Racist Scumbag Alert!

This one comes to us from the good offices of Dave Neiwert over at Orcinus.

Apparently, the Minutemen have come to a town near us, and they have brought some of their little bullet-headed friends with them, to wit:



The extra galling thing for me is that this took place in Laguna Beach. I was born in Laguna Beach and I would suspect that not one of these fscking numbnuts can claim that. That's my fscking home!. It may sound odd to say, but I feel a littel violated. I'll let Dave tell the salient part of the story:

Well, I've been saying all along that the Minutemen's core demographic is constituted of right-wing extremists, including many outright racists.

At a recent anti-immigrant rally in Laguna Beach, the connection was made explicit.

The rally was held July 30. It apparently was a follow-up of sorts to a similar rally held in the same locale on July 16, in which a local anti-immigration activist decided to protest a local arts festival's financial support for a day labor center for undocument workers. This rally drew the participation of the Save Our State campaign (an ostensibly mainstream anti-immigration organization) and the Minutemen's Jim Gilchrist. It also drew a contingent of neo-Nazis.

A Live Journal account gives a quick overview of what occurred:

Save Our State and founder of the Minutman project Jim Gilchrist organized the protest at the Day Labor Center to oppose the hiring of day laborers by city residents two weeks after some members of SOS attended an unofficial rally at the Laguna Beach Arts Festival. There they protested the event's contribution through rental space sale to city coffers, which in turn pays out $21,000 to the group that operates the Center. That original anti-immigrant protest organizer, known as OCAngel, has publicly disassociated herself from the Minutman Project/S.O.S. after neo-Nazis stood with S.O.S. members threatened her due to her Jewish background.

... What's going on, of course, is that the Minutemen provide an ideal opportunity for white racists to "mainstream" their agenda, using the relatively benign "average citizens" that Lou Dobbs exclusively observes in their ranks as just so much cover.

These craptacular losers are now stepping into our house. That is really unacceptable.

And now they are officially doing their thing in the Tecate/Campo region. I can hardly wait for Labor Day when me and the gang go camping down there at a local park. If we have to pass through one of their pickets, that's going to be, as Jayne Cobb says, "an interesting day..."

mojo sends

Update 1.0 Apparently this was not a sanctioned "Minuteman" event, although the head Minuteman Jim Gilchrist showed up to the hatefest with some pals. This was sponsored by an even more odious group called Save Our State, which, if memory serves, was one of the prime bits of muscle in the last few Republican voter intimdation campaigns along with Barbara Coe's browshirts. Interetingly though, the rally organizer, OCAngel, has apparently bailed on this group out of terminal embarassment. She apparently didn't realize there would be Nazis at a Nazi rally.