The Voices of Indigenous Peoples in 2007
Resistance and Censorship
http://www.counterpunch.com/norrell12312007.html
By BRENDA NORRELL
The widespread censorship of crucial issues for American Indians increased in 2007, according to Censored Blog readers. The most censored issue was the "Silencing of traditional and grassroots' voices by those in power."
The elected councils in the United States and band councils in Canada attempted to silence Indian spiritual leaders and traditional people by way of silencing and distorting the news in 2007. Elected tribal leaders also threatened and oppressed Indians speaking out in their own communities. Tailgating by tribal police, threats of harm and threats of membership removal increased for Indian activists, according to reports from across North America.
The next most censored issue was the "Nuclear, uranium and coal genocide on Indigenous lands." Throughout the Americas, Indigenous lands and people are targeted by mining and dumping that will poison their air, water and land.
Navajos are fighting the new proposed power plant, Desert Rock, in New Mexico. The Algonquin, Pueblos, Navajo, Lakota and others are battling new uranium mining, while Goshute and Western Shoshone fight nuclear dumping on their lands which will be detrimental to future generations.
Yaqui in Sonora are opposing the use of pesticides in agricultural fields which are banned in the United States, but are still produced in the US and exported to other countries. These pesticides are causing deaths and "jelly babies," Yaqui babies born without bones. O'odham are fighting a proposed waste dump in Sonora in their ceremonial community of Quitovac. Indigenous Peoples from Guatemala and Peru, now fighting copper, gold and coal mining in their communities, met with Navajos, Acoma Pueblo, Western Shoshone and others to create solidarity in action in 2007. As efforts intensified in the Americas, nuclear and mining corporations began targeting more communities in Africa.
"Where are the warriors?" asked Janice Gardipe, Paiute-Shoshone, during the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November, urging a new wave of resistance to Yucca Mountain nuclear dumping and the gold mining that is now coring out the mountains and poisoning the water on Western Shoshone lands.
As the pollution from power plants increases and the black carbons are carried by the winds to the north, the Arctic ice melts and destroys the homeland and lives of polar bears, walrus and seals. Ultimately, it will kill the birds and fishes. Even there, the Bush administration rushed to capitalize on the misfortune and the deaths of endangered species. The Bush administration rushed to claim the regions of melting ice in the Northwest Passage for oil and gas drilling.
"Border deaths, abuse of Indigenous Peoples at the border and racism in border news," was the next most censored issue. As television news increased the racism and xenophobia toward migrants, the Bush administration and Congress layered on millions of dollars for private prisons to incarcerate migrants, with millions of fresh dollars for Texas and private border prisons. These included the T. Don Hutto prison for migrant and refugee infants and children in Taylor, Texas.
In Arizona, Mohawks joined Tohono O'odham at the US/Mexico border on Tohono O'odham land in November. Mohawks rushed to intervene in the arrests of Mayans on O'odham land as the US Border Patrol sped quickly away.
"These are your people," Kahentinetha Horn said, igniting a new wave of thought at the southern border. "As the Great Law says, you don't ask for permission to save someone's life," Kahentinetha said of the large number of people, including Indigenous Peoples, dying each year on O'odham land.
Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham, continued to put out water for migrants, and search for bodies, including those of Mayan women who died walking to a better life with their children.
"No one should die for want of a drink of water," Wilson said.
The most censored news articles at the border included the digging up of the O'odham ancestors' graves for the border wall on Tohono O'odham land, the spy federal spy towers in border communities and the corporate profiteering by US corporations and foreign corporations.
The foreign corporations benefiting from the new border hysteria include the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems subcontracted by Boeing under the Secure Border Fence contract. Another is Wackenhut, whose buses wait at the border to be filled with migrants. The Wackenhut buses are owned by G4S in England and Denmark. (Earlier, Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root received a $385 million contract from Homeland Security for migrant prisons in 2006.)
In 2007, the majority of the media censored the fact that all environmental laws, and federal laws protecting American Indian remains, were waived by Homeland Security to build the US/Mexico border wall. Dozens of endangered species are at risk as Homeland Security voids court orders, citing national security.
Already, the building of the wall at the Arizona border has been detrimental to the endangered jaguar which migrates between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The Sonoran pronghorn, which does not jump fences or anything else, will also be affected. Only a few dozen Sonoran pronghorns remain in the US, while several hundred are found to the south in Sonora, Mexico. A new barbed wire fence was recently added alongside the border wall on O'odham land which will harm the jaguars, pronghorns and other endangered species. Destruction of the habitat, particularly in the San Pedro area of Arizona where Homeland Security voided all laws, will destroy fish and migrating birds.
"Leonard Peltier," was the next most censored issue. As Peltier's legal challenges continued and censorship increased, there was a theater production of his life in Boulder, Colorado. Another censored issue was the efforts made on behalf of all American Indians inmates' religious and ceremonial rights.
Further, the censorship of the injustice by police and courts was widespread. The arrests and racism of police in border towns around Indian communities continued. With the oppression of Indian youths by police and prosecutors, pushing them into rage, prisons continued to be filled with America Indians. The US military recruiters continued to target American Indian youths, considering them as "expendables," to fight and die in Iraq.
The "American Indian delegations in Venezuela," was the next most censored issue according to Censored Blog readers, regarding the Indian delegations from North America who met with Indigenous leaders in Venezuela to form solidarity in action. The effort by Vernon Bellecourt, attending in a wheelchair and in frail health, was his last. He died after returning to the United States.
The next most censored issue was the "Zapatistas meetings at the US/Mexico border." Subcomandante Marcos and the Mayan Comandantes held meetings near the US border as part of the Other Campaign, beginning in April of 2007. Just two hours' drive south of the Arizona border, Marcos and the Comandantes met several times with O'odham, upheld the fishing rights of the Cucapa in Baja, Mexico, and met with Yaqui, Mayo, Seri and other Indigenous communities in northern Mexico, culminating in the International Intercontinental Encuentro in the Yaqui Pueblo of Vicam in the state of Sonora, Mexico.
While the media in the United States increased its censorship of these issues in 2007, the alternative national media and international online media continued to provide coverage.
It was the international online media that covered the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas 2007. While upholding the right of Indigenous Peoples to freely pass in their ancestral territories, they opposed the US/Mexico border wall, militarization of border lands and new passport requirements. They opposed the corporate profiteering at the border for the border wall, private prisons and private security firms such as Blackwater now planning a border training camp in Kumeyaay territory at the California border.
Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham organizer of the summit, told the gathering, "The United States is going to continue to build walls and close us all in, or close us all out, and privatize our lives."
The international media, from China to Taiwan, Russia to Belgium, extensively covered the Lakota Freedom Delegation's announcement of withdrawing from the treaties and declaring sovereignty on Dakota lands.
While the media in the United States continued its pathetic and manipulated news coverage, the international media covered the fact that four countries voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The countries are the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand followed by arresting Maoris in the sovereignty movement. The United Nations declaration upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their aboriginal lands.
Both New Zealand and Australia's mainstream media continued biased and racist coverage.
More recently, a new censored topic has emerged: the seizure of private lands of Apaches and other residents in Texas for the US/Mexico border wall, using the law of eminent domain. Since Homeland Security has issued a 30-day notice, Texas mayors and residents are now mobilizing to stop the border wall, militarization and occupation of the Texas border.
Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council, spoke of the fire of resistance and resilience at the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November.
"We consider it relighting the fire of Indian survival, Indian resistance here in this hemisphere. To remind people that first of all, John Wayne didn't kill us all. That we're still alive, distinct cultures that are thriving here in America."
Brenda Norrell is human rights editor for U.N. OBSERVER & International Report. She also runs the Censored website (http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/). She can be reached at: brendanorrell@gmail.com
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12/31/07
Sovereignty & Stolen Gold
Of Sovereignty and Stolen Gold
Russell Means Goes to Washington
http://www.counterpunch.org/melendez12242007.html
By STEVE MELENDEZ
In 1980 the United States government printed 500 hardcover books called, The Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission. It is on our Museum's wish list. In it on page 4 under the heading "Historical Survey," it makes the grand revelation on how this government is dealing with First Nations America. Giving a history of its very own formation, it candidly reveals, " to create a United States Court of Indian Claims." This court was to consist of three judges, have a 5-year filing period for all claims founded upon the Constitution, laws of Congress, treaties and contracts, and render a final decision within a 10 year life span. Thus, by 1930, the resolution of Indian claims was proposed under two forms of tribunal.
In 1934 and early 1935, the proponents of an Indian court submitted two more bills to establish an Indian claims court. Both bills were ignored, largely because they were not, by this time, considered practical answers to the claims situation. In a report to the Senate committee on Indian Affairs, Secretary of Indian Affairs Harold Ickes argued against them and directed the Senators' attention to a bill recently introduced in the House to create an Indian claims commission instead of a court which he considered preferable.
With the introduction, in March 1935, of H.R. 6655, an act to create an Indian claims commission, the legislative movement to expedite Indian claims shifted irreversibly from the consideration of a judicial to a commission format. Both Congress and the Secretary of the Interior now felt that a commission rather than an adversary proceeding could better "cut through" the red tape of Government agencies charged with the preparation of Indian cases. An investigatory commission appeared to be a better vehicle for "claims involving history and anthropology as much as law". This bill, and three similar ones, aroused a good deal of debate throughout the 1930's but no legislation resulted."
In other words, this was and is the government's boldface attempt to nullify all treaties made with First Nations America by circumventing the courts and the rule of law. The movement shifted from a "judicial to a commission format"? What hogwash!
Sure the Indian Claims Commission went out of business in 1980 but its rulings are still hanging over the heads of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone Nation and Dr. Russell Means and the Lakota Nation to the tune of $34 million and $800 million, respectively.
Everyone who knows the story of Carrie Dann knows the story of how the indigenous people have been criminalized for standing up for Native civil rights. And yes, treaty rights are guaranteed and protected by the U.S . Constitution under article 6--supposedly.
And laws supposedly should be enforced but they are not. This is just the latest example of the racial discrimination that our people have had to endure for the last 500 years.
