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.

A Movie Review for National Bullying Prevention Month

Bullying is pervasive in schools and it has horrible consequences [pdf], some of them life-ending. October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Timed to coincide with it, the Southern Poverty Law Center has released its seventh educational film, available free to schools. Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that Made History, the documentary film by the Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit civil rights organization—which is known for its successful lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups—has many lessons for many people.

The movie tells the story of Jamie Nabozny who was bullied relentlessly by classmates when he attended junior high and high school in Ashland, Wisconsin, a "probable" Sundown town that sits on the shores of Lake Superior.

In the film Jamie’s ordeal is recounted by his mother, by eyewitnesses and by Mr. Nabozny himself (as an adult) as he speaks to a group of teenagers in a school gymnasium. Narrated by Emmy Award-winning actress Jane Lynch, the 38-minute film is a must-see for middle and high school students. Bullied is also required viewing for teachers, for school counselors and for school administrators. Moving back and forth from interviews to re-enactments of actual events, Bullied tells the horrifying "education" of verbal and physical abuse Jamie endured, survived, and ultimately conquered.

If you are an American school student and you're gay or lesbian or transgendered (or perceived to be), or if you're comparatively very short or tall, or comparatively overweight; or, if you’re black in a nearly all-white school in a nearly all-white town; or, if you speak with an accent because you are the only foreign-born student at your school; or, if you're artistically or academically gifted in a school that worships its athletics program; or, if you choose to wear your clothes and your hair differently than most of your peers at school, or if you are in some way disabled, then chances are you know all too well about the endless, psychologically tortuous days at school that Jamie Nabozny had. You’re not alone. And I beg you: don't give up. In addition to teaching that bullying is the opposite of tolerance, not giving up is one of the messages to students Bullied provides (the film is in memory of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover who, God bless him, could no longer live in the same world as his tormentors). If you are a parent of a school aged child, now is the time to have a disucssion with her or him about bullying; and, now is the time to learn what you can do to make sure your child's school is a place for education, and not a place for her or his victimization.

The first half of Bullied is a heart-wrenching downward spiral account of a young midwestern kid with lots of psychological resiliance who is stripped of much of his fortitude by his classmates: those who bullied him with homophobic slurs and repeated assaults, for sure, but also those who bore witness to his suffering and did nothing. In his attempt to deal with the hell that was his public school education—complete with invalidating, and willfully impotent school administrators—Jamie goes from isolating himself (at school and at his loving home) to taking more drastic measures after school officials failed to stop the escalating attacks on him, and after desperate pleas from Jamie and his parents were callously ignored.

The second half of the film deals with the federal lawsuit that Jamie Nabozny filed against his schools and their administrators, after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Going on the offensive—and winning his civil suit against the school administrators—must have been empowering and healing for Mr. Nabozny, because the film showing him as an adult reveals an empathic, seemingly well-functioning, psychologically mature and happily-out-of-the-closet man. He won $900,000 in the lawsuit, and the jury took just minutes to decide the case. That is the sobering lesson the film gives to teachers, school counselors, and school administrators who might be tempted to—as Mr. Nabozny's school administrators did—blame the victim and allow known bullying to continue on their watch.

As an aside, it doesn't take much delving to discover that those who are opposed to hate crime statutes also fight vigorously to stop anti-bullying measures in schools. That's probably because these people want to pass their hatred on to future generations. Bullying, you see, when committed by young adults and adults is often considered a hate crime. But even when tormenting someone to death because of their sexuality—or for some other reason—might not be considered a hate crime by the legal system, as in the criminal case against Rutgers University students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, the "sport" of tormenting someone because of some physical or sociopolitical characteristic that they possess, seems to me, is a form of bullying and must be stopped. As the lyrics to a song by Everything But The Girl go, "Little Hitlers, Little Hitlers grow up into big Hitlers, look what they do."

If you are a junior high school teacher or high school teacher, or a school administrator, and if you are serious about preventing bullying, then please get your school a free copy of Bullied and make sure it is shown throughout your school. The film is the perfect primer for a classroom discussion about not only bullying, but also about diveristy and tolerance and the benefits of both. If you are an elementary school teacher, and you are serious about preventing bullying, then please visit this site and also this site for useful online tools to help teach your class this important message: bullying is never OK.

Cross-posted at: DailyKos

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.

**********************************************************

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.

Huffington Post goes Right Wing Nutty in Hate Crime Analysis. Yes, HuffPo.

It's irritating as hell when the neo-cons blather about being against hate crime laws. Stupid garbage typically falls out of their mouths (oh, and this is no small point: the people are almost always persons of privilege, people who are demographically not likely to be victims of a hate crime). They'll toss out the tired, incorrect chirping points of those who hate and those who want to stay in power (they're very often the same people). Without regard for America's hateful history, they'll spout phrases like "all crimes are hate crimes" and "you can't tell what a person's motivation is let alone prosecute it" and "hate crime laws are thought crime laws." If you follow the loony hate crime dialogue of The Right in the United States, you know this. But, it's enraging when the Huffington Post gives credence to this crap as it did when it published Diane Dimond's article on July 21st titled, "Hate is the Name of the Game in Crime."

