican border. Although fascism does not yet exist qualitatively in the united $tates on a country-wide scale, what the Minuteman Project expresses is proto-fascism going through the motions of fascism. It seeks to repress at a qualitatively higher level the whole of undocumented proletarians, but right now it targets undocumented migrant proletarians at the u.$.-Mexico border for this special consideration.
The Minuteman Project is a deeply reactionary organization that is fascist in character. It is fascist in political effect. However, the Minuteman Project has adopted the deceitful white-supremacist tactic of equating white supremacist formations with oppressed-nation narrow nationalist formations. "The Minuteman Project has no affiliation with, nor will we accept any assistance by or interference from separatists, racists or supremacy groups or individuals, no matter what their race, color, or creed"(http://www.minutemanproject.com/), thus encouraging oppressed nationalities to confusingly take up racial-nationalist ideology. The Minuteman Project openly advocates cultural purity:
"Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious 'melting pot.' " (http://www.minutemanproject.com/AboutMMP.html)
The Minuteman Project's concern with terrorists and drug traffickers crossing the border is secondary. Marty Lich, writing in the Borderline Politics newsletter of the Civil Homeland Defense complains:
"My belief has always been that "law-abiding, good hearted, putting food on their families tables" people, aka legal residents of the United States of America were the ones most respected, the ones most responded to, and the ones who made America the great and prosperous country that She is today." (http://www.civilhomelanddefense.us/html/december_30__2004.html)
The concern with the Amerikkkan so-called worker (unemployment and supposed low exploiter so-called wages) runs throughout Civil Homeland Defense and Minuteman Project volunteers' ideology. Beside the Minuteman Project's distributing articles encouraging stricter bureaucratic oversight of the INS' contracting practices, Civil Homeland Defense wants more Amerikans to be employed as Border Patrol agents while criticizing the effectiveness of high-tech border surveillance technology.(9)(10) The appeal of the vigilantes is class-based. The bought-off Amerikan so-called workers aim at squeezing out potential economic competitors while lobbying for more jobs that do not create any wealth.
mim136@mim.org adds: HC116 notes that the Minuteman Project is supposed to end in May (although the vigilantism that spawned the project will no doubt outlive it as well). We should point out that even if the MMP ends as scheduled, it will have succeeded in more than just scaring migrants away for the month of April.
The MMP has forced a lot of migrants to delay their border crossings, pushing them into the more dangerous months of the year, when desert temperatures rise into the 100s and a migrant's chances of dying in the desert for want of water or shade are higher. The Mexican and Central American people will hold the MMP responsible for these deaths, just as if they had stayed around to shoot these individuals.
Readers should also remember Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa Cty., AZ as that notorious pig who has made himself a name by housing his captives in a tent city (in the southeastern Arizona heat).(11) The jail-issue postcards Arpaio had printed make sport of the fact that prisoners work the chain gang and are suggestive of jailhouse rape. Arpaio boasts of being "America's Toughest Sheriff;" banning coffee, cigarettes and porn; and serving meals that cost less than 20 cents a piece.(12)
Arpaio can also be proud that he was cited by Amnesty International for "excessive use of restraint chairs, pepper spray and stun guns by guards, and also documented 12 cases of excessive use of force during an 18 month period, including one incident that sparked the riot of November 17 1996." That rebellion began when a prisoner died from a lack of oxygen while strapped in a restraint chair.(11) Arpaio may not like the Minuteman Project's activity in his county, but his only imaginable objection is that these vigilantes are encroaching on his repressive prerogative.
Notes:
1. Arthur H. Rothstein, "Reservist accused of detaining immigrants says he's a victim," April 13, 2005, http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0413az-border-detention13-ON.html
2. "Arizonan arrested for allegedly detaining illegal immigrants at gunpoint," April 13, 2005, http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20050413/NEWS/50413004
3. Julie Watson, "Armed U.S. residents are patrolling Mexican border on their own," February 3, 2003, Associated Press.
4. "Citizens' border patrol group taking break," April 12, 2003, Associated Press
5. "The Minuteman Project - SOP - Standard Operating Procedures," http://www.minutemanproject.com/SOP.html
6. "Frequently asked questions regarding the MinuteMan Project," http://www.minutemanproject.com/FAQ.html
7. Morgan Lee, "Mexico investigates allegations U.S. volunteers illegally detained Mexican migrants," April 12, 2005, /templates/index.cfm?template=story_full&id=005F7823-4D3F-4CDF-B885-301FC9DC6A5E
8. Arthur Rotstein, "Group patrols U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona," April 12, 2005, http://www.outinamerica.com/home/news.asp?articleid=8449
9. http://www.minutemanproject.com/articles/art2005apr11.html
10. "CHD Minutemen not a hindrance; assists Border Patrol with 53 apprehensions in 4 days," February 10, 2005, http://www.civilhomelanddefense.us/html/february_10__2005.html
11. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=152
12. http://www.mcso.org/submenu.asp?file=aboutsheriff&page=1