When Columbus waded ashore and said that he, "was taking possession of this island for the King and Queen," why is it not right for Dr. Russell Means to go to Washington and do the same thing.
Black's Law Dictionary tells me on Pg.1502 that a treaty is "An agreement, league, or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns."
Did the United States honor their end of the international agreement called the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868? In the summer of 1874 Gen. Philip Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills to verify the rumor that gold had been found. Miners had been showing up with gold. He had an entourage of about 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons, two or three gatling guns, a cannon, a sixteen piece brass band mounted on white horses and two miners who were the experts on gold. He was there in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land, the treaty of 1868. When he found gold, he sent a dispatch back to Ft. Laramie: "Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have on my table 40 or 50 small particles of pure gold. In size, averaging in size that of a small pinhead, and most of it taken today from one panful of earth."
The following year, President Ulysses S. Grant stood before Congress and said,
"The Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his discretion."
Volume 9 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Page 4306 President Ulysses S. Grant's 7th Annual Message To the Senate and House of Representatives, December 7, 1875
"Sustenance" is food and withholding food from people is a government policy of starvation. Previously, the U.S. Army supported the extermination of the buffalo in order to control the native people. Why wait for the hammer to drop again? Why not support Dr. Means before the hammer drops on this economy and $800 won't buy bread let alone buffalo. Ask not what the U.S. Government can do for one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, ask what is the price for reparations for genocide. If ever you find that you are a part of a deceptive system called Mystery Babylon you are instructed to, "Come out or her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes".
Sometimes to be right is worth than all the gold they took out of in the Homestake mine.
(http://www.aigenom.com/homestakegoldmine.html)
Steve Melendez is a Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston.
(http://www.aigenom.com/)
Russell Means Goes to Washington
http://www.counterpunch.org/melendez12242007.html
By STEVE MELENDEZ
In 1980 the United States government printed 500 hardcover books called, The Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission. It is on our Museum's wish list. In it on page 4 under the heading "Historical Survey," it makes the grand revelation on how this government is dealing with First Nations America. Giving a history of its very own formation, it candidly reveals, " to create a United States Court of Indian Claims." This court was to consist of three judges, have a 5-year filing period for all claims founded upon the Constitution, laws of Congress, treaties and contracts, and render a final decision within a 10 year life span. Thus, by 1930, the resolution of Indian claims was proposed under two forms of tribunal.
In 1934 and early 1935, the proponents of an Indian court submitted two more bills to establish an Indian claims court. Both bills were ignored, largely because they were not, by this time, considered practical answers to the claims situation. In a report to the Senate committee on Indian Affairs, Secretary of Indian Affairs Harold Ickes argued against them and directed the Senators' attention to a bill recently introduced in the House to create an Indian claims commission instead of a court which he considered preferable.
With the introduction, in March 1935, of H.R. 6655, an act to create an Indian claims commission, the legislative movement to expedite Indian claims shifted irreversibly from the consideration of a judicial to a commission format. Both Congress and the Secretary of the Interior now felt that a commission rather than an adversary proceeding could better "cut through" the red tape of Government agencies charged with the preparation of Indian cases. An investigatory commission appeared to be a better vehicle for "claims involving history and anthropology as much as law". This bill, and three similar ones, aroused a good deal of debate throughout the 1930's but no legislation resulted."
In other words, this was and is the government's boldface attempt to nullify all treaties made with First Nations America by circumventing the courts and the rule of law. The movement shifted from a "judicial to a commission format"? What hogwash!
Sure the Indian Claims Commission went out of business in 1980 but its rulings are still hanging over the heads of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone Nation and Dr. Russell Means and the Lakota Nation to the tune of $34 million and $800 million, respectively.
Everyone who knows the story of Carrie Dann knows the story of how the indigenous people have been criminalized for standing up for Native civil rights. And yes, treaty rights are guaranteed and protected by the U.S . Constitution under article 6--supposedly.
And laws supposedly should be enforced but they are not. This is just the latest example of the racial discrimination that our people have had to endure for the last 500 years.
When Columbus waded ashore and said that he, "was taking possession of this island for the King and Queen," why is it not right for Dr. Russell Means to go to Washington and do the same thing.
Black's Law Dictionary tells me on Pg.1502 that a treaty is "An agreement, league, or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns."
Did the United States honor their end of the international agreement called the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868? In the summer of 1874 Gen. Philip Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills to verify the rumor that gold had been found. Miners had been showing up with gold. He had an entourage of about 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons, two or three gatling guns, a cannon, a sixteen piece brass band mounted on white horses and two miners who were the experts on gold. He was there in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land, the treaty of 1868. When he found gold, he sent a dispatch back to Ft. Laramie: "Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have on my table 40 or 50 small particles of pure gold. In size, averaging in size that of a small pinhead, and most of it taken today from one panful of earth."
The following year, President Ulysses S. Grant stood before Congress and said,
"The Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his discretion."
Volume 9 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Page 4306 President Ulysses S. Grant's 7th Annual Message To the Senate and House of Representatives, December 7, 1875
"Sustenance" is food and withholding food from people is a government policy of starvation. Previously, the U.S. Army supported the extermination of the buffalo in order to control the native people. Why wait for the hammer to drop again? Why not support Dr. Means before the hammer drops on this economy and $800 won't buy bread let alone buffalo. Ask not what the U.S. Government can do for one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, ask what is the price for reparations for genocide. If ever you find that you are a part of a deceptive system called Mystery Babylon you are instructed to, "Come out or her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes".
Sometimes to be right is worth than all the gold they took out of in the Homestake mine.
(http://www.aigenom.com/homestakegoldmine.html)
Steve Melendez is a Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston.
(http://www.aigenom.com/)
Lakota Renounce Treaties With U.S. Government!
Lakota Tribes: Stop This Country, We Want to Get Off!
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on December 21, 2007, Printed on December 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/71373/
Well, well, well. This is certainly interesting … (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html)
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.
"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,'' long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.
A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.
The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
[...]
The treaties signed with the U.S. were merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists said.
The only thing that's surprising is that there hasn't been a more aggressive push towards self-determination for indigenous Americans. We're all familiar with the struggles of groups like the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, or the Basque in Spain and Southern France, among others, but there are independence movements going on all over the world. That our own indigenous nations haven't struggled to secede -- with obvious exceptions like the AIM movement -- is, I suppose, a testament to just how thoroughly Europeans wiped out the natives. The Chechens, Nunavut, Palestinians and Papua New Guineans may have had some fight left in them, but America's indigenous people were well and truly decimated, and the fact that they remain living in squalid poverty in Bantustans called "reservations" -- and that everyone goes about their business like that's not a big deal -- really speaks to that unique American combination of extreme brutality and the exceptionalism that allows us to deny its existence.
The Lakota actually declared independence back in the mid-1970s, but that went nowhere. It's worth noting that a shifting perception of indigenous rights in general is part of the equation:
[The effort gained momentum] in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.
"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children,'' Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.
One note about the plan: the Lakota intend to issue their own passports and driver's licenses, and anyone within their territory would be eligible for citizenship. Citizens of the new state would live tax-free, and all a person has to do is renounce their allegiance to the United States.
I can see conservative heads exploding over that Sophie's Choice: On the one hand, you can live in Nebraska without ever paying taxes again, but on the other, you've got to become a dirty, rotten, un-American foreigner and can never mindlessly (but honestly) scream U-S-A! U-S-A! at a sporting event again.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/71373/
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on December 21, 2007, Printed on December 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/71373/
Well, well, well. This is certainly interesting … (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html)
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.
"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,'' long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.
A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.
The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
[...]
The treaties signed with the U.S. were merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists said.
The only thing that's surprising is that there hasn't been a more aggressive push towards self-determination for indigenous Americans. We're all familiar with the struggles of groups like the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, or the Basque in Spain and Southern France, among others, but there are independence movements going on all over the world. That our own indigenous nations haven't struggled to secede -- with obvious exceptions like the AIM movement -- is, I suppose, a testament to just how thoroughly Europeans wiped out the natives. The Chechens, Nunavut, Palestinians and Papua New Guineans may have had some fight left in them, but America's indigenous people were well and truly decimated, and the fact that they remain living in squalid poverty in Bantustans called "reservations" -- and that everyone goes about their business like that's not a big deal -- really speaks to that unique American combination of extreme brutality and the exceptionalism that allows us to deny its existence.
The Lakota actually declared independence back in the mid-1970s, but that went nowhere. It's worth noting that a shifting perception of indigenous rights in general is part of the equation:
[The effort gained momentum] in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.
"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children,'' Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.
One note about the plan: the Lakota intend to issue their own passports and driver's licenses, and anyone within their territory would be eligible for citizenship. Citizens of the new state would live tax-free, and all a person has to do is renounce their allegiance to the United States.
I can see conservative heads exploding over that Sophie's Choice: On the one hand, you can live in Nebraska without ever paying taxes again, but on the other, you've got to become a dirty, rotten, un-American foreigner and can never mindlessly (but honestly) scream U-S-A! U-S-A! at a sporting event again.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/71373/
Phoenix Has Highest Police Murder Rate In The Country!
Killed by Cops: Police Shootings Run Rampant
By Jessica Hoffmann, ColorLines
Posted on December 21, 2007, Printed on December 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/71289/
This article is part of a series from ColorLines and The Chicago Reporter. In a joint national investigation, the publications found that Blacks are overrepresented and Latinos are a rising number of those fatally shot by police.
It was hot and quiet in Mesa, Arizona, as a crowd gathered outside the headquarters of the police department on Aug. 25, 2007. On this day in 2003, the parents of 15-year-old Mario Madrigal Jr. called the police in a panic because their oldest son was threatening to kill himself with a kitchen knife. Within hours, they found themselves watching helplessly as Mario Jr. was shot and killed by police officers, who say he had threatened them with the knife.
Four years later, about 100 people, most of them wearing black T-shirts, joined the family in insisting that Mario was a threat to no one but himself that night and that he was killed by a police force ill-equipped to engage with mental-health crises and Mesa's growing Latino community. "We need changes in how officers approach us Hispanics," Mario Madrigal Sr. said. "They should be much more educated [in] knowing our culture...and understand that we are human beings."
