One of the hardest things about being a California historian is watching the same tragedies repeating themselves, nearly every generation. Ever since the Anglo conquest in 1846, non-whites have faced the brunt of scapegoating during hard economic times. And in almost every case, this immigrant-bashing has turned violent.

California’s ugly history of racial terror spans all 150+ years of US ownership. It includes the attacks on Mexican miners (here legally under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) in the Sierra goldfields in 1850, the state-sanctioned genocide of Native peoples in central and Northern California later in the 1850s, the forced disposession of Latinos’ land in the 1870s, the violent assaults on Chinese laborers and communities in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and the forcible deportation of 1 million Mexican residents of CA, including many US citizens in the early 1930s.

Now, in 2007, it is returning, with an ugly vengeance. Last Friday, day laborer Artemio Santiago Garcia was savagely beaten in Seaside, a majority-Latino city next to Monterey. Prosecutors are calling it a hate crime. We can call it the leading edge of outright terrorism, a predictable evolution in the already ugly immigration paranoia. And it’s spreading.

From today’s Monterey Herald (linked above):

Rather than cleaning houses or mowing lawns, what he got was a severe beating to the head and upper body that made him lose consciousness and could have ended tragically, he believes, had he not come to and found a pipe to scare his assailant….

  Santiago Garcia’s assailant entered an abandoned house, and they both began walking along a hallway, the man pointing out the rooms and telling him things he didn’t understand. When they reached the rear of the house, his assailant pulled out a flashlight and turned it on.

“I was then standing behind him, wondering what we would do, when he turned around and slammed me on the head,” he recalls. “I immediately fell and lost consciousness. Later I felt more blows, to my head and to my upper body. Then he dragged me outside the house.”…

“I ran away and then I hid under one of the houses. I was afraid that if he saw where I’d run to, he would come after me. I was hidden for a minute or two, then I walked into the street screaming and asking for help. I was bleeding through my nose and mouth.”

Santiago Garcia told the reporter that he wasn’t the first victim of such an attack – that last year an older man, also from Oaxaca, was also beaten – but that he did not feel safe in telling the police.

The article goes on to note that other Latinos – regardless of resident status – are feeling more vulnerable to this kind of hate:

A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank found that Latino residents are feeling more discrimination than before. Pollsters attributed the results to failed immigration reform policies.

“All we want is a work permit,” worker Jose Perez said. “We don’t even want residency. All we want is to be able to work.”

If this isn’t chilling enough, the incomparable David Neiwert, a Seattle-based author who has studied racial hate and the far-right on the West Coast and the founder of Orcinus, has now come across a video apparently showing a group of white bigots shooting and killing a Mexican somewhere along the border. They may or may not be related to a San Diego offshoot of Jim Gilchrist’s notorious Minutemen organization – the San Diego group’s violent harassment of Latino day laborers was charted by Neiwert earlier in the week:

  Halloween or not, the San Diego Minutemen take year-round pleasure in scaring immigrants. On Saturday mornings, when they travel to the sleepy suburban gas stations where immigrant day laborers go to find work, they create scenes that would play well in a show called “Nativists Gone Wild.” They call immigrants “wetbacks” and “Julios.” They pull out Mace and threaten passing motorists who disagree with them. Calling those who hire day laborers “slavemasters,” they’ve been known to slap flashing amber police lights on their SUVs and chase the would-be employers down. When they’re not busy physically intimidating migrants, they take to the airwaves and the Internet to accuse them, without a shred of evidence, of running child prostitution rings and practicing “voodoo Santeria rituals.”

Unfortunately, it is not a great step to go from physically intimidating migrants, to beating them in an abandoned building along Monterey Bay, to shooting at them in hopes of killing them outright.

And how did this terror come about? Is it some ugly tangent to a more mainstream dialogue about immigration?

Sadly, that is far from the case. Ever since this current round of immigrant-bashing began around 2003, it has been driven by paranoia not about lost revenue or lost jobs, but about racial fears. Victor Davis Hanson’s 2003 book Mexifornia began the wave, stoking fears that California was somehow being “overrun” by Latinos who were going to undermine our civilization with their supposedly dirty, third world ways. From there these sentiments have taken off, with many immigrant bashers speaking of immigration as a kind of “invasion” or, in Michelle Malkin’s favored terminology, a “reconquista” to overturn the Anglo conquest of 1846-48.

