Saturday, June 13, 2009

More Vigilante Violence From Extreme Right

The fact that these people are armed to the teeth doesn’t make me feel safer:
Head of a minuteman group arrested for double homicide

TUCSON, AZ - Three people have been arrested in connection with last months deadly double homicide in Arivaca that left a nine-year-old and her father dead. One of the people arrested for the homicide is the National Executive Director of the Minuteman American Defense group (M.A.D.), a group known for patrolling the border, and is dedicated to "Defending America's Borders" according to their website - http://minutemenamericandefense.org/

Jason Eugene Bush, 38, Shawna Forde, 42 and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 43, were all taken into custody and charged in connection with the murders of 29-year-old Raul Flores and 8-year-old Brisenia Flores. Both were killed during an alleged home invasion.

M.A.D. is a separate group from the better-known Minuteman Project, but according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s dossier on Forde, she has appeared at anti-immigration events with that group’s founder, Jim Gilchrist.

Writes the SPLC of Forde:

As head of Minutemen American Defense, or MAD, she straps on a yellow armband and carries a two-way radio to patrol the U.S.-Canadian border "against unlawful and unauthorized entry of all individuals, contraband, and foreign military." Acting on what she claims are "insider personnel tips," the group also has assigned members to patrol the Everett, Wash., main branch public library in search of suspicious-looking Middle Eastern men. Fortuitously, the library's windows overlook the Port of Everett, which MAD deems a high-profile terrorism target.

[...]

Forde's belief that in two years undocumented immigrants will "outnumber real Americans" is mild compared to other statements on MAD's website, such as a claim that Al Qaeda terrorists are recruiting U.S.-based members of the violent Latino street gang MS-13. A photo of the Ford Foundation's New York building is captioned, "This is where La Raza gets money to help destroy the U.S."
Lovely. Anti-immigrant and completely crazy. These wackos get nuttier by the day. And I do mean that in the clinical sense: According to the KVOA story:
"If you look at her history closely, and you know what we know, she is at best a pyschopath," says Sheriff Dupnik referring to Forde during a press conference Friday.

The Anti-Defamation League has its own dossier on Forde, and it’s even more alarming. It’s alleged she has fabricated claims about being violently attacked by Hispanic gangs, even alleged that her daughter has been targeted by Hispanic gangs.

And of course, Forde and her army of vigilantes are armed to the teeth:

One of Forde's activities has been coordinating vigilante border patrols in Arizona.  In an Internet radio interview in January 2009, Forde explained, "I have many weapons that I borrow when I go down on the border…All of our Minutemen all have weapons and long arms and all that kind of stuff."

The woman is clearly delusional, a wackadoodle just primed to go off with all guns blazing.

Would love to know why she was allowed to get within 10 feet of a gun.

Don’t answer that, I already know: she has a “right” to “defend herself” against the imaginary Hispanic gangs she is convinced have attacked her. Looks like she went too far and a young child was killed as a result.