HOLLYWOOD, 11 February 2007--Yesterday at 10:45 a.m., ANSWER-LA led a small crew of fifteen, with banners, signs, and a blaring loudspeaker packed in a shopping cart, south down Argyle and across Hollywood Boulevard into a sea of forty minutemen.  Half an hour later, the minutemen, amassed from across southern California, retreated to join their fellows on the southeast corner, pushed back by the growing crowd of protesters.

At an anti-minuteman protest last July 8 at the same location, the cops cornered and beat ANSWER-LA members in yet another videotaped LAPD brutality incident.  In that instance, the cops decided not to press charges.  Today reporters at the march compared notes and came up with four or five arrests, but only one was verifiable: a man carrying a concave foamboard sign was deemed by the cops to be carrying a shield and, when he reappeared with the sign, was hauled off.  A second arrest was reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Ultimately, about 120 protestors shouted down a nearly equal number of minutemen today on Hollywood Boulevard.  The minutemen, formerly über-patriots "defending" the U.S. from an "invasion" of "illegal" workers, are now attempting to bypass a jury trial and judicial appeals, demanding a Congressional or Presidential pardon for two border patrol agents convicted for assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, civil rights' violations, and obstruction of justice.

Deprived of their key speaker, an agents's father-in-law stalled en route by a blown tire, the minutemen scrambled for alternates, who were mostly drowned out by bullhorns, the loudspeaker, and the chants of angry protestors.  The minutemen cavalierly, and undeterred by the cops, moved through the protesters' ranks, along with a bevy of unidentified T-shirted young white men with close-cropped hair.  The more notable minutemen were forced back into the street, and two were chased off when they tried to pose as undercover cops.  Angry shouting matches erupted, as the minutemen crossed onto the sidewalk and the plaza behind it.

What could be heard was a speaker announcing that "the streets have been taken over by Mexicans" and "Bush is a traitor."  A bullhorn declared, "Why does anyone allow you to walk these streets? You are worthless. You are foolish."  Later it blared "You are Hispanic slaves of the King of Spain."

The Minutemen rallied under a billboard for The Naked Truck and T-Bones, a commentary not lost on the protesters.

Meanwhile, the protesters continued confronting and pushing back the invading minutemen.  At 11:45, the Danza Cuautehmoc leader blew a conch shell to signal their arrival, and began ritual dances that reached back to a time before the Conquest.  At 12:20, the mintuemen began their march with a round of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Yesterday's minuteman march was notable for their confusion, who have been repeatedly thwarted in their efforts to demand patriotic xenophobia from the ruling elite, but today appeared with far fewer flags and flag-emblazoned clothing than at their previous events.  Frustrated at President Bush's support for a bracero-style guest worker program, Congress's refusal to pass the onerous Sensenbrenner HR4437 immigration reform bill after mass demonstrations last spring, and now the judiciary's insistence that migrants have human rights, the minutemen appeared rudderless.

A red, white, and blue Torino without a passenger led the march, perhaps intended for the missing speaker.  Protesters filled the south sidewalk, continuing their chanting and bullhorning, and talking to curious passersby.  When the minutemen reached the Chinese Theatre, several took turns posing for photographs with the costumed characters before the procession U-turned and returned along the same route.  Christie Czajkowski, one of the leaders of the San Diego Minutemen who last weekend tried to hold a San Diego cop under citizen's arrest, today walked among the slow-moving police vehicles, stuck her head in each, and demanded they enforce her citizen's arrest against several women who had moved her off the sidewalk when she forced herself into their group.  One policemen, shrugging her off, asked, "What did you expect?"  Ted Hayes, leader of the Crispus Attucks Brigade of the minutemen but best known for his work for the homeless, skipped a major homeless protest against city sweeps to stand with the minutemen.  Organizing group Save Our State leaders Joe Turner and Don Silva straggled along at the end of the march while Jim Gilchrist of a sometimes competing group, the Minuteman Project, strode in the front ranks.

Whatever the local nightly news reported, the pedestrians and shopkeepers along Hollywood Boulevard missed the minuteman's message.  One shopkeeper shouted, "Why can't you march on Sunday?  You're ruining my business!"  When asked what the march was about, a young white employee said, "Illegals want freedom and American's don't want to give it to them."  A Black guy in a wheelchair, when asked who were marching, answered, "Racists. Yeah, racists walking down the street."  Another shopper said, "They want to shoot all the illegal immigrants."  Still another, an Asian woman, said, "They want to get some guy out of prison."  What's this about?  "Some guys pretending to be police shot an immigrant, and they want to get him out of prison," another pedestrian explained.

