Friday, December 16, 2005
Precursor to Domestic Terrorism
Presentations about the role of armed groups in the political process were made by:
Paul de Armond, Research Director, Public Good Project
Devin Burghart, Director, Building Democracy Initiative, Center for New Community
David Neiwert, journalist/author/blogger, Orcinus
Jay Taber, author of Blind Spots and War of Ideas
Workshops on the Minuteman Project and immigrant rights were conducted by:
Genevieve Aguilar, ACLU NW Regional Director
Magdaleno Rose-Avila, Executive Director, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
Jerry Hebert, Washington State Human Rights Commissioner
Adriana Jasso, American Friends Service Committee
Participants in the researchers’ private discussion along with the presenters above were:
Brandi Bratrude, journalism student, Western Washington University
Marc Brenman, Executive Director, Washington State Human Rights Commission
Michele Lefkowith, Investigative Researcher, Anti-Defamation League
Patrick Manz, Researcher, Anti-Defamation League
Sheila O’Donnell, ACE Investigations
Connie Stringer, Board Member, Rural Organizing Project
Reports on the roots of the Minuteman Project issued in advance of the gathering included:
Analysis of the impending nationwide battle over immigrant rights was kicked off by Devin Burghart’s detailed report of right-wing organizing and fundraising now underway that implicated individuals with twenty-year track records of inciting bigotry and violence against minorities from coast to coast. Particularly disturbing was the level of coordination and sophistication by the GOP in mainstreaming former anti-government paramilitaries into pro-apartheid government supporters—the Minutemen.
The political climate fostered by such notable xenophobic public officials as Governor Schwarzenegger, combined with the atmosphere of fear exacerbated by groups with antecedents in the Klan, Minutemen, Posse Comitatus, Militia Movement, Aryan Nations, the Order, and John Birch Society, raised the very real concern about bloodshed and other forms of violence in the coming year. Hearings on anti-immigrant legislation in the U.S. Congress this week signal the beginning of this social conflict. Anti-immigrant television ads are already running in the Midwest.
The continuity of the hate groups and paramilitaries that now have a voice in Congress as well as on right-wing media is now a vertically-integrated support system for organized hate. They have experience, funds, and to a large degree, public opinion on their side. And unless groups like the National Council of Churches and their allies mobilize their resources in opposition soon, the extreme positions of the racist organizations listed above will be the supreme law of the land. Civil rights as well as civil liberties will be a thing of the past.
As Marc Brenman remarked, “This Minuteman Project is a precursor to domestic terrorism.”
[Read what some are doing about it today: http://firstsolidthoughts.blogspot.com ]
