Minutemen Leader Arrested for Murder Trained at East County Minutemen Camp[DUer's article]

[Liberty Belle]

Source: East County Magazine (San Diego)

By Miriam Raftery

June 14, 2009 (San Diego’s East County) – Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen America Defense(MAD), has been arrested along with two men and charged with double homicide in a home invasion. The victims included a nine-year-old girl. Forde has attended training at Camp Vigilante, a high-desert training camp operated by Minuteman Civil Defense near Boulevard in San Diego’s East County in 2008, East County Magazine has learned. photo: Forde in East County, courtesy of Campo Minutemen A second suspect arrested also has ties to Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), which operates a Minutemen training facility in East County.

<snip>
“These Minutemen are violent vigilante groups as I’ve always said, including groups of people in East County,” Enrique Morones, founder of Border Angels in San Diego and a leader in the immigrant rights movement, told East County Magazine. ”Their motivation is hate,” he said, warning that hate speech and vigilantism can lead to violence and in this case, the tragic death of an innocent child. “They have been in the Campo area an at meetings these are part of the racist vigilante minutemen there are also some neo-Nazis in East County now,” he added., “The authorities have been advised.”

Local Minutemen group have long claimed to oppose violence, while supporting vigilante citizen patrols of the Border.

“It is, of course shocking and horrible, especially with the little child being involved. It takes someone truly monstrous to harm a child,” Campo Minutemen spokesperson Deborah Craig informed ECM in an e-mail. “We have not heard the men involved, however, we have met Shawna Forde,” she revealed in an e-mail interview. “The various media reports seem to be inaccurate with regard to her involvement with other groups.”

Minutemen Civil Defense Corps is based in Arizona and was founded by Chris Simcox, who left when he began his run for United States Senate. “Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) maintains a facility in California near Boulevard known as Camp Vigilance," Craig said. "In August of 2008, Shawna Forde came to the border at Campo, CA and contacted Campo Minuteman Britt Craig. She did not make any comments to indicate she was unstable or violent,” Forde recalled. “She had a Minutemen Civil Defense Corps badge so she presumably had been vetted by the group. Minutemen Civil Defense Corps charges a fee and does a background check.”

According to Deborah Craig, Forde and Campo Minutemen leader Britt Craig went to Camp Vigilance in separate vehicles “where she was given full access by the caretaker. She purchased a bullet proof vest from the caretaker and indicated she planned to spend the night,” Deborah Craig added. “She indicated that she primarily did her border watching in AZ , that she had her own group, Minutemen American Defense, and we did not hear her directly again.”

Bush, who goes by the nickname “Gunny”, serves as operations director of MAD according to the group’s website, however the Associated Press reports, he has “recently been living in Arizona and was once associated with the better known and larger Minutemen Civil Defense Corps” which operates Camp Vigilante in East County.

Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) took $10,000 in political contributions from The Minuteman PAC, the political action arm of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC). The MCDC is described as “a nativist extremist group whose members conduct armed patrols of the border” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization which tracks hate crimes and hate-related groups nationwide.

(Much more at the link above)

Read more: http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/?q=node/1419

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Moderators - I am the author of this story and editor/founder of East County Magazine. I give my permission to post more than 4 paragraphs here.

If anyone here has additional information about activiites of the three murder suspects in San Diego or San Diego's East County, please contact [e-mail] or post here.

[Hawkeye-X]

1. violent viligante groups? Call them for what they REALLY are!

TERRORISTS! HOMEGROWN DOMESTIC TERRORISTS!

USE THE EFFIN PATRIOT ACT!!! CHIMP ABUSED IT - LET'S TAKE THEM DOWN!

Hawkeye-X

[Sensible321]

5. Some of them are undoubtedly motivated by racism but ...

... many had sons and daughters with good jobs that paid well with union benefits and now struggle to feed their families. They don't want to live 3-to-a-room and 6-to-a-truck to survive. The selflessness of the immigrants who live this way, in order to send a little money home to their families, is admirable - but it doesn't change the other side of the coin.

Are these militiamen blaming the wrong people? Absolutely. They should know their government, by not enforcing hiring laws, has cynically used the citizens of another state, who were similarly disenfranchised in their own countries, to destroy their livelihoods. They would be better served by going to Washington DC. But, of course, they would just be called racists as those in the corporate board rooms cheer along and pay themselves bonuses with their 'labor savings'.