An example comes from the comments on an article by Peter Schrag on the California Progress Report yesterday, where one “Steve” started off by citing poll numbers about border security but then threw in this telling item:

Also, it’s suggested that Californians don’t notice the ‘browning of our complexion’ anymore. Hmm. I wonder about that…. He [Schrag] then comes to the conclusion that Southerners and Midwesterners won’t mind handing their states over to the Latinos in the end, either.

While it is absolutely true that immigration reform is necessary and should be discussed sensibly, too much of the conversation is dominated by openly racist sentiments like this. And as we sit idly by while racism is spewed forth, it becomes easier for this hate to go mainstream, and for others to start acting on their violent xenophobia.

Why is it that the immigration debate stirs up this kind of terrorism? Precisely because of its origins in racist thought. Behind every moment of immigrant-bashing in California’s history is a belief that this state and its economic benefits are reserved for whites only. To adherents of this belief, the presence of people of color is to be tolerated at best and actively fought when they deem it necessary.

Some might argue that this violence against immigrants is the product of a fringe mentality, that the mainstream and “serious” anti-immigrant voices would never condone it. So why, then, are conservatives like Lou Dobbs and Debra J. Saunders campaigning to free two former Border Patrol officers who admitted to and were convicted of shooting a suspected drug smuggler?

Voices like these conflate smugglers and immigrants; they are all lumped in together as “lawbreakers” in their terminology. As long as they continue to cast immigration in terms of an “invasion,” condone the acts of the Minutemen, speak openly of racist fears, and call for the further intimidation of immigrants and Latinos by the Department of Homeland Security, they are not excused from their responsibilities either in the emerging anti-immigrant terrorism.

Hi, everyone! I hope you had a good time chatting today. Well, it’s that time again when the sun comes down and the open thread starts up. So what’s on your mind tonight? What are you thinking about right now?

Tonight, I’m thinking about this Total Buzz piece about even MORE Minutemen follies. Remember the Minutemen? Yes, that racist group that’s falling apart! Well, it turns out that not only the Minutemen Project headed by Aliso Viejo man Jim Gilchrist is undergoing internal turmoil, but so is the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. Remember them? They’re the original Arizona group that split from the original Minutemen project. Who knew that all these crazed egos can take down such a committed group of crazy xenophobes?

Sorry, but I just had to share that hilarious anecdote with you while I’m on my way to Drinking Liberally in Rancho Santa Margarita. Hey look, I can see my house all the way from here at the edge of the world on the 241 Toll Road! So what hilarious anecdote would you like to share with me? What good news clipping or wild viral video do you want to post tonight? What other blog story are you still reading?

Go ahead. Make my day. Fire away! : )

Oh, my! As soon as I picked up my OC Register, I suddenly found this:

A Superior Court judge on Thursday rejected Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist’s request to be immediately returned sole control of the anti-illegal immigration group – a ruling that leaves the organization immobilized.

Judge Randell Wilkinson also placed restrictions on the three directors tussling with Gilchrist, noting in his order that there were “serious issues concerning the credibility of the claims of both Jim Gilchrist and the defendants…”

Oh, my! What can I say about this? Well, perhaps I’ll say more after the flip…

OK, so what again caused this? (From OC Register)

Gilchrist was ousted from the group in January by the vote of the three directors, who said they were concerned with sloppy accounting and possible fundraising improprieties. The three then took control of the organization’s primary bank account and, at least temporarily, the group’s main Web site.

However, Jim Gilchrist is saying that these three “hijacked” the group. Oh yeah, and Gilchrist is “under attack by internal terrorists“(??!!). Remember, according to Gilchrist, these three “directors” were only serving “advisory roles”, and that only HE had real power over the group.

So what will now happen to the organization? Nothing, since no one is really in control.

Wilkinson did grant two Gilchrist requests: The mutinying directors – Barbara Coe, Melvin Stewart and Deborah Ann Courtney – cannot spend donations to the group and they cannot use stationery with Gilchrist’s printed signature.

But the lawyer for the defendants said he was pleased with the ruling.