Partly because reducing racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of prejudice is so close to my heart. Partly because I had just read this awesome diary by fellow Kossack Maimonides. Partly because according to wikipedia (boldface mine):

The Huffington Post is an American liberal news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, featuring various news sources and columnists.

For these reasons, my blood pressure rose while reading a staunchly right wing opinion piece on the current debate regarding hate crime legislation posted on a supposed liberal website. Let me tell you this: The HuffPo's Diane Dimond's opinion about hate crime legislation is not a liberal position, it is a solidly conservative one. Claiming to be liberal but being against including sexual orientation and gender to the federal hate crime statute is akin to saying you are liberal and are also for racially segregated schools. Dimond's avowedly anti-civil rights position is the opposite of being a liberal. Let me count the ways.

Dimond first stupidly asks why we should label as hate crimes the murders of abortion provider Dr. Steven Tiller and the murder of Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen T. Johns when we already have strict laws against murder. It's a ridiculous set-up for the rest of her article. To begin with, doctors who perform abortions are not part of a protected class of persons in any pending hate crime legislation or any American hate crime law. The murder of Dr. Tiller, while fueled by anti-abortion hatred, does not meet the definition of a hate crime, and no person knowledgeable about hate crimes would state otherwise. (Had Dr. Tiller, who was murdered in his church during a worship service, been killed because of anti-Christian hatred, then the perpetrator could have been charged with a hate crime). Current hate crime laws vary from state to state (as outlined in this pdf), but they typically protect persons based on race, color, religion, national origin, and ethnicity. Some state laws include sexual orientation, gender, and disability. None include "abortion doctor" status as a protected class of citizens. You'd expect Arianna Huffington, the Editor-in-Chief at HuffPo, to know this basic fact about hate crime laws before allowing Dimond to publish what she did.

Wingnuts always focus on hate crime murders as a reason to oppose hate crime laws--laws that permit enhanced punishment. So does Dimond and she uses the same wingnutty logic. She asks what difference would it make if the term "hate crime" is attached to a killer's deadly actions. It's a strawman question that requires no critical thinking whatsoever; lack of critical thinking is another common feature of opponents of hate crime laws (which is probably why Democrats vote in bloc [pdf] in support of expanding the federal hate crime law to help aid oppressed minority persons while the GOP overwhelmingly vote against it). The answer to Dimond's rhetorical question is this. Finding someone guilty of a hate crime murder couldn't lead to increased punishment, because life in prison is, well, life in prison. In states with the death penalty, there is no enhanced punishment greater than death. Yawn. OK, but moving beyond the rhetorical question, one must ask: but what about the 99.9% of all hate crimes that aren't homicides? In those cases an enhanced punishment could be handed down to the hate crime convict. Thus, there is no reason to toss aside hate crime laws because enhanced punishment could only be used in 99.9% of cases.

Then Dimond tosses this wingnut doozy:

The first hate crimes legislation in America was passed forty years ago. Yet according to the Southern Poverty Law Center hate groups continue to flourish. The SPLC displays a map of their locations on its web site. There are 84 in California, 66 in Texas, 56 in Florida, 45 in South Carolina, 40 organized hate groups in New Jersey and Georgia, nearly that many in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri. Does anyone truly believe the label "Hate Crime" and the additional jail time it tacks on to a sentence deters criminals?

First of all, connecting the SPLC's hate group data to hate crimes creates a false correlation between hate crimes and hate groups. Very few hate crime defendants belong to an organized hate group; some hate crime defendants went to college, happily trying to obtain yet another level of privilege (the privilege that comes with higher education). You don't have to belong to the Westboro Baptist Church to gay-bash, Diane, and you don't have to be a member of a neo-Nazi group to attack a Jew. Second, like it or not, in America there is this right called the freedom to associate. People have the right to belong to a hate group. Third, because hate crimes continue to happen long after hate crime laws went into effect is no reason to repeal them. This from the Q & A section of the Trends In Hate website:

