By John Earl

Jim Gilchrist and his Minutemen proved that they can retreat from battle on a minute's notice by withdrawing Friday night from the front lines of Costa Mesa's immigration war started by Minuteman Mayor, Allan Mansoor.

The pullout follows a surge of immigrant organizing across the country that led to massive strikes by high school students and more than a half-million immigrants and supporters protesting in Los Angeles in solidarity with tens of thousands of others across the country.

Gilchrist and a handful of supporters arrived on two previous Fridays in front of El Chinaco restaurant to protest its owner, city council candidate Mirna Burciaga, for opposing local police as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and to retaliate for weekly protests occurring in front of City Council member Gary Monahan's beer bar, a popular Minuteman outpost.

Gilchrist fired off an email accusing Burciaga of being a “racial supremacist” and a member of “racist groups.” No proof of that was offered, but in a flyer Gilchrist cast his own racist net over all undocumented immigrants:

“Does MIRNA BURCIAGA envision Costa Mesa as a criminal haven sanctuary city, infested with drug dealers, murderers, child molesters, robbers, and rapists wandering freely without any interference from law enforcement?”

Gilchrist's urged followers to bring bright flashlights to El Chinaco “to flash in the faces of the adversaries when they approach.”

Armed with a mag flashlight outside of El Chinaco, Gilchrist said that his band of border patrolling baby boomers would protest there every Friday “until she [Burciaga] orders her operatives to stop harassing Monahan.” But Burciaga is not involved with the Monahan protests, which are organized by a community group called the Colectivo Tonantzin.

But last Friday the Minuteman brigade couldn't be found, at least not at Chinacos, which offered the $1 “minuteman” taco that increased business during Gilchrist's St. Patrick's Day appearance.

The only Minuteman found was at Monahan's, holding out against 50 noisy protesters marching and debating immigration law with customers. Offending customers and protesters alike, he singly defended the Minuteman creed, speaking without benefit of militia or musket and with only a single Guinness to fire up his patriotic blood, but with the power of three six-packs of Guinness flowing through his veins and a flask full of dry powder loaded up his muzzle.

He gave me the middle finger as I video taped, then pleaded with me to “talk American” with him.

“Does anyone speak English,” he asked the crowd.

In Hebrew, I answered (transliterated) “Ani medabaer evreet,” which means “I speak Hebrew.” He ignored me, perhaps because he thought I was speaking Spanish.

Some of Monahan's regular beer drinking clients claim that the weekly protests have increased business—pointing for proof to the influx of Minutemen who have come to drink since protests began.

But a nearly equal number of clients have walked away from Monahan's bar after learning from protesters about his anti-immigrant political agenda. Others have been observed driving off after seeing Minuteman counter demonstrators in the bar's main driveway. And turnout for the Monahan protests has generally increased, while Minuteman counter-demonstrations, marked by Gilchrist's rude but hilarious antics, have steadily declined.

As immigrant rights protests surge, the Colectivo has grown through grassroots organizing. It has regular meetings in Costa Mesa's immigrant community and held two fruitful community forums on immigrants rights, including one attended by Gilchrist. It also sent a three buss caravan of protesters to the Los Angeles rally.

Growing protests will cut Monahan's profits and, combined with other efforts, will help change the local political landscape before the next election when Mansoor is expected to run again and Monahan will be termed out.

Costa Mesa business owners are also organizing—over forty held a press conference announcing their opposition to ICE. The city's 489 member Chamber of Commerce also opposes the proposed plan.

Very little organized support for ICE has come from within the city. Even when Minuteman contingents show up in force at city council meetings most of them are from outside of Costa Mesa. At the last council meeting, for example, 21 people spoke in favor of ICE, but only seven of them said they lived in Costa Mesa.

Minutemen also have a hard time gathering members for their regular protest raids on day labor sites, where they harass employers and workers. Often far out numbered by counter demonstrators, their protest power peaked last summer when, joined in Laguna Beach by white supremacist groups waving swastika banners and confederate flags, their numbers reached into the 40s at most.

Increasingly unwelcome in Orange County, Gilchrist's Minuteman members were recently banned from a Laguna Beach parade and denied entry into another parade in San Juan Capistrano. Even Orange County Republican party heads, who have adopted the Minuteman agenda as their own, and who are reportedly grooming Mansoor for party ascendancy, want nothing to do with insurgent Gilchrist, who they see as an annoying and unstable amateur standing in their way.

