COMMENTARY
It's the Boss, Not the Workers - The Minutemen: Mad at the Wrong Guys
By Dan La Botz
CounterPunch/Weekend Edition
August 19 / 20, 2006
The image and the idea of the Minuteman is attractive: the patriot,
the typical working guy, prepared to take up arms at a moment's notice
to defend his country. Minutemen and Minutewomen too: the ordinary
people fighting the good fight to protect the American way of life: a
good job, a home, a living wage, health care and education, and some
left over for entertainment and eventually a retirement with dignity.
The contemporary Minutemen, mostly white guys with guns, have taken
their stand on the Mexico border. The stand with binoculars, gazing
South, yearning to fire off a few rounds at their enemies the
immigrants.
The problem is that the Minutemen are mad at the wrong guys. The guys
they want are back East. The enemies they're after are not short,
dark-skinned guys with names like Jesús Martínez but tall,
fair-skinned fellows with names like Jack Welsh, Sam Walton and
Richard Farmer.
Answer these questions, and you see where the Minutemen have gotten
lost.
Who closed the auto plants and steel mills taking away hundreds of
thousands of unionized jobs with high pay and good benefits? Who sent
the auto parts plants, television plants, hospital supply plants, and
many others to Mexico? American corporations sent them South looking
for lower wages. The foreign workers had no hand in it and weren't
even allowed to say a word.
Who declares bankruptcy to take awake workers' contracts, wages,
benefits and pensions? Not immigrant workers. American corporations
like LTV, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, United Airlines, Delphi have
turned to bankruptcy to screw workers. The immigrant worker now takes
a job in a place that plays little more than the minimum wage-but the
employers drove down the wage, not the immigrants.
Who took your son or daughter-or is about to take them--and sent them
to kill or die for oil in Iraq? An American politician, a congressman,
probably a former corporate lawyer, threatens your kids' lives-not the
immigrant worker. Most immigrants I know oppose the U.S. imperial wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Who lowers income taxes for the rich and raises sales taxes on the
poor? You can bet it was politicians who receive money from corporate
PACs. Immigrant workers didn't raise our taxes. Most of them can't
even vote and congressmen pay even less attention to them than they do
to us.
Who was it that--after they got rid of the union jobs--hired the
immigrant, paid her or him low wages, denied them basic benefits like
health care, and worked them like they were pack animals? Who
advertised for immigrants in Mexico or Central America, brought them
here illegally, hired them illegally, and often worked them in
violation of the wages and hours act? Well, it wasn't Juanita.
Who discriminates against African American workers, preferring to hire
Latin American immigrants who have no rights? It's the boss-not the
immigrant worker.
Who was it that destroyed Mexico's economy with NAFTA, forcing the
Mexicans to come here? Who was it that supported Guatemala's dictators
as they turned Indian communities into killing fields, leaving many
Guatemalans with no alternative but to come here? Who was it who
destroyed the economies of South America, creating mass unemployment
followed by mass migration? I think you know who it was, and it wasn't
the wretched family trying to cross the Sonora-Arizona desert with a
few gallons of water, a few dollars in their pocket and a prayer on
their lips.
Who should you be mad at, Minutemen? It wasn't the foreign worker and
it wasn't immigrant who took away our jobs, high wages, good benefits
and decent working conditions. It was that congeries of scoundrels and
lawyers, that complex of interlocking directorates and corporate
hierarchies, that network of good old boys with Texas oil money and
that clique of New York bankers with sheaves of stocks and bonds, that
system of political payoffs, favoritism and nepotism that taken all
together we call the American power elite--what the old school called
the ruling class-that's who did it. They're white guys, they wear
ties, and they live on this side of the border.
If the Minutemen want to guard America from lying, thieving, murdering
bastards who would destroy our country and its values, then they are
shooting in the WRONG DIRECTION. Go East young Minuteman!
If the Minutemen want to protect us, then they
should throw their guns in their jeeps and go to Washington, D.C. to
get those guys who cut the taxes on the rich and raised the taxes on
the poor.
Or, instead of taking pot shots across the border, they should take
their troops to New York and visit the offices of the insurance
companies and health care corporations that keep us from getting
single payer health.
They might jump in their half-tracks and head to the headquarters of
the oil companies whose avarice drives us to war in Iraq while
opposing measures that would conserve our resources and save our
environment.
The contemporary Minutemen don't seem to me to be in the tradition
they claim. The original Minutemen didn't go out shooting at poor
farmers coming to town looking for jobs, they fought their
government-then the British government-and they fought the wealthy
English Loyalists. The original Minutemen fought the power-not the
powerless.
I could support the Minutemen, once they get straight who the enemy
is. And it isn't Jesús and Juanita. It's guys like Sam Walton of
Walmart, Jack Welsh of GE and Richard Farmer of CINTAS, corporate CEOs
who drive to amass profits and power who have fought labor unions,
killed the good jobs, driven down wages. How about the Minutemen mount
up, gather up the posse, and get those guys. That would be a task
worthy of their historic name.
____________________________________
Dan La Botz is a Cincinnati-based writer, teacher, and activist.
Article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/labotz08192006.html
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