...laws can only reduce, but not eliminate, crime. For example, there are strong laws in the United States prohibiting rape and murder. Despite these laws, rapes and murders continue to occur in America daily. From 1996 through 2005, for instance, there was an average of over 45 homicides in the United States daily. Prohibiting murder has not eliminated it. Yet, people unwaveringly understand the continued need for laws criminalizing such society-destroying behavior. As is the case for all criminal codes, one reason for having hate crime laws is deterrence. Hate crime laws serve the purpose of reducing the frequency of bias-motivated crimes, even though the laws can’t eliminate them. Generally speaking a so-called hate crime enhancement allows for the possibility for greater punishment of a perpetrator than would normally occur had the crime not been motivated by hatred. Added punishment serves as a means of deterring to some extent bias-motivated crimes from taking place in America. This benefits society because, as we’ve described, hate crimes terrorize communities. Additionally, because hate crime perpetrators premeditatively select their victims, increasing the punishment for a hate crime perpetrator makes sense. Why? Because hate crime laws by their definition take into account the motive for the crime; and, perpetrator motivation (or lack thereof) has long played a role in American law for establishing culpability and exacting appropriate punishment. For instance, killing someone is agreed to be more heinous when premeditation occurred as compared to the negligent, unplanned killing of another. This is why planned (first-degree) murders carry harsher punishments than unintentional killings of persons by, say, drunk drivers.

Another reason for hate crime laws to exist is to provide an added measure of protection to groups of people who are made more vulnerable in society because of the prejudices of others. In examining the history of the United States, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans have all been targeted—because of their race or ethnicity—for unfair treatment, discrimination, and worse: violence. This does not mean that only persons of color are made more vulnerable by the prejudice-based criminal acts of others. Anyone can harbor anti-ethnic or racist beliefs and act them out criminally, not just whites. This is why hate crime laws include protected categories (e.g., race) that include everyone, not just one particular group of persons (e.g., people of color). So, for example, hate crime laws in the United States provide protection to Protestants and Muslims, and not merely to those who historically have been discriminated against or otherwise have been targeted in the United States because of their religious affiliation, such as Jews or Catholics. Which groups within a protected category are more vulnerable than others in our society have changed in some respects over time; and, they will likely continue to change as society changes. So hate crime laws which protect everyone are defensible on practical as well as constitutional grounds.

That pretty much rebuts this neo-con talking point that Diane spat out in her article:

Declaring there is hate in a person's heart when they act in a criminal fashion seems to be a shaky proposition to me. We should stick to punishing people for what they do -- not what we believe they were thinking at the time of the crime.

So, Diane, you're saying the premeditated murderer should receive the same punishment as the person who, through recklessness, killed someone in a motor vehicle accident? The logic in your argument means that James Byrd's killers should receive the same punishment as the over-stressed parent who kills his or her infant by inadvertently leaving said infant in a hot minivan after a trip to the grocery store.

Dimond's and Huffington's lack of fact-checking aside (hey, they have deadlines to meet and it's only journalism so it's no big deal), what about the fundamental question: why should a murder, or any crime, ever be labeled and prosecuted as a hate crime? A Black man gets hooked up to a Texas pickup truck and dragged to his death by a clan of white guys simply because the victim was black, why should that motive matter? A gay man gets lashed to a fencepost in Wyoming and is murdered because of his sexual orientation; again, why would the hate motive matter? Dimond actually provides the answer in her own article, but is too dense to see it. She concluded her anti-hate crime legislation screed by stating:

Hate is the name of the game when it comes to crime. We don't need a fancy label on it. We need to figure out how to make it socially unacceptable.

Yes, Diane and Arianna, America does need to figure out how to make hatred socially unacceptable. Thanks for that insightful, "progressive" tidbit. And thanks for the non-progressive obfuscation of the real issues here: race-based, ethnicity-based, religion-based, sexual-orientation based, and gender-based violence and intimidation, all of which are rooted in America's history, are community-destroying acts of domestic terrorism. Set a person of color's home on fire and lace your arson with spray-painted racial slurs, you are letting the entire community know that any person of color could be the next target. You're making all person's of color in that community anxious. You're terrorizing them. You're also letting the whites know they're safe. You do get that Diane, right? You do get that there is white privilege in white-on-color race-based hate crimes (and those types of hate crimes account for a high percentage of all hate crimes according to FBI statistics). You do know that in 2007 84% of all hate crimes were committed by white people, right?

Speaking of white privilege, it is unsurprising that Diane Dimond, who is white, fails to let her readers know that her anti-hate crime legislation stance would have the impact of cementing her white privilege in society. By not maximally stigmatizing (i.e., making socially unacceptable) hate crimes--which is done by labeling them "hate crimes" in code of law, in the media, and in the courtroom, and via enhanced punishment to the convicted hate crime perpetrator--as a white person Diane gets to continue to enjoy her significantly lower-than-you'd-expect risk for being a hate crime victim. Just how low is her risk? According to the graphs shown here, it's pretty much in the gutter. If Diane Dimond is heterosexual (me thinks she is), her risk of being a victim of a sexual-orientation hate crime is also in the gutter. But, you didn't read about that heterosexual privilege in her HuffPost article. You also didn't hear Dimond say that by eliminating hate crime laws, there would be no need to tabulate hate crimes as is now federal law. This is what the wingnuts want--the repeal of the federal act that shows hate crimes actually exist. Without that law, the neo-cons could continue to set Black churches and synagogues on fire, continue to beat Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans, and continue to bash the shit out of GLBT people while denying that America has a race, anti-Semitism or homophobia problem. Nice job HuffPo. The Right will play you like a fiddle (to quote Keith Olbermann).