No one from the Mesa Police Department emerged to face the crowd. The crowd was literally speaking to a brick wall as they chanted "justice for Mario" and cheered Mario Sr.'s insistent statement, "The case is not closed." Although the Mesa PD's internal investigation cleared the officers who shot Mario Jr. of any wrongdoing, the family is involved in an independent investigation, and a federal district court judge has set a date in September 2008 for the Madrigals' civil case to be brought before a jury. The family hopes they will be more responsive than local authorities have been.
The Madrigals are hardly the only family in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area that feels like they're talking to a brick wall as they seek justice in the police killing of a loved one.
In March 2006, Malissia Clinton's younger brother, James Deon Lennox, 35, was shot by a police officer outside his apartment in Mesa. According to the story Clinton and her mother have pieced together from witnesses' accounts, Lennox and his girlfriend had returned home late after a night out and began arguing about where to park the car. Within minutes, a police officer arrived. Then two more officers appeared. For reasons none of the witnesses can be sure of, Lennox and one of the officers got into a physical fight. Then, Officer David Kohler shot Lennox twice -- once in the shoulder, once in the chest -- and James Deon Lennox died.
Mesa police spokesmen say Kohler felt his life was threatened -- that Lennox had already hit him with a lawn chair and that he fired his gun when Lennox picked up another one. Neighbors say the chairs in question were cheap, flimsy ones-not life-threatening -- and the autopsy report by the county medical examiner says that both shots came from a distance. The city of Mesa denied a claim of wrongdoing filed by Lennox's family, and the county attorney's office has not filed criminal charges against Kohler. An internal police investigation into the shooting is still under way.
According to Lennox's family, two witnesses have said that one of the officers called him a "nigger" the night he was killed. Malissia Clinton, an attorney in California, thinks her brother was "just tired of playing by rules that are unfair." He'd been arguing with his girlfriend, he'd had a little bit to drink, it was late and suddenly there were police officers on the scene.
"As a Black man," Clinton said, "you know what you are supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do with the police. There are rules that are kinda unspoken, but everybody understands that you could lose your life, so you need to really be careful. That's a given -- my husband knows it, Barack Obama knows it...everybody knows that." So what happened that night? "I just think that he was tired, he decided that this guy was not gonna put his hands on him -- if he wanted to talk to him like a man, that was fine, but if he wanted to play physical at all, he was just not gonna stand for it. And so, he decided to take a stand, and I think that that's why he lost his life."
Lennox and Madrigal were just two of the many civilians who have been shot to death by police from various departments throughout the multi-city Phoenix metropolitan area -- in the city of Phoenix alone, an average of more than one per month since 2000, making it among the worst cities in the nation for police shootings.
Phoenix had the highest rate of fatal police shootings from 2000 to 2005 among the 10 U.S. cities with more than one million people, according to federal data. In fact, Phoenix ranked second in total number of fatal police shootings, just behind New York City and ahead of much larger cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. During those years, more Latinos were killed by police in Phoenix than in any other large city that tracked victims' ethnic identities. (In federal reporting, Hispanic/Latino is considered an ethnic rather than a racial category.) Neighboring police departments in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area -- notably Mesa, Scottsdale and Chandler -- have also attracted attention for a series of fatal shootings of civilians. In Mesa (which has a population of approximately 460,000), 45 civilians were shot by police between January 2000 and August 2007, according to the Mesa Police Department. (The department was unable to indicate how many of those shootings were fatal.)
Maricopa County's largest urban area is one of the most dangerous places in the nation to be a Latino person interacting with law enforcement. Among the 27 cities with more than 250,000 people that tracked victims' ethnicities during this time, 23 out of 137, or one in six, Hispanic victims of police shootings were killed in Phoenix, although Phoenix had just 6 percent of the total population. As the region's Latino population grows, local police departments remain majority white, and community organizers feel shut out of civilian review processes ostensibly created to include them. Further, despite programs touted for reducing the shooting rate or improving police-community relations -- the introduction of Tasers to many local departments' arsenals, Spanish-language initiatives, and increased training in dealing with people who live with mental illness -- shootings of civilians by police persist throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area. And, across cities and departments, police officers rarely suffer any consequences for choosing to fire.
* * *
Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing, and fastest-changing, metropolitan areas in the United States. The urban center of Maricopa County (which has experienced the largest numerical increase in population of any U.S. county since the 2000 Census) encompasses the city of Phoenix as well as numerous adjacent cities such as Mesa, Scottsdale and Chandler. Since the 1990s, the Hispanic/Latino population in particular has grown rapidly, with Phoenix proper going from 20 percent Latino in 1990, to 34 percent in 2000, to 41.8 percent in 2005.
Yet police department demographics have been much slower to change. A Department of Justice report on police personnel showed a Phoenix Police Department that was 81 percent white in June 2003. (12.7 percent of officers identified as ethnically Hispanic.) Four years later, despite the department's stated efforts to diversify, the Phoenix PD is 77.9 percent white, with only 14.8 percent of officers identifying as ethnically Hispanic. In fast-growing Mesa, where, according to the city, the "ethnic/minority" population grew by 20 percent between 1990 and 2000 and Hispanics today represent 25 percent of the total population, only 14.2 percent of police officers in the field identify as Hispanic. "Whenever you have bilingual, bicultural police, usually you have better police-community relations," said Salvador Reza, an organizer with the indigenous community-development organization Tonatierra who works with immigrant day laborers in Phoenix. "When you don't have that, then there's the language barrier, then on top of that, there's a cultural barrier. [Among Latinos in Phoenix] the police are not seen as to protect and to serve, they're seen as to harass and make sure that you get to jail so you can get deported."
Indeed, said Reza and other local activists, any consideration of Phoenix Latinos' relationship to the police must be looked at in the context of the broader climate of anti-immigrant/anti-Latino xenophobia in the area. In July 2007, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (aka "America's Toughest Sheriff") created a hotline for people to call in information about undocumented immigrants.
The Phoenix Police Department does have several community advisory boards meant to connect police to specific local communities. But Reza noted that the members of these boards are "more like yes men, instead of asking the hard questions. They do have a review board, but they don't have any power."
That may partially explain why, in a Department of Justice report about citizen complaints of police use of force in 2002, only 17 were recorded for Phoenix. Cities with similar populations and police-department sizes had about eight times as many -- 133 in San Antonio and 132 in San Diego. It may also explain why Phoenix attorney Augustine Jimenez gets calls about police brutality "about twice a week" -- "but there are very few cases we can take on," he said. "[I get] calls all the time from poor Mexican people who get beaten up by police, but the sad reality is, unless you have some videotape or witnesses who are white...The cases we've taken and been successful on, we've had strong physical evidence to support our claim."
* * *
In spring 2001, Gerardo Ramirez-Diaz got into a fight with Phoenix police after his roommate called the cops because he'd attacked him. The roommate, aware that Ramirez-Diaz was living with schizoaffective disorder, wanted the police to help get Ramirez-Diaz into treatment. But when police arrived, Ramirez-Diaz wouldn't comply with their orders-he threw things at them and repeatedly shouted "stay away from me." In the ensuing struggle, a Phoenix police officer shot and wounded Ramirez-Diaz, whose family was eventually paid $699,000 in damages by the city. Despite a jury's decision to award damages for excessive force, the police department's internal review found the use of force "in policy."
Ramirez-Diaz's attorney, Augustine Jimenez, sees his client's case as one example of a larger problem: "Officers deal almost on a daily basis with individuals who suffer with mental illnesses. Officers demand that you comply with their orders, but these people who are mentally ill don't always understand the officers or are in some kind of psychotic event or episode." Another local attorney, Richard Treon, anecdotally connects this dynamic to the "excessive number of shootings going on in the Phoenix area" in recent years, saying, "It seems like it most frequently happens when police are on a 911 call to deal with someone who is mentally ill."
Although every police officer in Arizona receives training on dealing with people who are mentally ill, and Phoenix has a unique 40-hour training block on mental illness, the stories of Ramirez-Diaz and Mario Madrigal Jr. suggest this may not be enough. "It's a tough situation for the cops because they're not trained to be social workers; they're trained to be almost automatons who react almost like a military force," Treon said.
Martha Madrigal, the mother of Mario Jr., urges people not to call the police when loved ones are in crisis. In the wake of her son's death, she created a postcard that reads, "If your son, daughter, or loved one is suicidal, [or] under the influence of drugs or alcohol, do not call police for help." On the back, she has listed national hotlines that address suicide, drugs and alcohol, domestic violence and depression.
The Phoenix PD's Sgt. Joel Tranter rejects the notion that officers are trained as "automatons," emphasizing that each officer goes through simulation training to practice responding to a range of different situations. "As far as being one canned response, that's not true, each response from officers is tailored to that situation."
Yet communication breakdowns between police and civilians are not uncommon.
They happen across differences of mental states -- as well as across language barriers.
Although the state's basic training includes some modules on interacting with people who do not speak English, there is no Spanish-language requirement in officers' basic training, despite the fact that 28.5 percent of the state's reported population is ethnically Hispanic.
In summer 2007, all first responders on the Phoenix PD received 10 hours of Spanish lessons. But, Lt. Dave Kelly noted, while most of the participants appreciated it, there was "very vocal" protest from "about 25 percent" of them who did not. And so, from now on, Spanish-language education will be available only as an option to Phoenix police officers.
The impact of lack of mandated Spanish-language education on police shooting incidents is difficult to measure. But it's clear that any communication gap may be part of a deadly equation when a commonly cited reason for use of force is an individual's failure to comply with an officer's orders.
