The Confessions of Warden, The Notorious Mexican Flag Burner

An Exercise in Confrontational, Non Partisan Political Activism By Roy Warden

roywarden@hotmail.com

PROLOGUE
By the last week in March 2006 their forty year dream for the Nation of Aztlan was about to come true. After decades of hard work to advance their agenda, including, amongst other things, the promulgation of the so-called right of impoverished Mexican citizens to cross the border freely, to gain American citizenship and access to the pockets of American citizens, the long term, well coordinated plan of the Pro-Raza Movement and the advancement of Mexican Government Economic Policy, was finally clicking on all eight cylinders. On Saturday March 25 and Sunday March 26, ordinary Americans sat glued to their televisions, bewildered, mesmerized and somewhat apprehensive as they listened to the news and watched legions of radicals and their liberal sympathizers marching in the streets of America from New York City to Los Angeles; first by the tens and then by the hundreds of thousands, angry mobs of activists, stomping on American flags, waving Mexican flags, shouting slogans like we didnt cross the border, the border crossed us! and today we march, tomorrow we vote! To the common man and the untrained eye it all appeared to be a massive and spontaneous public uprising in support of a

general amnesty for the estimated 20-25 million illegal Mexican aliens already in the country. However, unbeknownst to all but a few insiders, the plans for these rallies, including theme and date, had been made months in advance by the leaders of well known radical groups1, such as Lulac, MEChA, the National Council of la Raza, ACORN, SEIU, MALDEF, The American Friends Service Committee, etc. along with the Communist Party, all working in concert to maximize the effect. In Tucson Arizona one of the prime movers in what would eventually become known as the Pro-Raza, Cheap Mexican Labor, Open Border Movement, Pima County Legal Defender, Isabel Garcia, sat in her office on the 14th floor of the Pima County Legal Services Building and talked to selected members of the left wing media, including Lorraine Rivera of KVOA News, and watched reruns of the March rallies with immense satisfaction. The fact that Pima Countys Legal Defender was also Director of an Arizona based Open Border group named Derechos Humanos, and openly used her tax funded government position, and office staff, to communicate and organize with radical organizations around the country to facilitate the breaking of American immigration law, was no secret in Pima County, nor did it present Garcia with any ethical, legal, or political considerations to ponder; after all, it was precisely Garcias identity as an Open
1

The Shadow Party, David Horowitz, pg. 102

Border Activist that made her so valuable to all of the local vested interests, political, economic and otherwise. What was secret was Garcias personally vested economic interest in the continuation of the border controversy, and the fact that over the previous three years she had not paid tax on a half a million dollars of income she received from a non-profit called Arizona Border Rights Foundation. In Arizona, the activist Open Border foundations were anything but humanitarian or not-profit; in fact they were cleverly constructed devices by which enormous amounts of tax free money could be collected and funneled to the activists who directed such enterprises. Si, se puede Garcia said to Lorraine, over and over again, si, se puede, repeating the mantra she first learned in the California melon fields some forty years before when her family marched with Cesar Chavez. Garcia put in a call to Lupita Murillo of KVOA news and returned to work, along with fellow legal defender Margo Cowan2, leaders of non-profit so-called humanitarian groups like Border Action Network Director Jennifer Allen, Reverend Hoover of
In 1976 Margo Cowan was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged, amongst other things, with using her federally funded program, The Manzo Project, to aid, abet and to otherwise facilitate the entry of thousands of Mexican Illegal Aliens.
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Humane Borders, Reverend John Fife3, Pima County Public Defender and former Superior Court Judge Robert Hooker, members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, members of the Tucson City Council, and high ranking members of the Tucson Police Department, to put the finishing touches on several major future rallies Garcia was planning, including the most important one to be held in Armory Park, Tucson Arizona on April 10, 2006. Garcia had good reason to be satisfied; the dream was coming true. The entire audacious plan, decades in the making, was unfolding with breathtaking speed. ******** Now, if you thought that by the spring of 2006 the vast majority of American left wing groups, and the Mexican government, had their sights dead set on achieving a permanent Open Border Policy, with all its insidious ramifications, you are right. However; if you thought that conservative Arizona politicians like Senators John McCain and John Kyle, and a large number of right wing groups including the Arizona Cattle Growers Association, whose members included ranchers with property being
In 1986 Reverend John Fife, co-founder of the US Sanctuary Movement, was indicted and convicted for felony violations of immigration law.
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overrun and destroyed on the border, and other statewide business and political organizations, stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity to oppose them, you are wrong, dead wrong. In fact Senator McCain, who raised few eyebrows in 2010 when he switched gears, backpedaled, and vowed to fix the danged fence, actually opposed the first citizen initiative to halt voting rights and other benefits extended to illegal aliens, and sponsored the infamous Kennedy McCain Amnesty Bill in 2006. To be sure, by the spring of 2006 there were some Arizona republicans standing up against Open Border Policy, a few good men like former Arizona legislator Randy Graff who was running for congress in the 8th district, and Arizona legislator Russell Pierce, whose son, a police officer, took a bullet in his chest on December 16, 2004 while serving a search warrant on a felon who also by accident, just happened to be a Mexican Illegal Alien, and there were citizen activist organizations like Glen Spencers group The American Patrol, and the Minutemen, which took powerful activist stands to protect the border against the unrestricted entry of Mexican Illegal Aliens, as well as Kathy McKees organization, Protect Arizona Now, which succeeded in promulgating and passing the powerful statewide citizens initiative, the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act in 2004, which limited alien access to welfare and denied them voting privileges.