Thanks too Dimond for repeating the right wing and completely false claim that all crimes are hate crimes ("hate is the name of the game when it comes to crime").

Here, I think, is a sufficient response to the all-crimes-are-hate-crimes lie. Again from Trends In Hate:

The notion that all crimes are hate crimes is a preposterous, indefensible claim made by some who oppose hate crime laws and pending hate crime legislation.

We’ve even seen it said that if hate crimes exist, then crimes not deemed to be hate crimes must be ‘love crimes.’ It’s difficult to fathom that people can be so simplistic and illogical. It is patently false that all crimes are hate crimes. In fact, it is not even true that all violent crimes are hate crimes. The vast majority are not. Where greed or financial desperation are the motives for crimes—as is the case of almost all burglaries, armed robberies, and muggings—there is no hatred toward the victims. Criminals just want their victims’ money. Even when a strong emotion drives a crime—such as a so-called crime of passion—that emotion is generally not hatred. It’s typically something shorter-lived like jealousy or rage. Additionally, when someone kills someone—because of some strong negative emotional state such as rage—generally it is not because they hate some socio-demographic feature of the victim, such as the victim’s race or ethnicity. Typically, it is because the killer became enraged at the victim based on some aspect of their relationship. This is why from 1996 through 2006, the FBI tallied 184,604 homicides in the United States, but only 118 hate crime homicides. Even considering that some hate crime murders were not tallied as such, it is clear the nation’s crime data shows us that very few crimes are hate crimes.

As you can see when perusing through this calendar of recent American history, hate crimes happen every day (except, it appears, on Christmas day). Yet, only a miniscule percentage of all reported crimes are hate crimes. Transforming the quoted figures above, only .06% of all American homicides were hate crime homicides during an eleven-year timeframe. OK, so much for the all-crimes-are-hate-crimes rationale for wanting to keep excluding gender, sexual orientation, and disability from the current federal hate crime amendment.

I was unsurprised to learn someone with an affinity for a white racist website like VDARE would take such interest in Dimond's anti-hate crime legislation viewpoint as to send her a link to the VDARE hate site after praising her for her article. That's exactly what happened. She cross-posted her HuffPo screed on her own website and received this "progressive" comment:

Thanks for this. I discussed in [link to the VDARE hate site removed]

Do you stand by your assertion that Vigilant Eagle is monitoring web sites. Has this appeared anywhere in the MSM? Pretty big story, if documentable.

VDARE is a white racist hate site, by the way, and Dimond apparently has made a fan there.

When you hold the exact same position on expanding the federal hate crime law to include gender, sexual orientation and disability that Senator Jim DeMint holds, you lose a lot of progressive cred. In fact, you come off like a white, heterosexual privileged jackass, just like DeMint who recently said this during the recent hate crime amendment debate in the Senate (one the GOP lost):

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said it was "patently offensive" that violence against one class of victims would be considered worse than violence against others.

Channeling DeMint, Dimond asks this in her article, which is the oft-asked question by many dyed-in-the-wool conservatives:

why should an attack on a homosexual or a minority be worth more punishment than a similar attack on a regular Joe?

The answer: to even the playing field. That is, to reduce the huge gap in the risk for becoming a hate crime victim in the first place. Or put more bluntly, to reduce white, Protestant, heterosexual privilege. That is, to reduce hate by reducing hate-based crimes.

But, of course, these people don't want to lose their societal privilege (or they are too damn dumb to see that they have it).

Diane Dimond offers this beauty of a solution (bracketed material mine):

If someone attacks a gay person let's prosecute them for assault [but not as a hate crime] and demand the judge give the harshest sentence possible.

My God this is embarrassing. OK, so she doesn't get that most judges are, demographically speaking, at a really low risk for being a hate crime victim (sexual-orientation based or otherwise) and therefore might be just as cluelessly privileged as she is. Some judges, like Boston Municipal Court Judge Thomas C. Horgan, actually reduce the sentences of hate crime perpetrators (how's that for progressive social justice?!). Is Dimond even aware of this gay-bashing case or any other gay-based hate crime other than the Matthew Shepard murder? Does she even give a shit? Also, Dimond fails to realize that judges are often appointed not elected, so the public can't just oust someone from the bench because of lenient sentences given to hate criminals. "Demands" would fall on deaf ears. Having a more diverse judiciary would help insure that more hate crime victims get the justice they deserve, a justice that in the long-run benefits all. I'm just thankful Dimond doesn't go on to argue that a white person charged with a race-based hate crime assault should be judged by a jury of his peers--other white racists.

