Love Society

By: Douglas Bower

Just like a bad penny that always seems to show up, guess who is back in the limelight soaking up the press that was diverted to more serious world-issues like hurricanes and wars: The Minuteman Project.[1]

So, let’s have a look-see, shall we, at what antics and hijinks they’ve been up to since we last spoke:

* July 2005: Former Texas and Goliad chapter president Bill Parmley, one of the group’s original organizers, said in a July interview that the group would conduct observation activities mostly on private land along a line stretching from Port Lavaca, through Victoria, on to Goliad, then following U.S. Highway 59 to a point near Laredo. Parmley resigned abruptly in late July alleging racism in the local chapter and a lack of organization on the national level. In subsequent interviews, Parmley stated the racism must run through to the national chapter since it had failed to take action against the Goliad group. “I have seen how they have not tried to carve the cancer out of the (Goliad area) group. I can only assume that (racism) is a part of their agenda,” Parmley said previously.[2]

* September 12, 2005: “The Goliad chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps was dissolved today,” reported Goliad chapter president Kenneth Buelter in a brief e-mail sent to the Victoria Advocate on Monday evening. There was no additional explanation in Buelter’s e-mail.[3]

* Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of Texas president Al Garza quickly jumped into the spin game: “”(The e-mail) really doesn’t spotlight anything in particular,” Garza said. The e-mail simply said things weren’t working out, he added. As to Bill Parmley’s sudden resignation and accusations of racism in the group, Garza, who worked for more than 30 years as a private investigator, said he looked into the allegations and found them groundless. “It was merely a misunderstanding and misinformation,” Garza said, referring to the charges of racism.”[4]

Now isn’t that rich? Do you think that Garza has a wee bit of a bias in this “internal investigation” of his? And do you really think that the appeal to the authority, “who worked for more than 30 years as a private investigator”, constitutes proof for the claim that Parmely´s allegations was groundless?

It strikes me, how shall I say this nicely, suspicious the chain of events here. Let’s take another look:

* First, a “dyed-in-the-wool” Minuteman—apparently one with a great deal of integrity—resigns over racism in the group and its unwillingness to excise “the cancer out of the (Goliad area) group”.

* Second, two months later, the guy who took Parmley’s place, Kenneth Buelter, dissolves the same Goliad chapter without so much as a “by your leave”.

* Instead of an outside group, someone neutral and unbiased—without an anti-Mexican axe to grind—investigating this Parmely’s allegation of racism, Garza proclaims the allegation as groundless.

What you didn’t see in the mainstream Fair and Balanced news coverage (besides everything I’ve written above) is that there is more to Bill Parmley´s resignation. There is more than meets the eye here, like most everything with The Minuteman Project.

“Bill Parmley, former coordinator for Texas, quit after alleging Simcox[5] botched the organization’s financing. He also warned that some members of his Goliad, Texas, chapter, which recently was shut down, were “racists” and “wanted to go after Mexicans as a whole,” not simply report undocumented immigrants to the U.S. Border Patrol.”

Note that phrase, “wanted to go after Mexicans as a whole”. I warned of this neo-populism in my columns months ago:

“J.C. Hernandez, a third-generation Texan, is the founder and president of Americans for Zero Immigration. Hernandez was working with Minutemen organizers in Texas and said he expected to play a leading role in the upcoming patrol. He also wants the right, he said, to make a citizen’s arrest of suspected illegal immigrants. “When you fight a war you don’t fight it with rhetoric,” Hernandez said. “When you fight a war, man, you go in and kill the enemy…. A signal has to be sent to Mexico and all those countries that we are tired of it and we’re not going to put up with it.”[6]

The Houston Chronicle reported:

“Parmley said he has become concerned that some of the Minuteman activists in his region have a vendetta against the Goliad County sheriff, who is Hispanic. He asserted they also have made comments about shooting illegal immigrants or letting them die from dehydration. That’s their mind-set, and I don’t want my name and my reputation associated with a group of people who are racist like that,” he said.”[7]

“We are not racists in any way, shape, form or fashion,”—Minuteman Spin