L.A. Organizers Denounce Black Minuteman

LEIMERT PARK — A coalition of community activists from diverse backgrounds came together in Leimert Park Wednesday to denounce homeless activist Ted Hayes’ recent alliance with the ultra-conservative Minutemen Project as a means of battling illegal immigration.

During an afternoon news conference at the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse, activist Najee Ali said he believed Hayes is being used as a pawn by what he called a racist faction that never has affiliated itself with the black community until now.

“Ted Hayes and his involvement in the Minuteman group is certainly an issue that we should be concerned about,” Ali said. “We feel that [the Minutemen] will polarize the [black and Latino] communities. It will bring us farther and farther apart instead of [bringing us] together collectively to talk about tolerance, peace and resolution.”

Hayes, who did not attend the news conference, said he approached the Minutemen about eight months ago, in part, because they were in support of helping the homeless. Hayes help organize Dome Village, the homeless encampment west of downtown.

“I’m realizing that illegal immigration is taking away the resources of the homeless,” Hayes said. “The Minutemen are right. They want to help the homeless. I can’t get Jesse [Jackson] or [Rep.] Maxine Waters to work with the homeless. Who’s helping me? White people.”

Others speakers at the Leimert Park news conference faulting Hayes’ alignment with the Minutemen included Randy Jurado Ertll, executive director of El Centro De Accion Social; Gideon Krakov of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, attorney Cynthia McClain-Hill and writer and activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

“We [have] enough violence between black and Latinos in schools, jails and in the community,” Ali said. “We’re speaking out against potential violence that may happen based on Ted Hayes.”

Ertll agreed with Ali saying that “we need to unite both communities. I think it’s time that [blacks and Latinos] start talking to each other more and finding common ground and common issues that we can work on together.”

“I think the president and Congress need to find a solution to [illegal immigration] because it will create more divisions in the future,” Ertll said.

It’s a matter of learning to listen and “walk in other people’s shoes,” added Krakov “and not being a part of the problem, but being a part of the solution.”

Hayes, a Republican, his newly formed Crispus Attucks Brigade, and some of his Minutemen allies held a forum Sunday in Leimert Park, drawing more than 100 people. It became an intense war of words between him and another group, the Progressive Alliance, a coalition of blacks and Latinos urging unity.

The argument grew into a physical altercation for which Hayes later apologized.

During the Sunday forum, Hayes announced a plan to hold a protest march in downtown Los Angeles on May 21 and invited gang members to join the border patrol.

Tuesday Hayes said he went to the downtown Mexican Consulate to “clarify” the goals for his new group.

“We support civil rights for illegal immigrants — but in Mexico, in the country that drove [illegal immigrants] out — whatever country that drove you out,” he said. “[Iillegal immigrants are] coming here to get my civil rights, something [blacks] fought for. You just can’t come here and take our civil rights.

“We’re going to champion your cause for civil rights in Mexico. We, as blacks, are going to be your champion,” he said. “You might not understand now, but in time you will.”

Hayes said he wrote the Mexican consulate general a letter about five weeks ago, asking President Vicente Fox to allow a multi-ethnic delegation led by blacks to talk with Fox, Cardinal Roger Mahony and other Mexican civic and social leaders as a means of restoring civil rights back to Mexicans.

Hayes has called illegal immigration the “biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery.”