Thread: Protesters face off - Minuteman Project members and others o

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ho ... 557080.php

Pictures and Video:

http://www.saveourstate.org/forums/inde ... opic=21551

Saturday, January 27, 2007
Protesters face off
Minuteman Project members and others opposed to illegal immigration protested in Dana Point on Saturday. Counter demonstrators exchange verbal jabs.
By VIK JOLLY
The Orange County Register

DANA POINT- With "God Bless America" playing on a chilly and overcast morning, supporters and members of the Minuteman Project and Save Our State groups brought their anti-illegal immigration message to a Doheny Park Road sidewalk on Saturday.

Many waved the Stars and Stripes and carried banners and signs that read "Stop Illegal Aliens" and "No Street Hiring."

Organizers said they came to the 34100 block of Doheny because this is where day laborers hang out and get picked up by employers and they would like to see the practice stopped and the illegal immigrants who seek work deported.

Counter protesters, some of them wearing black and covering their faces with scarves, also made their presence known, saying they oppose the Minuteman agenda and stand in solidarity with the day laborers. They carried handmade signs that read "Anti Racism Anti Minuteman."

Both sides girded for the protest, arriving before 8 a.m. and setting up on both sides of the road. As the morning wore on, the protests turned into shouting matches, with bullhorns. People filmed one another with video cameras, each planning to post the recordings on their Websites.

At one point, as people stuck cameras in one another's faces, Orange County Sheriff deputies who had been keeping a watchful eye on the demonstrators stepped in.

Sgt. Jim Greenwood told them that they should maintain their distance. Greenwood later said an estimated 100 Minutemen and counter-protesters attended the demonstrations, which remained largely peaceful.

"Only Traitors Hire Illegal Aliens" read the sign that Larry Culbertson hung around his neck. Across the street, a fellow Minuteman protester held another: "Employers Exploit Day Laborers."

Culbertson, a retired lab technician who has lived in San Juan Capistrano since 1978, said in a way he feels sorry for the illegal workers and if he were in Mexico he might come north too. But, he added, they are breaking the law.

"The simple fact is I can't save everybody who's hungry in the world. We can't let them destroy what our parents have produced here. Now we have thousands of illegals bringing it down," he said.

Counter protester Josh Freya, a college student, who said he lives in south Orange County, insisted that the Minutemen are racist, a charge that doesn't hold sway with members of that group because they say they focus on people illegally in the country, regardless of ethnic background.

"Our main purpose," Freya said, "is to show the community that the Minutemen and their ideals are not welcome in the community."

Few day laborers were in the area Saturday. Anastasio Varela, 60, of San Juan Capistrano, hung back behind a donut shop, observing the protests from a distance.

Varela, from Mexico City, said he has lived in the United States for 20 years and is a legal resident. He came here, he said, because there was no work at home.

Occasionally, he looks for day jobs in the area, but it was unlikely he would get any work Saturday because of the protest, Varela said.

"No problem," he said. "Maybe tomorrow."

Contact the writer: 949-465-5424 or vjolly@ocregister.com

I especially liked the part when that weasel said they 'won' the land back. It is numbing to watch that behavior, words fail and my blood starts to boil!

Much appreciation goes to the Munutemen Project members. Thanks so much for the photos and the video.