But

these

citizen

activist

groups

were

truly

non-

confrontational, grassroots, and non partisan by nature; credible republicans, right wing political groups and large numbers of media to support them were few and far between. To be fair: around the country there was significant right wing radio talk show support for citizen activism, guys like CNNs Lou Dobbs, Fox News Bill OReilly and Michael Savage, who on March 27, 2006 openly advocated the adoption of aggressive and confrontational street tactics like burning the Mexican flag, etc., but the more openly republican mainstream talk show hosts, like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, fell into the left wing trap and generally viewed the citizen groups, by and large, as vigilantes and unwashed militia. The absence of large numbers of mainstream republican politicians, who of course on the basis of party doctrine were probusiness, was understandable when you consider the following quote from an article titled Desperate Times on the ArizonaMexico Border, published in the spring of 2006 by the New York Times: Meanwhile, economists like Marshall Vest at the University of Arizona said the illegal immigrants were an important source of labor for the booming construction and tourism industries that had helped make Arizona the second-fastest growing state, (in 2006) after Nevada.

Arizona didnt become the second fastest growing state in 2006 by accident. It took hard work, focus, and the dedication of high ranking members of the business elite, guys like real estate developers Paul Robeson and Don Diamond who, way back in 1960, had a vision to change the focus of the Arizona economy from Copper, Cattle and Cotton to Recreation and Retirement, fast food magnate Mac Magruder who owned a string of McDonald franchises and employed cheap, illegal labor, and Tucson auto impresario Jim Click. In future years, when the writing of history finally caught up with the rapidly changing economic and political reality, people would begin to come to their senses and realize an ironic and fundamental truth: in Arizona, mainstream republican business interest for cheap Mexican labor actually preceded and contributed to the growing strength in the Pro-Raza Movement. Moreover, by 2006 the number of student foot soldiers of the Pro-Raza Movement itself was fueled by the children of ever increasing numbers of Mexican Illegal Aliens, who, over the years had come to America to do the jobs Americans wont do4, according to then President George Bush.

