Smash the Minutemen in SF

Any info on why they're coming? And also, where are they coming from?

They're coming as a contingent of the Tax day thing - so there should probably be quite a few of them. This looks like it should involve Minute-types from the whole region.

THIS IS ANTI-FASCISM

Here is their website. Their address is in Fremont, which is filled with immigrants. I like the feature where they show photos of latinos vs. members of their own group, and ask 'which america do you want?'
http://www.goldengateminutemen.org/

They list several events which have nothing to do with immigration, such as a talk by Bill Ayers, which their group protested. They don't like San Francisco because of the sanctuary resolution.

Thanks for getting back to me so quick.

The world is not a grand democratic forum where we can all sit at the table and argue it out until we agree on something - People are brutalized and attacked every day. To simply sit idly by while people drum up support for racism and fascism is the worst kind of complacency.

sweeet

hope yours turns out good and hope ours does too ;)

but you got a better flyer

We are not anti-immigration, just anti ILLEGAL Immigration. If you don't know the difference, educate yourselves and stop demanding we take care of you.

whether something is legal or not isnt much of a concern to us, just so you know. we're are interested in justice and liberty (which usually don't align themselves with the law), neither of which you support. Some of the most horrendous acts throughout history have been completely legal (hiroshima was legal, the war in iraq was legal, segregation was legal, even everything hitler did was legal under German law).

Fuck off and stay out of our (sanctuary) city.

Here's a sample from the Golden Gate Minutemen website;

"We don't want our country, our culture, or our language - the very foundation that was handed down to us by our forefathers who toiled and died for our freedom, to be diluted by gate crashing illegal aliens who are aided by bleeding heart liberals, cheap, greedy business owners, and worse yet, self-serving elected government officials!"

They are somewhat correct when stating that "illegal" or undocumented immigrants are often aided by greedy business owners, specifically those in large corporations like meatpacking and agribusiness, where they toil away at below minimum wage, and if injured on the job (common in meatpacking), are usually sent home without medical care. The key word of "aided" should be "aided and exploited by corporations", and this would be more accurate..

Neither do the Minutemen bother to educate their group's members by explaining the connections between NAFTA/WTO and the increasing instability in countries like Mexico where a great deal of undocumented immigrants come from. This flaw is furthering the tendency of Minutemembers to scapegoat the undocumented immigrants as coming from "poverty nations", while ignoring how their own government (Clinton signed NAFTA into law with bipartisan Republican support, minus Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) and U.S. corporations (Cargill, ADM, ConAgra, etc...) then used NAFTA free trade agreements to override tariff protections in Mexico and flood their markets with cheap subsidized U.S. grown corn, thus driving smaller Mexican maize (corn) farmers off of their land and into the undocumented immigration stream. For all the windbag patriotic bluster of the Minutemen, they forget that the loss of the American Midwest's "family farmer" also increased as a result of NAFTA/WTO free trade policies that allowed these megafood corporations mentioned above to gobble up smaller family farms into the undocumented immigrant virtual slave plantations of today..

On the other hand, the resistance to the Minutemen comes in the form of either "open border" or "no border" groups of supposed anarcho-socialists (neoliberal wolves in anarcho-socialist sheeps clothing?), or the Mexican Aztlan nationalists who seek through power of numbers to regain some credibility for the Reconquista proposal to reclaim the southwestern states for Mexico, or a new nation called Aztlan, based on the myth of southwestern U.S. being the "lost Aztec homeland". So what if hundreds of culturally and linguistically unique and indigenous peoples from Mexico die in the process of assimilation, just give us Aztecs our land back!!

