NJ to Minutemen and Their Supporters: ¡Basta Ya! Current rating: 4
by One People's Project and NJ Indymedia
(No verified email address) 26 Jun 2005
Modified: 08:01:39 PM
(from the Open Newswire): The United Patriots of America (UPA), a group allied with the Minuteman Project, announced this public recruiting drive in Bridgewater on a radio station whose hosts are pretty sympathetic to their cause. Logic would say that they should have expected the press to show up, but when they did, they turned them away. Logic would also say that they should have expected protests, but they didn't seem prepared for that either considering most of the people that were in their meeting was there to disrupt it!
Finally logic would say that if you are going to have a meeting to get support for your group while at the same time try to deflect charges of working with racists and the hate groups they belong to, the last thing you would want to do is have as your keynote speaker a guy who is a member of not one, but two groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center designate as a hate group.
Well, all of that happened this weekend, and we got it all down for you.
NEW JERSEY TO MINUTEMEN AND THEIR SUPPORTERS: ¡BASTA YA!
Contact:
http://www.onepeoplesproject.com/index.php?option=com_contact&Itemid=3
All of the attendees were lily white, except for two people. One was a black dude who was working for Ron Bass, the guy who runs UPA. The other was DLJ - and he was asked to leave because he was taping the meeting! He managed to BS them into allowing him to stay, and he was able to get some good footage prior to them trying to give him trouble. The pics going along with this story come from that video, so some of them are a little fuzzy, but they are still good enough for folks to see what went down. Mad props have to go to Casa Freehold, who alerted everyone to what was happening in our backyard. The summer is getting hotter and hotter.
BRIDGEWATER, NJ, June 25--A public meeting sponsored by the Minuteman Project-allied United Patriots of America (UPA) was disrupted today by a group of anti-fascist activists calling the group out on their trying to promote the hatemongering vigilantism that is currently being seen in the southwest US against Hispanics. The UPA was holding this meeting at the Bridgewater Sports Arena in an effort to recruit local residents opposed to immigration, but the fact that the keynote speaker was a member of two hate groups added another dynamic to what this group's agenda might be.
The disruption began in the midst of Minuteman Ed Whitbred's speech, about 25 people got up from their seats, unfolded a banner, and first chanted "stop racist deportation working people have no race", which then evolved into "Fascists go home!"
"That was just the Communist Worker's Party of the United States of America," an Arizona Minuteman said, attempting to jokingly brush off the opposition - just before he left the room to check on his car, fearing it might be vandalized by counterprotesters if they notice his Arizona license plates.
Whitbred of Frederick, MD, reportedly a cast director for East Alco Aluminum Plant, was sent by Minuteman founder Chris Simcox to represent the group. He was a daylight crew supervisor for the Minutemen when they were mobilized in Arizona last April. He tried to describe the necessity of the Minutemen in securing the U.S. Constitution. In doing so, he said, the largest priority is to secure borders. Once the "crazy radicals" were forcefully kicked out, one in handcuffs, by Bridgewater Police, Whitbred concluded his speech, speaking of the "success" of the Minuteman project and his hope for its future.
"Our goal is to demonstrate that the border could be secure if the government had the will to do so," he said, adding that the government is simply not doing enough to keep immigrants out. In practicing such vigilante-type border control, he added, the group has a "no contact rule," meaning that, as he claims, they aim to spot "illegal aliens" crossing the border, report such crossings to the border patrol, and "stay out of the way."
Those inside were not the only ones demonstrating against the meeting. Protesters gathered outside of the Bridgewater Sports Arena as well. At the parking lot entrance, a diverse crowd of 30-40 people rallied against the meeting. The rally was organized by Casa Freehold, a coalition of immigrants and citizens from Freehold, NJ fighting for social welfare and immigrants' rights, and lasted about two hours. In emails leading up to the demonstration, they asked supporters to call the Bridgewater Sports Arena or email them and "let them know your disappointment in allowing them for allowing an obvious hate group to use their arena."
About 50 people attended the meeting; but the antifascist disruption left the room with less than half the attendees the meeting started with, and that also left the attendance in the room a older white handful of persons. Some came from Long Island, where Bass said the next meeting will take place. Others came from a group called Pennsylvanians Against Illegal Immigration, which holds meetings every first and third Wednesday of the month at 7 pm at the library in Warminster, PA, 18.5 miles from Philadelphia. Chris Simcox's community paper, the Tombstone Tumbleweed was also distributed.
Linden, NJ-based United Patriots of America is operated by Ron Bass who owns a trucking company in Elizabeth, NJ. He opened the meeting with words of anti-immigrant sentiment. Bass, who had helped to coordinate the newly formed NJ Citizens for Homeland Defense (NJCHD), said politicians and government officials are not doing their job in "protecting" U.S. borders from "illegal aliens."
The UPA is self-described as an "established organization that seeks to provide an 'umbrella' under which to form, into one large association, a coalition of solidarity for ALL the small, medium, and large anti-illegal alien groups and individual activists." The purpose of the organization, reads a flier, is to gain such clout through their numbers that they will be "respected, heard, and feared." In doing so, they plan to "wage the war to stop and reverse the overwhelming, illegal alien invasion, crushing our country."
