All of the articles here themed on the Minutemen and anti-immigration politics were very good. http://www.thenation.com/issue/20060828
Esp. this one http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/moser
White Heat
Bob Moser | Welcome to Nashville, Tennessee, the unlikely symbol of
the biggest American immigrant resettlement since the Industrial
Revolution. It's also the white-hot nexus of the new American
nativism.
>...Camaro ("it matched," she says), has always had a rebellious
streak as wide as Tennessee. "Maybe I read too many mysteries as a
child," she says. "I have to think out of the box." She fell in love
with activism in 1999 when she partnered with the ACLU in a successful
challenge to a new uniform policy at two of her children's public
schools. "I don't know about you, but I see kids going to school in
uniforms, and I'm seeing little Nazis heiling Hitler."
Harmon sees the same mindless conformity taking hold in America. "We've let George W. Bush do more damage than Bill Clinton and every President before him could have even thought about doing. It's all about corporations. They run this country, and they run this world. That's not a world I want to live in. But everybody just behaves like sheep." Including those who've supported the war in Iraq. "How many kids did we have killed over there today for no good reason?" she asks. "Two? Ten? Twenty? Get. Them. Out. Of. There." It all fits together for Harmon: opposing Bush, opposing corporatism and opposing immigration. "This whole influx happened because big business wants cheap labor," she says. "Just like that war is making corporations a lot of money. And Bush is doing all he can to help them."
As the temperature over immigration keeps rising, Harmon says she worries about the level of frustration she's hearing, more and more, from other nativists in Tennessee and around the country. "The most popular formula is, 'soap box, ballot box, ammo box.' They'll X out the first two, like those options are gone and all you can do is arm yourself and get ready. I'm looking at that going, phew! It's going to get ugly."
>...Why does he do it? When I ask the question, Carter turns to
Kerr--as if to say, there's your reason. Until recently, Kerr ran his
own framing business. He says he did well until he refused to join his
peers in hiring illegal immigrants and slashing wages. "By trying to
be legit, I was losing twelve to fifteen hundred a house as I was
framing. I had fifteen people working for me, three crews. By being
stubborn, I ran my business into the dirt. If I'd hired illegal
immigrants, I'd be living high on the hog right now."
CONTINUED BELOW Catch a Fire Carter says that much of the Minuteman membership, so far, consists of white folks--and two black men--who've had similar struggles. Now they're hatching plans to confront local construction firms that have "gone brown." "We'll pick our places, inform the owners of our intentions, and then we'll start marching on them," Kerr says. "To me, it's a no-brainer. If we show up with eighty or ninety people and the Daily News Journal, we're probably going to stop this. Within a month, we'll get rid of all of them. They're going to know the heat is coming."
The other goal, Carter says, is to recruit enough members "to have a small group on the border, fifty-two weeks out of the year." He and Kerr both plan to be part of the MCDC's next Border Watch month, in October. Carter will surely not lack for ammunition. At the immigrant-rights march in Nashville this spring, when he was accompanied by about twenty-five other counterprotesters, "I had five guns on me. I had over 150 extra rounds of ammo just in case. I didn't know what was going to happen, or who was going to be there."
Kerr is resigning his membership on the county's Republican Party executive committee now that he's a Minuteman leader. "What I'm doing now is going to upset a lot of people who put me forth" in the GOP, he says. "I've been a contractor here for twelve years. I know these people. And they know me, and know that I'm a 250-pound state wrestler. They have that in the back of their heads. My goal is to have twenty contractors up in my face. If I don't have twenty, I'm not making enough noise."
"The only time we will become violent is in self-defense," Carter interjects.
"Yeah, well, they're going to come after me. There's going to be some upset people who are affected by this. My thing is, you make the first move and there's witnesses, and we'll take care of it from there." A five-beat pause. "But let's hope it won't come to that. Calm. Positive attitude. Restraint." Kerr says it like a mantra he's trying to learn--so much so that it makes us all laugh. Until Carter speaks up.
"If it gets too violent, I still got six acres out on Walter Hill," he says, referring to a plot of land he owns in the country. "I'll take my tent out there, take my long guns with me, put up my tent and stay out there."
"If they come to shoot you, they'll have to hit me first."
"Well, if they shoot through you they'll hit me, 'cause I'll be right there with you." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marc Cooper in the latest issue of The Nation 'sez the GOP is running away from supporting a Minuteman supported Congressional candidate in AZ.,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061023/cooper