Minutemen make a stand in Vista
By Adam Klawonn Union-tribune Staff Writer February 5, 2006
VISTA - The San Diego Minutemen's first public attempt to stop employers from hiring migrant workers drew about 200 people to downtown yesterday, but it did not prevent day laborers from being hired at the site.
Organizers for the group and the national Minuteman Project Inc. called the turnout "outstanding" and the event "very successful," although day laborer Jorge Cruz found work nearby and counterprotesters appeared an even match.
Project founder Jim Gilchrist of Aliso Viejo said the event was meant to encourage city councils countywide to endorse rules punishing day laborers for soliciting jobs curbside.
Two San Diego Minutemen organizers said more protest sites will be considered in the coming weeks, and that Encinitas was "on the radar."
"Entire city councils will fall," Gilchrist said. "It's just a matter of time."
Yet within shouting distance of the protest at Escondido and South Santa Fe avenues, a handful of migrant workers were getting job offers.
"We're not doing anything bad," said Cruz, 28, a Mexican from Oaxaca who was hired by a Vista resident to load furniture. "We just need the work."
The protest attracted people from Malibu to Mesa, Ariz., and at least 16 sheriff's deputies, half of whom kept public rights-of-way clear or watched from a distance while the other half stood between the two groups with riot helmets and wooden clubs ready.
Still, the protest was tame compared with other Minuteman Project events, said a spokeswoman for a volunteer group that watched for incidents of mistreatment yesterday.
Aside from insults, no incidents were reported.
"This is like a little advertisement for the Minutemen," said Sylvia Baiz, San Diego Legal Observer Coalition coordinator.
Baiz's coalition monitors the Minutemen and other border-watch groups for incidents of harassment or assault.
Minutemen supporters fanned out along South Santa Fe Avenue with signs that read "Jobs for U.S. Citizens" and "Slave traders belong in jail," among other things.
The latter was made by Gilchrist and Corey Shine, 11, who came from Oceanside with his father, Steven, to support the Minutemen.
"It's fun," Corey said. "We're protesting for what we believe in. This is America, and it's for Americans."
"And?" Steven asked.
"And we want legal immigration, not illegal," Corey added.
Other Minutemen supporters said migrant workers are siphoning valuable jobs from Americans, and that they should be "sent back to their homeland."
Latino and human rights activists lined Escondido Avenue. They said migrant workers are the scapegoats for failed U.S. immigration policies, and that deporting them or blocking their employment was myopic at best.
"These workers are the backbone of California agriculture," said Heather Pregerson, 31, a physician's assistant from Carlsbad. "I look at the big picture."
They beat drums, chanted through megaphones, waved 5-by-10-foot Mexican flags, and propped a life-sized "Míster Minutoman" sculpture made of papier-mache propped on the base of a camera stand. The binoculars held by the gun-toting sculpture were trained on the Minutemen.
Those who came to watch the protest said they respected the various viewpoints, but noted that neither side had offered a solution.
"I don't know what they're doing," said Barney Crilly, 59, of Vista. "What's this going to prove one way or the other?"
Vista native Robert Dean, an air-conditioning contractor, said he has hired day laborers because no one else - including the Minutemen - would be willing to do the work.
"These (migrant workers) have a right to live, too," Dean said. "All these people want to do is make a living."
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