For the moment, however, the Minuteman agenda is determining Costa Mesa's future.

For photos, videos and links to related ocorganizer.com stories, go to http://www.ocorganizer.com/html/monahan.html

Offending customers and protesters alike, he singly defended the Minuteman creed, speaking without benefit of militia or musket and with only a single Guinness to fire up his patriotic blood, but with the power of three six-packs of Guinness flowing through his veins and a flask full of dry powder loaded up his muzzle.

About 50 immigrant rights protesters showed up at Monahan's. Numbers are growing as community organizing efforts go forward.

I want to know where are these 240 million people on the side of jimbo gilchrist.

That's not all the Minuteman Orator did. He interrupted a LF city council meeting. While they laugh at Coyotl's arrest in Costa Mesa and even have a protest sign calling for his imprisonment, one of them displays rude behavior at city council meetings as well. And this guy wasn't even the speaker, he was interrupting another speaker!

It was either him or his twin brother. Either one, same argument applies. The Minutemen are not all a bunch of civilized, well mannered, gentlemen and gentlewomen who can do no wrong. That much is obvious.

http://media.putfile.com/Interrupted-LF-cc-meeting-Nov-15-05

At least the Minuteman Orator guy got PWNED by the mayor or whoever it was who asked him to leave.

This is our homeland,
cowardly minutemen!

Go back to Europe with your racism.

Sound familiar ?

Don't fret, we may just be back to give you guys something to actually do on a Friday night. When is the last time John or Cliff have been on a date on Friday ? May I suggest you 2 look into this, as experience with the opposite sex, or maybe not the opposite sex, develops balance in a person....something that you guys have seemed to lack as of late.

Man, you guys need some time off !

Much do your disappointment Don, I haven't been to Monohan's for any reason and I'm not really planning on it.

Dear Lazy Racist Minuteman Don Silva:

I don't really believe that you're lazy, but far be it from me to interfere with your right to name yourself.

But, honestly, lazy is the last of many things that I would rightly call you and your glued together companion, the "Watchdog."

I thought that maybe you two just decided to go to a movie or Plato's Retreat, or something, which would probably would have relieved some of your racist anxieties and helped to make this world a little bit better place to live in, quite contrary to spending your Saturdays harassing innocent (brown) people who want to work and feed their families.

Gee, where were all the Minuteman counter demonstrators this weekend?

At the day labor center?

LOL!

John Earl

I didn't see much going on from 6to 7 o'clock. When i came out of Monahan's on Friday, the protesters were just standing around. The place seemed busy to me. I make it a point to eat there on Friday now.

The MMP/SOS are too chickshits to show up in L.A. this past saturday. also, where are those people suppporting jim gilchirst like 240 mil. jimbo always lies it is like 240 including his white nationalist friends.

It takes a while for people to get there. The first start trickling in at 6, the bulk are there between 7 and 8. There were about 50 total last time, not counting the one Minuteman orator.

JE

Amazing. The SOSMM / KKK / Aryan Nations / National Stormfront / National Alliance et al. scumbags are _still_ trying to spew their agenda of hatred in Southern California?

Jesus, I'd a thought that they had at least enough IQ points to twigg to their endless, massive, devastating defeats at the hands of the actual citizens of this country who repeatedly turned out in overwhelming numbers to oppose everything the unamerican scumbags stand for.

Guess not.

My opinions only and only my opinions.

I haven't heard much about their trying to get into a parade lately. Probably because they don't have a leg to stand on. I suggested they try a parade in Baldwin Park, but I guess that idea won't go far with them.

Where, as we stood silent with US flags, we were spat at, objects were hurled at us, our signs violently ripped away, and various other things happened that I am sure that you are all too familiar with, oh peaceful ones!

Any time, anywhere. Why be afraid to die?

JE, I worked with illegal aliens and minorities for almost 20 years in the streets, so its a bit hard to lean on the racist label when talkin bout me cuzz.

Big deal. For all we know, those 20 years could've been what made you have your view of this issue. Otherwise, wouldn't you be helping them like the Micah's Way people in Lake Forest?

Did any of the protesters last Saturday threaten to shoot you in the "f***ing face" like 1inchgroup did in Lake Forest?

Another thing I can’t help but laugh about is the fact that this is all so moot. All of it. The SOSMM, Aryan Nations, Stormfront people, National Alliance/Vanguard people, the Mayor of Costa Mesa, and on the other sides, the anti-racists, the “Mexica Movement” loons, and all the rest... all the efforts on all sides is utterly moot, ultimately pointless.

