Hate Crime Convict Is Turning His Life Around In An Impressive Way (& You Can Too)

On March 14, 2012, The Los Angeles Times reporter Thomas H. Maugh II thankfully introduced us to Timothy Fenstermacher, a white Tehachapi State Prison hate crime convict currently serving a lengthy sentence for having committed a dispicable race-based assault in 1996 when Mr. Fenstermacher was 24 years old. He stabbed a Latino man at Lindo Lake Park in Lakeside, California, and was convicted of felony assault. Like a lot of hate crime convicts, he had a previous criminal history; and, his violent behavior continued in prison. He was handed an additional three-year prison term for assaulting a correctional officer. But unlike a lot of hate crime convicts, Mr. Fenstermacher, now 40, is in the process of turning his life around. That's laudible enough, of course, but the circumstances and the devotion to which he has begun to shape his new, more satisfying life is truly impressive.

Mr. Maugh crafts an inspiring story of a man who exchanged his hate and violence for pursuing his interest in Egyptian heiroglyphics.
 

Mr. Fenstermacher, we realize you have no direct access to the Internet, given that you are a prisoner. We hope, however, that your family passes a copy of this blog along to you (or perhaps you will read this someday when you are a free man). Thanks to Mr. Maugh the world knows now about your talent, your intellectual gifts, and your drive to become the best man you can become. We applaud you. We understand that some adults become good people, not because of their parents and their childhoods, but despite them. We applaud how you have turned your back on hatred--especially given that you are doing so in a type of institution known for spirit-crushing racism, race-based segregation and violence--and turned inward to focus on bettering yourself. Take humble pride--but not egotistical pride--in your abilities to first recognize your intellectual curiosity and then to see that you have what it takes to turn that curiosity into a passionate, fulfilling pursuit. Whatever job or jobs you have once you complete your sentence, know that you are a role-model for scores of young people who are looking to read about someone who gives them hope in themselves. Your life of change is now widely-known. In addition to the LA Times readership, Mr. Maugh's story of you has been posted to over 1,000 Facebook pages and has been tweeted 200 times as of the date of this blog. You inspire hope that young people are worthy of an inner calm that is driven by following their bliss, by reaching for their potential. You, sir, might without even trying, save a life by demonstrating that people can learn to believe in themselves and learn to overcome the unfairness that life dishes out, and to shed the hatred they've absorbed from others, and live peacefully, and with purpose. Timothy Fenstermacher, welcome back to humanity. We wish you continued success.

Do you belong to a hate group or a race-based street gang and want out? Then get out.  You can do it.  You deserve to do it.  You can vanish from the people who are helping you lead a miserable life.  You can begin to develop friendships with those who don't harbor hate.  Your life and your relationships with others (and with yourself) will dramatically improve if you do.   Mr. Fenstermacher has abandoned his hateful ways of thinking and he is changing his life for the better and you can too.

They Burn Horses, Don't They?

Morgan County, Ohio farmer Brent Whitehouse is quoted as saying the following about one of his pregnant quarterhorses and the tragedy that followed:

"I knew the way she was acting Saturday and Sunday that she was ready [to give birth]. My one dog was acting funny, and I looked out the window and saw this orange glow coming from the barn. I ran out there, but the doors of the barn wouldn't open and suddenly, flames were shooting up through the roof. That barn was gone in five minutes."

All eight of his horses—Elvis, Barney, Floyd, Ethel, Love, Bella, Princess, and a one-week old guy named Buddy who was Princess' new foal—perished in the blaze that began around 11:30PM EST on April 24, 2011, a blaze that was so hot a tractor inside the barn melted; but, this was no brushfire gone astray. The state's Fire Marshal classified it as an arson, and a reward is being offered for information leading to the perpetrator(s). It should also be classified as a hate crime, and the Morgan County Sheriff's Department is weighing that possibility as they investigate. Spray-painted on the charred remains of Mr. Whitehouse's barn in McConnelsville were homophobic remarks according to various news sources. From what I can tell by examining a photograph of the barn taken by Chris Crook of the Times Recorder it appears the perpetrator(s) wrote something like "Burn in Hell" and the beginning of a word that begins with the letter "F." Another published photograph of the side of the barn showed this anti-gay phrase: "FAGS ARE FREAKS."

Said Mr. Whitehouse, "Whoever did this had to walk right by all those horses, including the baby, and didn't care that they were killing a gentle, loving animal." That's the take-away message about hate crime perpetrators—whether they prey on someone because of their race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation—they don't care about anyone's life but their own. Arrogant and callous, hate crime perps don't even care about the lives of animals, just their twisted worldview where they are first-class citizens.

It's doubtful that few, if any, arsons that lead to the deaths of horses are classified as hate crimes. However, when arson investigators find themselves at a loss for why such fires are started, perhaps—given the tragedy that Mr. Whitehouse is enduring— fire investigators should consider the sociodemographics of the human victim and the possibility that such arsons are hate crimes. Whoever killed Mr. Whitehouse's horses, one thing is certain, and that is the motive: the perpetrator had animus for the horse-breeder's perceived sexual orientation. Had the barn's walls been completely destroyed and the spray-painted homophobic messages gone unread, we may never have known the motive behind such a cruel and life-destroying act.

This was previously published at DailyKos.

London Calling: 2nd International Day Against Hate Crime

An important rally will take place in London, England on Saturday night on October 23, 2010. The second International Day Against Hate Crime is scheduled at 7:00pm GMT until 9:00pm with a two minute period of silence to occur at 8:00pm to remember and reflect on those killed by hate crime pertpetrators. The anti-hate crime event will take place at Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square was the location of the September 25, 2009 gay hate-crime homicide of Ian Baynham, 62, of Beckenham, Kent—a crime that spurred the launching of the International Day Against Hate Crime. Mr. Baynham was walking through the historic square with his partner, Phillip Brown, 30, on a busy Friday evening when the unprovoked homophobic attack on him occurred. The civil servant was knocked unconscious by a single blow to the head allegedly Joel Alexander after another person, Ruby Thomas, is said to have shouted anti-slurs at Mr. Baynham and Mr. Brown. After falling to the ground and suffering a severe brain injury, Mr. Baynham was then stomped on allegedly by two intoxicated teenaged females. They are said to have stomped on his chest and head repeatedly and then left him for dead. Subsequently, Mr. Baynham was pronounced brain dead and 18 days after the attack on him, on Tuesday October 13, 2009, doctors turned off his life-support machines. Joel Alexander, 19, of Thornton Heath in South London, Rachel Burke, 18, of Three Oaks in East Sussex, and Ruby Thomas, 18, of Lichfield in Staffordshire, were charged with manslaughter. The trial for the three began in April, 2010, and no verdict in the case has been revealed.

Whether because of a person's sexuality, homelessness status, disability status, race, religion, ethnicity, national origin or gender, a hate crime is an attack on the entire community. Therefore, it is up to the community to speak out against hate crimes. So, if you are in London on Occtober 23, 2010, please spend two hours standing with others against hate crime.

The Summer of Hating Latinos

Tweaking a recently coined phrase by Tim Wise, this diary's title describes an American phenomenon that few, if any, in the national mainstream media are saying much about this summer, even though it's a problem that seems to be spreading: hate crimes targeting Hispanics, most often immigrants, that are rarely called race-based attacks by the powers that be. Although I could have chosen any of a number of communities in the United States to describe the phenomenon, I've chosen Summit, New Jersey.


If you've never been there, Summit, New Jersey, seems at first blush like a pretty nice place, and I suppose for most of its residents it is. According to its Wikipedia page, the Union County city is an affluent Big Apple burb ("affluent" as in a good percentage of its approximately 20,000 residents are Wall Street stockbrokers). With a median family income of $141,659, a family poverty rate of only 2.5%, Summit, New Jersey boasted of a median home price of $655,500 as of October 2009, a point in time well after the national and international economic meltdown and after the onset of America's subprime mortgage housing collapse. Not bad considering. Nope, not bad at all considering that just before the beginning of the bottom falling out of financial industry's greed-fest, Business Week magazine ranked Summit, New Jersey #6 on its list of "American communities likely to be pummeled by the economic crisis," a September 2008 prediction that did not come to fruition. While Main Street U.S.A.'s financial status went down the proverbial toilet, no doubt thanks to some of the free-wheeling Wall Street investment bankers who call Summit home, Summit itself was spared (in no small part because of the government's white-collar welfare program, er, because of the Wall Street bailout). Three thousand dollar per month condo rentals aside, no place on earth is perfect (again from its wiki page):

A New York Times reporter and Summit resident criticized the city for being an "economically, racially and ideologically homogenized populace" with "a growing divide between Summit's haves and have-nots." He elaborated in 2006: "there's an ever-diminishing corner of the city akin to the so-called slums of Beverly Hills, where middle-income homeowners like me can take advantage of the schools and services of Summit without the million-dollar price tags so ubiquitous on the other side of the Midtown Direct tracks."

