kalikshama
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http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/murder-in-the-desert/Content?oid=1739974
On June 12, authorities also arrested Shawna Forde, executive director of a border-vigilante outfit called Minuteman American Defense. Prosecutors say Forde was carrying jewelry belonging to Gina Flores at the time of her arrest.
When he was taken into custody, Bush confessed to the murders and implicated both Forde and Gaxiola. Forde was subsequently intercepted as she was leaving the property of Glenn Spencer, founder of another organization called American Border Patrol. With its headquarters on the Mexican line south of Sierra Vista, Spencer's ABP specializes in patrolling the backcountry with high-tech cameras, and then streaming those images on the Internet.
According to authorities, Forde had intended to steal drugs from traffickers to fund her Minuteman group. But even before her arrest, she'd been a hugely controversial character within the border-vigilante movement. For one thing, Gunny Bush was her director of operations. Then there is Forde's involvement in a series of bizarre incidents in Washington state, culminating in claims of being raped by members of the vicious Salvadoran street gang Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13.
The already fractious anti-immigrant movement was further splitting among those who supported her work, and others who thought she was disturbed. William Gheen, founder of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, began rebutting Forde's claims on his Web site. Among other things, Gheen questioned the photos that Forde took of herself after the alleged attack. "Why would MS-13 switch from brutal murder and decapitations," he wrote, "to bruises and light scratches that look like they were made with a paper clip?
"If this story is a hoax and some sort of attention grab, then it could prove highly embarrassing to our movement and cause."
Other movement leaders also rushed to distance themselves from the radical activist. But it was too late, says Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement From the Margins to the Mainstream.
According to Zeskind, the Arivaca murders only highlight what many have always feared: The anti-immigrant movement, with its seething rhetoric and paramilitary posturing, would eventually attract people on the violent fringe. As a result, he says, guilt is collectively shared by leaders ranging from Jim Gilchrist of the California-based Minuteman Project, and Arizona's Glenn Spencer, to Chris Simcox, who founded the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Tombstone in 2002 and is now running a long-shot campaign to unseat Sen. John McCain.
"They're all up to their alligator ears with Forde," Zeskind says. "And they can't disown what they created. It's everything that everybody thought sending people to the border with guns would wind up doing, which is promoting solutions to social problems through violence. That's really what you see in this Minutemen attack."
< Message edited by kalikshama -- 1/30/2011 3:17:35 PM >
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RE: Another case of not right wing violence - 
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