This was a recruitment meeting for two right-wing campaigns that seek to expand throughout the state of New Jersey and throughout the United States. One is the Minuteman Project and the other is the NJCHD. This group says they will become a "force multiplier by recruiting more members, to protest, picket, confront elected officials, or wage campaigns to vote them out of office if they do not recognize the danger of open borders and lack of enforcement."
The fact that they was able to obtain the Sports Arena was no mean feat, because UPA has attempted to put together other meetings in the past, but have been repeatedly shut down. They were supposed to hold a meeting on April 3rd at a VFW Hall in Freehold, NJ, but a phone jam by those opposed to the group prompted VFW officials to cancel their event. They tried to move this meeting to a diner in Hightstown, NJ, but this time it was the diner that chased them off, and eventually they ended up somewhere in East Windsor, NJ.
They have also had problems putting together follow up meetings in other areas of the state, and according to a UPA weekly report published on May 22, the then-named New Jersey Citizens for Homeland Security held its second meeting on May 21 in Elizabeth, and planned a third meeting on May 24 in East Brunswick. The locations of these two meetings were not published. However, according to the report, those attending the meeting discussed how to increase their membership. The Elizabeth meeting was where they decided to hold the Bridgewater meeting.
Meanwhile, under said UPA umbrella, the Minuteman Project intends to "expand its efforts to focus on interior enforcement, including businesses that hire illegal aliens and sponsor illegal alien hiring halls," reads the flier. They want to remind Americans that the U.S. was founded based on "'rule of law,' not by the whims of mobs of ILLEGAL aliens who endlessly stream across U.S. borders." The Minuteman Project has publicly denounced racist groups and individuals, saying on its website that "MMP 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." Despite this, they are indeed found accepting assistance from separatists, racists and supremacy groups and individuals.
Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist admitted on Hannity and Colmes that Glenn Spencer was working with them. Joe Mc Crutchen, a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens from Arkansas, was also a participant in the Minuteman Project. Shaun Walker Chairman of the National Alliance official told a reporter that although they weren't "going to show up as a group and say, 'Hi, we're the National Alliance.'", their members were participating. Indeed, "National Alliance pamphlets were distributed in Tombstone and Naco, AZ, just two days before the Minuteman Project launched. This meeting exposed another connection between the Minuteman Project and hate groups.
The keynote speaker was John Clark from both the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR) and American Immigration Control Foundation (AIC). His comments attempted to re-emphasize the importance of the Minuteman Project, and his hope to "spread the word" that today's immigrants harm the country's well-being. This led him to go on a diatribe against Mexicans. "These people have no respect," he said. "They've killed people's livestock, they defecate on people's porches."
Both the AIC and the CCIR are listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups for good reason. The AIC is headed up by John Vinson who is also a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). According to the SPLC and the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, this group was long funded by the Pioneer Foundation, which was founded in 1937 as a support group for Germany's Third Reich, and has since funded studies of eugenics and the alleged links between race and intelligence. The CCIR, headed up by Barbara Coe, also works with the CCC, as well as white supremacist Glenn Spencer of Voices of Citizens Together (VCT). According to the SPLC, every Fourth of July the CCIR and VCT stage rallies that has been known to draw well-known neo-Nazis. Both groups promote a notion heard among white supremacists that Mexicans are using illegal immigration to reconquer lands that were taken from them over a hundred years ago. Clark touted a Raleigh, NC-based newspaper given free to the meeting attendees called the Middle American News.
In addition to columns contributed by prominent names such as Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan and Charley Reese, three of the contributors, Vinson, Wayne Lutton and Brent Nelson, are all CCC members. Story after story in the paper attacked people of color, framing certain incidents, as an attack on white Americans. For example, a University of Oregon plan to double the number of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American students attending the university in the next five years was reported as a plan "to make sure white people don't send too many of their kind to the school."
Towards the end of today's meeting in Bridgewater, Bass made mention of an upcoming Long Island meeting. According to the May 22 report, a Long Island resident, recently back from the border as a Minuteman, "will be assisting the UPA in sponsoring and forming a new Citizens Homeland Security group in Long Island."
"This group will attempt to mirror the strategy and plans that are currently being employed in New Jersey," read the report.
The event was closed to media and with the exception of those associated with the UPA, no one was allowed to take pictures or film the event. Those who were identified as press were quickly asked to leave. Ironically, this meeting was announced on the website of New York radio station 77 WABC. Minuteman supporter Sean Hannity's radio program originates from this station.
CONTACT BRIDGEWATER SPORTS ARENA AND ASK WHY THEY ALLOWED THIS SCUM INTO A FAMILY ESTABLISHMENT:
Address:
Bridgewater Sports Arena
1425 Frontier Rd.
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
Phone: 732-627-0006
Fax: 732-627-0973
e-mail: info@BSArena.com
NEW JERSEY TO MINUTEMEN AND THEIR SUPPORTERS: ¡BASTA YA!