By my standards a city that defines its "slum" as the spot where its middle-income homeowners live is fairing pretty well, economically-speaking. That's Summit: the 16th wealthiest place in New Jersey, a state teeming with millionaires. In addition to being pretty rich, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Summit is also pretty White. As of the 2000 census, Summit was 87.77% White which is significantly less racially diverse when compared to the nation (75.1% White) or to the rest of the Garden State (72.6% White), including Union County (65.51% White). Is Summit, New Jersey this white on purpose? Well, it's not a Sundown Town, but measures have been taken to make certain Summit residents are of a certain type, nudge-nudge-wink-wink (again from the Summit wikipage with the emphases being mine):

Summit...adopted a policy of zoning ordinances requiring a single family house on a large lot and could thereby "exclude any undesirable influences that might erode property values." The requirement excluded apartment buildings and multi-family dwellings, and tended to raise the price of houses. One study found that since 1945, the single family house on a large lot zoning mechanism "has been increasingly used in suburban and rural areas to safeguard particular vested interests."

But that's not coded language for anything, I'm sure.

Unlike most of the rest of the nation, in the fall of 2008 when local Democrats fared much better at the polls than their GOP opponents because the country yearned for political change, Summit elected a Republican town councilmember in its second ward which I think says something about the place. But, like most of the rest of the nation, Summit, New Jersey has seen a rise in its Hispanic population over the past decade; and, in a place that reeks of wealthy white privilege those changing sociodemographics can be fatal.

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By all accounts Mr. Abelino Mazariego-Torres, a 47-year-old married Salvadoran immigrant and father of two sons and two daughters, was a hard-working man. A good man who came to the United States from a poor country—a country with its share of war wounds—he immigrated to America 13 years ago for the same reason most of our white, Asian, Caribbean, and Hispanic family members/ancestors immigrated to the United States: for a better life. A dishwasher and occasional assistant cook at an Indian restaurant in downtown Summit, New Jersey, for the past several years, Mr. Mazariego set out on foot on July 17, 2010, from the Dabbawalla Restaurant after completing his day's work and after filling his pockets with his earnings: $640 in cash. It was while he was relaxing on a park bench in the Summit Promenade shortly before 9:30PM, possibly tipsy from alcohol he had purchased, that he would be taken from his wife and his four children, taken from a country he had fled to in order to avoid violence in his war-torn country of birth, in order to create a happier life for himself and his family. Taken in a most gruesome and callous manner.

Mr. Mazariego's funeral was touchingly described by columnist Mark Di Ionno, but let me not get ahead of myself.

These are the undisputed facts surrounding Mr. Mazariego's death. While sitting alone on a park bench in downtown Summit after he left work on July 17th, Mr. Mazariego was approached by a group of teenagers. Most of their identities have not been revealed by the police, so it cannot be verified whether the teenagers were primarily from Summit or from various towns. The police have reported that some of the teens were Summit residents, and that some were not. Five were females and nine were males. Only the identities of two teenagers have thus far been released. R&B singer Robby Guarantee, 19, of Morristown, New Jersey, whose real name is Nigel Dumas, and Khayri Williams-Clark, 18, of Summit, both African-Americans, were each charged with felony murder on July 21st, as was an unidentified 17-year-old male. (He is to be tried as an adult prosecutors said, so it is a matter of time before the public learns his identity). Then on July 30th two more unidentified Summit teenagers, one 15 years old and the other 17 years old, were charged with conspiracy, aggravated assault, and robbery. At first it was thought that no crime had occurred until evidence surfaced days later that pointed to a violent, unprovoked attack.

The allegations go like this: Nigel Dumas, Khayri Williams-Clark, and the other three teenagers charged with Mr. Mazariego's attack, along with nine other teenagers, approached Mr. Mazariego as he sat on a park bench. One of them is said to have sat down next to him, while the other is said to have covered Mr. Mazariego's head with his own t-shirt (one ABC television affiliate said his head was covered with a sheet). Then the police said Mr. Mazariego was punched several times about the head and body by Dumas, Williams-Clark, and the unnamed teens. The mob of teens then immediately fled. A 17-year-old video-taped the entire pre-meditated beating on a video-phone. The video then circulated among Summit teenagers for days just like old lynching postcards used to circulate among white townsfolk in the 19th and 20th centuries.

While the video of Mr. Mazariego's attack was making the rounds in Summit, Mr. Mazariego, who was found unconscious at the scene of the crime immediately after the attack, lay in a coma at Overlook Hospital in Summit. He died there on July 20, 2010, without ever regaining consciousness.
Understanding the current anti-Latino sociopolitical climate in the United States these days, one commenter at the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center made these insightful remarks about Mr. Mazariego's slaying:

Blame the hatred spewed out on Fox and Rush for terrible things like this. To think this guy escaped the madness in El Salvador only to be painfully killed by children here. Is there a chance to get this more publicity? Maybe a statue of this guy in a city park? Not that these kids listened to Rush and Beck but they’re smart enough to pick up the idea that this guy doesn’t matter so they can do snything [sic] to him.

This last statement—that the alleged perpetrators are smart enough to absorb the anti-Latino sentiment swirling around this country, perceptive enough to grasp the repeated notion that the lives of Latinos in the United States are somehow worth less (or worthless)—has deep historical roots in this country: racism.

For example, this quote by Brent Staples summarizing the lynching of blacks in America and the response by the larger community has eerie similarity, I think, to the attack on Mr. Mazariego:

Black American lives were viewed as expendable in the pre-civil rights South. The murderers who hanged, dismembered or burned black victims alive — before crowds of cheering onlookers — knew well that the law would not act against them. These savage rituals were meant to keep the black community on its knees.

Ironic how we keep repeating our past. Today's racism is, to quote David Bowie, the same old thing in brand new drag. Oh sure, African-Americans continue to be the victims of race-based hate crimes more than any other group; however, it should be clear that in communities across America, from Summit, New Jersey, to Staten Island to Phoenix and Los Angeles, Latinos are increasingly the people who are lashed to today's whipping posts. This despite the findings that the higher Latino immigration is, the lower the crime rate is.

It's racism, and just like the days of old, you can't always count on law enforcement to do the right thing. As Peggy MacIntosh began her essay on white privilege: "I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group." Or, the flip side, conferring submission on another group.

Illuminated here is the "invisible system" that seems to be working hard to confer submission onto Latinos with respect to Mr. Mazariego's death. On July 30th came these bold-faced lies from Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow who seems almost Lady MacBeth-like in his compulsive attempt to deny that Mr. Mazariego's death was a race-based public spectacle slaying:

It was a crime of opportunity. The defendants saw he [Abelino Mazariego] had $640 in on cash on him and intended to rob him.

At the same news conference, attorney Romankow goes on to repeat (because when you want people to believe your lie, you have to say it over and over again):

It was a crime of opportunity, they saw he was intoxicated, that he had money and a watch and decided they were going to take it.

And Romankow said this too at the press conference which is, of course, a permutation on the we're-not-racist-in-our-racially-skewed-town meme heard so often in covered-up race-based hate crimes, and now heard in everyday civic affairs:

This isn’t about him [Mr. Mazariego] being Latino.

Oh yes it was Mr. Romankow which is why you doth protest too much. The beating death of Mr. Mazariego was an anti-Latino sport-slaying; like the lynching of blacks, it was a spectator-attended, race-based hate-crime homicide. Period. Like many black lynchings, Mr. Mazareigo's lynching was recorded by the crowd who came to watch. Like the lynching of so many blacks in America, Mr. Mazreigo's lynching took place in the center of town with plenty of people around. Yes, the victim had hundreds of dollars on him at the time he was attacked. However, not one of the persons who beat Abelino Mazariego robbed him, not one of the persons who watched his beating robbed him (there were a total of 14 teenagers present), and the teenager who filmed the beating on a mobile phone also did not rob Mr. Mazariego. In nearby Suffolk County, New York on Long Island, the racist youth have an accurately racist term for this kind of targeted hate-crime attack. They call it beaner jumping. (Other targeted groups have long-known terms for hate crime attacks aimed at them; for gay men it's known as gay-bashing, and then, of course, there is the term lynching which was coined to describe the oodles of hate-crime slayings of blacks long before the term hate-crime was created).

Romankow—the prosecutor in this case—has chosen to take the public lead in white-washing this hate crime homicide by saying that those arrested had intended to rob their victim, but then (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) forgot to! Seriously, think about how mind-screwingly absurd that statement is. This is what Romankow wants the world to believe: that a bunch of upper-middle class/rich kids were so hard up for cash and a wristwatch that they selected, not one of the city's rich stockbrokers coming out of any of the nearby posh eateries wearing Rolex watches, but a Latino dishwasher, and that, oooops, they actually forgot to rob their so-called robbery victim while beating him up (and outnumbering their victim 14 to 1, you have to ask, couldn't they have robbed almost anyone without laying a finger on them?).

What about the videographer? Well, at his press conference Romankow likened the teenager who recorded the attack on Mr. Mazareigo to a—stay seated for this—photojournalist! Romankow said that this individual would not be charged with any crime.

Let me add this: Mr. Mazareigo was robbed. When he was brought via ambulance to the Overlook Hospital shortly after the attack on him, unconscious and clinging to life, someone stole the $640 he had in his pockets. Charged with third-degree theft was emergency room nurse Stephan Randolph, 39, of Flemington, New Jersey. Rolling a comatose patient: that, Mr. Romankow, is a crime of opportunity.

