Mayor Mark Funkhouser wanted to root out “elitism and community divisiveness” when he appointed a new slate of board members for the city’s parks department this week. But tapping Northland activist Frances Semler sparked an immediate rift with the Latino community. Semler, a quiet woman with a librarian's fashion sense, is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps – an anti-illegal-immigration group that pushes citizen patrols of the Southern border, pickets construction sites that supposedly employ undocumented workers and uses military language to describe an “invasion” of immigrants.
The day she was appointed to the parks board, Semler told The Kansas City Star that she was “not active” in the group. But she has been one of the most active members of the Heart of America chapter since its inception last year.
When Olathe resident Ed Hayes started the local Minuteman chapter, Semler showed up for the first meeting at a Johnson County library in August 2006. After Hayes gave an introduction to the mission, Joyce Mucci, the chair of the Mid-America Immigration Reform group, spoke to the crowd about the threats posed by a Kansas City-Mexico transportation hub called SmartPort. Mucci warned the group that the hub would be Mexican sovereign territory in the middle of Kansas City, that Mexican workers would gobble up jobs on American soil and that U.S. citizens couldn’t trust Mexican inspectors to ensure the safety of the trucks’ contents. When Mucci couldn’t remember a particular detail, she turned to Semler, who had been her partner in gathering intel on SmartPort. In fact, the Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly lauded Semler by name in an article she wrote about the SmartPort project in August.
Even before SmartPort, Semler had appeared with Mucci on CNN. In a February 2005 Paula Zahn Now segment, reporter Tom Foreman interviewed Semler about the growing immigrant population in Missouri. “I think we need to take a look at overall policy and get a handle on it,” she said about the number of immigrants entering the United States. “Maybe even stop it for a while until we can count everybody.”
Last September, Semler drove 60 miles to the second Minuteman recruiting meeting in Topeka, bringing along her well-worn hardbound copy of Pat Buchanan’s book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. She urged the group to read the right-wing politician’s book to get the straight story on the immigration crisis. Later that month, she attended the Operation U-Turn event at the Clarion Hotel, a daylong anti-illegal-immigration seminar featuring national Minuteman leaders, anti-immigration pundits and political sing-alongs with choruses like “You can pry my gun from my cold dead hands.” There, Semler helped Mucci distribute materials for an upcoming workshop on how to lobby elected officials.
This February, Semler attended a press conference that Hayes organized to announce a partnership between the Minutemen and a Hispanic group. Aside from a small handful of reporters, Semler was among fewer than a half-dozen citizens (including Hayes' wife) in the audience. More recently, Hayes told the Star that Semler was involved in organizing a Minuteman-sponsored anti-illegal-immigration rally in Topeka scheduled for this weekend. “The illegal aliens rally; now it’s time for us to show our support for our country and laws,” the Minuteman Web site says of the demonstration. “Bring signs and flags – American Of Course!”
Now that Semler has told the Star she’s not so active, maybe she won’t be marching in the rally that she helped organize. – Carolyn Szczepanski
I am troubled that one can not hold different views on things and be inelgible for a civic position. Noone was critical of Sandra Aust when she led the drive in favor of the stem cell initiative this past summer because most likely most of the readers here favored it. Doesn't this lady have the same right to offer opinions and be active in beliefs that she holds. No, I don't agree wiht her but this group so far has not been violent. They voice their opinion. You may disagree with it but she aslo has been very active as a neighborhood activist in the northland. She has a concern for our parks system. I think she deserves the same respect for her opinion as we gave Ms. Aust and others on the Park Board who have spoken out on things. Heck, no one was critical of Tim Kristil for being a major development lawyer and still serving on the Park Board. Talk about conflict of interests. Just my opinion and thoughts. Thanks.
Posted at: June 14, 2007 1:03 PM