Multinational coalition protests anti-immigrant Minutemen

As the African-American nation and its allies rose to their feet in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15 in the biggest display of unity in a decade, the racist Minutemen were meeting behind closed doors in Arlington Heights, a suburb of Chicago. These fascist cowards needed the protection of more than 100 heavily armed cops in body armor to continue their “fundraising and organizing” meeting at the Christian Liberty Academy campus, in the face of determined opposition from united immigrant communities from Chicago.

This attempt by the fascists to organize support for anti-immigrant racist violence was met by a peaceful demonstration of more than 300 people, organized and led by the Coalition of African, Asian, European and Latino immigrants of Illinois (CAAELII). CAAELII mobilized its allies in the Cambodian, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Mexican and Latin American com munities, filling eight buses with demonstrators. They ranged in age from high school students to the elderly, many of whom were undocumented. Many were attending this demonstration at great risk to themselves and their families, due to their legal status. The demonstration also drew several left organizations and anarchists.

More than 100 riot cops, some with rifles, heavy wooden batons and Plexiglas shields, responded violently to the peaceful demonstrators, despite the obvious threat of Minutemen dressed in camouflage uniforms on the roof of the Academy, who might well have been armed. The police were there to protect the fascists, not the demonstrators.

The Minutemen have demonstrated their capacity for violence and have made statements condoning the use of violence. The presence of what may well have been Minutemen snipers on the roof posed a clear danger to the demonstrators below, but the cops did nothing to protect the people against this very real threat.

The cops assaulted Sabah Khan, an activist from the Chicago neighborhood of Albany Park, before arresting him. Penny Brown, a World Can’t Wait organizer, and Linda Flores, a writer for Revolution news paper, were themselves arrested while attempting to intervene on behalf of Khan to prevent her arrest. Flores was charged with resisting arrest and battery. Brown was charged with two counts of battery to a police officer.

In addition to the Arlington Heights Police Department, cops from Barrington Hills, Des Plaines, Franklin Park, Gurnee, Lake Forest, Mt. Prospect, Palatine, Round Lake Beach and Skokie were mobilized in an attempt to intimidate the demonstrators.

Those in the cross-hairs of militant racists like the Minutemen cannot expect the careerist politicians of the Democratic Party to help. Success in the struggle against the Minutemen and their friends in the Democratic and Republican parties can only come through more mobilizations of this type and more unity, under the leadership of the communities that the Minutemen target.

Nor will any protection come from the police, defined by Frederick Engels as the “special bodies of armed men and women” who make up the repressive arm of the capitalist state. They certainly showed it in Arlington Heights.