Mr. Mazariego's anti-Latino beating death on a downtown Summit park bench, the prosecutor's public, pre-trial denial of the obvious motive of those charged with Mr. Mazariego's death, along with the economy-maiming default-swaps and other investment bank schenanigans masterminded by Summit's financial barons makes you wonder if there isn't something in the drinking water in Summit, New Jersey that makes the powerful people there lie and deceive and cause harm to others. Ohio-born artist Jenny Holzer's phrase comes to mind: The Abuse of Power Should Come as No Surprise. But, sadly, anti-Latino sentiment and violence are not unique to Summit, New Jersey; and, as the hateful rhetoric against the largest growing ethnic group in America continues, as it has this summer, expect to see more hate crimes directed at Latinos...and expect to hear denial that that is what they are.

This blog was posted originally at DailyKos on August 5, 2010.

University of North Carolina Issues Pathetic Hate Crime Conduct Code

Having staunchly protected a group of its racist students at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in late 2008, the UNC educational system is back at it: protecting the status quo while making itself seem like it's taking progressive, thoughtful measures. Specifically, on February 12, 2010, The University of North Carolina Board of Governors approved a uniform code of conduct to address hate crimes on the 16 campuses in the UNC school system. It's a pathetic, meaningless code of conduct, and it comes as no surprise to us. In our February, 2009, blog we predicted a white-wash job by the UNC administration, and earlier this month, they delivered. No, we're not psychic; we just saw the writing on the wall.

On election night in 2008 four North Carolina State University students spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama in the campus' Free Expression Tunnel. Although these messages would not be considered constitutionally protected free speech by anyone other than dyed-in-the-wool racists because they called for the assassination of an elected president—one statement read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and another said, "Hang Obama by a noose"—the NC State's administration refused to classify the grafitti as a hate crime, refused to expel those responsible for writing the death-threat directives aimed at President Obama, and refused to release the names of the students. The message from the school was clear; threatening, racist language by its students is acceptable at North Carolina State University.

Phase One of UNC's political white-wash of the graffiti incident came when UNC President Erskine Bowles created a "panel" of people to look at campus hate crimes and the issue of what constitutes free speech. Phase Two came on February 12th when the UNC Board of Governors approved a uniform code of conduct that (clutch your pearls ladies) prohibits on-campus actions defined by federal and state laws as hate crimes while expressing support for free speech on campus. Wow, it took a panel of higher education experts and a large public school system's board of directors to lower itself to state it will now recognize state and federal hate crime laws. They threw in support for the First Amendment as a patriotic bonus. What next from Erskine Bowles and the UNC Board of Governors? A position statement about the Declaration of Independence? Pathetic.

We're still left wondering who those four racist NC State students are who spray-painted the threats on President Obama's life in 2008 and who these students are connected to. Either white privilege hit a new low in the state of North Carolina or the four NC State students who got a free-pass to threaten the president without being charged with a hate crime and without being expelled from school are somehow well-connected. Since white privilege and well-connectedness often go hand-in-hand, perhaps both were at work.

Tancredo Speechwriter, Marcus Epstein, Found Guilty of a Hate Crime (with an Update)

And this biracial (yes, Jewish and Korean) pixie schmuck, Marcus Epstein, who consorts with European neo-Nazis, is going to the University of Virginia Law School in the fall? What a self-hating nincompoop. He must have some heavy duty sponsorship for his admission to that school. Do the school authorities know what he really is and what he’s done? Better walk a wide berth from this guy if they allow him to come. Or better yet, get the Latino and black law students at UV organized to be on the look out for this creep and his organization, Youth for Western Civilization. What? From the Washington Independent is the U.S. Attorney’s factual proffer:

On July 7, 2007, at approximately 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [REDACTED], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, “Nigger,” as he delivered a karate chop to Ms. [REDACTED]’s head.

A karate chop? To a black woman who just walked by minding her business? According to DC Indymedia, here is what happened next.

[Epstein] was briefly detained by the woman’s husband, but was able to escape, only to be arrested minutes later by a Secret Service officer who witnessed the attack. According to the officer’s statement, a friend of Epstein’s informed him that he had been drinking. Well, in vino veritas.

A restraining order to stay away from the couple has been imposed on Epstein. He currently faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and $1000 fine and also had to continue mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1000 to the United Negro College Fund prior to sentencing.

People have been onto Epstein for years. The New York Times, for example, came across a collection of his spew.

[..C]onservative writer and activist Marcus Epstein has worked with the mainstream of the immigration restrictionist movement. He wrote speeches for former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) during his presidential bid, and he’s still working as the executive director of Tancredo’s Team America PAC, alongside Bay Buchanan. Epstein has been targeted for years by civil rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the One People’s Project…

Epstein pled guilty, but later took it back. Instead, he admitted that “the government could prove me guilty.” Again, what? His sentencing is scheduled for July 8. Meanwhile, his employer, the former Colorado representative, as well as both Pat and Bay Buchanan, has assumed greater visibility in attacking–you guessed it–Judge Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist.
Well, it certainly takes one to know one.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo reported late yesterday afternoon that according to Jason Wu Trujillo, UVA’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Marcus Epstein will not be attending the University of Virginia, ever. Brian Beutler suggested that Epstein may have deliberately withheld the incident from college authorities, who insist that prospective students disclose any wrongdoing:

Have you ever been convicted of any offense, excluding minor traffic violations which did not involve injury to others?

Are there any charges pending or expected to be brought against you?

….If, after you submit this application, you are charged with a criminal offense or disciplinary charges are brought against you, notify the Office of Admissions in writing immediately.

If Epstein thought he could slide with silence in the age of the Web and e-mail, or by withdrawing and finessing his guilty plea, his gambling just crashed and burned. These people don’t want drunken, anti-social troublemakers, especially one with demonstrated neo-Nazi and racist tendencies, allowed onto their campuses. Even Pat Buchanan had to toe the line in college. And I bet any college official worth his water with the surnames of Wu and Trujillo would especially be on the lookout for that kind of thing.

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Cross-posted at: http://thisblksistaspage.wordpress.com/ and DailyKos

One Man's Quest to Quell Free Speech

"Far-left nuts" of Toledo, Ohio beware: should you publicly voice your opposition to the war in Iraq, voice your support for universal health care, or dare to criticize former Lucas County (Ohio) Republican Party chairman turned federal inmate, Tom Noe, you could be hearing from Michael Edward Coon, the 52-year-old white, Christian owner of Holland Benefits Group, a 24-year-old employee benefits consulting firm based in Ohio. If you’re retired surgeon Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, a University of Toledo trustee and guest editorial writer for The Toledo Blade, you already have heard from Coon who lives in the Point Place section of Toledo.

Coon was arraigned in Maumee Municipal Court Monday June 23, 2008, on three counts of felony ethnic intimidation (that’s Ohio’s kindly name for a hate crime) for allegedly sending "hate emails" to Dr. Hussain in apparent response to Dr. Hussain’s published editorials in The Toledo Blade. Coldly, some of the emails were sent after Dr. Hussain was the victim of a violent home invasion where he was sprayed with mace and pistol-whipped; and, heartlessly, Coon’s emails expressed delight in that crime. So much for the Golden Rule of Christianity. It seems Coon has been on a one-man campaign to quell the free speech of Toledo residents whose political viewpoints differ from his. He firmly supports the war in Iraq and is opposed to universal health care. Coon has admitted he has telephoned people who have publicly shared sociopolitical viewpoints different from his own—persons who have had their letters to the editor published in The Toledo Blade—and he has said that these people "are far-left nuts." Of course if he’s checked opinion polls lately, Coon will see that most Americans (even many self-described Christians like himself) are disappointed with our President’s performance in office, are against the war in Iraq (like Pakistani-born Dr. Hussain), and are desperately hungry for something other than our current health care system. We hope Coon has good telephone and internet service plans; he's got a lot of Toledo residents to contact.

According to the meticulous reporting of Toledo Blade staff writer, Kate Giammarise, since Coon’s hate-crime arrest, others have come forward to say that they have received harassing, scary telephone calls from Coon. One woman said she changed her telephone number to an unlisted one after Coon's menacing calls to her home following her letters to the editor in the Toledo Blade criticizing Tom Noe for orchestrating the investor-theft, money-laundering scheme now known as Coingate, and criticizing the war in Iraq. So frightened was this woman after Coon's telephone calls that she also contacted the police.

In his defense about his charges, Coon has said that he never threatened or intimidated Dr. Hussain who is Muslim. Talking about himself in the third-person, Coon said: "Coon is not a psycho, Coon is an American patriot." Coon may not be psycho, but Coon may have crossed the line from constitutionally protected free speech to the kind considered criminal--the kind that threatens and intimidates--because one email sent from Coon to Dr. Hussain, quoted from Toledo’s NBC affiliate, is said to have contained the following words:

"...Beheading Islamists will be as fun as a turkey shoot. You are in my sights!!!"

