In the Harrisonburg Ramada Inn meeting room, the packed crowd, fairly evenly divided between those angry about illegal immigration, those concerned about the human rights of immigrants and the Latino community, and the curious, was abuzz. During the first part of the forum on immigration, everyone had followed the rules set down by Minuteman leader George Taplin. Five speakers, despite strong disagreements, had been listened to politely. But there was a lot of anger in the room, and during a short break, it was beginning to be heard.

Rick Castañeda, a slight man with a calm demeanor sitting at the speaker’s table, clapped his hands softly, and said, just loud enough to be heard, “If you can hear me, clap your hands twice.” A few people in the front of the room followed his instructions. He said then, “If you can hear me, clap your hands three times.” A few more people followed his instructions. By the time he got to “six times,” the room had quieted down. As he had earlier in the meeting, Castañeda showed that a cooperative style of leadership could bring together people with bitter disagreements.

When word went out that the Minutemen group was coming to Harrisonburg, many human rights activists in Harrisonburg planned to protest the meeting — and some still did stand outside with signs. But Taplin contacted the New Bridges Immigrant Resource Center and the Hispanic Services Council, and invited them each to make a presentation at the public meeting. New Bridges provides services to Harrisonburg’s diverse immigrant community. The Hispanic Services Council, which Castañeda chairs, meets monthly, and among other tasks, intends to “provide a gateway for the local community into the realm of the Latino-Hispanic population in the Shenandoah Valley.”

The two organizations accepted Taplin’s offer, and Sam Nickels of New Bridges sent out an e-mail urging “as many advocates for immigrants to be there as possible,” noting that the Minutemen had promised them “an open forum discussion on immigration issues” at which their groups were “guaranteed equal time.”

The Virginia Chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “nativist extremist group.” It was founded by Taplin as part of the fight against a publicly funded day labor center in Herndon. Taplin angrily denies that his organization is racist, and strongly attacks businesses that hire undocumented immigrants for keeping them in “slavery” just to make higher profits.

At the Harrisonburg meeting, Taplin did keep his promise to allow the two local non-profits an equal share of time. He had also invited two other national groups with views similar to his, the American Council for Immigration Reform and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. When the representative of the American Council for Immigration Reform started to make a negative generalization about all Hispanic societies, Taplin told him such comments were out of line.

Nickels made a fairly straightforward presentation about immigration, countering statistics used by Taplin and his supporters with his own statistics. He also noted that the two “pro-immigrant” speakers were locals, while the other speakers were from out of town. (At the end of the meeting, this flushed out the man who had asked Taplin to come to Harrisonburg, who said he had kept in the background because of other obligations.)

Castañeda chose a very personal approach. As a Hispanic man born in the United States, he shared personal anecdotes, emphasizing our common humanity. He talked about waiting tables as a college student with his passport in his pocket, afraid that he might be caught up in a raid, especially after two young Puerto Rican men — both U.S. citizens by birth, but not good English speakers — were locked up for several days following a Harrisonburg area raid. He introduced Leo Alonso, a young man in the audience who came to the Harrisonburg area as an undocumented immigrant, and went on to serve in Iraq and now helps run his family’s grocery business. (Alonso got a round of applause from everyone in the audience.)

Sam Nickels’ e-mail closed with the appeal, “We need to do what we can to prevent [the Minutemen] gaining a foothold in the Harrisonburg-Rockingham County area.” Were he and Castañeda successful in doing that? After the public meeting, about 20 Minutemen supporters stayed for their organizational meeting. Apparently their minds had not been changed.

The local newspaper, the Daily News-Record, ended its coverage of the event with the comments of a James Madison University student, one of many in the audience — “It’s about human beings.” Perhaps that was the audience that mattered.

Even for supporters of the local organizations, the final judgment wasn’t easy. “I didn’t plan to come to this meeting. I planned to protest outside,” said VOP member and equal rights activist Linda Royster as the meeting came to an end. “But when New Bridges and the Hispanic Services Council asked us to come, I agreed to support them. It wasn’t easy to sit and listen to some of what I heard. But by the end of the meeting, I was glad I did.”

For more information on New Bridges Immigrant Resource Center, contact them at newbridges@verizon.net or (540) 438-8295.

For more information on the Harrisonburg, Virginia Area Hispanic Services Council, visit its website at http://www.hispaniccouncil.org/HSC/.