YEAH MOTHERFUCKERS, LET THE WHITCH HUNT BEGIN. WHERE'S MS 13 WHEN YOU
NEED THEM? ***** YOU.
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''I am seeing the same patterns here,'' said Robinson, 55, who like
most Hamblen County residents is white. ''I think ... the mind-set of
some of these people is that anybody that has brown skin is here
illegally. And that couldn't be further from the truth.''
Guatemala native Noel Montepeque, who owns a business that finds
blue-collar jobs for Hispanics, said the tone has changed since the
first migrant farm workers passed through in the 1990s.
''Now they are getting afraid of the many Hispanic folks coming in. And
we are coming to stay,'' said Montepeque, who spent 20 years in
California before moving to Morristown.
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Tenn. Minutemen stir controversy
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD
The Associated Press
Jul 5 2005
MORRISTOWN - This small southern Appalachian industrial town of 25,000
residents is nearly 1,800 miles from the Arizona-Mexico border where
citizen patrols out to catch undocumented immigrants have stirred
controversy and fears of vigilantism.
But this is where the self-styled Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen, a
spinoff by Tennessee sympathizers of those Western efforts, are taking
aim at a perceived invasion of ''illegal aliens,'' particularly
Hispanics, and those who employ them.
The Southeast has the nation's fastest-growing Hispanic population and
Tennessee is part of the trend. The state's Hispanic numbers have
nearly tripled over the last decade, often concentrating around
employment centers offering steady pay for hard manual work, such as
poultry processors and landscape nurseries.
The Arizona-based Minuteman Project, praised by California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger and denounced by President Bush, has spread to chapters
in Texas and New Mexico and is actively organizing in California, Utah,
Michigan and Vermont, said Gary Cole, the group's national operations
manager.
Carl ''Two Feathers'' Whitaker, an American Indian activist and
erstwhile Tennessee gubernatorial candidate, tapped into a splinter
group called Arizona Border Watch on a trip to Arizona in April and
brought the movement back to Tennessee.
''It's like O'Leary's cow has kicked over the lantern. The fire has
just started now,'' Whitaker said in an interview in the small office
that is home to the nascent Tennessee Minutemen and his 2006
independent campaign for governor.
Morristown Area Chamber of Commerce president Thom Robinson, who grew
up in Montgomery, Ala., in the '60s and knows the terms and tactics
long associated with hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, said the group
is practicing ''the same sort of dogmatism that racists used against
blacks in lower Alabama and across the South.''
''I am seeing the same patterns here,'' said Robinson, 55, who like
most Hamblen County residents is white. ''I think ... the mind-set of
some of these people is that anybody that has brown skin is here
illegally. And that couldn't be further from the truth.''
Guatemala native Noel Montepeque, who owns a business that finds
blue-collar jobs for Hispanics, said the tone has changed since the
first migrant farm workers passed through in the 1990s.
''Now they are getting afraid of the many Hispanic folks coming in. And
we are coming to stay,'' said Montepeque, who spent 20 years in
California before moving to Morristown.
Drawn to Morristown's chicken processors, warehousing operations and
manufacturing plants, Hispanics make up nearly 6 percent of Hamblen
County's population, about 3,300 of 58,000 residents. Though probably
an undercount, that's still twice the statewide concentration.
Whitaker seems an unlikely leader for the Minutemen. But he said his
American Indian heritage gives him insight into the cause. ''We know
better than anybody about being pushed around,'' he said.
Red pins in a map of Tennessee hanging by his desk denote like-minded
people interested in the Minutemen. Whitaker claims he's heard from
more than 120 potential recruits from Morristown in the Smoky Mountain
foothills to Memphis in the southwest corner of the state.
''We don't want to project it as a hate group because it is not a hate
group. We don't hate anybody or anything. But there are legal
immigrants and illegal,'' Whitaker insisted.
''It is not just a local issue there. It is the whole state,'' said
David Heppler, who runs Arizona Border Watch and is working with
Whitaker on plans for rallies in Memphis, Nashville and Morristown in
coming weeks.
At Whitaker's office, the Minutemen will tell you they're against
anyone who enters the country illegally. But they also gripe that
immigrants generally get more social services, pay fewer taxes and
don't even have to read English to get a driver's certificate in
Tennessee.
''There are people who would just as soon pick up a gun and shoot
somebody walking down the road because, hey, their family got cut off
from TennCare and he knows that Mexican over there is on it. You have
that mentality all throughout Tennessee,'' said Minuteman supporter Ron
Livingston, a computer technician.
''Now there is a central point to organize all the people to gather
together so their voice will be heard. Where people can speak out
rather than to talk amongst themselves on a porch.''
The Minutemen see their group as a way for a frustrated homegrown
majority to vent their outrage - nonviolently.
''It seems to me they spread a lot of misinformation and are
terrorizing the ethnic community in the area,'' said Santos Aguilar,
executive director with Alianza del Pueblo, a regional Hispanic support
group in Knoxville.
''There is a difference between terrorizing and invading,'' Whitaker
countered. ''We are not invading a community, the community has been
invaded.''
Against that backdrop, members of the Hamblen County Commission
suggested recently that if property taxes have to be raised some $1
million next year ''you can blame the Hispanics'' because of their
impact on schools and juvenile courts, The Citizen Tribune newspaper
reported.
Commissioner Tom Lowe, who sympathizes with the Minutemen but isn't a
member, said he was talking about ''illegal aliens'' not all Hispanics.
''We do not want Hispanics stereotyped as illegal. That is not our
goal,'' he said, but added that he believes the county's Hispanic
population is dominated by illegal immigrants. ''Eighty-five percent
may be too conservative a figure,'' he said.
Lowe, a retired pharmacist, said his particular fear is that immigrants
carry drug-resistant infectious diseases. ''We could be two or three
aliens away from an epidemic that would sweep through our county and
state,'' he said.
Purkey, the county mayor, said he supports immigration laws, ''But I
think you have to be careful when you are expressing your opinion on
that, that you don't appear as if you are against diversity as a
whole.''
No one doubts there are some illegal immigrants here. In March, for
instance, a 14-year-old boy suspected of being a Mexican national died
in an industrial accident at a recycling plant. He got the job with an
ID card, under a different name, that gave his age as 19.
Whitaker said he turned in seven local employers suspected of hiring
illegal immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But
agency spokesman Temple Black said ICE had received no such list.
The wave of immigration is forcing changes in the Hamblen County
schools, where for the first time all 19 schools had some non-English
speaking students this year. Some 660 students, about 6 percent of the
enrollment, are in English-as-second-language programs. Most are
Hispanic.
The county is planning to set up an International Center using private
funds and grants to tutor nonnative students in math and English until
they are fluent.
''We have found that once they become proficient in English we are
showing greater improvement in their academic gains probably than in
any other segment of our student population,'' Schools Superintendent
Dale Lynch said. ''So we don't see it as a drain. We see it as an
opportunity.''
''All of this is (about) being afraid,'' Montepeque said. ''Afraid of
our community growing up.''
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