TRIBUNE PROFILE: TED HAYES
Black activist joins border war
Longtime advocate for the homeless enlists in the Minuteman Project to fight illegal immigration, rankling Latinos, many

blacks

By Michael Martinez
Tribune national correspondent
Published June 12, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- He is America's black Minuteman, a crusading African-American in a volunteer group of mostly white men

whom President Bush has called "vigilantes" and harsher critics condemn as racist for their occasionally gun-toting patrols

against illegal immigrants on the U.S. border.

Ted Hayes is no dilettante. Since the mid-1980s, he has been Los Angeles' most visible homeless activist, voluntarily living

among the poor on Skid Row.

Hayes, 55, has been described as an urban Moses for the destitute. At 6 foot 3 and weighing the same 145 pounds since high

school, Hayes has cultivated a made-for-TV image; with large, languid eyes, he has grown his gray hair into dreadlocks,

topped with a skullcap "because Jesus was a Jew," he says.

Now, his evolution from Democrat to independent to Republican has taken him to new ground that has rankled many blacks

and Latinos.

Explanation for stance

Hayes is publicly denouncing illegal immigration, saying that undocumented workers are harming his efforts to secure limited

public resources to fight homelessness. He says they take away low-skilled jobs that the black working poor often filled.

A longshot candidate for mayor in 1993, Hayes has the background that draws attention to his condemnation of the nation's

illegal immigration. He calls the issue "the greatest threat to U.S. black citizens since slavery."

His indictment is extensive:

"There was a time when black folks did a lot of the work that illegal immigrants are taking. They came in here and undercut

our salaries in their desperation for survival. ... They say to an employer, `I can do that for half,' and the

`emplo[yer]-slavists' says, `You're on.' Goodbye, black man.

"The only way we can get those jobs is to undercut their pay, and if we undercut their pay, my God ... we're in the white

man's slavery again.

"When they used the word `civil rights,' they woke us up. Wait a minute. The words `civil rights' belongs to our ancestors

who suffered and died for our freedom dating 1964, '65, backward to 1866.

"We poor black people can't get housing anymore because the illegals are coming here, and they'll pile up in a house. ... They

won't let blacks in. ... If you can't speak Spanish, you're not working, you can't get a house."

Hayes' remarks are dismissed as grandstanding by some critics, but his willingness to march with Minutemen last month has

made him an open target of reprisals that reduced him to tears, he said.

Aside from what he charged were racial slurs uttered by Latino activists, he has been called "an Uncle Tom sellout" and a

"racist," he said.

Group has 10,000 members

Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project who marched shoulder to shoulder with Hayes, described him as perhaps

the most public face representing African-American supporters, who make up only a few hundred of the group's 10,000

members. Gilchrist said only one other black member in the group, who sits on the board, rivals Hayes' leadership.

Overall, the group has an e-mail list amounting to 220,000, Gilchrist said.

"Ted would be our icon for the African-American segment of the Minuteman Project," Gilchrist said.

In March, Hayes formed an African-American affiliate of the Minuteman Project called the Crispus Attucks Brigade, a small

group that includes "some of the founders of the Crips and the Bloods back in the day," he said.

Crispus Attucks was a patriot leader killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770; some historians say he was a runaway slave of

black and white descent.
To black and Latino advocates and analysts, Hayes represents a fringe counterpoint to the two groups' alliance to advance

immigrant rights in Congress.

But Hayes' position touches a raw nerve, especially in California, where violence between blacks and Latinos has been

evident in prison fights, school shootings and street gang conflicts, analysts said.

"The Minutemen have no traction in the African-American community. Many African-Americans see them quite frankly as a

racist organization," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, founder of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

But, Hutchinson added, "The danger of having an African-American leader of some note fueling the tinderbox of

black-Latino relations is absolutely dangerous at this point in time."

He acknowledged that many mainstream blacks feel "anger and hostility" about jobs going to Latino illegal immigrants.

Richard Rodriguez, an editor at Pacific News Service and analyst of Latino affairs, agreed that the country's "white, black

and brown poor have paid the major price" for illegal immigrants because it pits the poor against the desperate.

He expressed less sympathy, however, for Hayes' "theatrical affiliation with the Minutemen."

"I wonder if he is even aware that many Hispanics and some illegal immigrants from Latin America are black or mulatto,"

Rodriguez said in an e-mail exchange.

In a homeless shelter right off a freeway in downtown Los Angeles, Hayes was sipping morning coffee under a dense stand

of ficus trees. His Hayes' Dome Village is a collection of 20 fiberglass igloos that house 22 adults and nine children, all

homeless.

At the end of July, his village will have to relocate; the landlord is evicting him because of his newfound Republican

leanings, he alleged. But on this morning last week, Los Angeles County's chief administrative officer was visiting because

Hayes was seeking $2 million in public funds to relocate.

Hayes insisted he is sensitive to the plight of Latino illegal immigrants, whom he calls companeros, but he stills wants to send

the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants back to their home countries--"and take the children with them," he added.

Hayes, who said he will go to Washington this week to press his case with Congress, said the migrants must seek adequate

jobs and living standards in their home countries, whose lands he said have been exploited for centuries.

"Companeros, we're going to work with you to get civil rights--in your home country," Hayes said.

"This is the time to have a revolution in Meso-America, to undo the corruption of the sons and daughters of the Spanish

conquistadors. That's who the oppressors are."

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mjmartinez@tribune.com
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