"I'd like to see independent trustees bridge the gap from socialism to
mainstream, free America in the two towns," Fischer said. "With a lot
of work, this could be a regular American town in 10 to 15 years."
First you will need a coordinated assault on the two comunities
involving Utah, Arizonian, and Federal law enforcement agencies. Might
have trouble getting Utah to go along with it, since they are
"mainstream" Mormons and maybe unwilling to attack their own "lost"
kinsmen.
Don't let it turn into a mini Chechnya.
===================================================================
Civil War. I hope everyday Americans will get the experience of having
an M-16 pointed at their face, told to step out of the car, and have a
car search done before they go to Wal-Mart. ***** you.
***** THE WH*RE OF B*BYL*ON!!!!
===================================================================
Judge may decide fate of polygamist holdings today
Mark Shaffer
Republic Flagstaff Bureau
Jun. 22, 2005 12:00 AM
SALT LAKE CITY - Its leader has been indicted on charges of sex crimes,
and financial documents in its school system have been seized in a
search for criminal activity.
But the biggest blow yet to the polygamist sect that controls the twin
towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, could come today when
a Utah judge is expected to decide whether the sect leaders who control
the purse strings to a more than $100 million trust will retain their
positions as trustees.
Tim Bodily, an assistant Utah attorney general, said that if none of
the leadership of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints, including indicted leader and trustee Warren Jeffs, shows
up in court this morning to challenge a preliminary injunction that
froze trust funds, it will become a permanent injunction. advertisement
That would mean that independent trustees would then take over what is
expected to be an exhaustive task of trying to figure out what to do
with the money in the United Effort Plan, a trust with utopian,
socialistic ideals based on communal sharing in 19th-century Mormon
settlements in Utah and Arizona.
The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discontinued
the practice of polygamy in the late 1800s as a condition of Utah being
accepted as a state.
But polygamy has flourished for nearly a century in the remote
Arizona-Utah boundary area north of the Grand Canyon, and an estimated
6,000 multiple-marriage practitioners live in Colorado City and
Hildale.
Shem Fischer of Salt Lake City, a Colorado City native and former
manager of a wood-manufacturing plant nearby, said the trust owns about
700 homes, 35 businesses and other land both in and outside that area.
He estimates trust holdings at about $150 million.
Joseph Allread, Colorado City's town clerk and administrator, said he
could not discuss trust or church affairs.
Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who has represented church
matters, resigned earlier this year. The sect has been unrepresented at
three earlier court hearings regarding the trust.
"I'd like to see independent trustees bridge the gap from socialism to
mainstream, free America in the two towns," Fischer said. "With a lot
of work, this could be a regular American town in 10 to 15 years."
But Fischer fears that nearly a third of the trust's holdings already
have been diverted by church leaders to properties in Texas and
Colorado and, possibly, to other financial interests in Nevada, Wyoming
and Mexico.
Even with a temporary restraining order in place, which barred movement
of trust assets, a cabin-manufacturing plant on trust land was
disassembled within 24 hours last month and moved to another location,
Fischer and other Colorado City observers said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Jeffs' closest followers are believed to have
moved to a nearly 2,000-acre spread in western Texas, near the town of
Eldorado, where a four-story temple to the faith is being constructed.
An additional 500 to 1,000 church members also are believed to have
left for other church holdings, including one enclave near Mancos,
Colo.
About 6,000 church members have remained behind in Colorado City and
Hildale, where most live in dormitory-size homes owned by the church
trust.
The most vexing problem is what to do regarding those people, said Ben
Bistline, a former Colorado City resident and town historian who now
lives in the nearby community of Cane Beds.
"They could go a couple different paths here," Bistline said. "They
could continue indefinitely with new trustees if they can find anyone
willing to put up with that headache over time, or they could dissolve
it and divide it among beneficiaries already in place. But whatever
happens, that trust has been a magnet for lawsuits and will continue to
be so over time."
Bistline speaks from experience. He was a dissident who broke from
church ranks in the 1980s and then fought a 12-year court battle to
protect the equity he had accrued in his church-owned home.
Another fear, Bistline and Fischer said, is that other rival polygamist
sects would manage to take control of the trust and Colorado City and
Hildale religious life over time.
Former trustee Warren Blackmore, who formed a splinter polygamist group
in British Columbia, appeared at a court hearing about the status of
the trust last week, and many members of the Barlow family, which has
enjoyed great power in the towns' recent past before being castigated
by Jeffs, also seem poised for a return.
"Regardless, we're going to see more and more people come forward with
lack of human rights and incest allegations," Fischer said.
"There are going to be a lot of complications," he said. "You can't
turn them loose with free enterprise and say, 'Here it is.' There's
going to be a need for a lot of education and steering in the proper
direction."
.
|