In reality (that unpleasant condition where facts disprove myths) both sides of this debate are inherently wrong. The "No Borders" and "Aztlan" groups are wrong in thinking that people cannot live decent lives in their homeland of Mexico without needing to come here to be exploited by U.S. corporations, forgetting that indigenous peoples of the southwestern U.S. already have their own sovereign land (Navajo, Tohono O'ohdam, Pima, etc...) that is neither U.S. nor Mexico, and there were always natural boundaries that distinguished "borders" between different indigenous cultures, just no barbed wire fences along those boundaries. The Minutemen are wrong from their overdependency on U.S. empire with blinders on as to how their own government and corporate apparatus created and continues to benefit from the increased flow of undocumented immigrants..

If anyone is depriving the Minutemembers of their freedom of speech, it is their own leadership's unwillingness to address the effects of NAFTA/WTO on increasing undocumented immigration. Repeal NAFTA/WTO isn't heard very often at Minutemen rallies, they feel that it would be easier and more cost effective to construct a 500-some mile fence along the border than to tear up some simple pieces of paper we call NAFTA, as if NAFTA was somehow authored by the righteous Hand of God, when it was only neoliberal Pres. Clinton's free hand that wasn't tied up under Monica's dress..

What if the Minutemembers began a new strategy of boycotting the megafood corporations like Cargill, ADM, IBP and other meatpacking/agribusiness corporations that exploit and encourage undocumented immigration instead of only scapegoating the immigrants themselves? Could Minutepeople handle life without processed meat hamburgers, chicken sammiches and other corporate products of undocumented immigrant labor? This could be the Minutemen's ultimate form of hypocrisy, complaining about undocumented immigration yet purchasing and supporting the very corporations that encourage more undocumented immigrants to come here..

There is a good chance if a "Repeal NAFTA/WTO" themed protest or a "STOP IBP Exploitation of Undocumented Workers" protest by the Minutemen would gain them supporters from all sides of the spectrum, as this would finally get to the source of the problem..

Same goes for the left, instead of a "Stop ICE deportations" protest, how about a "Demand ICE prosecute meatpacking corporations that exploit undocumented labor" protest would draw some disgruntled Minutemembers to their side also..

What if the Minutepeople and the defenders of undocumented workers put down their differences and worked together to repeal NAFTA/WTO? If people on both sides of the ideology fence believe that NAFTA/WTO is indestructable and can only work for "symptom relief", than NAFTA/WTO will remain the status quo and no change will result, other than more infighting and cultural tensions. Maybe we all need to become more optimistic that NAFTA/WTO is only a collection of foolish words on paper, and finding the location of written NAFTA/WTO documents and lighting them up like a Tejas brush fire would do the world some serious good..

So until that happens, go ahead and get into a street melee with the "opposition" if that makes you feel better, though remember that in the end all this polarized arguing without any rational discourse on how both sides could be combining their energies to repeal NAFTA/WTO and thus alleviate the instability and poverty that fuels undocumented immigration enables the corporations to continue this process indefinitely, and the ecosystem, workers both foreign and domestic suffer as a result..

Repeal NAFTA from the left;

"WHEREAS Participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) has meant a race to the bottom for workers, family farmers and the environment, contributing to a $600 + billion trade deficit and a loss of millions of US jobs; and

WHEREAS Free trade has encouraged companies in the U.S. to leave the country in search of low wages, low commodity prices, anti-union climates and lax environmental laws; and

WHEREAS Free trade has stocked our retail shelves with goods produced by foreign workers under harsh working conditions that would be illegal in this country; and

WHEREAS Free trade favors multinational corporations, not citizens or communities here or abroad; and

WHEREAS Free trade agreements are not fair and beneficial to U.S. agriculture and are a threat to our national food security; and

WHEREAS The December 2005 Hong Kong WTO negotiations on agricultural subsidies, domestic supports and market access and special treatment for developing nations failed to deliver a significant development package for poor countries; and

WHEREAS Expansion of the General Agreement on Trades in Services (GATS) leaves foreign water supplies, electrical services, healthcare and education unprotected from the greedy tactics of multinational corporations; therefore, be it

RESOLVED That we support measures to restore control of trade from multinational corporations to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government and for the benefit of U.S. citizens, by:

* Immediately withdrawing from NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO
* Opposing unfair “free trade” agreements such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
* Opposing expansion of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
* Demanding Congress implement fair trade agreements that protect U.S. workers and farmers, the environment and strengthen local economies as well as affording comparable standards to global workers by guaranteeing livable wages, safe working conditions, child labor laws and environmental protections"

found @;
http://www.paa-tx.org/node/1395

Repeal NAFTA from the right;

"13) WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA: These trade agreements are unacceptable and that if they are not substantially revised then withdrawal is necessary. Resolution 63, passed on 10/12/05 also calls for "Fair Trade". While Obama voted against CAFTA, and says that NAFTA needs to be renegotiated, while I know Ron Paul is against WTO, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, period. Ron Paul is PRO-American worker, and PRO-American rights because he is not party to the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations). Unfortunately, I can not find Obama's stance on the WTO.

Ron Paul also knows inner-city youths are punished unfairly in the war on drugs. The war on drugs has abused our Bill of Rights. Ron Paul believes in property rights being the FOUNDATION right for the American homeowner and is against eminent domain - Obama supports NAFTA and NASCO by being a member of the CFR."

found @;
http://americanendeavor.blogspot.com/2007/12/barack-obama-and-cheerleader-oprah.html

There are plenty of points of disagreement between both opposing left/right sides, yet there seems to be growing concensus on both the left and right that repealing NAFTA/WTO is needed to restore our collective sanity. Would there not be incentive put forth by corporations that benefit from NAFTA/WTO free trade policies to derail any attempts at unity building across the left/right spectrums??

Where on their website does it say this?

Your search - events site:http://www.goldengateminutemen.org - did not match any documents.

Under 'Pictures', it shows them at the Bill Ayers talk at St. Mary's College.
http://www.goldengateminutemen.org/photo.htm

And, one should know that the Tax Day Tea Party event in San Francisco is planned for 11am Civic Center as well. That is how one might infer that they are forming a contingent of this. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=80768462048

All immigrants, anarchists, communists, socialists, and poor people unite!

We will be regrouping at Cesar Chaves Park everyhour on the hour starting at 12:00pm and ending at 6:00pm ;) We will be marching! all over town.
Add Your Comments

The rallies in SF and San Jose are NOT Minutemen events.

They are part of the 250 city "Tea Party" meet up demonstrations organized through a conservative Move-On style website. According to their website they are primarily focused on, "the bankrupt liberal agenda of the White House Administration and Congress. Specifically, the flawed “Stimulus Bill” and pork filled budget."
http://taxdayteaparty.com/about/

Golden Gate Minutemen posted to a conservative website that, "Many of us will be in San Francisco, Fremont, Hayward, San Mateo, etc. We encourage all minutemen and citizens to come out on April 15th and bring your anti illegal immigration signs" Who knows how many they will actually turn out and to which of the many Bay Area Tea Party events.
americanconservativedaily.com/2009/04/golden-gate-minutemen-participating-in-bay-area-tea-party-rallies

Essentially this is establishment conservatives in disarray, promoted by Fox News (who will broadcast live from some of the rallies), trying to take advantage of working and middle class popular outrage and fear about the economic crisis. Their anti-Obama/Stimulus Bill position is vague, they have no solutions and they are trying to get taxpayers pissed about the small amounts going help people from losing homes and jobs and not much about the trillions of our money going to the banks and rich. They are right for the wrong reasons about, "the bankrupt liberal agenda of the White House Administration and Congress and the flawed “Stimulus Bill” and pork filled budget." Rather than mobilizing against a few Minutemen who may or may not show, radicals can step up and begin doing education and organizing, which means breaking of our comfort zones and subcultures, trying to communicate common sense radical ideas and solutions in plain language, and out-organizing the right and the Democrats who created the crisis and want to solve it with more of the same.