“It’s 85 percent of what we wanted,” attorney Jim Lacy said. “The best interim remedy, if my clients aren’t going to have total control, is that the organization will remain neutral.”

And the best permanent remedy, in my humble opinion, is that THIS VIGILANTE RACIST GROUP DIES OF IMMOBILITY! Jim Gilchrist, Barbara Coe, and the rest of the Minuteman group all need to go away and stop harassing all brown people. And you know what? If all this infighting among the Minutemen prevents them from harassing any more Latinos, then the infighting is serving a great purpose.

So what will happen next to the Minutemen?

Wilkinson also called for an April 25 hearing, at which Gilchrist will have to convince the judge that the Minuteman Project should not be handed over to a third-party receivership until a trial is completed. Lacy said his clients would support a receivership.

Well, I’m still hoping that the legal action doesn’t end. So long as the Minuteman Follies continue, they can’t do any more destructive deeds. Let them fight themselves… That way, these undocumented workers have one fewer thing to worry about.

The power struggle “has absolutely stalled the movement from coast to coast,” Gilchrist said.

That is, Jim Gilchrist said it to an Orange County judge as he sues to retake sole control over Minuteman, Inc. So what exactly happened in court yesterday? Follow me after the flip for more…

From The OC Register:

An effort by Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist to regain authority over the group Wednesday prompted a Superior Court judge to encourage the bickering sides to work out their differences.

But Gilchrist called the differences among the leaders of the illegal-immigration opponent group “irreconcilable.” Judge Randell Wilkinson is expected to rule within a week on whether control should be returned to the Aliso Viejo resident until a full trial takes place later this year. He also indicated the possibility of placing the group in a neutral receivership until that time.

So what has this racist, anti-immigrant “movement” been stalled over? Oh, that’s right- Gilchrist thinks he’s the sole member of The Minuteman Project’s board of directors, and that the other three directors were simply “advisors” with no real decision-making power.

So what do the other “directors” think about Gilchrist and his claims of sole control over Minuteman, Inc.? The Register has more:

The three directors being sued by Gilchrist said they tried unsuccessfully to get him to address concerns in December, and after his removal still tried to make the peace with him.

“I pleaded with him,” said one director, Huntington Beach’s Barbara Coe, founder of the long-standing California Coalition for Immigration Reform.

The three directors said they were still open to reaching an agreement with Gilchrist. But he made it clear such a deal wasn’t going to happen, especially since a lawyer for the three has contacted two federal agencies to alert them to possible wrongdoing.

Yes, you heard it right… The Wicked Witch of the West pleaded with him! It’s just too bad that all those secret bank accounts, missing funds, sloppy accounting, and donations that had been collected without the full board’s knowledge got in the way. And oh yeah, I’m sure that the bounced checks didn’t help either.

The judge is expected to rule within a week on whether Gilchrist can retake sole control over Minuteman, Inc. However, I just have a strange feeling that this trial won’t quite end the feud. Can anyone say, “APPEAL“? Still, this would be so sad… If it weren’t so DAMN HILARIOUS that these gawd awful racists are destroying their own empire of hate! So who’s getting the last laugh now?

hehe ; )

Here are some wild and wonderful stories from behind The Orange Curtain that you just have to see to believe:

– Irvine protesters hold out hope for peace. There may have been only 80 antiwar activists holding their candles for peace last night, but they certainly made an impact. Martin Wisckol has more in today’s Register.

– Gilchrist makes peace with former foe to fight new foes. Apparently, Mr. Minuteman has now hired a former GOP candidate in the 2005 Special Election as his attorney as he battles his former allies in court to retake control of Minuteman Project, Inc. Martin Wisckol also has more on this story in today’s Register.

– How have the Vietnamese-Americans assimilated… Or have they? That’s been a question that all of us behind The Orange Curtain have asked since the special election debacle began to unfold last month. Guest bloggers Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs have some interesting answers at The Liberal OC. And finally…

– Crazy Dana caught on video! He spoke out against the imprisonment of the two Border Patrol agents on Saturday… And he did it just before going surfing. Joe Shaw has the full video at Orange Juice.

