Gilchrist and Spencer's Support for Accused Murderer Harms Minuteman Moveme
Posted on Monday, June 29 @ 09:49:00 EDT
Topic: Minuteman Project Minutemen border
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 ALIPAC NOTE: We warned the nation and all group leaders, including Spencer and Gilchrist, about Shawna Forde many months before these murders. It is truly unfortunate that Gilchrist and others continued to offer Shawna support and aid long after all other groups and leaders in the movement did our best to isolate her. These latest articles show us that Gilchrist and Spencer assisted Shawna Forde after the date of the murders. If Jim Gilchrist and Glen Spencer had listened to the rest of the movement after Shawna Forde and Jim Gilchrist tried to circulate fake rape and beating pictures of Shawna, it would have been clear to Forde that she had no reason to be on Spencer's property or in regular phone and email contact with Jim Gilchrist (Co-Founder of Minuteman Project). These men continued to associate with Shawna Forde long after it became very clear to the vast majority of leaders in our movement that she was unstable and dangerous. Gilchrist and Spencer gave assistance to Shawna Forde long after an organized effort of multiple groups such as Save Our State, San Diego Minutemen, and ALIPAC were launched to warn the movement as well as quarantine and isolate Gilchrist and Forde.
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Woman held in 2 slayings an outcast, activists say
But Shawna Forde had high-level contacts in Minuteman movement despite extreme views
Shawna Forde was a rogue, many border-security activists say, or an impostor or a criminal.
They say the woman now charged in connection with the home invasion and
shooting deaths of an Arivaca marijuana-trafficking suspect and his
9-year-old daughter was not really one of them.
By Tim Steller
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.28.2009
But interviews with so-called Minutemen and
their critics, as well as reviews of recently scrubbed Web sites,
suggest Forde was well-placed in the border-security movement and
represented a persistent radical wing.
"Shawna Forde was very much a known entity in this movement and,
to some degree and to different folks, tolerated for quite some time,"
said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and
Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.
Forde has been charged with two counts of murder in the May 30
home-invasion killings, and with aggravated assault in the shooting of
the pot-trafficking suspect's wife. Pima County sheriff's investigators
allege Forde conceived of the killings and carried them out with
co-defendants Jason E. Bush and Albert R. Gaxiola, in order to raise
money for her small anti-illegal-immigration group, Minutemen American
Defense, and other activities.
Forde and Bush were white supremacists, according to police reports
in Washington state and Pima County and one of Forde's brothers. Since
her arrest on June 12, Minuteman groups and their allies have distanced
themselves from her.
Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project and an early leader
of the movement, said last week that he donated $200 to a member of
Forde's group, that he called Forde a few days after the murders as
investigators closed in, and that his group removed postings by and
about Forde from its Web site after the arrests. But he called Forde
and her associates "rogues," and denied that he or his group had a
formal relationship with her.
"They happened to use the Minuteman movement as a guise, as a mask," he said.
Glenn Spencer, founder of the American Border Patrol and another
prominent figure in the anti-illegal-immigration movement, posted an
Internet account of Forde's arrest titled "Full Disclosure About Shawna
Forde." She was arrested minutes after leaving Spencer's house near
Sierra Vista.
He said Forde had dropped in uninvited on June 12 and asked to use
a room in the house, which doubles as American Border Patrol's offices,
to write an e-mail, then left.
"Being a polite person, I spoke with her, even though last summer I
told American Border Patrol employees that, due to her strange
behavior, she was no longer welcome at the ranch," Spencer wrote. "This
is an object lesson about understanding with whom you are dealing in
the border volunteer effort."
But former American Border Patrol employee Michael Christie, who
left the group in February, said radicals such as Forde were a
persistent part of the movement.
"This movement attracts people who are desperate to be a part of
something big," Christie said. "These are people who are discontented
with their lives for one reason or another, who have probably tried to
make a difference in other aspects of their lives and failed." Looking
back
Today's Minuteman movement was forming as early as last decade,
when Roger Barnett began patrolling Cochise County ranch lands, looking
for illegal immigrants.
But the movement took off in 2002 when then-Tombstone resident
Chris Simcox printed a call to form a border-security militia in the
Tumbleweed newspaper, which he owned.
