Julianne Hing

Minutemen Leader Tries Talking Like A Humanitarian

I imagined the folks at Minutemen gathering crowd asking themselves, “What’s a young, minority lady doing here?” I joined them in Congress Park in Denver. It was billed as an all-day rally—their 8-hour agenda featured speakers like Tom Tancredo, Bob Barr and Alan Keyes, but it was more like a subdued suburban picnic with lots of coded hate speech tossed around in alternating lofty and heated tones. Chris Simcox, president of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, called the event a “third party convention for the conservatives—the real conservatives.” The folks in the audience were nearly all white and middle aged, a relaxed crowd leaning back in their USA lawn chairs as if they were watching Independence Day fireworks.

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Posted at 12:16 PM, Aug 26, 2008 in Permalink | View Comments