Here's an idea for Diane Dimond to chew on: how about making racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, etc., socially unacceptable by having comprehensive state and federal laws that add extra penalties for hate crimes. There's nothing that says "socially unacceptable" better than attaching a nice, harsh punishment to a hate crime, and to providing local law enforcement with the means to investigate hate crimes. That is, of course, the rationale for having hate crime statutes, not an argument against them. We could even go a step further in our efforts to reduce hatred and have states enact so-called hate crime registry boards. Like a convicted pedophile, the convicted hate criminal would have to register with the state board and notify them of his/her housing location which would be passed along to those in the neighborhood. As a society we've decided that people have a right to know if a convicted sex offender moves into their neighborhood (I received a letter last week, in fact, from my local police department notifying my household of a sex offender who moved into my neighborhood). Don't people also have the right to know if a hate crime convict moves into their neighborhood? Or would that upset the status quo too much? Would people lose too much of their societal privilege?

Arianna Huffington you pay Diane Dimond. You hired her and you sign her checks. As Editor-in-Chief of HuffPo you also signed off on her neo-con words to appear on your site. For this, you also bear responsibility for her words. If, after reading this diary, you conclude you don't owe progressives who tirelessly fight historical oppression an apology for publishing Dimond's right wing article on your website, then as I sit and wonder if you will send Diane Dimond off on assignment to cover the next Council of Conservative Citizens convention, at least edit your wiki page to reflect that The Huffington Post is no longer liberal, because we all know that Dimond's opinions mirror those found at WorldNetDaily.

PS Diane, it's 2009, and the proper word is "gay" not "homosexual" (unless you're posting your screeds on internet hate sites, then you can use the antiquated "H" word, though you may find your homophobia so well received at those hate sites that you might choose to use more colorful words to describe GLBT folks).

This blog was originally posted at DailyKos.

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.

*************

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

Hate Crime Incidents: From Election Day to Inauguration Day

We've never before known hate crimes to be lubricated by our nation's presidential choice. Being the first elected African-American identified president, however, Barack Obama's success aroused the hateful passions of more than a few Americans. His run for the White House sparked hate incidents which we described in one of our November, 2008, blogs. In addition, his election provoked some to commit criminal acts of hate; and, his inauguration provoked others. Going beyond the headlines, we examine here in detail those hate crime incidents that have come to our attention that were fueled by Obama's election victory and by his assuming the office of the president. After reading this, you’ll learn that there was no randomness to these crimes; rather, similar forces were operating in places with similar histories regardless of where and when they occurred.

In the 78 days from November 4, 2008 through January 20, 2009, we've tallied 14 hate crime incidents that were significantly provoked by the election or inauguration of President Obama. On average, that's about one hate crime every six days, although the crimes did not occur at regular intervals. Ten of the 14 crimes occurred within 48 hours of GOP presidential candidate John McCain conceding defeat. Another Obama-related hate crime occurred on November 14, 2008, and the remaining three occurred four days before, two days before, and on inauguration day. For all we know, there may have been more Obama-related hate crimes, but they did not come to our attention. In these 14 incidents, there were 15 persons arrested; 12 of those arrested were white males, one was a white female, one was an African-American male (said to have posed as a white male on the Internet), and one was a Latino male who worked in concert with three white males. In five of the 14 incidents the perpetrators are unknown with this exception. On election night on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh, four N.C. State students spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama, including two assassination remarks that read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and, "Hang Obama by a noose." Instead of having the students arrested as they should have—calling for a head of state's head is an act of domestic terrorism—the mostly white school's administration instead protected the students. By refusing to take any legal action against them, the school protected the identity of the students, and it refused to discipline them or to expel them from school (although the NAACP demanded expulsion). N.C. State's administration thus sent a chilling message to its current and future black students. Bizarrely, the four cowardly students issued a written, anonymous apology, which of course is meaningless since no one but the N.C. State administration knows who they are. In other words, they said in essence: you don't know who we are, we aren't going to tell you who we are, we're not withdrawing from N.C. State, but now that we've been caught we want to say we are sorry we said we wanted Barack Obama murdered, now shut up and let our college educations be unmarred by our threats of domestic terrorism so that we can use our college privilege to eventually gain well-paying jobs. N.C. State administrators are "studying" the issue of on-campus hate speech, and we can expect their white-washed report out in March.

Turning to the election-to-inauguration hate crime incidents where something is known about those arrested and what they are accused of doing, we've found that in addition to 93% being male, 87% being white, and 80% being white males, the vast majority (93%) were young. The average age of the 15 arrestees is 22.2 years; their ages ranged from 18-42 at the time of their arrests, with five being in their late teens (18-19 years), and nine being in their early twenties (21-24 years). Additionally, only four of the 14 hate crime incidents occurred in former slave states (two in Mississippi and one each in Georgia and North Carolina). The other Obama-related hate crime incidents occurred in New York (where there were four), New Jersey (where there were two), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, and Utah. In other words, those arrested don't fit the stereotype of old, white Southerners clinging to hopes of a resurrected Confederacy. But, of course, American racism was never regional as James W. Loewen has taught us.

