Gente Unida Tramples the American Flag
If you watch TV news at all, you’ve no doubt heard about the Minuteman Project. For those of you who don’t watch TV news, the Minuteman project is comprised of groups of U.S. citizens who are calling attention to the huge influx of immigrants pouring across the border with Mexico. They don’t use guns and are commited to non-violence. What they do is simply stake out positions along the border and "assist" the U.S. Border Patrol in spotting illegals attempting to cross.
But it’s important to note that this is not about immigration. It’s about forcing our government to do what it should have been doing all along, and that is to prevent people from anonymously and illegally entering the United States.
There are groups in operation today who’s agenda is to disband the Minuteman Project. One of them is known as Gente Unida, a coalition of 20 or 30 activist groups that include anarchists. A contingent of Gente Unida members literally attacked a gathering of a group of border watchers on Saturday in San Diego.
Friends of the Border was assembling for deployment along the border when Gente Unida showed up, overturning tables, shouting obscenities and desecrating at least one American flag. Former Congressional candidate Roger Canfield witnessed the attack, "Gente Unita stole an American flag, ripped from its staff and trampled it, as captured on film by cameraman Larry Morgan."
Another witness saw retired Navy Officer Capt. Drew Johnson and four others assaulted by Gente Unita. The attackers were chanting, "We did not cross over the border, their border crossed over us," and one of the protesters threatened a future "firefight" along the border.
Friends of the Border chairman Andy Ramirez cancelled the deployment and apologized to the volunteers for the attack, even though he could not have forseen it. He was especially pretubed by the flag desecration, "An American flag was immediately desecrated by being torn away from our volunteers, off its pole, and onto the ground where it was stomped on and kicked," he said. "This vile act was committed by an individual who had concealed his face from cameras."
Groups like Gente Unida want unrestricted immigration into a country who’s sovreignty they have absolutely no respect for as evidenced by their treatment of the American flag. And their agenda is nothing less than the end of the United States, at least in any form the average American would recognize. Here’s how one of these righteous folks views the role of Gente Unida:
No one is illegal. All people have a right to travel and migrate wherever they want. Our struggle works toward the liberation of migrant people, women, indigenous people, people of all nationalities, queers and people of color against the violent bigotry of the MinuteMen and we intend to stop their project from going any further.
Migration controls hurt everyone’s freedom and privacy. Some of us are more directly targeted and affected by these policies, but all of our lives are being reshaped by them. We are in this struggle not only to reject and stop these racist attacks, but to move towards a world without borders, a world of liberation for all people.
A world without borders will be a world in which evil, power hungry people will be able to operate without restriction while the rest of us learn how to defend ourselves.