* * *
Most officer-involved-shooting cases in the Phoenix area are handled entirely within police departments' internal review processes, and the outcome of those internal investigations is murky. In Phoenix, the police department's Use of Force Review Board, which includes officers' commanders and peers as well as two citizens (selected by police and the city manager's office), reviews every incident in which an officer intentionally shoots a gun-regardless of whether anyone is hurt. From 2000 to 2005, that board reviewed 110 shooting incidents and found 11 of them to be "out of policy." Those findings were relayed to the police chief as "recommendations," and the chair of the Use of Force Review Board isn't sure what ultimately happened to the 11 "out of policy" cases. Assistant Chief Kevin Robinson, who chairs the Disciplinary Review Board, is similarly unsure about what happened to those cases. All he could say in a July 2007 interview was, "I'm not aware of any that resulted in termination."
Although there were more than 100 incidents of officer-involved shootings in the city of Phoenix alone in the last five years, and numerous shootings in neighboring jurisdictions, only one shooting in the county (involving the Chandler Police Department) has resulted in criminal charges being filed against the officer who fired -- and that was for the fatal shooting of a white woman. Even in that case, the state standards and training board decided against revoking the officer's status after a jury found him not guilty. (The city of Chandler did decide not to reinstate him as a police officer.) Of the many cases that did not go to criminal trial, the city of Phoenix paid on civil settlements related to only three fatal officer-involved-shooting cases from 2000 to 2005. The consequences to police officers involved in the other 65 fatal shootings of civilians in Phoenix in that period are unknown. In Mesa, only three city payouts for police shootings by gun were made between January 2000 and August 2007, although police shot 45 civilians during that time. (The Mesa city attorney's office has not responded to queries about whether any of the payouts were for fatal shootings.)
James Deon Lennox's family is still waiting to see whether the city of Mesa will pay damages to help support his four children. The city of Mesa denied their initial claim of wrongdoing, and the Maricopa county attorney's office has no plans to take action on the case. The family's lawsuit against the city is in the discovery stage. The family of Mario Madrigal Jr., dismayed by the Mesa Police Department's finding that the officers who shot their son committed no wrongdoing, are waiting to see whether a federal jury might take a different view of the case.
Will fatal shootings by police continue to occur in and around Phoenix, averaging more than one a month as they have for years, with no clear cause or consequence? "You just get the sense that it's more permissive in that area," said Malissia Clinton. "You can't look to, necessarily, the judicial system. You can't look to the prosecutors...I'm not sure you can look to the citizens. And so if no one's gonna do a sanity check, then that means the police are running around unchecked."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/71289/
By Jessica Hoffmann, ColorLines
Posted on December 21, 2007, Printed on December 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/71289/
This article is part of a series from ColorLines and The Chicago Reporter. In a joint national investigation, the publications found that Blacks are overrepresented and Latinos are a rising number of those fatally shot by police.
It was hot and quiet in Mesa, Arizona, as a crowd gathered outside the headquarters of the police department on Aug. 25, 2007. On this day in 2003, the parents of 15-year-old Mario Madrigal Jr. called the police in a panic because their oldest son was threatening to kill himself with a kitchen knife. Within hours, they found themselves watching helplessly as Mario Jr. was shot and killed by police officers, who say he had threatened them with the knife.
Four years later, about 100 people, most of them wearing black T-shirts, joined the family in insisting that Mario was a threat to no one but himself that night and that he was killed by a police force ill-equipped to engage with mental-health crises and Mesa's growing Latino community. "We need changes in how officers approach us Hispanics," Mario Madrigal Sr. said. "They should be much more educated [in] knowing our culture...and understand that we are human beings."
No one from the Mesa Police Department emerged to face the crowd. The crowd was literally speaking to a brick wall as they chanted "justice for Mario" and cheered Mario Sr.'s insistent statement, "The case is not closed." Although the Mesa PD's internal investigation cleared the officers who shot Mario Jr. of any wrongdoing, the family is involved in an independent investigation, and a federal district court judge has set a date in September 2008 for the Madrigals' civil case to be brought before a jury. The family hopes they will be more responsive than local authorities have been.
The Madrigals are hardly the only family in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area that feels like they're talking to a brick wall as they seek justice in the police killing of a loved one.
In March 2006, Malissia Clinton's younger brother, James Deon Lennox, 35, was shot by a police officer outside his apartment in Mesa. According to the story Clinton and her mother have pieced together from witnesses' accounts, Lennox and his girlfriend had returned home late after a night out and began arguing about where to park the car. Within minutes, a police officer arrived. Then two more officers appeared. For reasons none of the witnesses can be sure of, Lennox and one of the officers got into a physical fight. Then, Officer David Kohler shot Lennox twice -- once in the shoulder, once in the chest -- and James Deon Lennox died.
Mesa police spokesmen say Kohler felt his life was threatened -- that Lennox had already hit him with a lawn chair and that he fired his gun when Lennox picked up another one. Neighbors say the chairs in question were cheap, flimsy ones-not life-threatening -- and the autopsy report by the county medical examiner says that both shots came from a distance. The city of Mesa denied a claim of wrongdoing filed by Lennox's family, and the county attorney's office has not filed criminal charges against Kohler. An internal police investigation into the shooting is still under way.
According to Lennox's family, two witnesses have said that one of the officers called him a "nigger" the night he was killed. Malissia Clinton, an attorney in California, thinks her brother was "just tired of playing by rules that are unfair." He'd been arguing with his girlfriend, he'd had a little bit to drink, it was late and suddenly there were police officers on the scene.
"As a Black man," Clinton said, "you know what you are supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do with the police. There are rules that are kinda unspoken, but everybody understands that you could lose your life, so you need to really be careful. That's a given -- my husband knows it, Barack Obama knows it...everybody knows that." So what happened that night? "I just think that he was tired, he decided that this guy was not gonna put his hands on him -- if he wanted to talk to him like a man, that was fine, but if he wanted to play physical at all, he was just not gonna stand for it. And so, he decided to take a stand, and I think that that's why he lost his life."
Lennox and Madrigal were just two of the many civilians who have been shot to death by police from various departments throughout the multi-city Phoenix metropolitan area -- in the city of Phoenix alone, an average of more than one per month since 2000, making it among the worst cities in the nation for police shootings.
Phoenix had the highest rate of fatal police shootings from 2000 to 2005 among the 10 U.S. cities with more than one million people, according to federal data. In fact, Phoenix ranked second in total number of fatal police shootings, just behind New York City and ahead of much larger cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. During those years, more Latinos were killed by police in Phoenix than in any other large city that tracked victims' ethnic identities. (In federal reporting, Hispanic/Latino is considered an ethnic rather than a racial category.) Neighboring police departments in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area -- notably Mesa, Scottsdale and Chandler -- have also attracted attention for a series of fatal shootings of civilians. In Mesa (which has a population of approximately 460,000), 45 civilians were shot by police between January 2000 and August 2007, according to the Mesa Police Department. (The department was unable to indicate how many of those shootings were fatal.)
Maricopa County's largest urban area is one of the most dangerous places in the nation to be a Latino person interacting with law enforcement. Among the 27 cities with more than 250,000 people that tracked victims' ethnicities during this time, 23 out of 137, or one in six, Hispanic victims of police shootings were killed in Phoenix, although Phoenix had just 6 percent of the total population. As the region's Latino population grows, local police departments remain majority white, and community organizers feel shut out of civilian review processes ostensibly created to include them. Further, despite programs touted for reducing the shooting rate or improving police-community relations -- the introduction of Tasers to many local departments' arsenals, Spanish-language initiatives, and increased training in dealing with people who live with mental illness -- shootings of civilians by police persist throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area. And, across cities and departments, police officers rarely suffer any consequences for choosing to fire.
* * *
Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing, and fastest-changing, metropolitan areas in the United States. The urban center of Maricopa County (which has experienced the largest numerical increase in population of any U.S. county since the 2000 Census) encompasses the city of Phoenix as well as numerous adjacent cities such as Mesa, Scottsdale and Chandler. Since the 1990s, the Hispanic/Latino population in particular has grown rapidly, with Phoenix proper going from 20 percent Latino in 1990, to 34 percent in 2000, to 41.8 percent in 2005.
Yet police department demographics have been much slower to change. A Department of Justice report on police personnel showed a Phoenix Police Department that was 81 percent white in June 2003. (12.7 percent of officers identified as ethnically Hispanic.) Four years later, despite the department's stated efforts to diversify, the Phoenix PD is 77.9 percent white, with only 14.8 percent of officers identifying as ethnically Hispanic. In fast-growing Mesa, where, according to the city, the "ethnic/minority" population grew by 20 percent between 1990 and 2000 and Hispanics today represent 25 percent of the total population, only 14.2 percent of police officers in the field identify as Hispanic. "Whenever you have bilingual, bicultural police, usually you have better police-community relations," said Salvador Reza, an organizer with the indigenous community-development organization Tonatierra who works with immigrant day laborers in Phoenix. "When you don't have that, then there's the language barrier, then on top of that, there's a cultural barrier. [Among Latinos in Phoenix] the police are not seen as to protect and to serve, they're seen as to harass and make sure that you get to jail so you can get deported."
Indeed, said Reza and other local activists, any consideration of Phoenix Latinos' relationship to the police must be looked at in the context of the broader climate of anti-immigrant/anti-Latino xenophobia in the area. In July 2007, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (aka "America's Toughest Sheriff") created a hotline for people to call in information about undocumented immigrants.
The Phoenix Police Department does have several community advisory boards meant to connect police to specific local communities. But Reza noted that the members of these boards are "more like yes men, instead of asking the hard questions. They do have a review board, but they don't have any power."
That may partially explain why, in a Department of Justice report about citizen complaints of police use of force in 2002, only 17 were recorded for Phoenix. Cities with similar populations and police-department sizes had about eight times as many -- 133 in San Antonio and 132 in San Diego. It may also explain why Phoenix attorney Augustine Jimenez gets calls about police brutality "about twice a week" -- "but there are very few cases we can take on," he said. "[I get] calls all the time from poor Mexican people who get beaten up by police, but the sad reality is, unless you have some videotape or witnesses who are white...The cases we've taken and been successful on, we've had strong physical evidence to support our claim."
