Author Topic: Thoughts on the Minutemen  (Read 4505 times)

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Offline Sal Atticum

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Thoughts on the Minutemen
« on: October 10, 2006, 06:34:12 PM »
I just received this email.  Would anyone like to comment?  I don't know where I stand on the whole 'patrolling our borders' thing, but I do know that I am in favor of free speech.

Quote from: World Can't Wait
Hi friends,

Below is an Open Letter by Allen Lang, National Student and Youth
Organizer for World Can't Wait, in support of the recent protest at
Columbia University against the founder of the vigilante immigrant-hunting
group the Minutemen. The students who took part in this protest are facing
as-yet-undisclosed, but almost certainly severe, disciplinary action.  It
is extremely important to not allow the students who protested the
Minutemen not to face any disciplinary action, including expulsion.

Sign this Open Letter, right away by replying back with your name and
school if you are a professor or student.

Please forward this around very widely, and ask others to do the same. If
you have contacts for people who would be important to have as
signatories, or if you go out and get signatories, send their info and
their name to: [email protected]

Best,
Allen Lang, World Can't Wait Student Organizer
[email protected]

Stop the Harassment against the Protesters of the Minutemen at Columbia

No human being is illegal. The Minutemen, an anti- immigrant vigilante
group, had no intention of engaging in serious academic debate when
speaking at an event hosted by the Columbia University Young Republican
Club. The group's platform of normalizing racism and taking up arms to
preserve white supremacy is a dark path that the world has seen before.
Images of night riding Klansmen and Nazi storm troopers comes to mind.

When students dare to take action against groups such as the Minutemen and
remain unapologetic in the face of administrative threats and right-wing
media campaigns, they must be defended and their voice must be supported.
On the night of October 4th, students unfurled a banner that read: "No one
is ever illegal," in both Arabic and English, on stage during a speech by
Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist at Columbia's Roone Auditorium. The moral
clarity embodied in this simple act of resistance is urgently needed on
college campuses across the country. What would it have meant if
Columbia's student body remained silent as the founder of an armed
vigilante group spoke at their school?

Following the protest and cancellation of the event, the media has gone on
a rampage to vilify and grossly distort the protests while New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg has publicly criticized Columbia University's President
Lee Bollinger for not moving fast enough in reprimanding the Minutemen
protesters.

The terms of debate surrounding the Minuteman protests at Columbia
University are utterly intolerable and need to be dramatically altered. It
is an alarming and disturbing sign of the times when the press labels a
racist armed vigilante group that operates in the public eye as merely
"controversial". When speaking about Latino immigrants, Minuteman
co-founder Chris Simcox once said, "They have no problem slitting your
throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your
daughter and they are evil people." As debate rages over the Minuteman's
speech, it must be acknowledged that the Minutemen speak through guns and
through actions fueled by bigotry and intolerance.   Ask the Minutemen  if
they are interested in  an open debate with the human beings they
ruthlessly hunt on the border.

The discourse and debate over the Minuteman protest has been completely
abstracted from the context of a country currently undergoing radical
changes in governing laws and norms that date back to the very foundation
of this country. It cannot be ignored or denied that the Minuteman's
appearance comes at a time when the Bush administration is rounding up
thousands of immigrants, is moving ahead with the unprecedented
legalization of torture and shredding the basic right of due process. It
would be out of step with reality to discuss the Minutemen disconnected
from the fascistic direction the United States is moving under the Bush
administration.

The attacks and possible disciplinary action directed at the student
protesters by Columbia University are part of an increasingly repressive
atmosphere that is aiming to rid American universities of critical thought
and dissent. From the professors who have come under fire for expressing
progressive or oppositional views, to the Bush administration's attacks on
objective scholarship when it challenges its aims - this must be brought
to a halt.

We demand that the students under investigation for protesting Minuteman
founder Jim Gilchrist face no threats of expulsion or any disciplinary
actions!

The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime!

