COLORADO SPRINGS- I had the pleasure Tuesday night to attend a membership recruiting meeting for a Minuteman border protection group. About fifty citizens turned up, with a collective IQ of probably about that. Lots of people eager to use their handguns against brown usurpers of American land, jobs and social programs.
Protect our border because the Federal Government won’t do it. Protect it against immigrants, Hepatitis B, Drug-resistant TB, drugs, rape & pillage (seriously) and terrorism. The pitch was big on the threat of terrorism, 9/11 and all.
We knew they were bigots because they didn’t care a lick about the Canadian border. My friend Mark Lewis and I were going to show up in Klan robes, to mix it up and mock their bigoted enthusiasm, but we got there late and copped out.
The meeting was held at a police station of all places. We were going to make a stink about that, but didn’t.
In fact I spent the whole meeting trying to think of pointed questions but didn’t say a peep. And worse, when a protestor stood up and disrupted the presentation I didn’t chime in with words of support. He was pelted with insults and led out of the room with his young daughter. I felt very bad that she would have been hurt by the universal condemnation of her dad’s heroism. I do so hope to run into the two again someday.
By the way, the man was called out of the room by the officer in charge at the Falcon Police Sub-station, Sargent Rob Kelly who had I guess appointed himself bouncer to the public meeting. The protestor’s comments were disruptive but not obstructive. The minuteman spokesman didn’t ask to be assisted, the officer abruptly jumped in.
Mark and I had decided our presence would be most effective after the meeting, providing an opposing voice interview to the TV crew. It worked out, the TV crew was just as repulsed as we at the presence of such trigger-happy white people meeting in a police station community room.
In hindsight, I might have some suggestions for effective communication disruptors, if the goal is to dissuade as many of the attendees as possible from signing up with the Minutemen. If you get a chance to attend one of these meetings, here are a couple tactics you might consider.
Don’t do the KKK robes, they won’t let you in the meeting and the satire will be lost on them. Instead wear a t-shirt with the vintage Klan poster depicting Uncle Sam saying “I want you to join the Klan.” Later in the slideshow the Minutemen have the same image but this time it says “I want you to join the Minutemen.”
The first thing the Minutemen do in their presentation is try to dispel the idea that they appeal to bigots. If you are motivated by racial or cultural hatred, they ask you to please leave. Now. I so wish that I’d chosen that uncomfortably silent moment to stand up and walk out, well almost out, before saying “just kidding!”
The rest of the meeting was just more cheap manipulation, with little room to question the truck-sized fallacies in their fear-mongering. Questions were only solicited well past the emotional appeals. Laughter might have cracked the reverential manner in which the audience absorbed the bombastic presentation.
A strange point: There’s a $50 fee for applicants who require a security check before being accepted. The fee is waived for anyone who has a handgun permit. I wonder if the Minutemen are interested in you if you don’t have a gun. How then would they expect you to shoot Mexicans?
Do you have any questions you’d like to ask the Minutemen?
I don’t think that the name of the Minutemen organizer is his real name. I have tried to clue in the reporter who wrote for The Independent about this. Patrick Henry was the most famous Minuteman of olden times. It is an inside joke this prick is playing with the press, I do believe. Kind of like the program, “The Jeffersons’. lol.
“Jeff Henry” is nom de guerre for this fascist who I am sure is hiding some interesting history away from being found via GOOGLE. Check and see what you can find. It’s like he just dropped into the internet from another planet!
Have you had a chance to read the Independent article yet? His charade claiming not to be a racist he fluffed up with telling her that he had been a Peace Corp volunteer once in Nepal. This guy is selling the Brooklyn Bridge to the Colorado press, and they are buying it. I just emailed Naomi, and asked her to show some positive proof that “Jeff Henry” is the guy’s real name. I don’t think she has it, but am waiting to hear back from her. There is a certain sociopathic character to this guy. Naomi labeled him “saccharine-sweet.” But I see worse in his style.
What do you think? You know this city and state a million times better than I do. “Jeff Henry” the innocent Colorado Springs guy? I rather doubt it. He may be an illegal alien….
Nope. A friend of mine dug him up. Jeff Henry is a Chiropractor in Colorado Springs and wrote this online:
Dear Congressman Tancredo,
I want you to know that as a citizen of Colorado and a fellow Republican, I appreciate your efforts at securing our borders. I am not an expert, but it seems to me that an organized effort on the part of a foreign power to facilitate illegal entry into our country is tantamount to an act of war. At the very least, it is not the act of a friendly neighbor. It should be protested in the strongest possible way, and we should deploy forces along our southern border without further delay.
While the Minuteman project has been a huge success and has highlighted the problem and dispelled the myth that the border can not be secured, a strong military presence would be much better. I would support setting up a Gitmo-type camp in the desert for aliens captured while attempting to enter this country illegally. I am sure that spending the rest of their lives on a chain gang would give them time to contemplate the error of their way, and would send the message to terrorists and illegals alike that we are serious about border security.
Congressman, it is way past time to take border security seriously. I am surprised (and thankful) that we have not seen a serious terrorist attack via the southern border already. I simply cannot understand why we allow this obvious threat to go unaddressed. You have my full support!
Sincerely,
Dr. Jeff Henry
Colorado Springs