Even while calling for armed citizen patrols of the border, Simcox
warned of the danger of radicals joining up. "We want local people," he
said in 2002. "We don't want the Rambos, the mercenaries and soldiers
of fortune that some of these groups seem to be made up of."
When Simcox and Gilchrist organized an April 2005 patrol along the
border in Cochise County, hundreds of everyday people came from around
the country to join them. White supremacists also showed up, said Heidi
Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"From the get-go, from 2005, that movement has been shot through by
extremists," she said. "She was so assertive"
In 2007, Forde applied to join Simcox's group, Minuteman Civil
Defense Corps, and was allowed in on a probationary basis, said group
Vice President Al Garza and founder Simcox, who left the group this
year to run for the U.S. Senate. The group vetted her through
interviews and a background check, members said.
"Within a few weeks, she was so assertive, wanting to take charge and wanting to be a spokesperson," Simcox said.
"She lasted less than six months. After that, she went and tried
other groups," he said. "She thrust herself into the movement where no
one else wanted her." "It's a hodgepodge of folks"
The world she entered is a set of individuals and groups, many
using the word "Minuteman" in their name, many harboring hostilities
with each other. They share an interest in stopping illegal
immigration.
"It's a hodgepodge of folks, including some real decent people of
good will who are not racist, who are for strict immigration laws and
border enforcement," said Cal State's Levin. "However, peppered in
there are some unstable folks; peppered in there are some racists."
Garza and others noted, though, that the Minuteman Civil Defense
Corps and other groups have rules in place forbidding racism in their
organizations, and that their vetting is intended to catch white
supremacists. They also note that the whole movement has had few
negative incidents during its many patrols and has helped hundreds of
border-crossers in trouble.
Still, Forde showed up wherever she could find border-security hard-liners.
She came to Spencer's Sierra Vista-area ranch, from which the
American Border Patrol conducts high-tech border surveillance, at least
a half-dozen times, Christie said. (Spencer said she came a maximum of
three times.)
"She would use it as a place to stay when she would go out and scout the border," he said.
Last summer, she stayed for a week, Spencer said. He said he
decided to keep her away after she asked if her teenage daughter could
stay and work at the ranch, which he found inappropriate.
In August 2008, Forde showed up uninvited at Camp Vigilance, used
by the Minuteman Corps of California and the private group Border
Patrol Auxiliary as a base for patrols, said member Carl Braun. She was
ejected after 40 minutes.
Last October, she showed up at a camp near Three Points where the
Minutemen Civil Defense Corps had a group, Simcox said. There, too, she
was ejected not long after arriving, he said.
That same month, Chuck Stonex met Forde for the first time at a
border operation near Three Points, he said. "She said she was trying
to infiltrate the cartel in Arivaca," said Stonex, of Alamogordo, N.M.
On May 30, Stonex said, he was in Arizona to attend a barbecue at
Spencer's home when Forde called him asking for medical supplies
because a colleague, Bush, had been shot during a patrol. Stonex drove
to Arivaca and helped clean and bandage Bush's wound, which he says was
minor. Forming an association
As Forde made forays into other groups, she formed an association
with Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project. She posted
reports from the border on his Web site, and they defended each other
publicly from critics.
In July 2008, Forde wrote about Gilchrist, identifying herself as
"Operations Director For The Project," and saying, "The Project has
worked closely with MAD (Minutemen American Defense) for several years
now."
On Feb. 23, the day after Forde's hometown newspaper, the Everett
(Wash.) Herald, published an exposé of Forde's background, Gilchrist
defended her in an Internet posting.
"In my experience with Ms. Forde I conclude that she is no whiner.
She is a stoic struggler who has chosen to put country, community, and
a yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying
ego."
"The Minuteman Project is proud to be a supporter of Shawna Forde's Minutemen (women) American Defense (M.A.D.)"
On June 2, three days after the murders, Gilchrist received an
e-mail from a Southern Arizona associate who had been visited by
investigators looking for Forde. Gilchrist forwarded the e-mail to
Forde, he said.
He said he called her and asked if there was a warrant for her arrest. She said no.
But after roaming Southern Arizona for another nine or so days, she was picked up outside Spencer's home.
DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE WITH OUR ONLINE ACTIVISTS AT...
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-159347-25.html
Note: UPDATE! ALIPAC Issues Advisory on Glenn Spencer and American Patrol (click this link for details)
http://www.alipac.us/article-4352-thread-1-0.html
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