‘Minutemen’ not welcome in Vermont

By Bryan G. Pfeifer

Members of the racist vigilante organization known as the “Minutemen Civil Defense Corps” are meeting serious resistance from a wide range of progressive and revolutionary individuals and organizations.

As the Minutemen attempt to recruit and build nationally, they are increasingly confronted with militant resistance and messages such as this one at a Sept. 10 protest in Babylon, N.Y.: “Minutemen, racist, KKK, fascists out of the USA!”

Similar confrontations have taken place in California, Texas and Michigan.

The Minutemen, founded by Chris Simcox in April 2005, are working openly or covertly with at least 15 local, state and federal agencies to deport, menace and even possibly to incapacitate or kill undocumented immigrants attempting to cross the Mexican and Canadian borders into the United States.

The organization also lobbies politicians to pass chauvinist anti-immigrant legislation. And it targets businesses that hire undocumented workers.

Many of the Minutemen’s members are current or former military and police personnel. They are highly trained in paramilitary activities, including hand-to-hand combat, surveillance and sniper skills.

Since April the Minutemen have concentrated their activities in Arizona and California. But they now claim to have “volunteer operations” in 12 states on the southern and northern borders.

They work with other legal and extra-legal organizations such as America’s PAC, American Caging Inc., Capitol Watch, Citizens United, Conservative Petitions, Declaration Alliance, IFIRE, the National Border Control Council, Ope ration Spotlight, the Patrick Henry Center and RightMarch.com.

Politicians who support the Minutemen include Rep. John Culbertson. In August, this Texas Republican introduced a House bill to train civilian “volunteers” to patrol borders. The “volunteers,” according to the bill, would resemble the Minutemen but would receive federal training and certification.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarz eneg ger, also a Republican, supports similar policies. But Republicans have no monopoly on this kind of bigotry. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, both Democrats, are on the same bandwagon.

On Sept. 28, at a “Secure Our Borders” rally in Washington, D.C., Simcox announ ced a new operation, effective immediately, to increase the vigilante effort to all five states along the Mexican border, and to eight states along the 4,000-mile Canadian border. Twelve members of Congress from the House Immigration Reform Caucus participated in the rally at the Capitol Hill Club, where a detailed schedule of October rallies and “patrolling” activities was outlined.

The schedule includes coordinated Oct. 15 anti-immigrant recruiting rallies at state capitols or federal buildings in Arlington Heights, Ill., Salem, Ore., and Houston. Other Minutemen rallies are scheduled for Oct. 29 in Sacramento, Calif., at 10 a.m. at the State Capitol steps, and in Tallahassee, Fla., from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the front steps of the “Old Historic Capitol Building.”

No racists here!

According to the New England Minuteman chapter, Vermont would be their first major “testing grounds” in the Northeast and on the northern border generally. Vermont, population 600,000, is 98-percent white.

On Oct. 15 an 11-member Minutemen delegation arrived in the town of Derby Line, Vt., just across the border from Stansted, Quebec.

This area is historically well-known for many Underground Railroad passages.

Minutemen delegation members included Weymouth, Mass., police officer Bob Johnson, Bob Cassimiro, executive director of the misnamed Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, and others from Long Island, N.Y., and elsewhere. Casimiro spent three weeks in Naco, Ariz., earlier this year.

In a driving rain, dozens of protesters were ready. They dealt the racists a decisive blow. After the Minutemen attempted to gather in town, protesters and sympathetic town residents drove them out, telling them firmly, loudly and repeatedly, “Don’t come back!”

Perhaps parodying the Minutemen’s xenophobia, David Van Deusen of More town, Vt., a protest organizer, said: “They are outsiders, and we don’t want them here. We don’t want racist policies in Vermont.”

James Griffin, a Derby Line resident, agreed. “It’s just another form of vigilantism,” said Griffin. “I think their agenda is racist, and they’re just trying to impose their will. They’re just another form of militia. I don’t like their very presence.”

Members of various Vermont anti-war and socialist organizations, the Raging Grannies, the Vermont Workers’ Center and anti-racist Vermont residents all participated in this action. They vowed to confront the Minutemen anyplace, anytime and anywhere they come out.

The Minutemen say they plan to “patrol” the Vermont border the weekend of Oct. 21-23.

No borders in the workers’ struggle

As the Vermont victory and others show, U.S.-born working-class and oppressed people across the country are increasingly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with immi grant sisters and brothers, documented and undocumented, to fight back against the Minutemen, their supporters and similar organizations such as the Nazis and the KKK.

These organizations, depending on the ruling class’s needs at any given time, work openly or clandestinely in an attempt to deflect onto immigrants or other oppres sed people the endemic crises and the grave harm done by the capitalist system to the working class and oppressed.

Working-class whites who join the protests against these dividers show that they understand the real enemy: the capitalist ruling class. Attacking immigrants or other super-exploited people won’t lower unemployment, gas prices or rents, or turn around cutbacks in health care and education spending. Just the opposite.

There are no borders in the workers’ struggle. Increasing and ever-widening unity and solidarity among the working class and all the oppressed are essential to building a mighty, independent multinational class-wide movement.

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