TEA PARTIES
Agence France-Presse describes the Tea Parties:
Pro-Republican organizers say they are plugging into widespread popular anger at Democrat-led Washington.
An even bigger claim is that the catchy "tea party" idea and heavy use of Internet tools like Facebook, YouTube and blogs signals a historic first attempt by Republicans to rival Obama's renowned e-network.
"Conservatives may be catching up with their liberal counterparts in building a Web-driven, grassroots campaign to push their agenda," the Fox News television network said on its website.
"The tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects," liberal economist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman said Monday.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hIWJB0EBsIRWMzWP5t9irdVFz-Ew

Showing up to counterprotest or confront the Tea Rallies may play into the rights narrative of being persecuted by liberals.
Fox News wrote today:
As anti-tax protesters organize tea parties across the country on April 15, rumors are swirling that a backlash is brewing. Taxdayteaparty.com, which is helping to organize the protests, said more than 250 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies on April 15. Some believe ACORN will try to make the tea parties look like fringe group efforts at best, and racist undertakings at worst. Mekler said he is not concerned with how outsiders may try to portray their efforts. "The people who are involved understand they're not racist, they're not fringe, they're not even partisan," he said.
ACORN said if there are protesters, it won't be from its ranks. "The idea that ACORN is out to disrupt these meet-ups of fringe activists is yet another conservative fantasy," Kettenring said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/14/tea-party-protestors-gird-possible-backlash/

Anarchist analyst Noam Chomsky discussed this popular anger yesterday on Democracy Now,
It has a potentially positive side, like it could be like the activism of the 1930s or the 1960s, which ended up making it a more civilized society in many ways, or it could be like an unfortunate precedent that quickly comes to mind. Grievances aren't invented. I mean, for the American population, the last thirty years have been some of the worst in economic history. It's a rich country, but real wages have stagnated or declined, working hours have shot up, benefits have gone down, and people are in real trouble and now in very real trouble after the bubbles burst. And they're angry. And they want to know, "What happened to me? If in the next congressional election the economy has not begun to recover, this kind of populist rage could boil over and could have very dangerous consequences. There's a background of concern and fear, tremendous fear, and searching for some answer, which they're not getting from the establishment. "Who's responsible for my plight?" You know, and that can be exploited. And unless there's active, effective organizing and education, it's dangerous.

A POPULIST ANTI-CAPITALISM
We are at a unique moment in history where capitalism has blatantly failed, we the people in the US, Mexico and Latin America and around the world are hurting, and the government is part of the problem. It's the best opening in my lifetime for radicals, who sounded the alarm ten years ago in the street of Seattle while shutting down the WTO, to offer explanations and solutions-- or remain irrelevant as the Democrats continue business as usual and the right taps into popular discontent.

Last Saturday April 11 the 75 city protest against the bank bailout were organized in online meet up groups in two weeks through the progressive website "A New Way Forward." They describe the problem:
12 million unemployed. Foreclosures up 81%. Wall Street has taken over. We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.
They describe their solution:
DECENTRALIZE: Any bank that's "too big to fail" means that it's too big for a free market to function. The financial corporations that caused this mess must be broken up and sold back to the private market with strong, new regulatory and antitrust rules in place -- new banks, managed by new people. An independent regulatory body must protect consumers from predatory practices. As Wall St. corporations grew bigger and bigger until they were “too big to fail,” they also became so politically powerful that they led to distorted and unfair policies that served companies, not citizens. It’s not enough to try to patch up the current system. We demand serious reform that fixes the root problems in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation. And we demand that the reform happen in an open and transparent manner.

While A New Way Forward, in the tradition of the populist anti-trust movement a hundred years ago, criticize corporate capitalism's excesses; they don't take on this system at the root of our problems. In the US there are lots of signs of resistance, ACORN and others resisting foreclosures, protests against cuts in services, school closings, and layoff’s? But there is no one visibly organizing nationally and taking on the system.