Even without the national backdrop of increased violent crimes committed against Muslims and those perceived to be either Muslim or from the Middle East since the 9-11 terroristic attacks, such a statement can hardly be viewed as free speech, can it? "Beheading Islamists" followed by "turkey shoot" followed by "You are in my sights": how could that be considered free speech? How could that not be seen as criminal intimidation based on religious hatred? Coon is also reported to have communicated to Dr. Hussain:

"frightened scared immigrants like you have it coming big time."

Coon has said he posed "zero threat" to Dr. Hussain, which of course a jury will decide. One thing is for sure, we wouldn't want to take our chances dealing with a man with a violent past, such as Coon. As Ms. Giammarise wrote:

"in 2002, Coon pleaded no contest and was found guilty in Lucas County Common Pleas Court to aggravated assault, and attempted intimidation of a crime victim or witness. The charges stem from Coon's attack on a 19-year-old neighbor with a bat, lacerating his head and breaking the young man's left arm, according to a police report."

Wow, a then 46-year-old businessman taking a baseball bat to the body of a 19-year-old neighbor. So much for the Christian tenet Love Thy Neighbor. In that 2002 case, Coon initially pleaded Not Guilty, but it appears that on December 10, 2001, he entered a new plea of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, and was referred the following day for a psychiatric evaluation. The case was then scheduled for trial on January 3, 2002, but on that date there was a question about Coon's competence to stand trial. So, the case was postponed until January 8, 2002, at which time Coon changed his plea again; he entered his No Contest plea for the two fourth-degree felony charges, thus avoiding trial. A month later Coon was sentenced. He was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine, plus restitution and court costs, he was ordered to three years of probation (though in reality he was off probation after two years), and he was ordered to have no contact with the victim. Pleading No Contest to a violent criminal act is a savvy thing to do for a person with substantial financial assets, by the way, because evidence from a criminal court case that has a No Contest finding cannot be used against a defendant in a civil lawsuit. And it appears Coon has assets.

According to Ohiobiz.com, Coon’s Holland Benefits Group, a company with fewer than five employees, rakes in between $500,000 and $1,000,000 in annual revenue. You’d think with a business that lucrative, Coon would be too busy to track down and contact those whose sociopolitical beliefs differ from his own. Or, you'd think that Coon could see an obvious reality and maybe say to himself: Coon's not fighting in war-torn Iraq, Coon has a cushy white-collar lifestyle. You'd think he'd grasp that clear reality and that it would have motivated him to want to protect and keep his sweet CEO lifestyle, a lifestyle likely flushed down the toilet, if convicted as charged, just as the cushy lifestyle of Republican money-launderer Thomas W. Noe was flushed after he was convicted of laundering more than $45,000 to President Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign. (Noe was convicted in November, 2006, of 29 felonies in Ohio, and was sentenced to 18 years in state prison, which is to be served following his 27-month federal prison term. Noe, 53, is serving his federal prison term at The Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) - Low in Coleman, Florida, and he is expected to complete his federal prison term on October 27, 2008).

Detective Mark Woodruff of the Lucas County Sheriff's Department, who is the chief investigator in the Coon case, said, "There's a line somewhere out there between freedom of speech and criminal conduct" and police believe that line was crossed in the emails to Dr. Hussain. Regarding the accusations against him and his pending trial, Coon has said defiantly:

"We'll see if 12 real Americans will think this guy was abused, harassed, or intimidated. I can't wait to get to trial."

Neither can we, Coon, neither can we.

Coon is scheduled to appear in court July 3, 2008. In the meantime, he has been barred from having any contact with Dr. Hussain and he has also been barred from entering any building where Dr. Hussain is, according to a civil protection order issued by Lucas County Common Pleas Judge James Jensen on June 24, 2008.

Anatomy of a Hate Crime (Part Three)

Perhaps no other domestic social issue divides the two major political parties more than hate crimes and hate crime legislation. You'd be hard-pressed to find an issue with such consistent party-divided voting records as the ones that occur regarding hate crime legislation. In 2000, for instance, the U.S. Senate voted on the "Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2000", a hate crime amendment (S. Amdt. 3473) meant to beef up an already existing federal hate crime law sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. The amendment vote had 44 of 45 Democrats voting for the measure (only West Virginia's Robert Byrd opposed it) whereas only 13 of 55 Republicans voted for it (one Republican abstained). The amendment fell short by three votes to move it closer toward passage. A second attempt to strengthen hate crime laws was made in 2002. That year the Senate voted on the "Local Law Enforcement Act of 2001", and like the Senate's vote in 2000, the outcome was highly partisan. Only one Democrat (South Dakota's Tom Daschle) voted against it; and, only four Republicans voted for it. Three Republicans abstained and the measure was defeated (this time by six votes).

As the Democrats were in the past with racial desegregation legislation, they appear again to be in a tug-of-war with Republicans over one of today's important civil rights issues: hate crime legislation. For example, President Bush threatened last year to veto a hate crimes bill that might have gone to his desk had it been passed by Congress. That would have been only Bush's third veto as President; but, the measure did not make it to his desk, because it was suffocated when it was connected to an unpopular Iraqi War funding bill. It doesn't take a genius to predict that a federal law both bolstering aid to local law enforcement in their efforts to go after hate crime offenders and including sexual orientation as a protected category will pass once the Democrats have control of both the White House and the Congress. Until then, local law enforcement agencies will struggle to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, and elected Republicans (except freshman Oregon senator Gordon H. Smith and a few others) will likely continue to vote against and to slander hate crime legislation as they have done repeatedly.

In two previous blogs (Anatomy of a Hate Crime, Parts One & Two) I have reported on the national social climate surrounding one recent hate crime allegation out of Champaign, Illinois. It is a case involving an alleged gay bashing of a University of Illinois student, Steven Velasquez, that saw little media coverage; yet, even with scant media attention the internet was abuzz, in places, about the allegation. As I initially blogged getting answers to questions about the Champaign, Illinois hate crime allegation has proved difficult, although I learned the accused, Brett Vanasdlen (sometimes spelled VanAsdlen), was a star college baseball player at Parkland College where he is a freshman. While the legal end to this story is not yet in sight (the next court date is July 1, 2008), Brett Vanasdlen was temporarily kicked off of the baseball team following his arrest in early April, though his coach has said he expects Vanasdlen to be back in uniform by next season. (The Parkland College Cobras are fairing quite well without Vanasdlen, losing just 9 of the 27 games they played since he was removed from the team). If convicted of the hate crime he has been charged with (a fourth degree felony) Vanasdlen could do jail time.

Since initially blogging about the Vanasdlen case, where I have stressed that but for the angle and force of a single punch or shove a hate crime assault could become a hate crime murder, other hate crime head-injury victims have had their lives forever changed, yet punishment has not followed. Hate-based assaults targeting gay men have become so common in Boston, Massachusetts recently that the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office has hired a victim's advocate for sexual minority hate crime victims to help them as their legal cases navigate their way from indictment to trial or plea agreement.

Although Boston-area victims and their families have the needed support from their local D.A.'s office, nearly all other Americans are much less fortunate. Take, for example, the March 2, 2008, race-based hate crime murder of a young black man in Los Angeles, Jamiel Shaw, Jr., 17, a star football player at his high school. Shaw's family has had less than an empathic response from the L.A. D.A.'s office which has thus far refused to file a hate crime charge against the Latino man they believe is responsible for gunning down the teenage athlete solely because of his race. Shaw's parents have been pressing the D.A.'s office to file such a charge and they have been pushing for a law that would allow L.A. police to ask criminal suspects about their immigration status (Shaw's alleged killer is an illegal alien who had previously been jailed and had his immigration status been uncovered while incarcerated, Jamiel Shaw, Jr. would be alive today). Here is an example of how victims of hate crimes are sometimes treated by those whose job it is to prosecute criminals as reported by the Associated Press on May 13:

The rift between the Shaws and the district attorney's office was exposed last week when Jamiel Shaw Sr., 47, and his ex-wife Anita Shaw, 43, met with District Attorney Steve Cooley to complain about Michele Hanisee, the prosecutor on the case. Jamiel Shaw said Hanisee pressured him to stop pushing for the law and threatened to depict their son as a gang member unless they dropped demands that she prosecute the case as a hate crime.

Depict Jamiel Shaw Jr., as a gang member? Ah, prosecutorial discretion. It reminds one of Ohio artist Jenny Holzer's famous phrase: the abuse of power should come as no surprise. At least Hanisee was booted off as prosecutor after the Shaws' complaints, so perhaps Jamiel's parents will have an ally in the newly-appointed D.A. Although some on the outer fringes of sociopolitical conservatism have attempted to use Shaw's murder for an opportunity to bellow an anti-illegal immigration song (which is really a racist, anti-Latino song) instead of focusing on what the tragedy appears to be by many--yet another hate crime murder of an African-American man in the United States--these same conservatives go silent when immigrants who happen to be white evangelical Christians commit hate crimes against homosexuals. Just as nativists are trying to re-paint Jamiel Shaw Jr.'s senseless hate crime murder into something it isn't for sociopolitical gain, some anti-gay activists and a few white nationalists (such as the like-minded former Ku Klux Klan head, David Duke) are trying to alter the reality of the Vanasdlen-Velasquez hate crime assault case. In doing so the blogsite, DailyKos, (where this blog was initially posted) has been called a "hate site" by one of Brett Vanasdlen's cheerleaders, Peter LaBarbera (never mind that DailyKos is featured on the website blogroll of one of the nation's hardest-working anti-hate organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and never mind that that immensely respected anti-hate organization has exposed Peter LaBarbera for the poisonous man that he is).

