We got there a bit late but friends of the blog – Jill (Imagine2050), Kyle (CitizenOrange) and Xicanopwr confronted the handful of Minutemen protestors whining about the ’20 million illegal aliens’ in the United States.

Apparently, they were out in numbers representing the ‘80% of Americans against illegal immigration.’

XP ventured to ask how they arrived at the number. Was there some sort of database with our names and counts in it? We would love to have it at DreamActivist for organizing purposes…

But they were chased away within 10-15 minutes.

Kety Esquivel, New Media Manager at NCLR, was protective and wouldn’t let me get near the Minutemen without backup. And offered me a blazer so I could hide my ‘Support the DREAM Act’ shirt. That wasn’t about to happen. But I didn’t get any great videos or audios. Hopefully, they come back tomorrow for some more enriching conversation.

However, I got up close with one Minuteman in particular who was calling us felons while being interviewed by Jill from Imagine 2050. He probably needs to re-read the ‘laws of the land.’

The Minutemen didn’t bother to come inside to the conference. They would have realized that NCLR is nowhere near ‘promoting illegal aliens above American workers’ or even remotely radical (we saw some disturbing Marines and Army booths at the Latino Expo along with corporate sponsors that aren’t exactly pro-Latino). NCLR is a DC-based civil rights organization, much like the NAACP.

Now, I don’t see Minutemen showing their KKK colors to protest against the NAACP but Latino/La Raza automatically means ‘illegal immigrant’ and hence, ‘taking jobs from Americans.’

To get up to date reports from the NCLR conference, follow the hashtag #nclr09 on twitter.