Two weeks ago at mass protests in London, a general strike in Greece and protests around Europe there was clear anti-capitalist message to the organizing. The main direct action coordinating alliance, G20 Meltdown, wrote:
G20 Meltdown calls for the G20 ministers to own up to their mistakes and admit that their global dominance– the dominance of finance capitalism – is the problem, not the solution to the current economic, ecological and political meltdown. Of its nature, capitalism seeks short-term profits, looking for the fast buck. Logically, we cannot expect from it the vision needed for humanity today.

While 2 million are now out of work in Britain alone, the G20 ministers still resist nationalizing the banks, instead continuing to pour trillions into the black hole of bankers’ bad gambling debts. That money should be put into the hands of those who would spend it immediately on the high street – single mums, students, children in poverty – not on reequipping hedge fund managers’ million-dollar yachts. Those ministers should now make way for government by the people, for the people, of the people, across the planet. Let’s be patriots for the only country we have got: Planet Earth. Only then can we adequately respond to the message of the climate scientists about the clear and present danger to our biosphere, investing in life for our grandchildren, not in death and oil wars. We call on President Obama to remove all US troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan with immediate effect. This will demonstrate his intention to cooperate in establishing a world under the rule of law.

After the London protests establishment columnist Hugo Rifkind criticized the protesters in the UK Times challenging them to, "Propose some sort of feasible alternative to the world economy, instead of just bitching about it and blowing your bloody whistles?
Anti-capitalist and "participatory economics" writer Robin Hahnel responded, "Our answer is simple: we want to empower people to protect themselves and the natural environment from the damage caused by neo-liberal capitalism. But we also want to replace the economics of competition and greed with the economics of equitable co-operation so we are not forever fighting defensive battles to mitigate environmental destruction and economic injustice, and so we need not fear that a crisis such as this will happen again."

More importantly, ideas on how to engage in equitable co-operation have been tested in various real-world experiments over the past few decades. Worker participation and partial ownership in capitalist firms, producer and consumer co-operatives, community-supported agriculture, participatory budgeting (pioneered in Kerala, India, and Porto, Alegre, Brazil), egalitarian and sustainable "intentional" communities, solidarity economics, alternative currency systems and other developments have been stimulated by networking at world and regional social forums, by friendly governments in several Latin American countries , and now by an economic crisis that has abandoned billions to fend for themselves. Most of this has gone unreported in the mainstream media, partly because it does not fit neatly into the framework for economic debate defined by the Cold War so badly, for so long.

Meanwhile, we are also busy building a new economics of equitable co-operation. Some of us build in the realm of ideas, so that when a majoritarian movement is ready it will have a wealth of thoroughly vetted ideas on how to facilitate equitable co-operation to choose from. Many more of us are creating living experiments in equitable co-operation to meet needs that increasingly are going unaddressed by a moribund economic system. Ridicule us if you like. Or you can pitch in and lend a hand."

with the TEA PARTY folks. They kick out the Minutemen and other racists adn we won't fuck with their rally.

http://www.goldengateminutemen.org/

No it's not. I looked. You lie. It's not a Klan event, either. Why do you lie to us about this stuff? Do you think we're too stupid to look up the truth for ourselves?

How can you disagree that thier website shows living proof they are racist ?

This is a conservative rally, not some violent paramilitary nazi action. The minutemen are pseudo-vigilantes. Doing violence to them just gives them a platform to spread their noxious views. The Columbia students who took the bait and caused chaos at the minutemen speaking event a few years ago looked like total fools in the national media.

I urge you guys not to take the bait.

Confrontation does not mean violence either. There are non-violent ways to deal with the enemy.

speak for yourself. they shut that party down. wasn't that the idea?

How did Columbia students "take the bait" last year? Are you reffering to when Minutemen attempted to speak at Columbia, had anti-racist students stand up on stage, and a minuteman kicked the head of one of the students? I can only guess since you were not specific. What exactly was the bait in this case? Minutemen initiated the violence. How were the students in any sense responsible for any violence?