[Liberty Belle]

8. Yes, it's simplistic to call them all racists.

I've interviewed Minutemen and their supporters. Some are blatant racists, but not all. One I interviewed is married to a Latino woman and they have interracial children. He's worried about not having a decent paying job, and it's true that immigrants have driven down the cost of wages in fields such as construction.

That is NOT to construe that there is anything good about vigilantism, in my view.
But as others have noted, our government has the power to solve the jobs problem if it wants to by simply enforcing laws against employers or by coming up with work programs that allow immigrants to fill demand where needed while making sure they are not abused (a common problem in our area, where immigrants are routinely preyed upon by criminals as well as unscrupulous employers). Making it easier for them to work here legally and join unions would also stem the downward wage spiral.

[atreides1]

12. How about this

Maybe the organization needs to go through a membership purging process and get rid of those "blatant racists", and then distance itself from "wannabe" groups.

They might want to start with standards and what the group stands for, and make sure that they list in letters 12 feet high that they will not tolerate racists or bigots of any kind in there organization, and will dump them as soon as they find them.

But they won't because with numbers comes money, and money is much more important then doing what's right!!!

Just ask most politicians.:D

[uppityperson]

9. "The selflessness of the immigrants who live this way". Question, when did your ancestors immigrate?

2 of my grandparents, 3 great grandparents, 2 great-greats all immigrated

[Sensible321]

13. So long ago I don't even know ...

... but I am aware of the slums and miserable working conditions faced by other immigrants in other times; also the hatred of those 'new immigrants' by those whose jobs they would fill for a lower wage. The patterns repeat.

[Liberty Belle]

6. It will be interesting to see if the SPLC files civil charges & seizes assets.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has successfully shut down some white supremacist groups where criminal charges didn't stick against leaders. They filed civil suits, won big judgments, and took the training facilities and cash from these groups as part of the judgments.

The first "victim" of this approach by the SPLC was Tom Metzger, a white supremacist in San Diego who actually ran for Congress on a Dem ticket (much to the shame of local Dems). Thugs recruited by Metzger killed an Oregon man. The SPLC was the first to come up with the legal theory of civil suits to address hate crimes. They took Metzger's home, which was later sold to a nice black family. To this day the SPLC collects checks mailed to Metzger's old address and uses the funds to fight hate crimes.

The lawyer who accomplished this adopted the slain man's son, who grew up to be an airline pilot.

In Idaho, an Aryan Nations or white supremacist training grounds was taken in a similar judgement, razed, and the land turned over to a local school for environmental courses.

I wonder if the Minutemen training camps may someday meet similar fates?

[Sensible321]

7. Oh, and the Patriot (sic) Act Needs To Be Repealed

"Those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither"
B. Franklin

[uppityperson]

10. Indeed it does. nt

[47of74]

2. Kiss the Hispanic vote goodbye, Republicans

[opihimoimoi]

3. The Self Implosion of the Republican Party continues Unabated

These Hate Crimes are Terrorist Crimes too....

They reflect the Hate Party which is the Republican Party De facto....

Violence and hatred are evil traits not to be tolerated in a civil society.....we are being tested..

The people committing violent acts continue to ruin the already damaged brand name of the GOP....

This is not the way to impress the American People of their(GOP) being worthy of Public Office...

Oh well, we tried to tell um

[Sensible321]

4. The Entire Wall/Fence Border Bit Is Completely Unnecessary

Just require employers to verify I-9s electronically on hire, with 6 months in jail (for the employer) if failing to do so. Problem solved. No walls, fences, or militias needed.

Granted, we also need to buy back the farms the 'illegals' families used to own in Mexico, before NAFTA and subsidized agriculture from the US wiped them out, so they have a home to return to and a means to survive.

We might also request that Mexico stop putting immigrants crossing their southern border in prison. Illegal immigration is a *felony* in Mexico, with violators subject to two-year prison sentences. And if you are an American, with a visa, and you march in a protest, you are immediately deported - a quite different standard than in LA.

[bos1]

11. More violence and murder from the right wing infrastructure

"Camp Vigilante" sounds like a terrorist training grounds. And they're associated with Duncan Hunter, a right wing Republican Congressman.

thanks for posting this