First, it was the Costa Mesa City Council taking federal law into their own hands by voting to deputize police officers as immigration agents…
And now, much of the nation is following. First it was just the Minuteman Project, but now it has become a giant monster.

So what is it about these anti-immigration measures taking off in Orange County, and spreading throughout the rest of California, and being copied elsewhere in the nation? As a native Orange County resident, I live in the middle of all of this…
And I want to examine the issues surrounding local governments enforcing immigration law. Today, we begin in Huntington Beach, where anti-immigrant hatemonger Barbara Coe had worked for over 10 years to bring more “awareness” to the issue of all those “Mexicans invading our border as part of a reconquista for Mexico to retake the Southwest”. She tried, and she tried, and she tried to “raise awareness”, but all she got was a failed initiative that was thrown out of court, and snark from OC Weekly to go with it…
That is, until… (Follow me after the flip for it…)

Jim Gilchrist took his “Minutemen” on a little trip to the Mexican border. Martin Wisckol, of The OC Register, has more:

It was a match made in activist heaven.

Huntington Beach’s Barbara Coe had toiled for more than a decade against illegal immigration, becoming the gritty grande dame of the movement. Just as progress was sputtering, along came Aliso Viejo’s Jim Gilchrist and his two-week Minuteman citizen border surveillance.

The April 2005 event along a desolate stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border attracted 880 volunteers and thrust the issue back into the national spotlight. It revitalized the movement and, with Gilchrist, gave it a public face.

Coe and her California Coalition for Immigration Reform found an instant partner in the high-profile upstart. The public debate suddenly included President Bush, who called the Minutemen “vigilantes,” and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who praised the border watchers. While still facing an uphill battle, activists saw support swell by the day.

And all of a sudden, immigration became a hot topic again. People started talking about the “illegal aliens” and how much havoc they wreak on our community. People began blaming “illegal aliens” for every problem facing the California and the nation, from the growing health care crisis, to the overcrowded schools, to the out-of-control crime in all the major cities “plagued by all those illegal aliens”. And thanks to the Minutemen, people started paying attention to far-right xenophobes like Barbara Coe once again.

Barbara Coe, along with other anti-immigrant activists, soon joined forces with Gilchrist, and they all formed a “Board of Directors” to run the Minuteman Project. This came just after Gilchrist’s better than expected third place finish in the race to fill Chris Cox’s vacated 48th Congressional District seat in December 2005. Everything seemed to be looking up for Gilchrist, the Minutemen, and the whole anti-immigrant movement… Until…

(From OC Register)

Internal conflicts began surfacing late last year. Gilchrist bounced a series of checks in December. Minuteman Project Director Deborah Ann Courtney came across a newspaper article about a nonprofit group associated with the Minuteman Project being fined for fundraising violations. Other fiscal issues arose.

(From LA Times)

By the fall of 2006, the relationship between Gilchrist and his board began to deteriorate quickly.

There were public accusations of secret bank accounts, missing funds, sloppy accounting and donations that had been collected without the full board’s knowledge. None of the claims were made in court and proof wasn’t offered. But the seriousness of the charges drove the former allies further apart.

Coe, Stewart and Courtney said in interviews with The Times that they finally concluded that there was as much as $750,000 missing from Minuteman accounts. They said they filed a theft report with the FBI and asked for an investigation.

So what went wrong? Apparently, sloppy accounting from the professional accountant. “Fundraising improprieties”, possible Postal Service violations, and IRS worries began to haunt the organization. And all of a sudden, the organization that made the “immigration crisis” into a national issue was itself falling into complete crisis mode.

And then, everything fell apart early this year. (From LA Times)

Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist was confronted by three associates who had been his closest allies when he arrived at his group’s headquarters in Lake Forest in late January.

“Jim,” said Marvin Stewart, “the board has terminated you as president.”

Gilchrist recalled that it felt like his heart sank to his stomach, prompting him to instinctively yell, “You’re all fired.”

“No, Jim, you are fired,” Stewart said.

Now, everything is in shambles. Gilchrist accuses Marvin Stewart, Deborah Courtney, and Barbara Coe of “internal terrorism“ for “hijacking” his organization. Barbara Coe, on the other hand, still considers Gilchrist to be a “courageous patriot”, though she does feel that he was “deceived” and “misled”, and “‘used’ by some others for THEIR personal gain“. Meanwhile, Stewart and Courtney are claiming to put an end to the “profit[ing] from an effort to secure America’s borders” as they take over the group.

