NEWSANTI-IMMIGRANT HATE CRIMES

Originally posted on the Reform Immigration for America blog.

Breaking news this morning – Connecticut’s Joe Arpaio is now out of a job. Thanks to more than 15,000 signatures on our Change.org petition calling on East Haven, CT Mayor Maturo to fire Chief Gallo, it was announced that Chief Gallo will be stepping down.

This campaign started receiving major attention and support for last week’s text-a-taco action and delivery to Mayor Maturo’s office, but it quickly focused attention on the serious underlying structural problems in the police department of East Haven. Let’s be clear: Chief Gallo resigned because his department had a history of racism and that those issues have not been seriously addressed.

The resignation is a welcome step, but the institutional racism running rampant in East Haven will not be overcome by a single act. We are committed to making sure it becomes a step forward in rebuilding the respect and trust desperately needed between East Haven leadership and the Latino community.

We are committed to holding the mayor and the town’s police department accountable in these next steps. We will be working with our allies at JUNTA for Progressive Action to plan the upcoming community dinner, and we invite the Mayor to use the dinner as an opportunity to begin serious conversations toward a future of greater racial understanding.

It took serious attention and outrage to address a problem that many thought would not be solved. Thank you all for stepping up to the challenge, and demanding the righting of years of wrongs in East Haven -- please share this victory far and wide online, as a reminder of the power of immigrant families united!

Guest post from Nicole Cairns at the Reform Immigration for America campaign. 

Yesterday, we delivered the 500 tacos you sent to Mayor Maturo of East Haven, CT. Your response was far more than we expected. So far, more than 4,500 people have texted us and, instead of sending the rest of the tacos to the mayor, we’re going to host a community dinner in your honor.

But this story isn’t over.

When we delivered the tacos to Mayor, he ran out the back door to avoid us. And, in an interview set to air on WFSB-TV this weekend, the Mayor’s comments continue to be tone deaf:

“I was voted in for my 11th year. I have an obligation as the leader of our community to do what is right for our community.”

“I’m going to be a better leader and we are going to heal. We are going to make East Haven a great place to live.”

East Haven cannot “heal” or be a “great place to live” until the institutional racism that plagues the town is gone.Mayor Maturo isn’t going anywhere. But the chief of police, Leonard Gallo, is another story.

Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck couldn't have been more wrong when he stated that the controversy over his suggestion that we shoot immigrants from helicopters like wild pigs was "over." Since that statement, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and House Republican leadership squeezed a grudging pseudo-apology out of Peck (R-Tyro), but immigrant rights advocates (and decent human beings across the country) want him to say it like he means it -- in public.

The entire text of Peck's reluctant "apology": "My statements yesterday were regrettable. Please accept my apology." As Lawrence O'Donnell puts it in the clip below, "Apology not accepted." O'Donnell continues, "Some apologies require more than a piece of paper. Getting most apologies accepted usually requires that you somewhere use the words 'I'm sorry' or 'I apologize.'" Though Kansas Republican House Leadership would like to dub this apology "sincere," it's clear to anybody paying attention that Peck doesn't even care enough to pretend he feels bad.

Victory: Over 4000 Change.org members signed the petition demanding a public apolgy from Rep. Peck -- and you won!

File this under "atrocious statement of the month": Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck (R-Tyro) piped up during a debate about feral swine control funding with a suggestion as unrelated as it was offensive to murder undocumented immigrants. "It looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal immigration problem," Peck declared to gasps from the audience and fellow lawmakers.

Rep. Peck is not sorry. He was just making a funny, after all. Because nothing spells humor quite like advocating the murder of hardworking mothers, fathers, and children. Especially when you get to compare them to wild pigs at the same time! Ho ho ho, ha ha ha ... eh.

When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the U.S. in mid-January, Rush Limbaugh marked the trip on his radio show by making a move that even grade school kids know crosses the line: He pretended to speak Chinese by lapsing into “ching chong”-filled gibberish.

Shocked that an adult with an audience of millions would mock Chinese in a way that racist bullies have used to taunt Asians for years, legislators such as California Congresswoman Judy Chu, New York State Assemblywoman Grace Meng, and Oregon Congressman David Wu condemned Limbaugh’s impression. Moreover, California State Sen. Leland Yee not only demanded that Limbaugh apologize for his remarks, but also threatened to organize a boycott of Limbaugh’s sponsors if the conservative shock jock didn’t deliver. Limbaugh, however, remained callously unconcerned about resorting to mockery that’s long been used to harass Asians.

He responded to Yee’s complaints by saying that comics have imitated foreign languages for years and that he considered his impression of Jintao a solid one. Limbaugh and a caller then proceeded to ridicule Yee. Unfortunately, the shenanigans didn’t end there. On Jan. 26 — exactly one week after Limbaugh mocked Jinato — Yee reported receiving threatening faxes from an anonymous Limbaugh supporter. The faxes referred to Yee as a “fish head” and warned, “Rush Limbaugh will kick your chink ass and expose you for the fool you are.” The faxes also threatened him with “death” and featured a drawing of a noose as well as racist references to President Barack Obama.

"Beaner-hopping" — a.k.a. assaulting people who look Mexican — had been a popular pastime among Suffolk County, NY, youth long before the Long Island county became infamous for the brutal murder of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero, killed in this "game."

A Suffolk County Hate Crimes Task Force was created to investigate the pattern of incidents, including turning a critical eye on County Executive Steve Levy, the highest ranking official in Suffolk. Hate crime experts assert that his harsh anti-immigrant stance and xenophobic attacks contributed to an intolerant and dangerous atmosphere for Latinos. (Thank goodness he didn't become New York's governor.) Not surprisingly, Levy isn't so keen on having his misbehavior exposed.