As I've said in previous blogs, the support for the accused, Brett Vanasdlen, has been loud. However, some of his supporters have gone beyond merely supporting him. They've attacked the concept of hate crimes and the need for hate crime laws (and they like to put the words hate crimes in quotes as if to pretend these crimes do not exist), and in doing so they have used Brett Vanasdlen as a pawn for their cause. With groundless accusations from Ronalee Vanasdlen, Brett's mother, they have accused the Champaign, Illinois police department of "trumping up" a hate crime charge against Brett to meet some sort of hate crime arrest quota. (Seriously, who's heard of such a thing: purposefully increasing hate crime arrests would likely only leave people with the perception that the town is unfriendly and steer people away from it, and no police chief who wants to keep his or her job would dare speak such patently illegal nonsense let alone make it policy). With the assistance of his mother, they've focused on the alleged assailant's religion claiming the Champaign, Illinois hate crime assault case is about religious freedom and not about a case of homophobia-fueled violence as the police allege. Brett's mother calls herself and her son "conservative Christians" and she reported that the Vanasdlens attend an off-label Christian church in Brett's small Illinois hometown of Minooka. A little digging reveals that their church is a Rapture-focused evangelical one that declares its believing members are "holy" and "saints". That's the kind of we're-better-than-you arrogance needed to fertilize a hate crime, and the kind of arrogance that can tarnish all humble Christians with a bad name. Brazenly, a few self-identified Christians have posted accusations that the victim in the case, Steven Velasquez, is trying to forward some type of homosexual agenda.

This latter assertion is cruel and has nothing to do with the type of Christianity that many Americans practice--including many Evangelical Christians such as Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter--the type where bearing false witness against someone is forbidden by God. The cruel accusation is like asserting that when a female rape victim goes to court to testify, she is doing so because she has some feminist axe to grind, and not because she wants to see justice prevail. It's a hideous character-smearing claim made about Steven Velasquez with no basis in fact made all the more grotesque given that the only agenda that is being forwarded in the Vanasdlen-Velasquez case is the one by anti-hate crime activists and anti-gay activists. They have claimed that "the hateful homosexual spin machine" is running at full-tilt activism (and they talk like DailyKos is one cog in that machine), simply because two gay-themed blogsites--Box Turtle Bulletin and 2015place--have mentioned the hate crime allegation (in addition to my diaries). In reality the opposite is true: only the anti-hate crime/anti-gay folks are calling for action. They are demanding that the felony hate crime charge against Brett Vanasdlen be dropped (which, prior to a finding of fact, they have determined is "bogus"), and they have called for their supporters to make telephone calls to the D.A.'s office not to influence the outcome of the legal process, but to kill it. Anti-hate crime activist and notorious anti-Semite, Reverend Ted Pike, has urged his whacky following to call the Champaign, Illinois mayor and police chief to protest Brett Vanasdlen's arrest. Their activism suggests they want more than hate crime legislation overturned; it suggests they want religious-based gay bashings made legal. So much for Brett Vanasdlen's constitutional right to a trial and Steven Velasquez's constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness.

What has also occurred since Brett Vanasdlen's first pre-trial hearing (held on May 6th) is that Brett's mother, Ronalee, injected herself smack into the middle of her son's hate crime story by proclaiming "We're being persecuted" (although she was not at the alleged crime scene and, as such, she has been charged with no wrongdoing). I can find no comments about the mother of four that even remotely sound persecutory--by the press or by any bloggers. Ronalee Vanasdlen has not said who, when, or specifically how she has been persecuted vis-à-vis her son's arrest (she also said the arrest of her son has been an ordeal for her and her family, and I don't doubt it, as I'm sure the incident has been for Steven Velasquez, the man who was rendered unconscious and taken to the hospital on the night Brett Vanasdlen was arrested). Ronalee Vanasdlen's "we're being persecuted" line just sounds tabloidish, narcissistically sad in a lime-light-grabbing kind of way, not to mention desperate, and it clouds the fact that her son is innocent of a crime until proven guilty in court. Yes, her false claims of persecution, and her false claims that the Champaign, Illinois police department has a hate crime quota policy erases whatever credibility one might afford Brett in his latest (post-defense-attorney-hiring) remarks about the case (remarks that, according to even his supporters, are markedly different from what he told the police at the time he was busted in early April). I, for one, grow highly suspicious when a criminal defendant starts changing his story, and that suspicion turns to a loud peal of laughter when arrest-quota conspiracy theories get introduced.

Ronalee Vanasdlen has further claimed her son was so blithely unconcerned about his arrest that, she claims, he failed to make supposedly important statements to the police. Oops. She also said Brett "never dreamed that something like this could happen to him." Well, really, how could he: he was raised to believe that he is "holy" and a "saint". Brett Vanasdlen's mother also asserts that her son is "so naïve it’s scary" and thus he could not grasp the gravity of his being arrested. Really? What's not to get about a set of handcuffs being placed on you, taking a ride to the police station in the backseat of a patrol car by men in blue uniforms, and the Miranda Warning being given to you prior to the mug-shot and the fingerprinting? That level of cluelessness--if the statement by his mother about his naivety is true--makes one wonder whether Brett Vanasdlen didn't leave Purdue University after just one semester because he couldn't conquer the strenuous academic load required there (his advocates say he scaled down to an in-state, lesser school--one that requires not even a GED for admission--to have more "playing time" on the baseball team). Regardless of the reason for his transfer to Parkland College this past semester, here's the thing about Brett Vanasdlen and naivety: Brett Vanasdlen is not so naïve as to have failed to learn anti-gay slurs (learned where mom?) and he is not so naïve as to have failed to direct said homophobic slurs at a gay man walking down the street (that part of the hate crime allegation is not in dispute by either side in the Vanasdlen-Velasquez case). If you're trying to find Jesus' do-unto-others teaching in those acts, forget it, they aren't there.

Additionally, Ronalee Vanasdlen also has complained how much money her son's privately retained attorney will likely cost. She fails to grasp that moaning about attorney's fees sounds like an upper-middle-class person bitching about their upper-middle-class privilege (how many Americans have the luxury of being able to actually afford to retain a criminal defense attorney?); it falls on deaf ears the way complaints about the high cost of a vintage bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon hits the ears of working-class Joes when made by rich, long-time diners at Spago's or the French Laundry. If worse comes to worse, Ronalee Vanasdlen--who lives on her enormous Vanasdlen family compound--could use some of her rental income from one of her two resort condominiums to help her son foot his legal bills. From her Naples Bay Resort condominium alone, she rakes in between $3,800 and $6,500 per month. In addition, Ronalee Vanasdlen's Dominican Republic property nets her between $2,800 to $4,200 a month, so even if her son's legal bills go as high as she says ($20-$30K), that only totals a few months of her rental income. Also, boo-hooing about attorney's fees posted at hate-fomenting websites that ask for donations comes close to cyber-begging for your hateful sociopolitical cause. Any thinking member of her evangelical church must be worried that Ronalee Vanasdlen's obsession with hanging onto every possible almighty dollar has got to be lessening her chances of her resurrection when the Rapture happens.

If Ronalee Vanasdlen's views about hate crime laws weren't so similar to those shared by a still-bigoted ex-Klansman (David Duke), and the likes of someone discredited by a large body of psychologists for his homophobic propaganda peddled as respectable social science (Peter LaBarbera), and if she weren't using anti-gay/anti-hate crime hate mongers (like Ted Pike and the far right news agency World Daily Net) to blame a host of people, institutions and laws for her son's legal situation, one might feel some pity for the woman whose eldest son is possibly facing jail time next year instead of his sophomore year in college. Instead, Ronalee Vanasdlen comes off as sympathetic as the character of Hillary Swank's mother in Clint Eastwood's film Million Dollar Baby and as classy as Brandine Spuckler.

The reality is that Brett Vanasdlen is a grown man expected to be responsible for his own actions including decisions about his finances (he supports his education at Parkland College via an athletic scholarship after all). If he had chosen, he could have a public defender represent him instead of a pricey private attorney (of course, he also might have chosen to not hurl an anti-gay slur at Steven Velasquez). It's hard not to conclude Brett's mother should have taken the advice of her son's attorney and kept mum on the whole incident. The sum total of Ronalee Vanasdlen's politically- and personally-motivated baseless complaints and her alignment with homophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic hate-mongers, coupled with her assertion that her son, Brett Vanasdlen, is "so naïve it's scary", now makes one wonder how far away the apple and the tree are here.

