 "Photo: Julio Salgado")
When Shawna Forde, leader of the racist Minutemen American Defense anti-immigration group, was arrested and charged with murder in June, it was as if somebody turned the light on in a cockroach-infested kitchen. Everybody using the “Minutemen” label tried to scurry from their one-time heroine.
Forde is charged, along with two others, with two counts of 1st degree murder and one count of attempted murder in Arizona. The three are accused of killing Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia, as well as wounding Gina Marie Gonzalez during a home-invasion drug robbery.
Forde and her cohorts, Albert Robert Gaxiola and Jason Eugene Bush — also members of the MAD, allegedly targeted the Flores family as drug dealers. They supposedly claimed to be police officers, burst in and opened fire in their attempt to steal drug money, according to multiple news sources. The result? Two innocent people murdered, one wounded, no drugs, no money.
The reason behind the murders is built on the group’s need to raise money for their vile border activities, namely to assail any Mexican they believe is crossing illegally. Bullets — and dog food for the pit bulls needed to chase people through the Southwest desert — are expensive, after all.
Once touted as a rising star by like-minded groups in other states wearing the “Minutemen” brand, Forde is now avoided like the bubonic plague. Her actions turned the light on and the rest ran. The hurried distance other Minutemen placed between themselves and Forde is reminiscent of German Gestapo accused of atrocities during the Holocaust. They ran and hid.
Ironically, Forde was the poster darling for all Minutemen at the end of last year. In December, Forde grabbed headlines — and supremacist sympathy — when she claimed to have been the victim of a home-invasion robbery “carried out by a trio of Spanish-speaking men who … beat her unconscious, sexually assaulted her [and] slashed the back of her neck” as reported by numerous mainstream media outlets.
Police can’t substantiate her claims and, in fact, Forde is suspected of generating the “assault” as a hoax to promote herself.
Pretending to be police officers isn’t the only façade these groups don. They also hide behind the U.S. flag and pretend to be patriots.
It’s true that some members of similar quasi-patriotic hate-mongering groups are ex-military. The ones who join, though, tend to be the dung beetles of former military personnel. Many are convicted felons. Others belong to different white supremacist groups.
They’ve forgotten, or twisted to triviality, such military concepts as honor, respect and valor.
The purpose these vigilante organizations tout as their credo is one reliant on creating terror. In essence, the paramilitarized nativist groups frighten the shit out of unsuspecting citizens with immigrant-bashing rhetoric in order to support vigilante operations along the U.S.-Mexico border.
They grab as many headlines as possible, post the articles on Web sites and ask for donations. There is a lot of money to be made in selling fear and hatred, believe it or not. Terrorizing the hell out of old “Mable and Bob” in Nebraska by convincing them the “brown menace” is threatening their existence can provide a steady stream of revenue.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the strategy works — and works well. “Nativist extremist” groups across the country, like the Minutemen organizations, grew by 20 percent, “from 144 in 2007 to 173 last year.”
Even if Minuteman collectives don’t violate civil rights — which we’re certain they do, —they clearly have no regard for human rights.
In effect, groups like Forde’s MAD, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the Minuteman Project, et al, are terrorist organizations that draw on the same fear-mongering and race-baiting strategies used by the Ku Klux Klan. They operate in factionalized, vitriolic and clandestine fashion, but are a true threat to decency.
If our federal government wishes to make a real humanitarian difference while working out comprehensive immigration reform, it should outlaw these groups and put them where they belong — out of business and behind bars.
No matter how these bigots try to clean up the codified language in their publications and signage, it still reads as hate speech. As soon as President Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Protection Act, every border hate group should be placed on notice and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
If Forde is convicted — hopefully — the refrigerator light will shine on the rest of these cockroach organizations and they will scatter into obscurity.
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