Armed Radical 'Minutemen' Kill Father and 9-Year-Old Daughter in Anti-Immigrant Hate

By Sally Kohn, Center for Community Change. Posted June 18, 2009.

MAD does not endorse or condone any events that are outside of the normal boundaries of any normal private citizen who is concerned about the current conditions of the opened border condition, and we do work totally within the boundaries and with the total cooperation and knowledge of all appropriate law enforcement agencies in our areas of operation.

While revealing how ironic it is that groups like MAD criticize new immigrants for not speaking English, the statement does anything but condemn violence against immigrants. It's worth noting here that Forde and her gang allegedly entered the Flores' home wearing law-enforcement attire.

Groups like the Minutemen are pretending to uphold laws that they flagrantly violate. Who are the real law breakers? Immigrants who come to the United States without legal permission but every single economic invitation, to work for companies that actively recruit them in order to support their desperate families back home? Or the vigilantes who prowl our southern border with assault rifles and camouflage and raid innocent families' homes and slaughter 9-year-old children?

"This was a planned home invasion where the plan was to kill all the people inside this trailer so there would be no witnesses," said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. "To just kill a 9-year-old girl because she might be a potential witness to me is just one of the most despicable acts that I have heard of."

I actually feel bad for Forde. She was fed a load of crap about how her economic troubles and sense that the 21st century was passing her by were the fault not of something vague like the public-education system or American trade policies or Reaganomics but something specific, something dark-skinned, something that fit perfectly into the us-versus-them scary story that readily embraces misplaced blame: immigrants.

Never mind that we were all in the same boat, sinking fast, immigrants and citizens alike -- and never mind that shaking her fist at foreigners and patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border was distracting Forde from taking action that would have brought about real change, like making our economy more democratic, changing tax policy to help working families, easing the burden of health care costs and gas.

No, Forde believed the hatemongerers on CNN and the Internet and stuck to her guns. Literally. But if the allegations against her are true, Forde can really only be blamed for taking to extremes the garbage that so many Americans believe is true, the lies we swallow to make the bigger pill of America's real, shared problems seemingly dissolve but in truth get stuck in our collective throats as we're looking the other way.

The alleged acts of Shawna Forde and her gang are inhumane. Our outdated immigration policies are inhumane. We can, and must, reform our immigration laws to make America work better for all of us, immigrants and citizens alike. That is the only pro-America side of this debate. Everything else must be unmasked for what it is -- a façade for an anti-immigrant bloodbath. On which side will you stand?

See more stories tagged with: minutemen, immigration, hate, white supremacy, fair, shawna forde

Sally Kohn is the director of the Movement Vision Project of the Center for Community Change, which is interviewing hundreds of activists across the country to determine the progressive vision for the future of the United States.

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