To sign online please visit:
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3149&Itemid=5

For Background Info:
"Why We Confronted the Minutemen"  - Letter from the Columbia Students who
Protested the Minuteman
http://www.counterpunch.org/columbia10072006.html

For video coverage please visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLcXcUhEL30
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Offline Red

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Re: Thoughts on the Minutemen
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2006, 12:19:49 AM »
Quote
No human being is illegal

That is all I had to read.  These people don't care about the law.  That is like me protesting saying no plant is illegal, as I cross the border with 20 kilos of cocaine.  Here in America we say that no one is above the law, that doesn?t mean that people who are not Americans don?t have to abide by our laws when they step foot on our soil.  I find it disgusting that a group of people feel righteous for protesting concerned citizens that want to see the law enforced.
100 percent of everything is attitude

Offline Red

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Re: Thoughts on the Minutemen
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2006, 12:50:43 AM »
Quote
The group's platform of normalizing racism and taking up arms to
preserve white supremacy


To bad the first of three speakers, the guy who opened the evening giving an hour long speech, was a black man.  A black man who all throughout his speech was being taunted by people calling him sellout, and nigger.  Those people are not protesters.  They are anti-American anti-free speech scum bags, most of whom are part of the socialist party on campus.  They don?t even believe in America, and they want to tell us how to run it.
100 percent of everything is attitude

Offline nick06

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Lets look at their pledge - form our opinions from there
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2006, 01:04:44 PM »
The Minuteman Pledge

 A Minuteman upholds the Constitution of the United States of America, and reveres the American Creed that unites us as one people, our Declaration of Independence.


A Minuteman knows well America is a nation of immigrants, and realization of our national promise has always relied upon those who come to America from other countries to participate fully, with their children and descendants, as loyal and law-abiding U.S. citizens.


A Minuteman believes that just as ethnicity, race, religion and all such factors are incidental and do not affect our God-given, constitutional equality as American citizens, such factors are also irrelevant in the debate over illegal immigration. There is no tolerance among Minutemen for racism or bigotry - E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many, One.


A Minuteman believes in a strong, safe and secure America that begins with borders open only to those who have a legal right to enter, and who have met all the lawful criteria to cross into our territory established by the sovereign American people.


Minutemen vow to use every legal means at our disposal to assist law enforcement authorities in identifying and apprehending those who violate our borders, whether they are illegally trafficking people, weapons, arms, property, sexual slaves or any other contraband.


Minutemen vow to report to the proper authorities any business entity which knowingly recruits, facilitates or employs people who have entered America illegally, or which cooperates in any commercial activity which involves contraband smuggling or marketing of persons, products or material.


Minutemen promise to raise our voices -- on cellular phones along the borders of America and in the halls of Congress -- in the defense of the rule of law. The American people are firm but fair, and we share their great compassion for the many powerless victims of cruel, illegal human trafficking and labor exploitation. But we also support our citizens' adamant rejection of the blatant disregard for our laws and ordered liberty represented by the U.S. government's failure to secure our borders, enforce our nation's sovereignty and end the flood of illegal trafficking into American territory.

I vow before God and my fellow Americans that these principles guide my actions as a Minuteman. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty..." And so I will stand watch on America's borders and in her sovereign interest until relieved from duty by my fellow countrymen.

Offline Sal Atticum

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Re: Thoughts on the Minutemen
« Reply #4 on: October 15, 2006, 08:42:33 PM »
I see your point, nick06, but you can glorify any pledge up to look good, even when the individuals who take that pledge may be utterly hypocritical in their actions.  Take "Give us your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathre free."  While we aren't turning so many people away as certain other countries, we have fallen far short in recent times of meeting the goals represented by the Stature of Liberty.  Then you could look into the propaganda of Nazi Germany, when everyone of Aryan descent was ready to pledge that they were better than the rest of the world, but didn't know what was actually occurring until far too late to speak out against it.

I have no side in this, actually--take or leave the Minutemen, people will act as people will.  But forcefully beating down a protest is as un-American as it gets.
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Offline Red

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Re: Thoughts on the Minutemen
« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2006, 12:35:19 PM »
Almost as un-American as denying someone the right to speak.  Those protesters had a chance to protest, during the Q and A session.  They could have created the perfect argument, since they are obviously right, and really blasted the minute men, but instead they chose to rush the stage in an act of disgrace.  If you watch the video you would see that the police did nothing, and none of the protesters were forcefully beaten down.  If you want to talk about free speech, the protesters were allowed to express their views, the minute men were not.
100 percent of everything is attitude

 

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