From Long Island to Staten Island: Another Hate Crime in NY

by Alex DiBranco · 2010-04-09 12:30:00 +0100
Topics:

As the trial for the Long Island murder of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, continues, this week another violent hate crime occurred in New York, this time in Staten Island.

A 26-year-old Mexican immigrant, Rodolfo Olmedo, was assaulted in Port Richmond with a baseball ball and robbed while his teenage assailants shouted anti-Mexican slurs. Unlike Lucero, Olmedo survived the attack, and has been recovering in a local hospital. Police already have three of four suspects in custody and report that all have implicated themselves in the attacks, which are being charged as hate crimes.

We already knew that Suffolk County in Long Island has a bad tradition of anti-immigrant hate crimes, but Staten Island doesn't have a clean slate either. In 2008, a man who couldn't stomach the existence of Mexicans living in the Port Richmond area took out his racism-fueled anger by driving his truck into store fronts. And the Staten Island hate crimes aren't only directed toward Latino immigrants: when we elected our first African-American in 2008, a string of racially-fueled Election Night hate crimes occurred, including beating a 17-year-old Liberian immigrant with a pipe.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn states: "This type of a crime does not represent Staten Island. It does not represent New York." As a New Yorker, I'd like to agree with her sentiments. These hateful attacks certainly don't represent the New York I love. And it makes the recent launch of the Not in Our Town website dedicated toward empowering people to fight back against hate and intolerance in their communities that much more poignant. Because when horrifying attacks like these occur, revealing a dangerous atmosphere of hate in our own backyards, it's up to everyone to denounce the hate and violence and work toward building a community that is safe and inclusive for everyone.

Photo credit: Mai Le

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Hate Crimes Against Asian-Americans in San Francisco
NEXT STORY:
Community Members Fight Detention of High School Graduate with a Mental Disability

COMMENTS (1)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.