Anatomy of a Hate Crime (Part Two)

We know from examining the FBI's hate crime statistics from 2006 that hate crimes based on hatred toward non-heterosexuals accounted for 1,387 of all 9,080 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2006. Over nine hundred gay men were the victims of reported hate crimes that year; they constituted 9.46% of all reported hate crime victims. That percentage is totally out of proportion to the estimated percent of gay men that make up the population of the United States which is about 2.8%, according to a reputable study from the National Health and Social Life Survey by Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels titled "The Social organization of sexuality in the United States". In other words in 2006 gay men were 3.38 times more likely to be the victim of a reported hate crime (often genteelly called a bias-motivated crime) than would be expected. Reported is an operative word here because there is some federal data that for every hate crime reported, there are about 20 that go unreported. Logic thus dictates that the relative risk for gay men is much higher than 3.38. We also know from examining the FBI's hate crime data that most hate crimes involving violence directed at a person (such as murder, rape, etc.) are of the assault variety (aggravated and simple assault). Again looking at the FBI's most recent dataset, we learn that of the 5,449 reported hate crimes directed against persons (not property) in 2006 most (53.5%) were assaults.

Most hate crimes are barely covered by the media--unless they end in murder as in the case of Larry King, end in permanent disfigurement or damage as in last year's David Richeson case or involve torture as in the Megan Williams case last year. If a non-lethal hate crime is covered by the press at all it typically involves only reporting that a suspected hate crime occurred; if an alleged perpetrator happens to be apprehended immediately following the hate crime incident, that too will be reported. Rarely, however, do journalists follow-up on a case, following it through to the end of its life: to conviction or acquittal. It's ironic that assault crimes targeting gay men are so common that we've coined a term for them, but yet they scarcely go noticed by us, in large part because they go unreported by the press. Few, it seems, care about gay bashings except the bashers themselves. Or, perhaps, such assaults are as common as summer baseball games, and so, from the perspective of a media editor, unless there is something unique about a particular hate crime assault, it's not considered worthy to report.

In my previous blog (Anatomy of a Hate Crime, Part One), I began my attempt (as a non-journalist) to report as much as I could about one hate crime assault allegation (on a college student named Steven Velasquez) and the alleged perpetrator of that crime for reasons detailed in that diary. Let me repeat a point from that blog, a point not to be lost when reading this one. But for the angle or force of any particular punch or shove any hate crime assault could have been a hate crime murder. Last year alone two young gay men, targeted precisely because they were gay, were each punched only once; both died. Trying to obtain some basic factual information about the case I am following and reporting has proved difficult as I said in my previous diary. It's interesting who's communicated with me, who hasn't, and perhaps most interesting of all, who's discussing the case (beside me) online and what's being said.

Brett Vanasdlen, an 18-year-old freshman at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, was arrested on April 12, 2008, in Champaign, after he allegedly yelled anti-gay slurs at Steven Velasquez, 20, who was walking near his college campus with three friends, and then allegedly pushed Velasquez so forcefully that when he hit the ground he was knocked unconscious and suffered from a head injury. Born in podunk Minooka, Illinois, Vanasdlen, a talented baseball player, had played baseball at Purdue University very briefly in his first and only semester at the West Lafayette, Indiana university, before transferring (for reasons unknown to me) to Parkland College. His choosing to attend Parkland was very likely based on the successful baseball program the Division II school has: the Parkland Cobras won the National Junior College Athletic Association's World Series in 2002, finished fourth in 2003, and finished second in 2005, according to the school's baseball webpage. By my calculations, during the five weeks and 27 games he played for the Cobras (from February 29, 2008 until on or around April 8, 2008) Vanasdlen had the fifth best batting average (.342) of the 13 Parkland players who batted in at least ten games (the team had an average of hitting .334). He was the second leading player on his team in terms of RBIs and he was tied for 19th in all of Division II college baseball by April 12th.

Jodi Littleton, the Executive Director of Community Relations at Parkland College, and the only school administrator who would talk to me, told me on April 21st that she did not know whether Parkland has, as some schools do, a policy or procedure for possibly expelling students accused of a violent crime. Ms. Littleton told me that Vanasdlen was kicked off the baseball team, but her words suggested he was still enrolled in school. I realize that for student privacy reasons college administrators cannot talk about a particular student to the press or even to a blogger like myself. What's astonishing about the school's response to my question about its policies are these facts.

Ms. Littleton told me on April 21st that Linda Moore, Parkland's Vice President of Student Services, and/or Damien McDonald, Executive Director of Community Relations, would know if Parkland College has a policy or procedure for possibly expelling students accused of a violent offense. Ms. Littleton said she would email Moore and McDonald about my question; she took my telephone number so that either administrator could speak with me. Marsha Kaster, Moore's administrative assistant, confirmed to me later in the afternoon on April 21st that Ms. Littleton had emailed both Moore and McDonald of my request to speak with them. After placing me on hold briefly--to see if Damien McDonald was available to speak with me--Kaster returned to state somewhat tersely that he was not available and that, "They'll contact you at their earliest convenience." I had the distinct impression from the new tone in her voice that I would not hear from either Moore or McDonald. I haven't. Now I'm left to speculate whether or not Parkland College has bothered to follow its own student safety policy:

"It is the policy of Parkland College to keep its faculty, staff and students informed of all matters concerning safety and security. The Department of Public Safety has developed a plan to notify the campus population...The level of notification depends upon the type and severity of the incident."

I could find no evidence that Parkland notified its student body that one of its freshman was arrested for allegedly causing head trauma to a gay college student at a neighboring university in an alleged hate crime gay bashing, and that the freshman has not been administratively expelled from school, even temporarily, pending some type of school investigation. A gay student at Parkland might want that information, even if they aren't told the assailant's identity. Perhaps the administrators at Parkland College could care less about the safety of its gay students. Perhaps they care more about the reputation of its successful baseball team. (If it's any consolation to the student body at Parkland College, the school has a policy regarding sexual assault that can include a disciplinary hearing.)

I also made attempts to speak with the Champaign County State's Attorney's Office about the allegation against Brett Vanasdlen, because the one and only television news account of the incident offered no details about whether or not Vanasdlen was with anyone (as Steven Velasquez was) at the time of the incident, whether he was arrested immediately following the incident, and where exactly he was arrested. What I learned when I spoke to the woman who answered the telephone at the State's Attorney's Office on April 21st is that the case had not been assigned a prosecutor. The woman stated, "It’s being looked at but it has not been assigned." She said that it was being examined by two attorneys (presumably those responsible for assigning cases to D.A.s), but the unidentified woman I spoke with at the State’s Attorney’s Office would not give me either of their names when I asked. She did state, however, that May 6, 2008 in Courtroom S (#315) would be the date and location of the next hearing on the matter. So, more than a week following the alleged hate crime assault the state has not bothered to assign the case. One is left to wonder how much the deck might be stacked against the victim seeking justice in this case. After all, Brett Vanasdlen, the State's Attorney's Office had told me, had already done what any savvy person in his shoes would do. He retained an attorney. Specifically, attorney Carol A. Dison at Becket & Webber out of Tuscola, Illinois was retained as defense counsel. With a little digging, I learned that that law firm has a partner with the same last name as Parkland College's Vice President of Student Services, so I also intended to ask Linda Moore if Parkland College had retained Ms. Dison for their baseball star or directed him to Becket & Webber, but as I've said, no one at Parkland has returned my calls.

Little has been reported by the media about the alleged attack on Steven Velasquez, but that has not stopped people from commenting online about the incident. What's surprising to me is not only the content of the comments, but also where some of them have been posted. Other than my own blogging on the subject, two other websites that reported the initial media report of the alleged hate crime against Steven Velasquez allowed readers to comment on the incident and how it was covered. One is a Seattle-based gay-oriented blogsite run by a guy named Tom. The other was the CBS affiliate in Champaign, Illinois that initially broke the story. This is where, I think, things get interesting; it's where the sociopolitical climate of our country gets illuminated. The Seattle blogsite had a whopping ten postings to the Champaign, Illinois incident, as of May 2, 2008, which is unusual because of the location of the blogsite relative to where the incident is said to have occurred and because the alleged attack was not a fatal one or one widely publicized. (As I said in my previous diary I was the author of one of those postings). Yet the Champaign, Illinois website had just three postings, and this too is surprising because, as mentioned, the attack took place right there in Champaign.

OK, let's have a look at what people have said about the alleged hate crime and where they said it. At the Seattle-based gay blogsite, excluding my posting and the two postings by Tom the blogsite owner, four of the seven postings were in support of the alleged assailant! One person claimed to know the assailant and to know he is not guilty, another claimed to know the victim and to know he lied about the incident, and a third claimed to know that one of the three Champaign, Illinois police officers involved in the incident just wants to make life miserable for the accused, Brett Vanasdlen. In my first blog, I wondered whether Brett Vanasdlen himself wasn’t the author of one of the first postings at Tom’s blogsite—that drunken-sounding posting on Friday April 18th just six days after his arrest declares Vanasdlen’s innocence:

"all this is bullshit brett didnt do shit its jsut some pussy looking for a way out"

I specifically wondered how, if he was the posting's author, Brett Vanasdlen could be so careless as to not even bother to at least pose as a gay man when attempting to deny the accusations against him at a gay-themed blogsite. Then, as if magic, a second posting at Tom’s blogsite in support of Brett Vanasdlen sprang up on April 20th, and this person wanted it known—as if to add credibility to his claim—that he was (you guessed it) gay. What next, a posting from someone who could provide damning information about the Champaign, Illinois police officers responsible for Vanasdlen’s arrest? Yep. This April 23rd posting on Tom’s blogsite reads in part:

"From my understanding, there were 3 cops on the scene, and 2 did not want to even write the incident up, while the third was very intent on making life miserable for Van Asdlen, and won out."

