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Danger at the Border: What the Media Misses about the Minutemen
It seems that everyone talking about the anti-Minutemen protest at Columbia University is talking about the wrong issue.
On October 4, a group of students demonstrated against a presentation given by leaders of the Minuteman Project, a controversial border-patrol organization invited to campus by the Columbia College Republicans. Soon after Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist began his speech, students stormed the stage holding a banner reading “No human being is illegal,” and shouted slogans comparing the Minutemen to KKK members and Nazis. The ensuing conflict prompted Gilchrist to flee the stage and end his presentation.
So far, the mainstream media, Columbia President Lee Bollinger, and many Columbia students have interpreted the presentation and protest as issues of free speech and fair treatment. In their discussions of the controversy, they have emphasized allegations of physical violence and verbal assault committed by both the protestors and the Minutemen; they have criticized the student protestors for denying the Minutemen their right to free speech and have questioned the status of free speech on college campuses in general.
The commentators are right to include these issues in the discussion: both sides were wrong to physically and verbally attack each other, Gilchrist should have had the opportunity to finish his presentation, and the protest should make us wonder whether or not our universities are places for free and open dialogue. However, by focusing on free speech, much of the American media, and what seems like the majority of Columbia students and staff, are dismissing the protestors’ allegation that the Minutemen are a dangerous organization. The media and many at Columbia completely disregard the fact that, contrary to their rhetoric about upholding the rule of law, the Minutemen are not motivated by civic responsibility, but rather by xenophobia and aggression. Although they undoubtedly have a right to free speech, the Minutemen do not merely represent a controversial opinion on immigration, but a threat to American values that anyone should oppose, regardless of their political opinions.
To engage with this issue more productively, we need to do something that both the media and the Columbia administration have irresponsibly neglected to do; we need to investigate who the Minutemen are and evaluate the students’ criticisms of them.
The student protestors take a clear position on this issue. In their official statement released on October 8, they wrote, “As Chicanos and Latinos, alongside African Americans and progressive people of other nationalities, we took it as our responsibility to give voice to the undocumented immigrant families who live in fear at [sic] terrorist vigilante groups like the Minutemen. Armed patrols by these groups force more and more people desperate for work to find even more hazardous ways into the United States. Over 3,000 people-including hundreds of children-have died in the desert. Their blood is on the hands of Gilchrist and his thugs.”
The protestors also draw an analogy between the Minutemen and racist hate-groups. “We are sure that if the Nazi party held a public meeting on campus, Jewish groups would be there to challenge them-so would we. We are sure that if the Ku Klux Klan held a public meeting on campus, African American groups would be there to challenge them-so would we. The Minutemen are no different.”
The Minutemen, however, claim that their organization is neither racist nor violent, and specify that they do not accept aid from racist groups. They say that they are simply dedicated to prompting the U.S. government to endorse and apply a more stringent immigration policy.
But the Minutemen cannot rightfully divorce themselves from all allegations of racism and violence. Despite their claims to innocence, Minutemen volunteers have included members of the white supremacy group the National Alliance, and despite their alleged non-violence, members with permits are allowed to carry guns. In fact, Minutemen volunteers have been suspects in border-side shootings, although no volunteers have been definitively connected to acts of violence.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization that monitors hate-groups, issued a report about the Minutemen’s first stake-out in Arizona. The report clearly shows that, whether proven or not, the potential for acts of violence certainly exists.
"It should be legal to kill illegals," said one volunteer, according to the report. "Just shoot 'em on sight. That's my immigration policy recommendation. You break into my country, you die."
In addition, the report shows that volunteers don’t always agree with their leaders’ understanding of the group’s mission. After Gilchrist mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. during one of his speeches to reporters, some volunteers were overheard calling King “an Alabama silverback” and making gorilla noises.
The report also reveals volunteers’ violent, militaristic mentality. During their mission, volunteers used military slang to refer to their border-side set up, calling their cafeteria the "mess hall," their dormitories "barracks," and the boundaries of their area "the perimeter." One volunteer even referred to the immigration conflict as “a race war.”
Ray Borane, the mayor of a town near the Minutemen’s “perimeter,” corroborated the Project’s visibly racist attitude, saying, “The Border Patrol didn't want them, my community didn't want them here, and I didn't want them here. All they succeeded in doing was creating hard feelings and spreading a racist message.”
Clearly, not all of the Minutemen volunteers share their leaders’ commitment to racial inclusion and non-violence. In fact, the Minutemen leaders do not really seem to share these commitments with themselves. Although the Minuteman Project’s leaders insist that they have no problems with legal immigration and racial diversity, their online mission statement gives us reason to doubt their sincerity. The statement says that if we do nothing about illegal immigration, our nation will be “devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens.” It also states, “Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious ‘melting pot.’”
The Minutemen are not the only sign of danger in the immigration controversy. Hate-crimes and racist killings have occurred recently near the border in Georgia and New Mexico, in towns where relations between Hispanic immigrants and whites are often tense. This violent behavior is only encouraged by the Minutemen’s militaristic mentality and rhetoric.
Frighteningly, this mentality is not just relegated to fringe groups and violent individuals. Well-known politician Pat Buchanan is currently selling stacks of his new book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, which, in addition to echoing the Minutemen’s concern about the cultural effects of the “immigrant invasion,” contains lines such as: “Was not Western civilization vastly superior to the indigenous civilizations it encountered and crushed, from the Aztecs and Incas in the Americas to the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist civilizations from Africa to the Far East?”
Regardless of our views on immigration policy, we should condemn the mentality of people like Buchanan and groups like the Minutemen. Racism and paranoia about “invasions” will only mar our debates about immigration policy, and arrogant opinions about cultural purity will only lead us to treat immigrants with hostility (which would actually “guarantee the death of this nation as a harmonious ‘melting pot.’”)
While Columbia students should not have let the protest infringe on the speaker’s right to free speech, the media must not dodge issues of racism by criticizing college students. Treating the Minutemen as a legitimate political force will only encourage their dangerous behavior. Both the media and the leaders of our universities have a duty to take concerns about racism and threats to innocent lives seriously, examining them thoroughly and responsibly. If they don’t, we as students have a duty to do it for them.
Thanks to Eva Fortes, Columbia ’09, for contributing reporting to this article.
Ed Quish is currently a sophomore at Wesleyan University. He plans to
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