Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Announces Plans to Cease Operations, Dissolve Organization

On Tuesday, March 23 Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) president Carmen Mercer sent an e-mail to supporters announcing that the organization is disbanding. The MCDC had recently come under controversy for a March 16 e-mail inviting volunteers to come to the border "locked, loaded and ready" and stating: "We will forcefully engage, detain, and defend our lives and country from the criminals who trample over our culture and laws.” Mercer stated that the organization was afraid that they would be unable to "control" those who responded to the invitation, and did not want to assume the liability.

The MCDC had long been accused of links to right-wing hate groups and anti-government militias. On June 12, 2009 Minutewoman Shawna Forde and two other volunteers were arrested for the first-degree murders of a nine year-old girl and her father in Arivaca, AZ. Forde and her supporters later claimed that they were attempting to steal a cache of drugs in order to help fund their anti-immigrant operations (the drugs turned out to be non-existent).

Although the organization had been active in southern Arizona since 2003, the MCDC entered the national political scene in 2005 when they changed their name from "Civil Homeland Defense Corps" and invited volunteers to join them from across the United States. Although the national organization is folding, numerous local splinter groups continue to operate in various parts of the country; likewise, the Minutemen are far from the only vigilante group to come under criticism for activities along the U.S./Mexico border.

Click here for an archive of Arizona Indymedia coverage of the Minuteman Project.

Demonstrators Hold Banner Stating "War is Not a Show"

TUCSON -- On Sunday afternoon, March 21, at the Aerospace and Arizona Days military exhibition and air show at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, two Tucson residents were arrested for trespass. John Heid, 55, and Gretchen Nielsen, 77, unfurled a banner declaring "War is Not a Show" and stood peacefully near the Predator UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle).

Heid stated, "War is not a show. It is killing us. And them. Combatants and children alike. Our soul and civil society. The moral order too is a casualty. War is hell. Not a cause for celebration. A frontal assault on reason. And the earth. War is not a spectacle or family entertainment.

"Today at the Air Show we see its shiny weapons, not its bloody victims. Not the nearly 4,400 dead U.S. soldiers. Not the tens of thousands of Iraqi, Afghani or Pakistani civilians. We glorify the mighty flying death machines and ignore the havoc they wreak..." read more>>>

Thousands of Claims Threaten Public Health & Sacred Lands

Denison plans on extracting 335 tons of uranium ore per day out of the "Arizona 1 Mine", which is set to operate four days per week. The hazardous ore will be hauled by truck more than 300 miles through towns and communities to the company's White Mesa mill located near Blanding, Utah.

After being pressured by environmental groups, U.S. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar initially called for a two-year moratorium on new mining claims in a buffer zone of 1 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park, but the moratorium doesn't include existing claims such as Denison's. The moratorium also doesn't address mining claims outside of the buffer zone.

The Grand Canyon is ancestral homeland to the Havasupai and Hualapai Nations. Although both Indigenous Nations have banned uranium mining on their reservations the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management may permit thousands of mining claims on surrounding lands.

Read the full article here

O'Odham Solidarity Across Borders Issues Statement on the January 16 Day of Action

"After days of reflection, O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective (OSABC) would like to give our thoughts and analysis on what occurred on the January 16th National Day of Action Against Sheriff Joe: March for Human Rights.

As we all saw, heard and read, the march turned violent due to calculated moves by Phoenix Police to unfairly, and unjustifiably remove a contingent of marchers that expressed a voice and message that was foreign to them and national organizers, but all too familiar to the original people of the very land they walk on.

OSABC called for what we dubbed the “Dine'-O'odham-Anarchist/Anti-Authoritarian” (DOA) contingent, in order to voice what we recognize to be an unending historical condition of forced removal here in the Southwestern so-called United States..."

To read more, please visit the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective or the recent AZ Indymedia article

Activists Confront Governor Ulises Ruiz; Are Charged with "Assaulting an Officer", then Released

On Thursday January 28, at around 9 p.m. Andrea Caraballo, Guadalupe Rodriguez Lopez, James Wells and Jennifer Lawhorne were eating ice cream in the zocalo of Oaxaca. At that time, one of us recognized the face of the governor of Oaxaca who was about nine feet away from us. As a friend of Brad Will, a U.S. journalist who was killed in Oaxaca in 2006, one of us took advantage of the governor’s presence to ask him about the case of Mr. Will, which to this day remains unresolved. We didn’t receive a response from the governor who continued walking and we continued strolling in the zocalo with our ice creams.

Five minutes later, between six and eight police agents, some in official uniform and others dressed in plainclothes, surrounded us, demanding to see our identifications and made us walk with them to a municipal police truck. While the police forced us to get into the back of the truck, we asked them why they were taking us away and to where they were going to take us. The police refused to give us any information. We were actually very afraid and worried for our safety... read the whole story>>>