* * *
In spring 2001, Gerardo Ramirez-Diaz got into a fight with Phoenix police after his roommate called the cops because he'd attacked him. The roommate, aware that Ramirez-Diaz was living with schizoaffective disorder, wanted the police to help get Ramirez-Diaz into treatment. But when police arrived, Ramirez-Diaz wouldn't comply with their orders-he threw things at them and repeatedly shouted "stay away from me." In the ensuing struggle, a Phoenix police officer shot and wounded Ramirez-Diaz, whose family was eventually paid $699,000 in damages by the city. Despite a jury's decision to award damages for excessive force, the police department's internal review found the use of force "in policy."
Ramirez-Diaz's attorney, Augustine Jimenez, sees his client's case as one example of a larger problem: "Officers deal almost on a daily basis with individuals who suffer with mental illnesses. Officers demand that you comply with their orders, but these people who are mentally ill don't always understand the officers or are in some kind of psychotic event or episode." Another local attorney, Richard Treon, anecdotally connects this dynamic to the "excessive number of shootings going on in the Phoenix area" in recent years, saying, "It seems like it most frequently happens when police are on a 911 call to deal with someone who is mentally ill."
Although every police officer in Arizona receives training on dealing with people who are mentally ill, and Phoenix has a unique 40-hour training block on mental illness, the stories of Ramirez-Diaz and Mario Madrigal Jr. suggest this may not be enough. "It's a tough situation for the cops because they're not trained to be social workers; they're trained to be almost automatons who react almost like a military force," Treon said.
Martha Madrigal, the mother of Mario Jr., urges people not to call the police when loved ones are in crisis. In the wake of her son's death, she created a postcard that reads, "If your son, daughter, or loved one is suicidal, [or] under the influence of drugs or alcohol, do not call police for help." On the back, she has listed national hotlines that address suicide, drugs and alcohol, domestic violence and depression.
The Phoenix PD's Sgt. Joel Tranter rejects the notion that officers are trained as "automatons," emphasizing that each officer goes through simulation training to practice responding to a range of different situations. "As far as being one canned response, that's not true, each response from officers is tailored to that situation."
Yet communication breakdowns between police and civilians are not uncommon.
They happen across differences of mental states -- as well as across language barriers.
Although the state's basic training includes some modules on interacting with people who do not speak English, there is no Spanish-language requirement in officers' basic training, despite the fact that 28.5 percent of the state's reported population is ethnically Hispanic.
In summer 2007, all first responders on the Phoenix PD received 10 hours of Spanish lessons. But, Lt. Dave Kelly noted, while most of the participants appreciated it, there was "very vocal" protest from "about 25 percent" of them who did not. And so, from now on, Spanish-language education will be available only as an option to Phoenix police officers.
The impact of lack of mandated Spanish-language education on police shooting incidents is difficult to measure. But it's clear that any communication gap may be part of a deadly equation when a commonly cited reason for use of force is an individual's failure to comply with an officer's orders.
* * *
Most officer-involved-shooting cases in the Phoenix area are handled entirely within police departments' internal review processes, and the outcome of those internal investigations is murky. In Phoenix, the police department's Use of Force Review Board, which includes officers' commanders and peers as well as two citizens (selected by police and the city manager's office), reviews every incident in which an officer intentionally shoots a gun-regardless of whether anyone is hurt. From 2000 to 2005, that board reviewed 110 shooting incidents and found 11 of them to be "out of policy." Those findings were relayed to the police chief as "recommendations," and the chair of the Use of Force Review Board isn't sure what ultimately happened to the 11 "out of policy" cases. Assistant Chief Kevin Robinson, who chairs the Disciplinary Review Board, is similarly unsure about what happened to those cases. All he could say in a July 2007 interview was, "I'm not aware of any that resulted in termination."
Although there were more than 100 incidents of officer-involved shootings in the city of Phoenix alone in the last five years, and numerous shootings in neighboring jurisdictions, only one shooting in the county (involving the Chandler Police Department) has resulted in criminal charges being filed against the officer who fired -- and that was for the fatal shooting of a white woman. Even in that case, the state standards and training board decided against revoking the officer's status after a jury found him not guilty. (The city of Chandler did decide not to reinstate him as a police officer.) Of the many cases that did not go to criminal trial, the city of Phoenix paid on civil settlements related to only three fatal officer-involved-shooting cases from 2000 to 2005. The consequences to police officers involved in the other 65 fatal shootings of civilians in Phoenix in that period are unknown. In Mesa, only three city payouts for police shootings by gun were made between January 2000 and August 2007, although police shot 45 civilians during that time. (The Mesa city attorney's office has not responded to queries about whether any of the payouts were for fatal shootings.)
James Deon Lennox's family is still waiting to see whether the city of Mesa will pay damages to help support his four children. The city of Mesa denied their initial claim of wrongdoing, and the Maricopa county attorney's office has no plans to take action on the case. The family's lawsuit against the city is in the discovery stage. The family of Mario Madrigal Jr., dismayed by the Mesa Police Department's finding that the officers who shot their son committed no wrongdoing, are waiting to see whether a federal jury might take a different view of the case.
Will fatal shootings by police continue to occur in and around Phoenix, averaging more than one a month as they have for years, with no clear cause or consequence? "You just get the sense that it's more permissive in that area," said Malissia Clinton. "You can't look to, necessarily, the judicial system. You can't look to the prosecutors...I'm not sure you can look to the citizens. And so if no one's gonna do a sanity check, then that means the police are running around unchecked."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/71289/
FAIR & Lou Dobbs
Where Anti-Immigrant Zealots Like Lou Dobbs Get Their 'Facts'
By Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Report
Posted on December 17, 2007, Printed on December 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/
The forces seeking to sharply reduce the number of immigrants coming to America won a stunning victory last June, when nativist anger at an "amnesty" for the undocumented scuttled a major bipartisan immigration reform package backed by President Bush. Many members of Congress were completely unprepared for the flood of angry E-mails, phone calls and faxes they received -- an inundation so massive that the phone system collapsed under the weight of more than 400,000 faxes.
They should not have been surprised. The furious nativist tide was largely driven by an array of immigration restriction organizations that has been built up over the course of more than 20 years into fixtures in the nation's capital.
The vast majority of these groups were founded or funded by John Tanton, a major architect of the contemporary nativist movement who, 20 years ago, was already warning of a destructive "Latin onslaught" heading to the United States. Most of these organizations used their vast resources in the days leading up to a vote on the bill to stir up a nativist backlash that ultimately resulted in its death.
At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, FAIR President Dan Stein sought "advice" from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.
FAIR officials declined repeated requests for comment.
None of this -- or any other material evidencing the bigotry and racism that courses through the group -- seems to have affected FAIR's media standing. In just the first 10 months of 2007, the group was quoted in mainstream media outlets nearly 500 times with virtually no mention of its more unsavory aspects. Stein was featured on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" at least 12 times in the same period, along with countless appearances on other television news shows. And, perhaps most remarkably of all, FAIR has been taken seriously by Congress, which has called upon its officials to testify on immigration more than 30 times since 2000.
"The sad fact is that attempts to reform our immigration system are being sabotaged by organizations fueled by hate," said Henry Fernandez, a senior fellow and expert on immigration at the Center for American Progress, a "progressive" think tank. "Many anti-immigrant leaders have backgrounds that should disqualify them from even participating in mainstream debate, yet the American press quotes them without ever noting their bizarre and often racist beliefs."
The Founder: Early Hints
For decades, John Tanton has operated a nativist empire out of his U.S. Inc. foundation's headquarters in Petoskey, Mich. Even as he simultaneously runs his own hate group -- The Social Contract Press, listed for many years by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its anti-Latino and white supremacist writings -- Tanton has remained the house intellectual for FAIR. In fact, U.S. Inc. bankrolls much of FAIR's lobbying activity and, at least until 2005, Tanton ran its Research and Publications Committee, the group that fashions and then disseminates FAIR's position papers. In its 2004 annual report, FAIR highlighted its own main ideologue, singing Tanton's praises for "visionary qualities that have not waned one bit."
But what, exactly, is Tanton's vision?
As long ago as 1988, when a series of internal 1986 documents known as the WITAN memos were leaked to the press, Tanton's bigoted attitudes have been known. In the memos, written to colleagues on the staff of FAIR, Tanton warned of a coming "Latin onslaught" and worried that high Latino birth rates would lead "the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile." Tanton repeatedly demeaned Latinos in the memos, asking whether they would "bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe], the lack of involvement in public affairs" and also questioning Latinos' "educability."
Echoing his 19th-century nativist forebears who feared Catholic immigrants from Italy and Ireland, Tanton has often attacked Catholics in terms not so different from those used by the Klan and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s. In the WITAN memos, for instance, he worried that Latino immigrants would endanger the separation of church and state and undermine support for public schooling. Never one to miss a threatening and fertile Catholic, Tanton even reminded his colleagues, "Keep in mind that many of the Vietnamese coming in are also Catholic."
The leaked memos caused an uproar. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Walter Cronkite quit the board of a group Tanton headed, U.S. English, after the memos became public in 1988. U.S. English Executive Director Linda Chavez -- a former Reagan Administration official and, later, a conservative commentator -- also left, calling Tanton's views "anti-Hispanic, anti-Catholic and not excusable."
In 1994, Tanton's Social Contract Press republished an openly racist French book, The Camp of the Saints, with Tanton writing that he was "honored" to republish the race war novel. What Tanton called a "prescient" book describes the takeover of France by "swarthy hordes" of Indians, "grotesque little beggars from the streets of Calcutta," who arrive in a desperate refugee flotilla. It attacks white liberals who, rather than turn the Indians away, "empty out all our hospital beds so that cholera-ridden and leprous wretches could sprawl between white sheets ... and cram our nurseries full of monster children." It explains how, after the Indians take over France, white women are sent to a "whorehouse for Hindus." In an afterword special to Tanton's edition of the novel, author Jean Raspail wrote about his fears that "the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, to extinction."
Tanton's view of the book he published? "We are indebted to Jean Raspail for his insights into the human condition, and for being 20 years ahead of this time. History will judge him more kindly than have some of his contemporaries."