Of those arrested little is known about any possible prior criminal history; that is, in only two hate crime incidents where arrests were made was something reported by the media about past criminal activity. In the case of Steven Joseph Christopher, 42—a white man who was arrested in Brookhaven, Mississippi after allegedly planning to travel to Washington, DC, to assassinate President Obama during the inauguration ceremony on January 20th—we know that while living in his native Wisconsin, Christopher was charged with knowingly violating a domestic abuse restraining order in February, 2008 out of Walworth County, Wisconsin—a county whose population is 94.5% white, and one of only 13 counties of Wisconsin's 78 counties to give John McCain the nod over Barack Obama. Forty-eight percent of Walworth County voters picked Obama in a state where he garnered 56% of the vote. According to the laudable research of James W. Loewen, Walworth County, Wisconsin is no stranger to racism; it has one probable and four possible sundown towns—entire communities that have a history of banishing blacks from living there or even being present after dark (hence the term sundown town). It's places like Walworth County—historically racist, currently and historically disproportionately white, and largely Republican—where you would expect hateful seeds to germinate into a plot to assassinate Barack Obama.

In the other hate crime case where something is known about the criminal records of those arrested, in Hemet, California, Justin Tyme Hayes, 21, Crystal Lee McCann, 22, Derek Shane O'Brien, 22, and Darrin Peter Thibault, 24—who were all arrested for allegedly being involved in the brutal race-based beating of a 19-year-old Latino man causing him permanent and severe brain damage ten days after the presidential election—are said to be members of a white supremacist hate group, the “COORS Skins”. In addition, Hayes has been charged with drug dealing. What makes the Hemet hate crime connected to the election is the fact that the COORS Skins had a website which included angry messages railing against the election of Barack Obama. Clearly, Obama's race and his victory on November 4th appeared to further enrage the gang. Thankfully, the website was shut down after the November 14th attack on the Latino victim whose name has not been released to the public. Not so coincidentally, Hemet, California—a city in Riverside County with an African-American population totaling just about 2.6% and with a white population of about 80.5%—also has a history of racism: it is a probable sundown town according to James Loewen's research. Hemet's white population far exceeds that of Riverside County (65.5%), and its black population is about two-and-half times lower than Riverside County (6.24%) which is itself about half the national average. Also not coincidentally, the voters of Riverside County were much less likely to have voted for the winning presidential candidate in 2008 (Barack Obama got 51% of the vote in Riverside) when compared with the entire state of California (61%).

In the 14 hate crime incidents we tallied that were sparked by President Obama's election and inauguration, what exactly is said to have occurred? As we've mentioned, in one case a young Latino man with his future ahead of him now will spend the rest of his life severely brain-damaged and the ward of the state of California; and, as we've said, four college students spray-painted a threat and a directive to kill our president at North Carolina State University on election night with no consequences to them, and one white man, who had also allegedly verbalized threats to assassinate President Obama, was apparently making plans to go to Washington, D.C., to carry out his act at the inauguration. In the other eleven hate crime incidents either someone was assaulted (or otherwise intimidated face-to-face) or a fire was set—with the exception of the case of the only black person arrested. Dyron Hart, 19—a former Nicholls State University student and 6-foot-3-inch, 350-pound Nicholls State football player wannabe—allegedly sent to black students at four schools a message via Facebook stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them, the day after the November 4th election. Hart stands accused of sending the electronic threats to students at his old school in Thibodaux, Louisiana, as well as to students at Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama. Hart, of Poplarville, Mississippi, allegedly was posing as a white man when he is said to have sent the emails. He was arrested by the FBI on November 12, 2008, and if convicted, Hart could receive up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Not unlike Walworth County, Wisconsin, and Riverside County, California, the voters in Pearl County, Mississippi, where Poplarville is located, were significantly less apt to vote for Barack Obama (19%) than the rest of the state (Obama won 43% of the vote in Mississippi).

THE ARSONS

Six of the 14 election-to-inauguration hate crime incidents we've tallied involved purposefully setting a fire. In some instances, the physical damage was minor. For example, in South Ogden, Utah—a place where whites make up 91.5% of the population, where African-Americans constitute only 0.74% of the population, and a place that in 2002 had an active Neo-Nazi hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center—the American flag flying at the home of a black family who had just returned home from volunteering at their local polling station on November 4th was torched. The family was publicly known as being supporters of Barack Obama, and the incident was investigated as a hate crime (no arrest was made).