Let's stop telling those willing to directly confront racists/fascists what to do and what not to do. If tactics, strategies, ethics, and tools are of interest to you, why not bring them up at other times, and not in times when action is to be taken. Or if now is the time, let's discuss while we're ready to stand arm and arm with our comrades, and not condescend to them from the safety of being out of range.

Please don't let the minutemen get away with this. We have to do something. Please come out show support. People of SF come out. People of SJ come out. We need your support. Anti-authoritarians were are you?

MINUTEMEN ARE NOT WELCOME HERE

The Tax Day tea party thingy is NOT a Minuteman event... they did NOT say they were coming to the San Francisco thing at City Hall... so if you want to go yell at a bunch of people who have nothing to do with the Minutemen, want to go scream "racist" at a bunch of people who lost their 401ks, then go... you will look like complete a**holes will lose the tiny bit of credibility you have with everyone in this city who isn't a militant anarchist.

Oh... and what sort of "anarchist" is in favor of the largest expansion of the government in US history???

Here's what I think will happen. The immigration-themed people will be there, but it might be hard to find a group of people with the immigration signs mixed within the rest.
There have been war-tax resistance groups around for decades, and it is an important ethical issue.
Fox News and Michelle Malkin have been promoting this event heavily, and there are even merchandisers selling Tea Party gear. So, the participants will largely be composed of Fox news listeners. If you read Alex Jones conspiracy or 'libertarian' right websites, they are huffy about the cooptation of their paleoconservative position by the republicans, who were the ones who just brought the debt from $5trillion to over $11trillion during GWBush's two terms. http://www.infowars.com/republicans-and-democrats-determined-to-turn-tea-parties-into-circus-sideshow/ The GOPs goal is to blame the entire problem with debt and unemployment on Obama. Progressives should not want to signal that they are on the polar opposite side, or that they are pro-government and in favor of large debts

That's a straw man. I never said they weren't racist. I said you lied when you claimed their website contained evidence that the Tea Party was a Minuteman event. It does not. The Tea party is not a Minuteman event. It's not a Klan event, either. Why do you lie to us that it is? Have you no morals? Have you no shame? Have you never heard the story of the boy who cried, "Wolf!"?

National Guard On Alert For Tea Party Protests

Force Protection Advisory mirrors United States Army Reserve Command alert issued before End the Fed protests last year

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2009

The Maryland National Guard has been put on alert in anticipation of today’s nationwide Tea Party protests, while a Homeland Security spokesman refused to deny that protesters would be under surveillance from the DHS.

The Maryland National Guard issued a Force Protection Advisory on April 11 which has since been leaked to the Internet, namely to the Jawa Report website.

The document warns the National Guard to be on alert during the Tea Party protests because Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become “targets of opportunity.” The contact point for the document is listed as the Antiterrorism Program Coordinator.

“This Maryland Army National Guard (MDARNG) Force Protection advisory is in response to a nationwide planned protest activities scheduled for April 15, 2009. Although there is no known direct threat to MDNG facilities and MDNG members, they may become a target of opportunity during plan protest activities throughout Maryland,” states the advisory.

It continues, “Numerous entities have formed recently to express displeasure/anger over recent federal/state government actions: more taxes, increased spending, higher deficits, a surge of borrowing to pay for it all, bailout of the financial institutions, and etc. This movement can be identified by different variations of “TEA Party” or “Tea Party.” Past “TEA Party” events have been peaceful. There was a “Tea party” event at Solomons, Maryland, on March 22, 2009. “TEA” stands for “Taxed Enough Already.”

The document then gives a full list of the times and locations of the Tea Party protests in Maryland and advises National Guard personnel to, “Contact local law enforcement when feel threaten by protesters or protesters trespass into MDNG.”

“Commanders at all levels should establish relationship with local police in order to understand the local threats. Keep family members informed. Talk to other service personnel to share information. Practice OPSEC. Don’t provide personal information to anyone you don’t know. Avoid high risk areas,” the advisory states.

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