Source:
East County Magazine (San Diego)By Miriam Raftery
June 14, 2009 (San Diego’s East County) – Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen America Defense(MAD), has been arrested along with two men and charged with double homicide in a home invasion. The victims included a nine-year-old girl. Forde has attended training at Camp Vigilante, a high-desert training camp operated by Minuteman Civil Defense near Boulevard in San Diego’s East County in 2008, East County Magazine has learned. photo: Forde in East County, courtesy of Campo Minutemen A second suspect arrested also has ties to Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), which operates a Minutemen training facility in East County.
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“These Minutemen are violent vigilante groups as I’ve always said, including groups of people in East County,” Enrique Morones, founder of Border Angels in San Diego and a leader in the immigrant rights movement, told East County Magazine. ”Their motivation is hate,” he said, warning that hate speech and vigilantism can lead to violence and in this case, the tragic death of an innocent child. “They have been in the Campo area an at meetings these are part of the racist vigilante minutemen there are also some neo-Nazis in East County now,” he added., “The authorities have been advised.”
Local Minutemen group have long claimed to oppose violence, while supporting vigilante citizen patrols of the Border.
“It is, of course shocking and horrible, especially with the little child being involved. It takes someone truly monstrous to harm a child,” Campo Minutemen spokesperson Deborah Craig informed ECM in an e-mail. “We have not heard the men involved, however, we have met Shawna Forde,” she revealed in an e-mail interview. “The various media reports seem to be inaccurate with regard to her involvement with other groups.”
Minutemen Civil Defense Corps is based in Arizona and was founded by Chris Simcox, who left when he began his run for United States Senate. “Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) maintains a facility in California near Boulevard known as Camp Vigilance," Craig said. "In August of 2008, Shawna Forde came to the border at Campo, CA and contacted Campo Minuteman Britt Craig. She did not make any comments to indicate she was unstable or violent,” Forde recalled. “She had a Minutemen Civil Defense Corps badge so she presumably had been vetted by the group. Minutemen Civil Defense Corps charges a fee and does a background check.”
According to Deborah Craig, Forde and Campo Minutemen leader Britt Craig went to Camp Vigilance in separate vehicles “where she was given full access by the caretaker. She purchased a bullet proof vest from the caretaker and indicated she planned to spend the night,” Deborah Craig added. “She indicated that she primarily did her border watching in AZ , that she had her own group, Minutemen American Defense, and we did not hear
her directly again.”
Bush, who goes by the nickname “Gunny”, serves as operations director of MAD according to the group’s website, however the Associated Press reports, he has “recently been living in Arizona and was once associated with the better known and larger Minutemen Civil Defense Corps” which operates Camp Vigilante in East County.
Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) took $10,000 in political contributions from The Minuteman PAC, the political action arm of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC). The MCDC is described as “a nativist extremist group whose members conduct armed patrols of the border” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization which tracks hate crimes and hate-related groups nationwide.
(Much more at the link above)
Read more: http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/?q=node/1419
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