It’s not that it’s pointless to oppose race hatred, and it’s not that it’s pointless to demand the removal of the nation’s borders. It’s just that the “re-Mexification” of California is inevitable. There’s not a damn thing that the SOSMM et al. can do to stop it or even slow it, and there’s not a damn thing that the “destroy the borders / retake North America from the European invaders” clowns can do to speed it up.

Whites are a minority in Los Angeles County and that unavoidable fact is spreading. The SOSMM et al. are going to have to come to grips with the fact eventually and accept it, get along with it, and accept the fact that they’re going to be part of the growing minority from now on.

There’s not going to be any massive military response to some imagined border invasion because illegals crossing the borders are matched body-for-body by the number of brown babies that are born in California every year. Building a 700 mile long wall won’t stop that – in fact won’t stop illegals crossing the border, either, though it’ll slow them down what? An hour at most

And no, it’s not “illegal immigration” that these SOSMM et al. types oppose according to all available evidence, it’s the browning of America that it looks like they overwhelmingly are railing against. They look at towns where there are brown people and call the town “sewers” and “pig sties” not because there’s illegal Mexicans walking around – they don’t know who’s a citizen and who is not – but because the people have brown skin, by all apparent indications that I can see from their web site postings and from postings on IndyMedia.

The SOSMM et al. is windmill tilting at its best; commanding the waves to be still at its best. Utterly pointless.

Then on the other side are the anti-racists and “Mexica Movement” lunatics. It’s good to oppose racist hatred, bigotry, assaults on freedom of speech, and assaults against art on our nation’s monuments. It’s good because we’re all living here in the here and now and if such people and such threats aren’t opposed, they grow and reduce the quality of life for everyone, even themselves – though often both unknowingly and uncaringly.

But calls to tear down the border, throw wide the Doors of America, and “return North America to the people who legally and morally own it” are absurd and, ultimately, irrelevant since it’s going to happen eventually any way, and it’s going to happen slowly, inevitably, and it’s going to happen simply by virtue of the fact that national borders all over the world are increasingly irrelevant. (More so due to the advent of Peak Oil and the growth of fascism and Christian terrorism around the world, driven by our nations’ multinational corporate sponsors.)

Any way, it’s just kind of amusing watching the SOSMM et al. kick and struggle in futile agony, attempting to justify their ideologies when they certainly appear to be motivated by the advent of the unavoidable. “White flight” will continue regardless of anything SOSMM et al. wannabes do or say, and the browning of America is something they’re going to have to live with.

My opinions only, and only my opinions.

Yeah, big deal. Years of handing out free food, taking people into my home, blah blah blah. I get ' big deal ' from cliff 'what have I done anyway' May.

Question...have you always been such a self important done nothing snot ? Or, have the goons rubbed off on you this quick.

Forget answering, I think I know the answer already. Also, someone that talks the way you do to those that have done so much, and much of it when you were still in diapers, is not worth our time.

Sure I didn't do what you do for 20 years. But if I did, I wouldn't do it just to talk down on others just for being younger. I've come across plenty of people like you who would love to see younger people shut their open minds and just say "yes sir." If I were to do that, I might as well join the military and murder innocent people in Iraq. My mind is too open to be affiliated with SOS or the Minutemen.

> Yeah, big deal. Years of handing out free food,
> taking people into my home, blah blah blah.

After many months of reading your postings here in IndyMedia, I'd have to say that you're claims above are, well, um, not exactly factual.

I don't believe it's possible for thoughtful, careing, liberal people to suddenly -- or even over the course of 20 years -- to become, well, um, you.

No offense intended, I assure you. I just don't believe you based on your message postings.

My opinions only and only my opinions.

> where are these 240 million people on the side of jimbo gilchrist.

the number is overstated more than 100:1 tax records reveal




> illegals crossing the borders are matched body-for-body by the number of brown babies that are born in California every year / the browning of America



the ratio is 8 person's of Hispanic decent to 1 of White, US census records show



(The Hispanic population is growing 8 times faster than the White population)

this doesn't include other races like Blacks, Asian's either...



Hispanic businesses growth rate 3 times national average.


The national growth rate is 31 percent, which is three-times the national average for all American companies.

Nationwide, there were nearly 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses in 2002, generating roughly $222 billion in revenue.