These are pretty amazing postings at a gay blogsite. Whether or not someone was trying to do damage control for the accused at the blogsite, Tom, the blogsite's owner who moderates all submitted posts, certainly can't be accused of censorship. What is also clear is the poor-him-sounding theme of these postings: Brett Vanasdlen, although charged with a fourth-degree felony crime, we’re supposed to believe, is really the victim in the assault on Steven Velasquez, not Mr. Velasquez. We’re told to believe that the victim had it out for Vanasdlen (why we don’t know) and that a police officer had it out for Vanasdlen (why we don’t know). What the person or people who posted at Tom's blogsite fail to see is that complaining about the calls that umpires make in the game of life does not change those calls.

Similar to the postings at Tom's gay-themed blogsite, the comments left at the CBS affiliate that broke the story didn't seem to show much support for the man who suffered a concussion in the attack. One commenter sang praises for the assailant stating:

"I would like to stick up for Brett VanAsdlen. I know him. He's a very nice young man."

That commenter went on to say that the CBS news story that included a brief comment by the victim and one of the eyewitnesses shouldn't have been aired. A second commenter basically agreed, adding that he is not "a fan" of hate crime laws, and suggesting the news station had some sort of bias in reporting this particular crime allegation. Then there was the third and final commenter from yet another Brett Vanasdlen fan. This commenter said:

"I would also like to stand up for Brett V. I too know him. He has been like an older brother to me sinse i was little...Brett is a good guy. I do not believe this was a hate crime at all. I believe that the fact that the victim was gay should have nothing to do with it. Maybe the media should have heard what happened from Brett VanAsdlen first before they put that clip on t.v. Now I'm not saying that Brett didn't do anything because I wasn't there and i don't know what happened but i do believe that he should be given a chance."

To be clear the Champaign, Illinois CBS affiliate did not state or imply that Vanasdlen was guilty in their report of the incident; they merely said he was accused of attacking a gay University of Illinois student that allegedly included anti-gay slurs and that resulted in the victim needing to be hospitalized for head trauma. Apparently seeing the victim describe his version of what happened to him--seeing a gay man stand up for himself, seeing a gay man give voice to his ordeal and listening to a story of a gay man who vowed to seek justice following an alleged unprovoked assault on him--hit a raw nerve with middle America.

Judging from the comments from the locals, Brett Vanasdlen ought to plead not guilty and demand a jury trial. He's certain to get an acquittal. Some people just refuse to believe that some crimes could be based on the assailant's prejudice and hatred of persons from a specific group. To think that this could be a possibility a case involving a male, presumably heterosexual college athlete is apparently an affront to many. Like baseball, gay bashing seems an all-American sport never to be sullied. To dare to report just an allegation of a gay bashing hate crime, especially one that involves the arrest of a college baseball player, as two news sources did in the Brett Vanasdlen case, has brought much ire. It's as if the press attacked mom on the Fourth of July with an apple pie and then burned Old Glory.

Brett Vanasdlen, the alleged hate crime perpetrator in the Champaign, Illinois case, has received some supportive words from rightwing hate-mongers. Typical of one of his histrionic rants, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, über-Christian, and anti-hate crime activist, Reverend Ted Pike, published a blog in support of Brett Vanasdlen whereby he claims to know that the victim was the one who actually put his hands on Brett Vanasdlen, and not the other way around as the police allege (the good man of the cloth comes to this conclusion not by speaking to one of the eyewitnesses at the scene of the alleged gay bashing, but by speaking with someone not present when the incident occurred...Brett Vanasdlen's mother!). Reverend Ted Pike broke one of God's commandments and lied when he wrote:

"The homosexual and public media in the Champaign area are now in hue and cry to convict Brett. Homosexual groups are publishing articles against him in their media and on the internet. (See, http://illinoishomepage.net/content/fulltext/?cid=12590) They have posted his address on the internet. Homosexuals are now picketing on the street where this alleged hate crime occurred."

As I've shown, quite the opposite has occurred. The media barely touched the story, only one gay blogsite mentioned the story, and the support for the alleged perpetrator has been shockingly loud (I say shockingly because not one eyewitness has reported something contrary to what the police have alleged). Incidentally, I could find no published address of Vanasdlen, and I could find nothing about a single person picketing, as Rev. Pike claimed (although the University of Illinois' GLBT student group held a rally opposing hate crimes and supporting tolerance in response to their fellow student, Steven Velasquez, being assaulted). But this is what we can expect from someone who is adored by none other than ex-Klansman, David Duke, who, unsurprisingly is as vehemently opposed to hate crime legislation as Rev. Ted Pike. (For anyone reading this who is opposed to hate crime laws, just so you know, these are the dogs you are laying with: dyed-in-the-wool bigots, neo-fascists, and members of known hate groups).

Speaking of those with résumés that include membership in known hate groups, I found another posting about baseball slugger and accused gay-man-slugging Brett Vanasdlen. This one came from the Vanguard Network News forum, which is a virulently anti-Semitic, white supremacist hate site. As of May 3, 2008, twelve white supremacists commented on Rev. Ted Pike's call-to-arms in support of "Christian" Brett Vanasdlen. The responses from the white supremacists were less homophobic (and more anti-Christian) than I would have guessed, but unsurprisingly none of the white supremacists came out in favor of hate crime laws or supporting the gay victim in the case (and, yeah, some were sickeningly homophobic, but mostly the comments were a slurry of anti-Jewish invective).

From my examination of hundreds of reported hate crimes in the United States, more often than not the alleged assailant avoids trial and pleads guilty to a lesser (non-hate crime) charge; or, the hate crime charges are dropped prior to trial. Also, from my examination of recent cases of college students arrested for allegedly committing a hate crime rarely does the District Attorney vigorously prosecute the case, and never do such students receive any time in jail. Judges just won't have that (call it college student privilege or call it preserving the status quo).

Vanasdlen is not the first college jock to be charged with a hate crime, and he'll probably have the same fate as those before him. It is my prediction in the case of Brett Vanasdlen that at most he will receive probation for a charge other than a hate crime (I'll guess something equivalent to disorderly conduct or simple assault). Unless the victim in the case, Steven Velasquez, is tenacious (and he may very well be, he has eyewitnesses and it sounds like he has some really supportive friends and a supportive college community), Vanasdlen has a 50-50 chance of having the charge against him dropped. Regardless, I predict he'll be back on the Parkland College baseball team next year.

Anatomy of a Hate Crime (Part One)

Understandably, there was national outrage and sadness about last year's very probable hate crime murder of a young gay man from South Carolina, Sean William Kennedy, 20, of Greenville. A stranger with hatred in his heart and homophobia swirling in his mind is said to have thrown a single, fatal punch at Kennedy--a college student with a life's worth of promise--on a sidewalk in downtown Greenville in May, 2007. Less than two months later in early July, a west coast picnic outing with friends similarly ended in a violent, homophobia-fueled death. The single-punch hate crime murder of 26 year old Satendar Singh outside Sacramento, California, will be another tic-mark in the "Murder and non-negligent manslaughter" column of the FBI's annual report of hate crime statistics for 2007 to be released later this year. Whether or not the FBI chooses to bring Mr. Singh's alleged killer to justice is another story; Andrey Vusik, 29, fled to his native Russia and there seems to be no political will to have him returned to the United States to face a murder charge, although he has been charged with manslaughter. Fizzling out quickly in the daily media lifecycle are the dozens of hate crime attacks on gay men that do not, thankfully, end in a homicide. But for the angle or force of a particular punch or shove any of these gay hate crime assaults could end up as tragically as the attacks on Sean Kennedy and Satendar Singh.

One such attack occurred on April 12, 2008, in Champaign, Illinois. Barely mentioned by the media and not covered at all by his own school's newspaper, gay University of Illinois student Steven Velasquez, 20, of Urbana, Illinois was walking on or near campus with two female friends and a male friend when, allegedly, a stranger to the group began yelling anti-gay slurs directed at Velasquez. According to one of two news reports I found on the internet about the attack, Velasquez was shoved so forcefully to the ground by the assailant that the U of I student was rendered unconscious and required medical attention. At the risk of calling Velasquez lucky, unlike Sean Kennedy and Satendar Singh less than a year before, he did not become a gay hate crime murder victim. From hearing his tearful, brave words about his attack and when it occurred in his life (it happened at a time when he was just beginning to embrace his sexual orientation after a period of self-struggle), we know Velasquez was also psychologically wounded by the ordeal.

The first media account of the attack piqued my curiosity about the man arrested in the case. Amanda Evans of WCIA 3 News reported the name of the alleged assailant, Brett Vanasdlen, but she gave no other details about him, except that he was out on bond. No age, no address, no other details about the alleged attacker or how he was apprehended. From reviewing dozens of hate crime stories this lack of reported information struck me as unusual, and it made me want to dig deeper. Since I'm no investigative journalist, digging deeper for me started with a simple google search of "Brett Vanasdlen." Here's what I found.