The story is that border patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos were convicted by a Texas jury after a border incident in which they called on a guy driving a van to stop.  After a brief foot pursuit he surrendered, hands in the air.  One of the agents began to hit him with the butt of his rifle, but the agent slipped, and the suspect took off.  The agents fired off fifteen rounds, striking him once.  Then the agents scooped up as many shells as they could find, sent another agent back to recover and dispose of the rest, and failed to file a report on the shooting.  Only after the pursuit and shooting did the Border Patrol confirm that the guy had expired papers and was hauling pot.  The minutemen were also championing Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez of Edwards County, Texas, who was convicted of shooting at a fleeing vehicle and injuring a migrant in the vehicle.

Heated verbal exchanges between the minutemen behind the wrought iron fence of their parking lot and the protesters on the sidewalk continued until 2:30 p.m., when the LAPD urged the minutemen to leave.

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in the parking lot

I have been emailing LA-Indymedia repeatedly this morning to correct the lead picture to this article on the front page. It is not a picture that I included with the article or one that is anywhere on my hard drive.

I have had problems with picture files getting mixed up on their server before--in ways that seem more than coincidental--and this appears to be another instance of the same. It does appear in go vegan's collection, along with other photos that I don't believe are from yesterday's protest. That might be a hack as well, I just don't know.

However, the folks at LA-IMC appear to be off doing other things, and the picture remains. So please, until it can be fixed, know that I did not post it, and I do not want it associated with this article.

and LA-IMC has cleared things up. I like the new photo. Thanks, all.

You must have mistaken John March for Gilchrist. He was in Vegas this weekend, I believe.

gawd, I love open publishing. Thanks for the correction.

yelled at and it is news.
Latinas suffer domestic violence and they get deported.

Anna Nicole dies and it is all the news all the time.

Mexican women are murdered in the hundreds near Tia Juana. And no one cares.

No, thank you Leslie

Ah, hell. I wish I could have been there. It's great seeing neo-Nazi scumbags confronted where ever they show their faces.

Immigration between wealthy nations and less wealthy nations has been happening since the beginning of time, nothing new under the sun, here. Our last mid-term elections the previous party that control the House, the Senate and the White House went with this wedge issue. Last Presidential elections it was gay marriage, something to bring out the “I hate those people vote”. For all the time they were in power they did nothing about the immigration issue. The failure of the existing immigration laws has been the lack of enforcement, since all politicians know if they aggressively enforce immigration laws their action will reduce the margins of large corporations and they put in jeopardy the large political contributors they rely on for re-election. So that party that previously had the majority wanted to pass more laws that they do not expect to enforce and in the process trample on those less fortunate and look tough back home to get re-elected, well, guess what , it did not work!

AWESOME REPORT

Leslie wrote;

"Ted Hayes, leader of the Crispus Attucks Brigade of the minutemen but best known for his work for the homeless, skipped a major homeless protest against city sweeps to stand with the minutemen. Organizing group Save Our State leaders Joe Turner and Don Silva straggled along at the end of the march while Jim Gilchrist of a sometimes competing group, the Minuteman Project, strode in the front ranks."

Here's four prominent people who strongly influence the rhetoric of the so-called 'militia' movement of anti-immigrant activists (Minutemen, SOS, etc..)..

What are the goals of these individuals? We already know Gilchrist is running on a conservative political platform that seeks to villify (mostly Mexican) immigrants who journey to the US because of economic need. However, Gilchrist and his peers almost NEVER address the actual cause of this economic based immigration, the poverty in Mexico induced by decades of globalization free trade programs like NAFTA, WTO and now PPP.

In addition to the right to migrate freely between different regions, people ALSO have the right to live and work in their homeland country without being coerced by adverse economic conditions to migrate elsewhere..

IF the Minutemen/SOS wanted to protest the source of undocumented immigration from Mexico to the US, THEN they would be most effective by protesting at Cargill, the US corporation responsible for dumping cheap corn on the Mexican market and causing local farmers to lose their land (and then forced by survival to migrate to el norte.)..

Some reasons to protest and boicott Cargill;

"Cargill, the biggest grain distributor in the world, was permitted to buy six hundred thousand tons of corn at 1,650 pesos per ton. Later, Cargill began to sell the corn in the valley of Mexico at 3,500 pesos the ton (“Pactortilla,” Reforma, 1/21/07). Profits resulting from the price hike were clearly reaped by the major grain distributors but not by corn producers. Article 253 of the federal penal code prohibits hoarding, and excessive profits based on price-fixing, but the Federal Competition Commission has done little to enforce the laws (“Maiz: Cosechar Tempestades,” Oaxaca Libre, 1/18).