Tanton has repeatedly suggested that racial conflict will be the outcome of immigration, saying in the WITAN memos that "an explosion" could be the result of whites' declining "power and control over their lives." More than a decade later, in 1998, he made a similar point in an interview with a reporter, suggesting that whites would inevitably develop a racial consciousness because "most people don't want to disappear into the dustbin of history." Tanton added that once whites did become racially conscious, the result would be "the war of each against all."
In 1997, Tanton spelled out his views on the inevitability of immigration overwhelming American whites. "In the bacteriology lab, we have culture plates," he explained. "You put a bug in there and it starts growing and gets bigger and bigger. And it grows until it finally fills the whole plate. And it crashes and dies."
The Founder's Friends
It's no surprise that Tanton employs people with similar views. His long-time deputy, for example, is Wayne Lutton, who works out of Tanton's Petoskey offices and edits the journal, The Social Contract, published by Tanton's press. Lutton is not just linked to white supremacist ideas, many of which he publishes in his journal -- he has actually held leadership positions in four white nationalist hate groups: the Council of Conservative Citizens, the National Policy Institute, and The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance, both racist publications. Lutton has written for the Journal of Historical Review, which specializes in Holocaust denial. Early on, Lutton and Tanton collaborated on The Immigration Invasion, a nativist screed that has been seized by Canadian border officials as hateful contraband.
Under Lutton's editorial leadership, Tanton's journal has published dozens of articles from prominent white supremacists. One special issue was even devoted to the theme of "Europhobia: The Hostility Toward European-Descended Americans" and featured a lead article from John Vinson, head of the Tanton-backed hate group, the American Immigration Control Foundation. Vinson argued that multiculturalism was replacing "successful Euro-American culture" with "dysfunctional Third World cultures." Tanton elaborated in his own remarks, decrying the "unwarranted hatred and fear" of whites that he blamed on "multiculturalists" and immigrants.
Presumably, these articles and more are well known to Stein, the president of FAIR -- until 2003, he was an editorial adviser to The Social Contract. And Stein had lots of company. FAIR board members Sharon Barnes and Diana Hull also have been on the journal's board of editorial advisers. FAIR's current media director, Ira Mehlman, was an adviser in 2001 and 2002, and his essay, "Grand Delusions: Open Borders Will Destroy Society," was published in the journal's pages. Today, FAIR still advertises The Social Contract on its website, saying the journal "offers in-depth studies on immigration, population, language, assimilation, environment, national unity and balance of individual rights and civil responsibilities."
So where does FAIR stand on the matter of Tanton's views? The group has never criticized or sought distance from its founder. In 2004, in fact, Stein insisted that Tanton "never asserted the inferiority or superiority of any racial, ethnic or religious group. Never." The same year, FAIR hosted a gala event honoring Tanton for his 25 years of service. To this day, Tanton remains on FAIR's board.
The Eugenics Connection
Probably the best-known evidence of FAIR's extremism is its acceptance of funds from a notorious, New York City-based hate group, the Pioneer Fund. In the mid-1980s, when FAIR's budgets were still in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the group reached out to Pioneer Fund, which was established in 1937 to promote the racial stock of the original colonists, finance studies of race and intelligence, and foster policies of "racial betterment." (Pioneer has concentrated on studies meant to show that blacks are less intelligent than whites, but it has also backed nativist groups like ProjectUSA, run by former FAIR board member Craig Nelsen.)
The Pioneer Fund liked what it saw and, between 1985 and 1994, disbursed about $1.2 million to FAIR. In 1997, when the Phoenix New Times confronted Tanton about the matter, he "claimed ignorance about the Pioneer Fund's connection to numerous researchers seemingly intent on proving the inferiority of blacks, as well as its unsavory ties to Nazism." But he sounded a different tune in 2001, when he insisted that he was "comfortable being in the company of other Pioneer Fund grantees." Today, Tanton's defense is that he is no different than the "open borders crowd" that accepts money from the liberal Ford Foundation, which was founded by Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic auto manufacturer. What he ignores is that the Ford Foundation, unlike the Pioneer Fund, is not promoting racist ideas.
Some have called for FAIR to return the Pioneer money, but that has not happened. In fact, when asked about it in 1993, Stein told a reporter, "My job is to get every dime of Pioneer's money." One reason for Stein's lack of hesitation may be that FAIR has long been interested in the pseudo-science of eugenics.
One of FAIR's long-time leaders, and a personal hero to Tanton, is the late Garrett Hardin, a committed eugenicist and for years a professor of human ecology at the University of California. Hardin, who died in 2003, was himself a Pioneer Fund grantee, using the fund's money to expand his 1968 essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." In it, Hardin wrote, "Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all."
Race War and the Duty to Die
That was the least of it. In a 1992 interview with Omni magazine, Hardin said he supported infanticide -- "A fetus is of so little value, there's no point worrying about it" -- as "effective population control." He argued the Third World is filled with "the next generation of breeders" who need to be stopped. He discouraged aid to starving Africans because that would only "encourage population growth."
Hardin wasn't alone. A current FAIR board member, three-time Democratic governor of Colorado Richard Lamm, sounded a similar theme in 1984, while still governor, saying "terminally ill people have a duty to die and get out of the way."
Like Tanton, Lamm seems to fear a coming race war. In his futuristic 1985 novel, Megatraumas: America at the Year 2000, Lamm sketches it out like this: "[O]ur lack of control of our borders allowed 2 million legal and illegal immigrants to settle in the United States every year. That caused unemployment to rise to 15.2 percent by 1990 and 19.1 percent this year. ... [T]he rash of firebombings throughout the Southwest, and the three-month siege of downtown San Diego in 1998 were all led by second-generation Hispanics, the children of immigrants."
As late as 2004, Lamm was sounding similar racial fears, telling a reporter that "new cultures" in the U.S. "are diluting what we are and who we are."
For his part, Stein was asked about Hardin's belief that only "intelligent people" should breed for an editorial by Tucker Carlson in the 1997 Wall Street Journal. "Yeah, so what?" Stein replied. "What is your problem with that?"
After Hardin's death, John Tanton created in honor of his mentor a group called The Garrett Hardin Society, devoted to "the preservation of [Hardin's] writings and ideas." On the society's board are Tanton, Wayne Lutton and U.S. Inc.'s recently appointed chief executive, John Rohe, the author of an adoring 2002 biography of Tanton and his wife that reads like the life of a saint.
Hiring Haters
In late 2006, FAIR hired as its western field representative, a key organizing position, a man named Joseph Turner. Turner was likely attractive to FAIR because he wrote what turned out to be a sort of model anti-illegal immigrant ordinance for the city of San Bernardino, Calif. Based on Turner's work, FAIR wrote a version of the law that is now promoted to many other cities. (The law almost certainly violates the Constitution, but that has not stopped many municipalities' interest.)
But there was more to Turner than FAIR let on. In 2005, Turner had created, and then led, a nativist group called Save Our State. The group was remarkable for its failure to disassociate itself from the neo-Nazi skinheads who often joined its rallies -- something that virtually all other nativist groups, worried about bad publicity, worked hard to do. Save Our State's electronic bulletin board, too, was remarkable for the racist vitriol that frequently appeared there.
It was in that forum that Turner made one of his more controversial remarks, amounting to a defense of white separatism. "I can make the argument that just because one believes in white separatism that that does not make them a racist," Turner wrote in 2005. "I can make the argument that someone who proclaims to be a white nationalist isn't necessarily a white supremacist. I don't think that standing up for your 'kind' or 'your race' makes you a bad person." The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Save Our State as a hate group since it appeared in 2005.
Turner's predecessor in the FAIR organizing post, Rick Oltman, was cut from the same cloth. Oltman has been described as a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) in the publications of that hate group, which is directly descended from the segregationist White Citizens Councils and has described blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." He has spoken at at least one of the CCC's conferences and has taken part in one of its rallies. And he wasn't alone.
According to the CCC newsletter, FAIR's longtime associate director, Dave Ray, was scheduled to speak at another CCC event. And, in September 2002, FAIR Eastern Regional Coordinator Jim Stadenraus participated in an anti-immigration conference on Long Island, N.Y., with Jared Taylor. Taylor is both a CCC member and the founder of the racist eugenicist publication, American Renaissance.
FAIR has also produced programming featuring hate group leaders linked to the CCC. According to the anti-racist Center for New Community, FAIR's now defunct television production, "Borderline," featured interviews with Taylor and Sam Francis, who edited the CCC's newsletter until his death in 2005.
Donald Collins, a member of both FAIR's board of directors and its board of advisers, has his own ties to white supremacy. Collins posts frequently to a hate website called Vdare.com, which is named after Virginia Dare (said to be the first white child born in the New World) and publishes the work of white supremacists and anti-Semites. Collins also has been published in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, a periodical run by longtime academic racist Roger Pearson. (Pearson founded the Eugenics Society in 1963 and worked with at least one former SS officer in England. He is also the recipient of several Pioneer Fund grants.)
Several of Collins' articles have attacked Catholics and their church for their pro-immigrant stances. In one, he accused Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony of selling out his country "in exchange for more temporal power and glory." Collins has also accused Catholic bishops of "infiltrating and manipulating the American political process" in order to undermine the separation of church and state.
Collins is not FAIR's only link to the Vdare.com hate site. Joe Guizzardi, a member of FAIR's board of advisers, is the editor of Vdare.com. He writes there frequently about how Latin American immigrants come to the United States in order to "reconquer" it -- a conspiracy theory pushed by numerous hate groups.
Bad Press
By and large, FAIR has escaped negative publicity, generally being depicted as a mainstream critic of American immigration policy. But there are exceptions.
In 2000, FAIR ran ads opposing the reelection of Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), a Lebanese American who defeated Tanton in the primaries, because he had supported issuing more visas for immigrants with high-tech skills. The ads featured side-by-side photos of Abraham and Osama bin Laden and this question: "Why is Senator Abraham trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their war of terror to any city street in America?" The ads also accused the senator of pushing a bill that would "take American jobs. Our jobs."
The ads produced an immediate controversy, and a staunch conservative, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), quit FAIR in protest. Under attack, Stein insisted the ads weren't racist and later claimed that he'd thought Abraham was Jewish.
