Last night, when Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist came to speak at Columbia University as a guest of the Columbia College Republicans, a group of students stormed the stage holding a banner proclaiming "There Are No Illegals," a fight ensued - those who rushed the stage claim that they were attacked by the republicans, and Gilchrist was rushed away as the attendees chanted antiracist slogans (and called Gilchrist a pinche culo.)
The myth of the university as a neutral ground on which armed fascists should be welcomed as distinguished guests, though the people they terrorize are coded as good enough only to clean floors or serve hamburgers lies at the center of many of the loud condemnations of the protesters that have thus far circulated - and the video embedded on the site linked to above shows one young republican referrign to his fellow students in a manner which is, frankly, racist -- as "animals" inapable of the sort of rational dialogue we all know that conservatives are so quick to engage in.
The Minuteman Project is an armed paramilitary vigilante organization. It is racist, premised upon metaphors of invasion and reconquista which construct the immigrant as corrosive monster, unnasimilable other, and welfare queen. I will not claim that Gilchrist has no place in a university - I have never been convinced that the university as happy bubble of tolerance was either a particularly useful metaphor or a particularly true one - universities are implicated in structures of racial difference in complicated and profound ways - but I support the efforts of folks at Columbia to counter his hatred and fascism with banners and bodies. No one is illegal.
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