Now, Ted Hesson reports at Long Island Wins that Legis. DuWayne Gregory, head of the Task Force, filed an ethics complaint condemning Levy's administration for inappropriately obtaining the report and cutting out 52 out of 150 pages before they were able to review it. That's over a third of the documents censored, reportedly sections dealing with Levy's actions. What's going on in Suffolk County that Steve Levy doesn't want anybody to know about?

Well, we know some of what's going on. Incidents targeted at Latinos chronicled by a Southern Poverty Law Center Report, "Climate of Fear," included arson, violent assaults with baseball bats and BB guns, and running down bicyclists. A string of robberies in the news earlier this year targeted people who looked Latino because they could be expected to be less likely to go to the police. The situation got so bad, the Justice Department intervened with an investigation on police discrimination. But clearly there's more dirt on Levy's behavior yet to be exposed.

Apple has come under heat lately for allowing virulently anti-gay and anti-immigrant apps free reign on its iTunes network, something that is surprising because, as fellow blogger Prerna Lal points out, the company rejected a pro-single-payer healthcare app last year because it was "politically charged." Recently, Apple listened to the thousands of change.org petitioners who spoke out against the anti-gay, anti-choice app, and removed the offensive program.

But as blog Imagine2050 points out, Apple has another problem — the company has failed to take a stand against white power music. The largest online purveyor of digital tunes, it has become a platform of choice for white supremacists, neo-nazis, and skinheads looking to promote hate-filled music. If you are looking for a song with lyrics like “Have they got the white man on the run?/Multi-racial society is a mess/We ain’t ‘gonna take much more of this/What do need?/White power!” (and much, much worse) iTunes is the place to go. After all, other large music platforms like MySpace work with civil rights organizations to help weed out hate music for immediate removal.

This fall,  ColorLines announced a new campaign: "Drop the I-Word." The campaign is asking all Americans — and especially the mainstream media — to pledge not to use the terms "illegal immigrant," "illegal alien," and even that lovely, plain-old shorthand "illegal," in hopes to get these dehumanizing terms out of the mainstream public discourse. (According to TVtrends, these terms have already appeared on television four times as often in 2010 as they did in 2009.)

What the term "illegal" does, when used to describe a person without papers, is categorize that person as a criminal — and nothing else. It also denies the simple fact that there are legitimate pathways to becoming "legal" in this country even if someone arrived here without papers (like asylum). Says ColorLines, "The I-Word creates an environment of hate by exploiting racial fear and economic anxiety, creating an easy scapegoat for complex issues, and OK-ing violence against those labeled with the word." And anti-immigrant hate crimes are on the rise, in which Latino immigrants are beaten — or even killed — simply for being Latino.

In the media in particular, the constant pumping of I-word creates an "us" vs. "them" divide that contaminates the American zeitgeist. The I-word has become an effective slur, on par with the worst of them, used to dismiss the contributions of our country's immigrants and to blame "them" for all our problems (our education system! the environment! the economy! crime!). Its easier to point the finger at nameless, faceless, criminal masses — "the illegals" — than it is to incriminate actual human beings.

After over two years of heartache, disbelief, and outrage, there is finally some justice for Luis Ramirez, the young immigrant father killed by teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, who shouted slurs and racial epithets like “Tell your ****ing Mexican friends to get out of here" while bashing his head against the sidewalk. To anyone that followed the case, it reeked so obviously of a horrifying hate crime, that it was shocking when an all-white jury acquitted the two teens, Piekarsky and Donchak, of serious charges. Now, we partially understand why.

A federal prosecution case, assembled at the behest of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, has accused three Shenandoah police officers, including one who was dating the mother of Piekarsky, of a cover-up. The officers “threatened witnesses, sought the destruction of evidence and tried to place blame where it didn’t belong.” One officer told Arielle Garcia, a friend of Ramirez who was on the scene and heard the aggressors shouting racial insults while kicking him until he began to foam at the mouth, “You'd better be quiet. You wanna be quiet, or I can put you in jail tonight.” Another officer called the mother of one of the aggressors and told her to get rid of the blue shoes that had been identified. An officer coached the boys on formulating a cover-up story and omitting all racial slurs that were used at the time of the beating. And so and so forth, in a series of actions intended to line the path towards the acquittal that had the courtroom clapping, and the two teens previously cracking jokes about tattooing Hispanic names on their buttocks. The trial of the three officers will take place early next year.

With all the recent love that has been extended to immigrants (really, it’s been nonstop kisses and flowers), one could be forgiven for believing that hate groups in America are on the decline. However, a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says that the number of hate groups increased just a little — 244% — over the previous year. Now, this intimidating statistic provokes a natural question: What is the definition of a hate group?

Is it anyone who raises concerns about undocumented people? Does the group have to promote violence? Would a bunch of idiots who run a jingoistic blog make the cut?

Unfortunately, there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a hate group. Neither is there an official government classification, as with hate crimes. As such, hate groups can be tricky to identify with absolute precision.

Traditionally, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been the go-to organization for pinpointing who, exactly, belongs to a hate group. The SPLC identifies anti-immigrant hate groups as those that go beyond criticizing high immigration levels "by pushing racist propaganda." However, many of the unhinged xenophobes that the SPLC point the finger at are adamant that they're not haters. And the lack of a concrete definition helps them to issue their denials.