Minutemen do the dirty work that 'government won't do'Andy Isaacson
Curtis Stewart drives his truck to the Miracle Valley Bible College, where the Minuteman Project has set up its headquarters, a compound of ramshackle buildings situated in a high desert plain a mile from the barbed wire cattle fence dividing Arizona from Mexico.
"How many demonstrations have we had in the United States for women, lesbians, blacks -- minority demonstrations, right?" the San Antonio man asks from behind a windshield with a "Liberal Hunting Permit" sticker. "Never have you had the white, right wing say 'I've had it.' This is the first demonstration for the country since the Boston Tea Party."
Stewart and his fellow Minutemen could soon be headed for the California border if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way.
Last month, hundreds of volunteers from across the nation heeded a call put out over the Internet by a loosely organized coalition of immigration activists to join a grassroots patrol of a 23-mile stretch along the nation's most penetrated section of border in Cochise County, Ariz.
It's a region steeped in a rich Wild West history of lawlessness. It was once home to Wyatt Earp, Geronimo, Army forts and gunfights at Tombstone's OK Corral.
Today Cochise County has the nation's largest flow of illegal migrants, a stream redirected from a more-enforced California border. In 2004, some 350, 000 migrants were caught along the Arizona border, almost half of them in this county.
In their wake are littered belongings, damaged property, strained social services, an enforcement presence and a violent edge. It's a reality that local resident May Kolbe calls "living in a war zone."
The border patrol volunteers call themselves the Minutemen after the Massachusetts colony militia that was the first to arrive at a battlefield. They are retired military, firefighters and construction workers who bring along a modest air force, communications equipment, guns, lawn chairs and sunscreen to perform "the job the government won't do."
Local residents and authorities eye the arrival of these outsiders suspiciously, mostly out of a concern for the potential violence they could usher in, fueling an already raging fire.
From a distance, volunteers seem easy to typecast as disaffected, libertarian xenophobes, but the Minutemen have a range of backgrounds and views from moderate to extreme. Some arrive out of a concern for jobs lost to the influx of cheaper labor or with stories of family members unable to get into hospital emergency rooms occupied by illegal immigrants.
"I feel our state was near bankruptcy and our budget upside down because of illegal immigration and all the health, welfare, prison and education costs that we have to pay," said Artie Chandler. "We strongly feel that it's taxation without representation, and we're going to change that."
Afraid of crooks, terrorists
Others are united by a fear of criminals and possible terrorists streaming unchecked by the thousands across a porous barbed wire cattle fence. They worry about the demographic changes in their communities and the violence they feel is a byproduct of impoverished immigrants seeking economic opportunities.
Many are Pat Buchanan Republicans and Constitution Party voters alienated ("Bushwhacked") by a conservative government that, they say, looks the other way while lining its political pockets with financial tributes from employers who profit from the exploitation of cheap labor.
For the alienated, the problem stems from a diplomatic failure between the White House and a corrupt, Mexican government that flagrantly assists the illegal flow, washing its hands of the impoverished many while welcoming remittances from migrant workers who send back their wages in amounts that surpass domestic oil revenues.
The volunteers feel they are the vanguard of a silent majority, which polls show favor a crackdown on illegal immigration. They are frustrated by the government's contradictory pro-security rhetoric and under-funded and ineffective border activities. For many volunteers, this is their first act of political protest, an exercise of civic responsibility not unlike a march on Washington.
"What we're doing right here is First and Second Amendment, plain and simple," says volunteer Greg Coody, an ostrich farmer from Waco, Texas, who stood night guard at a fortified Minuteman compound. "There's not any insurrection or vigilantism except to the extent that President Bush said to be vigilant after Sept. 11, 2001.
"We're trying to close this sieve that's called a border. If you don't want it to be against the law, then get rid of the law. But if you're going to have a law, then enforce it."
Chris Simcox, publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed and an organizer of the event, makes clear to volunteers at an orientation meeting on April 1 in Tombstone that their job is strictly to observe illegal activity, make no contact with migrants and report to the Border Patrol. "Hold the line, but put your ideals before any instant gratification," warns Simcox, alluding to the temptation to confront.
His words work. There are no reported incidents during the monthlong watch. One volunteer is sent home because, after he offered a distressed migrant a bowl of cereal and $20, he shook the man's hand, thereby breaking the no-contact policy.
Nevertheless, the Anglo-Saxon tapestry of the Minuteman volunteers who assemble to deter mostly nonwhite migrants incite accusations of racist intentions. But volunteers cloak their racial and cultural views under a legal banner. They say it's not about who comes in, but how.
"If I'm in my house and I see my neighbor's house being broken into and call the police, I'm not a racist just because the burglar was black, brown or some other color besides white," said Coody. "A burglar is a burglar. This is not a race thing, it's a law thing."
Well, not exactly.
Along the border fence one afternoon, a California volunteer with Hispanic roots complains about how his son was told by Mexican restaurants denying him employment that he is too white.
Another volunteer points to the shopping bags stuck in the shrubs on the south side of the fence left by journeying migrants. "I want to tell you something light, a little joke we talk about. See those white plastic bags? I've given them a new name. They're called Mexican Samsonite. Isn't it true? They're all over the place. ..."
Much of the hysteria about gun-toting vigilantes is much ado about nothing. Retired men and women sit on the backs of pickup trucks in six-hour shifts. They are concentrated along a 2-mile stretch of border fence and eye the vacant desert. They appear more like a Neighborhood Watch group or a bird- watching excursion than a violent, paramilitary force.
The kaleidoscope of characters swirls around them, however. Reporters and camera crews watch young, liberal ACLU representatives in white "Legal Observer" T-shirts watch over middle-aged, middle American Minutemen. The Minutemen watch over the desert for migrants. Border Patrol agents cruise by, responding to remote sensors planted in the brush, which these onlookers have tripped.
Apprehensions drop
The U.S. Border Patrol says migrant apprehensions last month in the corridor where the Minutemen were posted were down 65 percent from the same period a year ago. Emboldened by the turnout and the international attention it garnered, organizers plan to stage similar protests in other border states. Schwarzenegger says he would welcome the group in California.
Others say their emphasis on militarization of the border complicates the problem.
"What we're simply saying is give workers access to globalization," said Christian Ramirez, who directs the U.S./Mexico border program for the American Friends Service Committee and was among the several groups that arrived on the border to protest the Minutemen's presence.
"Why is it that the borders have come down for transnational corporations, but it has become more deadly for working people on both sides? It's been 11 years since NAFTA was introduced, and the issue of labor movements has not been resolved. Allow workers the same rights that we have allowed product," Ramirez said.
The Minutemen's core grievances about illegal immigration are what they perceive as changes to the status quo of culture and community and the "greedy, self-serving companies that are hiring these poor people." While their solutions vary, the right wingers patrolling the border and the left wingers blocking the World Bank doors both blame governments for the failure to rein in globalization run amok. It's an irony lost on Minuteman Curtis Stewart.
Globalization may have accelerated the flow of migrants across the U.S.- Mexico border. But in demanding a closed border and the preservation of a more unified culture, the Minutemen may be waging a fight in futility.
The forces that have governed the interminable flow of human beings across lands since time immemorial -- wealth, greed, power and human survival -- are deep and historic phenomena. What's to stop them now?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/08/INGFACJHK51.DTL.
