Common Ground
by digby
In your face, lily-livered libs:
The Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella organization for local Tea Party groups, announced on Tuesday morning that it will be celebrating the second anniversary of the Tea Party movement in late February with a “policy summit.” The focus will be promoting the “the three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets” through politics, education, law, and culture.* But there are no details about the agenda. There isn’t even a promised big-name speaker to draw in crowds or create buzz, just a coy promise that “when you hear who will be joining us—you’ll be really glad you have a seat.”
In light of this general vagueness, it is remarkable how detailed the email announcement is on the subject of why it chose to hold the summit in Phoenix. The Tea Party Patriots call Phoenix “the great southwestern city, born from the ruins of a former civilization, now the rebirth place of American culture. It will also be our opportunity to support the citizens of Arizona in their current political battles that carry so many national implications.”
Well yes. But they aren’t supporting all Arizonans. They are showing their solidarity with allies like the Minutemen:
In August of 2009, Al Garza, a leader in the anti-immigrant movement, left his post as vice president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), once the largest, richest and most politically connected border vigilante group in the country. In an e-mail to supporters, Garza explained: I do not see an end in sight for the problems plaguing what was once the greatest citizen movement in America.”
It had been an embarrassing summer for the group. A former member, Shawna Forde, was arrested and charged with murdering a Latino man and his 10-year-old daughter in Arizona. Forde allegedly believed that she would find drugs and cash in the victim’s home, on a dirt road only a few miles from the US–Mexico border. Prosecutors contend that Forde was enacting a delusional plan to fund her breakaway faction—the Washington State–based Minutemen American Defense—by robbing Latin American drug cartels that she imagined were out to get her. The details about her fringe character that later emerged—her interest in starting an underground militia, her string of arrests for prostitution and petty theft, information from a co-defendant that her nickname was “White,” because “she hates all ethnicity with the exception of Caucasians”—further wrecked whatever credibility the Minutemen had.
The publicity surrounding the case enabled Garza to recruit hundreds, including former Minutemen, to an alternative group he soon created, The Patriot’s Coalition. “A lot of people felt, well, you’re a Minuteman, you’re a killer,” Garza told me, at a truck stop near his home in Cochise County, Arizona. “The name Minuteman has been tainted by organizations that didn’t want us at the border, that say we’re killers, that we’ve done harm.” Fortunately for Garza and others, their desire to reinvent coincided with a unique opportunity to do so—the emergence of the Tea Party movement on the national political horizon.
A few months before he broke with the Minutemen, Garza met Joanne Daley, his local Tea Party coordinator, at a tax day protest she had organized. Daley was a nexus of conservatism in Cochise County, spearheading health care reform town halls and a chapter of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project. When Daley met Garza, she said, “we…found out we had a lot in common, mostly outrage.” And when the time came for Garza to rebrand himself and his cause, he turned to Daley. She had expertise seeding nonprofits, developed through an old job with the state of Arizona. She registered Garza’s new group with the Arizona Corporation Commission, listing him as president and herself as a member of the board of directors.
[…]
[T]he flirtation between nativists and Tea Partyers that began during the healthcare debate last summer, as coverage for illegal immigrants became a flashpoint, has intensified. The lines between the movements are blurring, as members overlap at the grassroots and leaders make official appearances at each other’s events. Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, spoke at the Tea Party’s first convention in February. “There’s a whole lot of cross-pollination between the Tea Party movement and the anti-immigrant movement,” says Marilyn Mayo, co-director of right-wing research for The Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors nativist groups. “We’re starting to see a lot of focus on immigration in the Tea Party. It’s the next step for them after healthcare.”SB-1070, the Arizona law that requires police to ask for proof of legal residency from people they believe could be undocumented immigrants, has been a catalyst. Activism around the law this summer showcased the chemistry between nativists and various Tea Party groups. The Tea Party Patriots gathered thousands of signatures in favor of the law. The Tea Party Nation co-sponsored a rally in Phoenix on June 5, which proclaimed the backing of the broader patriot movement. The slogans on the T-shirts and buttons for sale there broadcast a wide array of messages and causes not related to immigration, including: “Dictators Prefer Armed Citizens” and “Karl Marx Was Not A Founding Father.” An overwhelming 88 percent of Tea Party “true believers” in Washington also back the law, according to a University of Washington poll.
Same old far-right bullshit in a tri-corner hat. Tucson didn’t change a thing for these people. However liberals are being very careful with their language now so I’m sure the nation will shun these extremists.
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