Minuteman Project: Week 1

Weekend 1 with the Minuteman Project:

I am a volunteer with the Minuteman Project. I am on the border on the weekends, I will post my experiences here after each weekend. Remember to bookmark this page and check back every week for updates.

Things were a little chaotic, my brother and I got there on April 1 at 7:30 PM. Unfortunately they had closed things down earlier than I was told, but we got signed in and headed out to "the Trading Post" where everyone would be meeting in the morning. A little bummed we weren't on the border already, we slept in the car behind the trading post for the night.

In the morning we woke up and went into the trading post. There we met Chris Simcox, until then I had only talked to him via email. We were assigned to the mountains to the west of the valley where most of the people were located. Our job was to spot and report illegals trying to cross around the rest of the group.

The day was actually very uneventful. The only illegals we saw all day was a mother and two sons walking down the street. I was about to call the Border Patrol when one of their trucks drove past. Paying attention to the Border Patrol, the family started to walk down the dirt road where my team was. When they finally looked down the dirt road they saw half a dozen Minutemen looking straight back at them. They started to scatter, but then decided that it looked to suspicious and regrouped. They started walking back to the border, I would assume to make it look less like they were illegal. Anyway, the Border Patrol truck that had passed them had turned around, and picked them up.

Nothing else happened all day. Needless to say it was because we were simply so effective that no one was crossing the border.

Me and my brother:



Here is a photo of my brother spotting:



Some garbage left by the illegals (we found a LOT of it):



That night I attended a planning meeting of sorts. We discussed our goals, our successful first day, and ways to improve how we were doing things. That meeting is something I will never forget. Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox both spoke, and it was so very clear I was in the presence of today's true American patriots. Never in my life did I expect to even meet such people, much less be working with them like this. If Chris ever runs for president, he has my vote.

Here are a couple of photos from the meeting:





In the meeting they mentioned that they were short on security volunteers, so we decided to help out for the night before we drove back to Tucson in the morning. Again that night was a night I will not soon forget. We walked a patrol of the grounds and then watched the front gate of the Bible College. Nothing happened all night, which gave us the opportunity to simply talk with the other security volunteers. We discussed freedom all night. We discussed the Bill of Rights. We discussed how our government has forgotten that it is the servant of the people, not the ruler. We discussed what we can do to continue to act, not only to talk about it. Of course we also talked a bit about guns and motorcycles...

In the morning my brother and I drove back to Tucson. I was so tired I don't know how I made it back- I should not have been driving. After I got home, I don't even remember falling asleep, I just woke up at 9 o'clock that evening, then went back to sleep for the night at 11.

I can't wait to get back to the border on Friday.