Interview w/ Minutmen Founder: There be racists and fascist among us

Good read.

Okay, for the sake of argument, I won't call Gilchrist a kook, I'll call him an extremist, so what does it say about a group when an extremist is calling other folks in the movment kooks?

Yikes.

 

I don't agree with Gilchrist but I have sympathy for him. Unfortunately things like this happen that extremists and / or people looking for a fight will get involved with a movement and cause trouble. Just look at protest movements where the vast majority of members are peaceful except for a small group of people that want to F^(K SH^T UP!.

I thought this was pretty good advice for any movement.

[rquoter]What if someone came to you and said, Mr. Gilchrist, I'm starting a grassroots effort on behalf of a cause that's dear to me. Do you have any advice?

Be extremely careful of volunteers who say they want to help you because they're passionate about your cause. Especially if there is fundraising involved. What I have found is that the same persons will attempt to steal your organization to get access to your money. I'm told that's commonplace in a lot of activist groups. And be wary of some extremists trying to infiltrate the organization to exploit it for their own philosophical advantage, and ultimately destroying it.

You have to be wary, especially as a beginner. Keep everything as close to yourself as possible. People who want to come in under the guise of I'm going to help you, especially if they volunteer because they're passionate in the cause, they're probably lying. In my case, I had to sue three former volunteers that I fired who were trying to steal my organization. I did sue them and I won several lawsuits in superior court and got judgments awarded. That essentially stalled my organization from moving the issue any farther. We got so tied up and disrupted and distracted by the infighting.

Another group... had a rebellion in its ranks due to the fact that the fundraising company it was using was keeping all the money and not using it to bring people to the border. I think they made about $10 million over three or four years. Apparently not a penny of it got to people on the border. There are various reasons for people to get involved in activism. This is not just the immigration issue. It could be the abortion issue, the religious issue, whatever. Number one, the fundraisers want to make money off it, it's not about the issue to them. It's really about making money. [/rquoter]