Washblog || Update: "Minuteman class dropped at WWU"

Update: "Minuteman class dropped at WWU"

By Carl Shook
Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 04:03:19 PM PST
Section: Diary Topic: Immigration

...according to John Stark at the Bellingham Herald.

A class on the history of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, to be taught by a Minuteman leader, has been pulled from the spring catalog of Western Washington University's Academy for Lifelong Learning.

Audley said the course's listing in the catalog sparked some inquiries from people concerned about its content.

In response, Audley said her office asked Williams to provide more information about the course.
"Rather than do that, he withdrew," Audley said.

In a voice mail message, Williams confirmed that, saying his health has been poor recently and he wasn't up to fighting any battles.
"They started messing with me, wanting me to justify what I was going to say, starting to censor me," Williams said. "My doctor feels I don't need the stress of the open-border lobby following me around ... The stress on me is just too much and I'm not going to do it."

The community opposition to Tom William's class was never about censorship, it was about widespread concern that the Minutemen were using Western Washington University to legitimize the same song and dance you can find at www.minutemanhq.com .

The "history" of border politics that Mr. Williams and the Minutemen espouse is blatant propoganda and has contributed to the stigmatization of many desperate economic refugees from Mexico and Latin America as dangerous criminals. In the end, it appears that Mr. Williams was unwilling to tell Barbara Audley what he planned to "teach," although according to this article from the Western Front, Mr. Williams was under the impression that he had a constitutional right to teach, but not justify to anyone, anything he said. The common thread of unaccountability and secretiveness throughout the Minuteman Project is the reason community opposition to the class was so compelling (and frankly, most people here don't trust him: neither Williams or Claude LeBas testified at that Human Rights Commmission hearing last year, though they were in attendance).

Finally, does anyone know anything about this "open borders lobby?" Does it bite?

< Bob Baker files another anti-immigrant initiative | Backbone: Guest of Honor at Olympia Clean Elections rally >

Update: "Minuteman class dropped at WWU" | 3 comments (3 topical)

"open borders lobby?"

Apparently Karl Rove is the leader of the "open borders lobby"...

"The Corner" at the National Review Online reports that at a Republican luncheon yesterday, White House adviser Karl Rove was overheard explaining the Bush amnesty immigration plan by saying, "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas." (from RAW STORY)

[/snark] ROFLMFAO

by citizensteve on Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 09:53:49 PM PST

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Open borders

The vast majority of people who take issue with the Minutemen do not advocate open borders. In my understanding, that's a solution advocated by a small minority. Do you think that's the case, Carl?

I have heard the open borders argument made. And I don't know enough to evaluate it. The predictions of dire consequences if we truly open our borders -- will those come true? What are those consequences? I'm sure a major policy change like that would have some negative consequences -- even if the positive consequences were greater than the negative.

I would guess that open borders would cause significant problems that would be very difficult to deal with. Intuitively, it seems like a mistake. But I think this argument is a canard that obscures what I see as the real issue... what seems to me to be the root of our immigration woes...

And that is that there seem to be nearly open borders for politically and economically powerful players to move labor, resources, manufacturing capacity, and capital -- anywhere they want in the world. This ability harms local economies, communities, environments, and cultures.

Why should a small minority have the power to move anything across any border just to maximize profit for themselves -- in a way that harms the majority? And, even worse, if this is the case, then how can we justify forbidding the people whose lives have been made unstable by these practices from attempting to adapt by them by moving just their own bodies and families across borders?

It is sad to me, in the first place, that so many people are refugees from difficult conditions caused or exacerbated by unjust economic practices.

Beyond injustice, it seems dangerous, unstable, unbalanced to have this huge gap between the haves and have nots.

by noemie maxwell on Sun Feb 11, 2007 at 12:35:48 PM PST

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The open-border lobby

What is following the Minutemen around, to their obvious displeasure, are demands for public accountability: because the Minutemen have taken such an aggressive, reactionary, and in some cases, racist and violent position on immigration, communities across the country are demanding that the Minutemen answer to those they claim to protect.

Personally, I think my passport is pretty cool, and I know that secure international boarders are crucial to our safety, but in those two ideas lies the rub, one that many who call for truly free and open borders have, perhaps, pointed out better than anyone: our borders, the point where our soverienghty begins or ends, is increasingly becoming a barrier to people and ideas that we fear, misunderstand, or simply hate.
Our country's borders are turning into a "nation's" borders, a nation falsely identified as primarily white and based in a frighteningly confused abstraction of pre-1776 statesmen and white-dominated agriculture existing (not coincidentally) during slavery.

Immigrant rights activists do not want to delete the border, we just want the rules for crossing it to be fair. We want immigration law based on real economic and social realities, not the interests of a bigoted and ignorant minority.

by Carl Shook on Tue Feb 13, 2007 at 10:53:57 AM PST

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Update: "Minuteman class dropped at WWU" | 3 comments (3 topical)