That same year, FAIR helped fund ads in Iowa that were rejected as "borderline racist" by the general manager of WHO-TV in Des Moines. When the same ads appeared in Nebraska, Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican, lost his temper. "The trash that this crowd puts out is just beyond terrible," Hagel said.
Four years later in Texas, the Coalition for the Future of the American Worker -- a FAIR front group designed to look like it represents labor interests -- ran ads heavy on images of dark-skinned men loitering on corners and running from police cars. One of the ad's prime targets, Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), condemned the ads as racist. His Republican challenger, Pete Sessions, found them so repugnant that he joined Frost in calling for them to be yanked off the air in their district.
In 2004, FAIR made an extremely unusual criticism of a fellow nativist, a woman named Virginia Abernethy who had just joined the national advisory board of Protect Arizona Now (PAN). PAN, aided by some $600,000 from FAIR, had worked to collect signatures for a referendum (which ultimately passed) to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote or signing up for public benefits. But as Election Day neared, newspapers trumpeted the revelation that PAN's new adviser was a self-declared "white separatist" who had long been active in the CCC.
FAIR reacted instantly with a pious press release denouncing "Abernethy's repulsive views." The release left many scratching their heads -- FAIR, after all, had CCC members on its payroll, and any number of other ties to the group. Its own officials had in several cases endorsed similar separatist views. And Tanton, FAIR's founder and chief ideologue, was intimately familiar with Abernethy's work. After all, he had published her writings frequently in The Social Contract and his editor, Wayne Lutton, had shared the podium with Abernethy at forums of the CCC.
Whither FAIR?
Following the defeat of the bipartisan immigration package this summer, FAIR flew into action one more time. This time, it went after the DREAM Act, a widely supported, bipartisan bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant students accepted to college. FAIR was the key advocate for its defeat and, sure enough, the DREAM Act finally died this October.
Is this the future for FAIR? Will journalists, politicians and the general public continue to take the organization and its nativist propaganda seriously?
Dan Stein thinks so.
As he put it at FAIR's 25th anniversary celebration in 2004, just when the American nativist movement had begun to sense its own strength: "[T]oday," he said, "as the country moves finally into a serious and realistic debate, the founders have created a mature and knowledgeable organization prepared to lead."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/
By Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Report
Posted on December 17, 2007, Printed on December 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/
The forces seeking to sharply reduce the number of immigrants coming to America won a stunning victory last June, when nativist anger at an "amnesty" for the undocumented scuttled a major bipartisan immigration reform package backed by President Bush. Many members of Congress were completely unprepared for the flood of angry E-mails, phone calls and faxes they received -- an inundation so massive that the phone system collapsed under the weight of more than 400,000 faxes.
They should not have been surprised. The furious nativist tide was largely driven by an array of immigration restriction organizations that has been built up over the course of more than 20 years into fixtures in the nation's capital.
The vast majority of these groups were founded or funded by John Tanton, a major architect of the contemporary nativist movement who, 20 years ago, was already warning of a destructive "Latin onslaught" heading to the United States. Most of these organizations used their vast resources in the days leading up to a vote on the bill to stir up a nativist backlash that ultimately resulted in its death.
At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, FAIR President Dan Stein sought "advice" from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.
FAIR officials declined repeated requests for comment.
None of this -- or any other material evidencing the bigotry and racism that courses through the group -- seems to have affected FAIR's media standing. In just the first 10 months of 2007, the group was quoted in mainstream media outlets nearly 500 times with virtually no mention of its more unsavory aspects. Stein was featured on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" at least 12 times in the same period, along with countless appearances on other television news shows. And, perhaps most remarkably of all, FAIR has been taken seriously by Congress, which has called upon its officials to testify on immigration more than 30 times since 2000.
"The sad fact is that attempts to reform our immigration system are being sabotaged by organizations fueled by hate," said Henry Fernandez, a senior fellow and expert on immigration at the Center for American Progress, a "progressive" think tank. "Many anti-immigrant leaders have backgrounds that should disqualify them from even participating in mainstream debate, yet the American press quotes them without ever noting their bizarre and often racist beliefs."
The Founder: Early Hints
For decades, John Tanton has operated a nativist empire out of his U.S. Inc. foundation's headquarters in Petoskey, Mich. Even as he simultaneously runs his own hate group -- The Social Contract Press, listed for many years by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its anti-Latino and white supremacist writings -- Tanton has remained the house intellectual for FAIR. In fact, U.S. Inc. bankrolls much of FAIR's lobbying activity and, at least until 2005, Tanton ran its Research and Publications Committee, the group that fashions and then disseminates FAIR's position papers. In its 2004 annual report, FAIR highlighted its own main ideologue, singing Tanton's praises for "visionary qualities that have not waned one bit."
But what, exactly, is Tanton's vision?
As long ago as 1988, when a series of internal 1986 documents known as the WITAN memos were leaked to the press, Tanton's bigoted attitudes have been known. In the memos, written to colleagues on the staff of FAIR, Tanton warned of a coming "Latin onslaught" and worried that high Latino birth rates would lead "the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile." Tanton repeatedly demeaned Latinos in the memos, asking whether they would "bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe], the lack of involvement in public affairs" and also questioning Latinos' "educability."
Echoing his 19th-century nativist forebears who feared Catholic immigrants from Italy and Ireland, Tanton has often attacked Catholics in terms not so different from those used by the Klan and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s. In the WITAN memos, for instance, he worried that Latino immigrants would endanger the separation of church and state and undermine support for public schooling. Never one to miss a threatening and fertile Catholic, Tanton even reminded his colleagues, "Keep in mind that many of the Vietnamese coming in are also Catholic."
The leaked memos caused an uproar. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Walter Cronkite quit the board of a group Tanton headed, U.S. English, after the memos became public in 1988. U.S. English Executive Director Linda Chavez -- a former Reagan Administration official and, later, a conservative commentator -- also left, calling Tanton's views "anti-Hispanic, anti-Catholic and not excusable."
In 1994, Tanton's Social Contract Press republished an openly racist French book, The Camp of the Saints, with Tanton writing that he was "honored" to republish the race war novel. What Tanton called a "prescient" book describes the takeover of France by "swarthy hordes" of Indians, "grotesque little beggars from the streets of Calcutta," who arrive in a desperate refugee flotilla. It attacks white liberals who, rather than turn the Indians away, "empty out all our hospital beds so that cholera-ridden and leprous wretches could sprawl between white sheets ... and cram our nurseries full of monster children." It explains how, after the Indians take over France, white women are sent to a "whorehouse for Hindus." In an afterword special to Tanton's edition of the novel, author Jean Raspail wrote about his fears that "the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, to extinction."
Tanton's view of the book he published? "We are indebted to Jean Raspail for his insights into the human condition, and for being 20 years ahead of this time. History will judge him more kindly than have some of his contemporaries."
Tanton has repeatedly suggested that racial conflict will be the outcome of immigration, saying in the WITAN memos that "an explosion" could be the result of whites' declining "power and control over their lives." More than a decade later, in 1998, he made a similar point in an interview with a reporter, suggesting that whites would inevitably develop a racial consciousness because "most people don't want to disappear into the dustbin of history." Tanton added that once whites did become racially conscious, the result would be "the war of each against all."
In 1997, Tanton spelled out his views on the inevitability of immigration overwhelming American whites. "In the bacteriology lab, we have culture plates," he explained. "You put a bug in there and it starts growing and gets bigger and bigger. And it grows until it finally fills the whole plate. And it crashes and dies."
The Founder's Friends
It's no surprise that Tanton employs people with similar views. His long-time deputy, for example, is Wayne Lutton, who works out of Tanton's Petoskey offices and edits the journal, The Social Contract, published by Tanton's press. Lutton is not just linked to white supremacist ideas, many of which he publishes in his journal -- he has actually held leadership positions in four white nationalist hate groups: the Council of Conservative Citizens, the National Policy Institute, and The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance, both racist publications. Lutton has written for the Journal of Historical Review, which specializes in Holocaust denial. Early on, Lutton and Tanton collaborated on The Immigration Invasion, a nativist screed that has been seized by Canadian border officials as hateful contraband.
Under Lutton's editorial leadership, Tanton's journal has published dozens of articles from prominent white supremacists. One special issue was even devoted to the theme of "Europhobia: The Hostility Toward European-Descended Americans" and featured a lead article from John Vinson, head of the Tanton-backed hate group, the American Immigration Control Foundation. Vinson argued that multiculturalism was replacing "successful Euro-American culture" with "dysfunctional Third World cultures." Tanton elaborated in his own remarks, decrying the "unwarranted hatred and fear" of whites that he blamed on "multiculturalists" and immigrants.
Presumably, these articles and more are well known to Stein, the president of FAIR -- until 2003, he was an editorial adviser to The Social Contract. And Stein had lots of company. FAIR board members Sharon Barnes and Diana Hull also have been on the journal's board of editorial advisers. FAIR's current media director, Ira Mehlman, was an adviser in 2001 and 2002, and his essay, "Grand Delusions: Open Borders Will Destroy Society," was published in the journal's pages. Today, FAIR still advertises The Social Contract on its website, saying the journal "offers in-depth studies on immigration, population, language, assimilation, environment, national unity and balance of individual rights and civil responsibilities."
So where does FAIR stand on the matter of Tanton's views? The group has never criticized or sought distance from its founder. In 2004, in fact, Stein insisted that Tanton "never asserted the inferiority or superiority of any racial, ethnic or religious group. Never." The same year, FAIR hosted a gala event honoring Tanton for his 25 years of service. To this day, Tanton remains on FAIR's board.
The Eugenics Connection
Probably the best-known evidence of FAIR's extremism is its acceptance of funds from a notorious, New York City-based hate group, the Pioneer Fund. In the mid-1980s, when FAIR's budgets were still in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the group reached out to Pioneer Fund, which was established in 1937 to promote the racial stock of the original colonists, finance studies of race and intelligence, and foster policies of "racial betterment." (Pioneer has concentrated on studies meant to show that blacks are less intelligent than whites, but it has also backed nativist groups like ProjectUSA, run by former FAIR board member Craig Nelsen.)
