Ed Hayes Promised a National Convention and is Delivering a Worksohop

WHAT NATIONAL CONFERENCE?
Minutemen scale back to local workshop!

MCDC; MINUTEMAN GROUPS IN A NUTSHELL
MCDC Minuteman Local Workshop Planned


Minuteman Civil Defense Corp (MCDC) will charge fees for a local workshop after scaling back its plans for February 1st and 2nd Kansas City, Missouri.

The first day is at the historic Uptown Theater and is purportedly open to the public. The second day, they hope to carry on at a secret location. MCDC claims they have security concerns but they have not really been challenged to explain what they are.

This doesn't mean that the event is likely to be anything like the often announced “first only national convention”. Dos Mundos recently referred to the event as a “regional conference” suggesting that expectations are way down. National MCDC refers to the event as a “regional retreat”.

When you think about it, it is something of a retreat. Once and still advertised as a national conference the MCDC event is going to be even smaller than imagined. Yet, somehow even Hispanic media take MCDC claims at face value. A little journalism reveals that they really hype their predictions. So the once ballyhooed national convention was, and still is uncritically reported as going to happen by the local media.

Once Dos Mundos reported there would be an MCDC national convention. They and other journalists should be asking, “Where is the national conference now?” It may not be the the most important or sexy story but it is still the story, a story of faltering efforts and lower expectations. This story of faltering efforts also has the merit of conforming to the facts.

The workshop personnel listed suggests more of a local workshop with the national MinutemanHQ staff pulling triple duty as attendees, trainers and speakers. After firing a dozen or more chapter heads back in the Spring of 2007 Chris Simcox has had a relatively low profile. Simcox has had trouble speaking at a dozen or so public venues across the nation due to protests. He also continues to be engaged in a long term vendetta with his rival and former minuteman ally Jim Gilchrist. Gilchrist organizes under the name www.minutemanproject.com .
[This local KCMO workshop can be seen as an effort by Simcox to rally those MCDC folks who have not defected to the Gilchrist minuteman faction.]

Of course we have no firm idea as to how many folks might be sympathetic to this MCDC event. While anti-immigrant fervor may be a majority view in some isolated areas of the nation I think we can agree that the MCDC view is actually a minority view even within the Anglo or white community.

Only something like twenty five percent of all Americans are disturbed about the current immigration situation. About the same percent are thrilled to have
the kind of immigration we have today. Yet politicians and the corporate media seem to be relatively prone to exaggerate the amount of support anti-immigrant activists have. Of course there are enough unhappy folk to makes fertile ground for groups like MCDC. Groups like MCDC have simple solutions and even simpler explanations for the difficult problems in a stunningly complex and interdependent world.