Minuteman Speech Interrupted in D.C.

Minuteman Civil Defense Corps president and founder Chris Simcox's speech at Georgetown University was interrupted by a fire alarm Wednesday.

Simcox's group is a separate border patrol group from the Minuteman Project, whose founder Jim Gilchrist was met with protest at Columbia last month.

According to The Hoya writer D. Pierce Nixon, the alarm went off 10 minutes into the speech and disrupting it for about 20 minutes. The speech continued with no further disruptions. Nixon said that it was not known if the alarm was pulled deliberately or if there was actually a fire. The speech was held in the formal lounge of Copley Hall, which also houses a dorm, and the alarm might have been pulled in the dorm.

School of Foreign Service sophomore Alfredo Fletes, who attended the protest outside, said the protest emcee "went onstage and made it official that it wasn't the Georgetown protesters who had pulled the fire alarm."

Fletes said that after the alarm was pulled, some of the protesters started cheering and walking towards the building where the speech was held, but after the emcee's announcement, "people kind of quieted down."

According to Fletes, students attending the event told him that when the alarm went off, a Minuteman supporter stood up and said, "Way to go you guys-way to stop free speech." He also heard that Simcox insinuated that the protesters were behind the disruption.