Calderón’s pact includes a promise to investigate and punish responsible hoarders, but considering the intimate relationship between big business and the PAN, it is unlikely that the investigation will uncover anything that turns out to be politically inconvenient.

“Let Them Eat Cake”

For his initiative to increase imports of tariff-free corn, Calderón has been criticized as merely adding fuel to the fire.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, has not made its way to the forefront of the debate but is certainly at the heart of the problem. Part of the idea behind the signing of NAFTA was a plan to shift the economy away from corn production and towards more lucrative goods aimed at the export market. In the years leading up to NAFTA, protected communal lands were parceled off and all support for small farmers and corn production was withdrawn, thereby escalating the expulsion of farmers from their lands."

read on @;
http://www.chiapaspeacehouse.org/en/node/397

As a result of the anti-immigrant psuedo-militias' one-sided PR campaign that ignores NAFTA, we now have the GW Bush regime calling for an apartheid segregation wall between the US and Mexico. In addition the same GW Bush regime promotes a wall between Iran and Iraq, and supported the segregation barrier between Israel and occupied Palestine. Is it clear by now that the GW Bush regime believes that building higher and longer walls is their solution for every political problem??

Ironically this so-called 'militia' is playing right into the hands of the GW Bush regime's call for a border wall. Why does it not surprise me that the leadership of the SOS/Minutemen is getting their marching orders from the CIA/FBI Homeland Security chumps who want to put dissidents behind the walls of FEMA camps??

In defense of a true militia movement in the US;

A true militia is a guaranteed right under the US Constitution to be organized, bear arms and if needed overthrow an unjust government. As US citizens it is our responsibility to maintain a safe haven for organizing such a response in the face of a tyrant in US government..

The gripes of the Minutemen/SOS about undocumented Mexican immigrants being allowed to work in the US are not reflecting a genuine militia movement and furthermore gives authentic militias an undeserved bad reputation. What we need today is a well organized militia prepared to occupy US military bases in the event of either a 'troop surge' to Iraq or an unjustified and illegal US military invasion of Iran. Let's make sure that no more innocent lives are lost in this illegal war for oil profits. We cannot acomplish this important task if a psuedo-militia "Minutemen/SOS" drains the people's energy potential by playing 'hunt the migrants' along the perceived US/MEX borderlands..

Then we have the predicted reaction of leftists and liberals to the exploits of the Minutemen/SOS. If the Minutemen say "No immigrants", the leftists say "Yes immigrants"! Again, any critical thinking about the initial causes of poverty induced immigration because of NAFTA/WTO free trade agreements are shoved aside by the polarized debates between the opposing sides..

Neither the 'border wall' Minutemen nor the 'open border' leftists seem prepared to get US policy makers to focus on the problems caused by neo-liberalism and NAFTA free trade globalization agreements. The suffering of Mexicans who attempt to cross the border and die in the desert is a result of economic disparity caused by NAFTA's free trade agreements. The suffering of both (un)documented Mexican immigrants in slaughterhouses, agricultural plantations and other undesirable jobs is prolonged by this polarized arguement between the factions. It is not acceptable to coerce people into working virtual slave labor because they were born on the 'wrong' side of a perceived border. Immigrant labor may in fact 'strengthen' the US economy as liberals often put it, though at the expense of the immigrant's lost land, language, (268+ indigenous tongues spoken in Mexico), culture and food sovereignty..

In my search for answers i came across this group's response to immigration;

"Liberal solutions have predictably failed to address the root causes of migration or the sources of racist injustice. Amnesty and legalization will undeniable make life better for migrants currently living in the US, but they will do nothing to prevent yet more indigenas and latinos from being driven from their homes, and they will do nothing to change the US economy's dependence on cheap migrant labor.

A truly radical analysis of migration must acknowledge that most migrants would prefer to stay home, but desperate circumstances force them to risk their lives in the hopes of finding work in the US. It must recognize the effect of treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which forces hundreds of thousands of campesin@s off their land every year by dumping cheap, subsidized, US corn on the Mexican market (according to some estimates, migration across the US's souther border has tripled since NAFTA went into effect in 1994). It must take into account the way that CAFTA will exacerbate the problem, and it must acknowledge the role of infrastructure projects like the PPP in facilitating these trade agreements.

Infrastructure projects, in and of themselves, also dislocate millions of people every year. The World Trade Commission on Dams estimates that those directly displaced by dam construction in the last 60 years number 40-80 million worldwide. In Latin America, these dislocations inevitably feed northward migration."

read on @;
http://rootforce.org/?q=node/9