Para-Militaries in the US

We met with someone from the Minutemen yesterday. It was our first formal meeting with them as a team. Despite press reports to the contrary, they are still here in Arizona and very active at the border, especially on the weekends. They have two main "lines" around here, but are expanding soon into Texas and California. They believe that they have stopped thousands of migrants from crossing the border; of course we know that the migrants have simply gone around them to more remote places, making a dangerous crossing even more dangerous.

The guy we met with is the spokesperson for the Minutemen and second or third in the hierarchy of command. As such, he was quite disurbing! One of the people I was with, who seemed to know something about these things, said he exhibited signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He took small kernels of truth and manipulated them into a complete fabrication. But there is enough of a kernel of truth in what he says that he can convince people.

Some of his claims: Every migrant that crosses illegally is carrying a backpack full of drugs. All the children crossing the border illegally are sold into slavery or prostitution. 3,000 people are crossing illegally each night around Douglas alone. All Hispanic communities in the United States are harboring criminals. He claimed that the organization is nonviolent, trained in the teachings of King and Ghandi, yet his associate who was also at the meeting was wearing desert camoflage and packing a gun.

Rather than trying to prevent migration with guns and intimidation, we would rather address structural causes. One of our local partners is an organization called Just Coffee. Many of you know about fair trade, but this is even better. Other fair trade companies buy the coffee at a fair price but then roast it and market it in the US, which continues to transfer jobs across the border. Just Coffee Pays farmers in Chiapas a fair price, then roasts and markets it in Mexico, keeping the jobs there. Many people we have spoken with say that the migration crisis got considerably worse after coffee prices fell dramatically in the 80s and coffee farmers could no longer support themselves, so they all migrated north. Anyway, the more Just Coffee we buy, the more fair wage jobs are kept in Mexico. Fair wage jobs in Mexico will lead to fewer dangerous border crossings. You can find them at http://www.justcoffee.org/.