Brett Vanasdlen (sometimes spelled VanAsdlen), shown here during high school, is a 2007 high school graduate from Minooka, Illinois, a middle-America, rural, dot-on-the-map just 4.25 square miles in size with a nearly all-white population of under 4,000 located 50 miles southwest of Chicago. By the numerous published reports of his athletic skills, in high school Vanasdlen was a talented baseball player (mostly a catcher) with a promising college career. The Chicago Tribune, for example, commented on his contribution in the 2007 WJOL Area Invite in Joliet, Illinois last April. On opposite ends of the country, as Vanasdlen played ball at the Joliet tournament in the last weeks of his high school career, Sean Kennedy and Satendar Singh were, unknowingly, living out the last weeks of their lives. After high school, Vanasdlen attended Purdue University, where he played baseball for the Boilermakers for one semester. In fact, he played in only one game in 2007 while at Purdue and he went hitless with four at-bats. For reasons unknown, but perhaps because he played little or because he played poorly, Vanasdlen returned to Illinois transferring to Parkland College in Champaign where he played baseball (first base) for the Cobras until April 8, 2008, according to the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) website. He played in 27 Parkland games starting on February 29, 2008, batting 73 times with 25 hits, a respectable .342 batting average. He knocked in 19 RBI's and two home runs, and when Vanasdlen was on the team, the Cobras racked up an impressive 21-7 record.

One factoid about six-foot-four-inch, 220-pound Vanasdlen that I couldn't help connect to the attack on Mr. Velasquez was a quote by Vanasdlen's Minooka high school baseball coach, Jeff Petrovic. Coach Petrovic said: "Brett uses his size to his advantage and hits with a lot of power." Though he was referring to hitting a baseball, not a gay man, Petrovic's quote about Vanasdlen might make the prosecuting attorney salivate, I thought. But, I also thought that with Vanasdlen's size and power, it's lucky Steven Velasquez wasn't killed, assuming Vanasdlen was his assailant. For reasons unknown, it appears from his NJCAA webpage that he stopped playing baseball after the double-header between Parkland College and Lincoln College on April 8, just four days before the assault on Mr. Velasquez. Why? Why had a talented baseball player stopped playing ball in mid-season? An injury, perhaps? Academic difficulties? Substance abuse? I had other questions about Vanasdlen. Why had this player transferred after just one semester from a Division I team (Purdue) to a Division II team (Parkland), only to stop playing days before his arrest for a hate crime attack?

The second news account of the assault on Mr. Velasquez kept me puzzling even more about Vanasdlen. On April 16, 2008, Steve Bauer wrote the following at The News-Gazette.com:

"According to Champaign police, Benjamin Vanasdlen, 18, is accused of pushing the Urbana man, causing him to fall down and strike his head about 1:35 a.m. Saturday. The Urbana man was knocked unconscious and was taken to a hospital for treatment of a head injury, police said...Vanasdlen, 18, who listed an address in the 2000 block of Moreland Boulevard, Champaign, was arraigned and pleaded innocent Monday to a Class 4 felony charge of hate crime. Bond for Vanasdlen, who also listed an address in Minooka, was set at $10,000, and he was due to return to court for a pretrial hearing May 6."

I know journalists sometimes get facts wrong, but the name of a person charged with a crime shouldn't be one of them. What's the assailant's name, Benjamin Vanasdlen or Brett Vanasdlen? My google and white pages searches of "Benjamin Vanasdlen" returned nothing but the citation of Steve Bauer's article. I learned, however, that the 2000 block of Moreland Boulevard in Champaign, Illinois, is just a few miles from Parkland College, where Brett Vanasdlan attended college and played baseball.

To find out the actual name and identity of the person arrested for allegedly attacking Mr. Velasquez, I google-searched the name "Brett Vanasdlen" again. What I found this time was a blog of the attack by someone in the Seattle area named Tom at 2015place.com, which, according to the blogger, is a "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Inter-sexed and Allies (GLBTQIA) [blogsite] Operated by a homosexual providing news and more intended for the above mentioned audience." Tom's blog, posted two days after Steven Velasquez was attacked, was actually just a cut-and-paste of Amanda Evans' report, but still, Tom cared enough about the story that I thought he might follow up on the lead I gave to him in my April 18th Anonymous post:

"Anonymous said... After doing a google search of the name "Brett Vanasdlen" and after reading a second media report about the attack on Mr. Steven Velasquez, I began to wonder this: is Benjamin Vanasdlen (who in one media report is the name of the man charged with the hate crime) Brett Vanasdlen? Did Vanasdlen give an alias name to the court/police? My google search reveals a baseball player from Minooka, IL (Brett Vanasdlen) who graduated from Minooka High School, then played baseball for one semester at Purdue U. before transferring to Parkland College in Champaign, IL. His baseball skills and his physical power are well-documented on the internet.

Is this the same man as the accused? Is someone (the media, the school, the defendant) hiding his true identity? Could it be that the accused is the college baseball jock I've found on the internet? My search in Illinois and neighboring areas found no Benjamin Vanasdlen, just Brett and his younger brother Jon."

Blogger Tom replied to my post stating he has no more information about the hate crime assault on Steven Velasquez; however, he said when he has new information, he'll share it. Curiously, just eleven hours after posting my response to Tom's blog, someone else posted a comment about the Champaign, Illinois hate crime attack at Tom's blogsite; it was a response that had me even more curious than I had been previously. This anonymous posting reads as follows:

"all this is bullshit brett didnt do shit its jsut some pussy looking for a way out "

That posting prompted a number of questions. First, why would someone visiting a gay/lesbian/bisexual, etc., blogsite rush to the defense of someone accused of committing a hate crime against a gay man? That someone apparently knows Brett personally given the content of the posting. Also, how common is it, really, for someone posting at a GLBTQIA blogsite to use the word pussy in a sexist and emasculating way? Notice too the word "just" is misspelled. Clearly, the poster is nervous and defensive, but why? Is Brett Vanasdlen, like me, trolling the internet to find out how much information there is about the attack on Steven Velasquez? Would Brett Vanasdlen really be so desperate as to make a pathetic, albeit disguised, denial of committing a violent hate crime against a gay man--at a gay-themed blogsite no less? Would he be so careless to not even bother to at least pose as a gay man when attempting to distance himself from the accusations against him at said gay-themed blogsite? The questions that I posted at Tom's blogsite still remained unanswered more than a week after the hate crime attack: did Vanasdlen give a fake name to the court/police, and if so, to what end? To avoid getting suspended from school or the baseball team? Or did Steve Bauer and The News-Gazette err in reporting the name Benjamin? The blog-posting person claiming to know Brett Vanasdlen--and to not so articulately profess his innocence--led me to think more and more that reporter Amanda Evans had the alleged assailant's name correct. And as I thought more about Steven Velasquez's attack, I also wondered what was Vanasdlen doing out alone in the early morning hours at the time Steven Velasquez was walking down the street with his friends, and where was Vanasdlen going?

Some of these questions were answered on April 21st, after I spoke with the Circuit Clerk in Champaign, Illinois, after I spoke with an administrator from Parkland College, and after I received an email from Steve Bauer (on April 17th I twice emailed Mr. Bauer inquiring about the actual name of the assailant in the Velasquez hate crime assault). The Circuit Clerk's office told me that Brett Vanasdlen was arrested by city police and charged with committing a hate crime on April 12th. Steve Bauer told me that he double-checked the information provided by the Champaign County State's Attorney's Office and the records in the Circuit Clerk's Office, and that the man charged with assaulting Steven Velasquez was indeed Brett Vanasdlen. One question answered: the defendant did not provide false information about his identity; instead, The News-Gazette printed the wrong name. Parkland College informed me that they are aware that one of their students was arrested and charged with a hate crime. They also told me that the student arrested was suspended from the school's baseball team. A second question answered: Brett Vanasdlen, the now-former Parkland College baseball player, is Brett Vanasdlen, the accused hate crime perpetrator.

Readers might be wondering why I care. It's simple really. It's called fighting back, and here's the possible push-back in this case. If the man who assaulted Steven Velasquez is someone who stands to earn millions of dollars in a few year's time playing major league baseball, even a slight chance, I want to do what I can to prevent that. I want to do what I can to stop a violent homophobe from becoming a well-paid role model to American boys who dream of playing in the big league. The thought of that happening, the thought of hate being rewarded like that, sickens me.

The nervous blog-poster may be right about one thing: the assailant in the Steven Velasquez hate crime assault case may be looking for a way out. He may be looking for a way out of a life that is sliding downward, toward a jail sentence. He may be looking for a way out of the shame and disgrace that will be the talk of whatever town he's from. Or, he may simply be a confused, self-loathing young American man raised to love baseball and taught to hate gay men looking for a way out of the closet. Whatever the reason, one thing we can all be inspired by is the absolute courage it took Steven Velasquez to appear on television still acutely pained from being called a faggot then assaulted to unconsciousness on the street in front of his friends. Affirming his newly embraced sexuality on camera and vowing to seek justice in his assault case, Steven Velasquez showed the world his fortitude. Steven, you hit a home run.