But still, Courtney and Stewart’s grip on Minutemen, Inc. is quite tenuous. On March 21, an OC Superior Court judge will hear Gilchrist’s case as he sues to retake control of the group that he founded. But whatever happens in court, all seem to agree that “the movement” has lost its way, and that it will be quite difficult for the Minutemen to regain its footing, along with its past glory.

In the interest of regional balance, here are a few things in the part of the state that gets sun (jus’ kiddin’, guys) which caught my eye:

• Full public financing of municipal elections will be on the agenda at tonight’s Santa Monica City Council Meeting.  Solidly progressive City Councilman Kevin McKeown raised this issue earlier in the year and couldn’t get a second, but they ran a staff report, and both Common Cause and the League of Women Voters are pushing this hard.  Just like everything else, we’ll need to win the Clean Money battle from the bottom up.

more…

• This complete crackup of the Minuteman Project is so hilariously predictable that it should be a reality show.  I can’t wait for the twists and turns and the backstabbing.  You put a bunch of power-hungry authoritarians in the same group, who knew that they’d start fighting each other for control?  Fascinatin’.

• You might want to think twice before eating in LA – the biggest produce wholesaler in the city, the 7th Street Market, was cited for multiple violations, including rat infestation.  Never been, not going now.

• I wish I had the time to write the badly needed very long series of articles about the proposed LNG terminal off the coast of Malibu.  This would be an environmental disaster for the coastline, yet the Governor has given tacit support to BHP Billiton to build it.  This blog is a great resource for this story.  Look at this part:

Environmental Protection Agency political appointees used non-existent analysis and misled the public when they reversed course and rejected tough smog rules for the proposed Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu coast, the chairman of the House Investigations Committee said Monday.

Rep. Henry Waxman also accused top EPA officials of refusing to hand over key documents detailing the 2005 decision by a White House political appointee to overrule regional EPA officials on a key decision about whether the Cabrillo Port proposal can go forward.

The news from Washington comes as BHP Billiton and its lobbying firm have hired another two close associates of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, to press the case behind the scenes for Cabrillo Port. That facility faces key licensing decisions next month, and could be operating on Malibu’s coastal horizon in three years.

It looks like Assemblyman Lloyd Levine has withdrawn his support for the LNG Terminal, which is key.

• New op-ed columnists at the LA Times.  Surprise, there are less now than there were – cost-cutting rulez!  Also, somehow, Jonah Goldberg kept his slot (then again, I actually like his op-ed today), though Arianna Huffington, Adam Hochschild, Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican!) and Sandra Tsing Loh come aboard as “contributing editors,” which I think means they’ll write op-eds but won’t be paid as staff op-ed writers.

This just in from The Liberal OC:

Barbara Coe just resigned from the Minuteman Project. She was on the board and recently voted to give Jim Gilchrist the boot because of “financial and accountability issues” according to the Orange County Register. Gilchrist took the group to court and filed a “it’s mine and you can’t have it” lawsuit.

You may remember Coe’s name from the Tan Nguyen scandal. The fake letterhead that Nguyen used to write the infamous “immigrants can’t vote” letter on used the name “California Coalition for Immigration Reform” and Coe is the founder of that organization-but was not involved in the Nguyen letter.

OK, so you still don’t remember Barbara Coe? Well, then follow me after the flip for a quick history lesson, as well as my personal thoughts on the Minutemen’s loss of the Wicked Witch of the West…

Ah, Barbara Coe! Yes, that Barbara Coe… Ya know, the one whose group is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Yes, the one who didn’t have a problem with Congressional Candidate Tan Nguyen sending out the now infamous “Immigrants Can’t Vote” Letter under her organization’s letterhead…

AND SHE’S GONE! Well, she’s just out of the Minuteman organization. But still, it’s so exhilarating to see OC’s own Wicked Witch of the West cause havoc for her fellow Latino haters! I just hope that they all suffer in the chaos that they are creating for themselves, just as they’ve caused so much suffering for all the Latinos here in Orange County.

Gawd knows they deserve it. : )