Similarly, in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, on November 6, 2008, while taking his eight-year-old daughter to school, an African-American man, Gary Grewal, 51, discovered that someone had burned a six-foot tall cross on his yard near his political banner that declared Barack Obama president. The banner was torched also. Although no one was arrested in that hate crime incident, nine days after the fire, townspeople marched in unity against hate crimes. Like some of the other places where there were Obama-related hate crimes, Hardwick Township is almost exclusively white (97%) with a very small, relative African-American population (0.6%). And like nearly all of the other places where these community-destroying crimes took place, fewer people in Warren County, New Jersey (of which Hardwick Township is a part) voted for Obama (42%) than the state where it is located (57% of Garden State voters chose Obama).

Then there was the cross-burning on the lawn of the only black man in Apolacon Township, Pennsylvania, the night after the election. In that small town in Susquehanna County, Archie Johnson, 71—a retired architect—and his partner, Ruth Cohen, 63, who is a Jewish retired school principal, discovered the cross-burning on their property, and one week later police arrested two white men, Stephen James Barrett, 22, and Forrest Michael Ashcraft, 19, both of Friendsville, Pennsylvania. The two were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit ethnic intimidation (a third-degree misdemeanor), ethnic intimidation (a third-degree misdemeanor), and trespassing out of the Montrose District Court. Unlike Harwick Township, New Jersey, there was no anti-hate crime rally in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where just 0.3 % of its residents are African-American and 98.5% are white, and where on election day, its voters—unlike Pennsylvania—gave the nod to John McCain (55% of voters in Pennsylvania chose Obama, but in Susquehanna County, he received only 44%).

On inauguration day in Jersey City, New Jersey, someone burned the front door of a woman's apartment after first taping Barack Obama newspaper articles on it. Thankfully, the woman who had apparently taken the day off of work to watch Barack Obama's inauguration on television smelled smoke at her front door and discovered it was on fire before major damage or injury occurred. No arrests were made to our knowledge in this case which took place in the only location—of all the Obama-related hate crime communities—where the president fared well in the election. Hudson County, New Jersey, where Jersey City is located, overwhelmingly supported Obama (73%) as compared to the rest of New Jersey (57%).

Two of the election-related hate arsons, however, were devastating. First there was the Springfield, Massachusetts church fire. Just hours after the nation elected its first non-white president, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, a predominately black church, burned to the ground, and authorities launched an investigation as to whether the Tinkham Road church fire was a hate-related arson set in retaliation for the election of President Barack Obama. They concluded it was, and on January 16, 2009, authorities arrested Benjamin F. Haskell, 22, Michael F. Jacques, 24, and Thomas A. Gleason Jr., 21, all of Springfield, Massachusetts. Haskell is said to have bragged to an uncover police officer that he set fire to the church and was responsible for five other arsons. On January 27, 2009, the three white men were indicted on federal civil rights charges. Each faces up to ten years in prison and three years of supervised release, if convicted as charged.

Then in Cumming, Georgia (Forsyth County) two days before Barack Obama was sworn in as our first African-American identified president, the home of Pam Graf was destroyed by fire as she was in Washington, DC, to attend his inauguration. Arson was the cause, and it was related to Ms. Graf's public support of the president. Referring to president Obama, someone had spray-painted a racial slur and the phrase "your black boy will die" on a fence along her Lanier Drive property. Prior to the suspicious fire, Ms. Graf took down an "Obama for President" yard sign after she received a threatening letter. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was called to aid in the investigation. At the time of the suspicious fire, Cumming, Georgia was overwhelmingly white (89% versus 67% for the state of Georgia), and Forsyth County had significantly fewer votes cast for Barack Obama (20.4%) than Georgia (47%) or nationally (53%). A known sundown community, Forsyth County is well-known for its racism, including incidents as recently as the 1990's.

THE ASSAULTS

As of this date, four of the 15 arrested have pleaded guilty; the remaining have not had their criminal cases adjudicated. The three white men and the one Latino man who pleaded guilty went on a race-based terror-spree on Staten Island immediately following—and because of—the election of Barack Obama. In all, four men were assaulted. Ironically, the victim most seriously injured was white. From our This Date in Hate calendar at our website, here is the account of those assaults:

"In the early morning hours on Staten Island, New York, just hours after the 2008 presidential election outcome was known, four men were attacked in separate race-based hate crime incidents by four Staten Island men—three white and one Latino. First, a black Muslim teenager who emigrated to the United States in 2000 from Liberia, Alie Kamara, 17, was attacked with a pipe and police baton by four men who shouted "Obama" in the Park Hill section of Staten Island. Bloodied by the attack, Mr. Kamara was able to escape from his attackers and he made his way home where he then called for help. The four perpetrators also assaulted a black man in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island by pushing him to the ground, and then accosted a Latino man and demanded who he voted for for president. After those three attacks, a white man, Ronald Forte, 38—who was mistaken to be African-American by his perpetrators—was run over and then left for dead on Blackford Avenue in the Port Richmond section as he was walking home at night from his job as a Shop Rite manager. Mr. Forte, a father of five, who had items stolen from his body allegedly by the perpetrators as he lay clinging to life, was in a coma for days following the attack. He suffered significant brain injury, is no longer able to work, and is being cared for by his mother. Two white Staten Island men, Ralph Nicoletti, 18, and Bryan Garaventa, 18, were arrested for attacking Mr. Kamara, and on November 16, 2008, they pleaded Not Guilty to state charges of assault as a hate crime and weapons possession charges in a Staten Island court. Two other suspects—Michael "Dominican Mike" Contreras, 18, and Brian Carranza, 21—were arrested on January 6, 2009, and were arraigned the following day on federal civil rights charges along with Nicoletti and Garaventa in Brooklyn Federal Court for their roles in the election night hate crime attacks. Police discovered Nicoletti, Garaventa, Contreras and Carranza were involved in the attack on Mr. Kamara, and in the hit-and-run attack/robbery of Mr. Forte, because police found items belonging to Mr. Forte in the possession of Nicoletti and Garaventa during their investigation of the two. All four pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations (federal hate crimes) for their roles in the post-election attacks which they admitted were prompted by their race-based anger about the election victory of Barack Obama. Garaventa pleaded guilty on January 6, 2009, Carranza pleaded guilty on January 26, 2009, Contreras pleaded guilty (also in January, 2009), and Nicoletti pleaded guilty on February 2, 2009. Nicoletti, who was the ringleader and who was the driver who hit Mr. Forte, could get up to 12 years in federal prison plus fines of up to $250,000; the other three could receive up to 10 years in federal prison each and fines of up to $250,000 each."

Never a sundown town and racially diverse with 15% of its population Latino and another 15% black, Staten Island nonetheless has in common with nearly all of the other sites of Obama-related hate crime incidents election results out of sync with its surroundings. While 62% of New York voters chose Barack Obama for president, less than half (47%) the residents of Staten Island (Richmond County) voted for him. Additionally, two presidential election cycles ago, in 2000, Staten Island had two active white racist hate groups (a neo-Confederate group and a white nationalist group). In fact, 7 of the 11 locations where the hate crime incidents we examined have occurred have had an active hate group or currently do have an active hate group, according to data from the Southern Poverty Law Center. An additional community has a history of overt racism aimed directly at African-Americans (Forsyth County, Georgia) in the form of being a sundown community.

CRIME SITE-SPECIFIC ELECTION RESULTS

Although Barack Obama won the popular vote in 6 of the 9 states where there occurred an Obama-related hate crime, the communities in which those hate crimes happened were very often not hotbeds of Obama support as we've shown throughout this report. In only 2 of 11 hate crime communities did Barack Obama garner significantly more votes than in the state in which those crimes occurred (viz., Hudson County, New Jersey, and Wake County, North Carolina). When examining the president's election results, by state-versus-community percentage differences, we discovered that the hate crime communities were very often places significantly opposed to Barack Obama. As listed below, 7 of the 11 communities were places where Obama had relatively weak support. For example, in Richmond County, New York (Staten Island), Barack Obama had 15 percentage points fewer votes than in the state of New York as a whole. Additionally, in only 3 of the 11 communities where an Obama-related hate crime occurred did he have more of the vote than his opponent, John McCain (highlighted in blue).

Forsyth County, GA: -27

Pearl River County, MS: -24

Richmond County, NY: -15

Warren County, NJ: -15

Susquehanna County, PA: -11

Riverside County, CA: -10

Lincoln County, MS: - 9

Hampden County, MA: 0

Weber County, UT: + 1

Wake County, NC: + 7

Hudson County, NJ: +16

In summary, we've found 14 Obama-related hate crime incidents most all of which occurred in clusters around the time of Barack Obama's election victory (10) and around the time of his inauguration (3). In most of these incidents (93%) the known or alleged perpetrators were men, white (87%), or both (80%); and, the vast majority (93%) were young with 14 of the 15 persons arrested being between the ages of 18 and 24 years. These 14 hate crime incidents occurred in ten states, but the places where the crimes occurred and those arrested for them do not fit stereotypes of old, white Southerners clinging to hopes of a resurrected Confederacy. That the majority of those arrested are young tells us that the nation continues to transmit its beliefs of white supremacy. That less than 30% of the hate crime incidents occurred in former slave states, and that 20% of all states had an Obama-related hate crime incident (and these occurred coast to coast) tells us that the transmission of white supremacy from generation to generation is a national problem. The communities where Obama-related hate crimes occurred generally were places of relative weak support for the president. Finally, in general these communities were historically racist places to live; and, they were and are today disproportionately white communities.

Note: This blog is available as a pdf at our website (see our Trend Reports and The Politics of Hate).