In Arizona the jobs Americans wont do included every job in the housing industry that American construction workers refused to do for less than minimum wage.
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It was an ironic twist of fate that the essentially left wing Pro Raza movement owed a debt of gratitude to the avarice and greed of right wing businessmen, but then again: had not the labor movements of the 19th and 20th century found traction as a result of centuries of abuse, and the exploitation of labor, by right wing business? The fact was: In 2006, behind the scenes, just about the entire Arizona business community5 joined hands with the ProRaza Movement to keep the borders open, and to keep the Illegals coming. ******** In 2006, few, if any, political writers viewed the concert of action of politically odd bedfellows from an historical perspective, even though in his excellent book The Shadow Party published in 2006, David Horowitz came close to the truth and exposed the process by quoting from a political tract written in 1957 by Czech Communist Party theoretician Jan Kozak: Kozak explained how a small number of communists managed to gain power in Czechoslovakia through parliamentary maneuvers. The trick was to exert pressure for radical change from two directions simultaneouslyfrom the upper levels of government and from provocateurs in the streets. Kozak called this tactic pressure from above and below.
See Chapter 5: Arizona Businessmen Join Pro Raza Groups in lawsuits to Defeat Arizonas Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2004.
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One way to exert pressure from belowwas to fill the streets with rioters, strikers and protesters, thus creating the illusion of a widespread clamor for change from the grassroots. Radicals in the government would then exert pressure from above, enacting new laws on the pretext of appeasing the protesters in the street even though the protestors (or at least their leaders) were themselves part of the plot. In Shadow Party, Horowitz theorized that in 2006 the push from above and below came from solely from left wing street activists, and their left wing counterparts in the House and Senate. And it was Horowitzs belief that the entire push for immigration reform was orchestrated by financier George Soros. In his zeal to pin the Soros tail on the Donkey, and the blame for Open Border policy entirely on the left wing, Horowitz neglected Tip ONeals famous quip, all politics is local. His analysis failed to factor in massive republican efforts in Arizona to keep the borders open, and the vested interest of the majority of elected republicans, as set forth by the following quote of President George Bush, as set forth in the spring of 2006 by the New York Times article Desperate Times: President Bush on Saturday again encouraged the Senate to pass an immigration overhaul bill before its Memorial Day breaks. Mr. Bush used his weekly radio address to increase pressure on senators debating legislation that couples tighter border controls with a guest-worker program and gives a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

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Horowitzs myopia can be excused. Perhaps the flaw in his thinking, as a reformed liberal and newly minted republican, was just another example of whose bread I eat, his song I sing." At any rate, by the time Shadow Party was published in 2006 events were unfolding far too rapidly for Horowitz, or anyone else for that matter, to put the frosting on the cake, or better yet, the guacamole on the enchilada. Yeah, sure, by the time elections rolled around in 2010, regarding what the media so lovingly called the immigration debate, things were crystal clear. Americans were mad as hell and every republican politician who wanted to keep his job proudly wrapped himself in the flag and stood up for US sovereignty and four-square against Amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform. But things were not quite so simple in 2006. What Ron Emanuel famously said in 2009, You never want a serious crisis go to waste, was true in 2006 for both republican conservatives and democrat liberals. In retrospect, it now seems so simple: in 2006, the American people faced what was, in effect, a revolution, not by the masses but by the republican and democratic elite. Quite literally, from President Bush on down to the left wing street activists of Tucson Arizona, it was a well-coordinated effort

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between government agencies and radical groups, right and left wing political factions, a push from the bottom and a push from the top, to subvert the constitution and the rule of law, all for a dual and sinister purpose: to erode the power of labor unions and promote the desires of conservative businessmen for an endless supply of cheap Mexican labor to exploit, and, to advance the dreams of radical left wingers to further polarize American politics on the basis of race, color and ethnicity. Significantly, a clue as to the essence of the process could be found in the quote of a Mexican illegal border crosser in 2006: "Yes, there is risk, but there is also need," said Mr. Espindola, explaining why he had brought his children on a journey that killed 464 immigrants last year, and a 3-year-old boy this week. Looking out at the vast parched landscape ahead, Mr. Espindola, a coffee farmer, talked about the poverty he had left behind, and said: "Our damned government forces us to leave our country because it does not give us good salaries. The United States forces us to go this way.6" ******* O n April 06, 2006 Garcia finished her phone calls. Then she

began to review a series of legal documents which later would prove pivotal to the legal issues raised five days later, in the smoldering aftermath of the rally.

Desperate Times, New York Times, May 28, 2006

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The primary document was the Exclusive Use Permit she obtained to control events in Armory Park on April 10, the day of the event. The phone rang. Bueno! It was Lupita Murillo. The old friends chatted for a few moments and exchanged the news regarding a press release Lupita had received several days earlier, which announced a rally to be held on Saturday, the following day, in front of the Tucson Mexican Consulate. The rally was in opposition to Open Border Policy. The A.C.L.U. was going to be there. Amongst other things the event organizer said the group planned to burn a Mexican flag. The women were silent for a few moments. Mexican Flag? Burn the

Then Garcia asked: This organizer, do you know his name? Si, Lupita said. Uno Pendejo se llama Roy Warden.

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