The Pioneer Fund liked what it saw and, between 1985 and 1994, disbursed about $1.2 million to FAIR. In 1997, when the Phoenix New Times confronted Tanton about the matter, he "claimed ignorance about the Pioneer Fund's connection to numerous researchers seemingly intent on proving the inferiority of blacks, as well as its unsavory ties to Nazism." But he sounded a different tune in 2001, when he insisted that he was "comfortable being in the company of other Pioneer Fund grantees." Today, Tanton's defense is that he is no different than the "open borders crowd" that accepts money from the liberal Ford Foundation, which was founded by Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic auto manufacturer. What he ignores is that the Ford Foundation, unlike the Pioneer Fund, is not promoting racist ideas.
Some have called for FAIR to return the Pioneer money, but that has not happened. In fact, when asked about it in 1993, Stein told a reporter, "My job is to get every dime of Pioneer's money." One reason for Stein's lack of hesitation may be that FAIR has long been interested in the pseudo-science of eugenics.
One of FAIR's long-time leaders, and a personal hero to Tanton, is the late Garrett Hardin, a committed eugenicist and for years a professor of human ecology at the University of California. Hardin, who died in 2003, was himself a Pioneer Fund grantee, using the fund's money to expand his 1968 essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." In it, Hardin wrote, "Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all."
Race War and the Duty to Die
That was the least of it. In a 1992 interview with Omni magazine, Hardin said he supported infanticide -- "A fetus is of so little value, there's no point worrying about it" -- as "effective population control." He argued the Third World is filled with "the next generation of breeders" who need to be stopped. He discouraged aid to starving Africans because that would only "encourage population growth."
Hardin wasn't alone. A current FAIR board member, three-time Democratic governor of Colorado Richard Lamm, sounded a similar theme in 1984, while still governor, saying "terminally ill people have a duty to die and get out of the way."
Like Tanton, Lamm seems to fear a coming race war. In his futuristic 1985 novel, Megatraumas: America at the Year 2000, Lamm sketches it out like this: "[O]ur lack of control of our borders allowed 2 million legal and illegal immigrants to settle in the United States every year. That caused unemployment to rise to 15.2 percent by 1990 and 19.1 percent this year. ... [T]he rash of firebombings throughout the Southwest, and the three-month siege of downtown San Diego in 1998 were all led by second-generation Hispanics, the children of immigrants."
As late as 2004, Lamm was sounding similar racial fears, telling a reporter that "new cultures" in the U.S. "are diluting what we are and who we are."
For his part, Stein was asked about Hardin's belief that only "intelligent people" should breed for an editorial by Tucker Carlson in the 1997 Wall Street Journal. "Yeah, so what?" Stein replied. "What is your problem with that?"
After Hardin's death, John Tanton created in honor of his mentor a group called The Garrett Hardin Society, devoted to "the preservation of [Hardin's] writings and ideas." On the society's board are Tanton, Wayne Lutton and U.S. Inc.'s recently appointed chief executive, John Rohe, the author of an adoring 2002 biography of Tanton and his wife that reads like the life of a saint.
Hiring Haters
In late 2006, FAIR hired as its western field representative, a key organizing position, a man named Joseph Turner. Turner was likely attractive to FAIR because he wrote what turned out to be a sort of model anti-illegal immigrant ordinance for the city of San Bernardino, Calif. Based on Turner's work, FAIR wrote a version of the law that is now promoted to many other cities. (The law almost certainly violates the Constitution, but that has not stopped many municipalities' interest.)
But there was more to Turner than FAIR let on. In 2005, Turner had created, and then led, a nativist group called Save Our State. The group was remarkable for its failure to disassociate itself from the neo-Nazi skinheads who often joined its rallies -- something that virtually all other nativist groups, worried about bad publicity, worked hard to do. Save Our State's electronic bulletin board, too, was remarkable for the racist vitriol that frequently appeared there.
It was in that forum that Turner made one of his more controversial remarks, amounting to a defense of white separatism. "I can make the argument that just because one believes in white separatism that that does not make them a racist," Turner wrote in 2005. "I can make the argument that someone who proclaims to be a white nationalist isn't necessarily a white supremacist. I don't think that standing up for your 'kind' or 'your race' makes you a bad person." The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Save Our State as a hate group since it appeared in 2005.
Turner's predecessor in the FAIR organizing post, Rick Oltman, was cut from the same cloth. Oltman has been described as a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) in the publications of that hate group, which is directly descended from the segregationist White Citizens Councils and has described blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." He has spoken at at least one of the CCC's conferences and has taken part in one of its rallies. And he wasn't alone.
According to the CCC newsletter, FAIR's longtime associate director, Dave Ray, was scheduled to speak at another CCC event. And, in September 2002, FAIR Eastern Regional Coordinator Jim Stadenraus participated in an anti-immigration conference on Long Island, N.Y., with Jared Taylor. Taylor is both a CCC member and the founder of the racist eugenicist publication, American Renaissance.
FAIR has also produced programming featuring hate group leaders linked to the CCC. According to the anti-racist Center for New Community, FAIR's now defunct television production, "Borderline," featured interviews with Taylor and Sam Francis, who edited the CCC's newsletter until his death in 2005.
Donald Collins, a member of both FAIR's board of directors and its board of advisers, has his own ties to white supremacy. Collins posts frequently to a hate website called Vdare.com, which is named after Virginia Dare (said to be the first white child born in the New World) and publishes the work of white supremacists and anti-Semites. Collins also has been published in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, a periodical run by longtime academic racist Roger Pearson. (Pearson founded the Eugenics Society in 1963 and worked with at least one former SS officer in England. He is also the recipient of several Pioneer Fund grants.)
Several of Collins' articles have attacked Catholics and their church for their pro-immigrant stances. In one, he accused Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony of selling out his country "in exchange for more temporal power and glory." Collins has also accused Catholic bishops of "infiltrating and manipulating the American political process" in order to undermine the separation of church and state.
Collins is not FAIR's only link to the Vdare.com hate site. Joe Guizzardi, a member of FAIR's board of advisers, is the editor of Vdare.com. He writes there frequently about how Latin American immigrants come to the United States in order to "reconquer" it -- a conspiracy theory pushed by numerous hate groups.
Bad Press
By and large, FAIR has escaped negative publicity, generally being depicted as a mainstream critic of American immigration policy. But there are exceptions.
In 2000, FAIR ran ads opposing the reelection of Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), a Lebanese American who defeated Tanton in the primaries, because he had supported issuing more visas for immigrants with high-tech skills. The ads featured side-by-side photos of Abraham and Osama bin Laden and this question: "Why is Senator Abraham trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their war of terror to any city street in America?" The ads also accused the senator of pushing a bill that would "take American jobs. Our jobs."
The ads produced an immediate controversy, and a staunch conservative, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), quit FAIR in protest. Under attack, Stein insisted the ads weren't racist and later claimed that he'd thought Abraham was Jewish.
That same year, FAIR helped fund ads in Iowa that were rejected as "borderline racist" by the general manager of WHO-TV in Des Moines. When the same ads appeared in Nebraska, Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican, lost his temper. "The trash that this crowd puts out is just beyond terrible," Hagel said.
Four years later in Texas, the Coalition for the Future of the American Worker -- a FAIR front group designed to look like it represents labor interests -- ran ads heavy on images of dark-skinned men loitering on corners and running from police cars. One of the ad's prime targets, Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), condemned the ads as racist. His Republican challenger, Pete Sessions, found them so repugnant that he joined Frost in calling for them to be yanked off the air in their district.
In 2004, FAIR made an extremely unusual criticism of a fellow nativist, a woman named Virginia Abernethy who had just joined the national advisory board of Protect Arizona Now (PAN). PAN, aided by some $600,000 from FAIR, had worked to collect signatures for a referendum (which ultimately passed) to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote or signing up for public benefits. But as Election Day neared, newspapers trumpeted the revelation that PAN's new adviser was a self-declared "white separatist" who had long been active in the CCC.
FAIR reacted instantly with a pious press release denouncing "Abernethy's repulsive views." The release left many scratching their heads -- FAIR, after all, had CCC members on its payroll, and any number of other ties to the group. Its own officials had in several cases endorsed similar separatist views. And Tanton, FAIR's founder and chief ideologue, was intimately familiar with Abernethy's work. After all, he had published her writings frequently in The Social Contract and his editor, Wayne Lutton, had shared the podium with Abernethy at forums of the CCC.
Whither FAIR?
Following the defeat of the bipartisan immigration package this summer, FAIR flew into action one more time. This time, it went after the DREAM Act, a widely supported, bipartisan bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant students accepted to college. FAIR was the key advocate for its defeat and, sure enough, the DREAM Act finally died this October.
Is this the future for FAIR? Will journalists, politicians and the general public continue to take the organization and its nativist propaganda seriously?
Dan Stein thinks so.
As he put it at FAIR's 25th anniversary celebration in 2004, just when the American nativist movement had begun to sense its own strength: "[T]oday," he said, "as the country moves finally into a serious and realistic debate, the founders have created a mature and knowledgeable organization prepared to lead."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/
War on Migrants
Divided Communities and Split Families
Planning the War on Immigrants
http://www.counterpunch.com/barry12172007.html
By TOM BARRY
Politics can be an ugly affair, and it doesn't get any uglier than when politicians try to best one another in the politics of hate and scapegoating.
That's what is happening in America, as politicians and political candidates at all levels of government join the anti-immigration bandwagon. Meanwhile, immigrants who do the dirtiest work in America are living in fear as they face a generalized immigration crackdown and stepped-up immigration raids.
The war against immigrants and immigration is being fought on three main fronts: in Congress, in local and state government, and on the campaign trail. While the anti-immigration movement that is coursing through American politics is beyond the control of any individual or organization, the leading restrictionist policy institutes in Washington are setting the policy agenda of the anti-immigration forces at all levels of U.S. politics.
Following their success in stopping a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate that included legalization provisions, immigration restrictionists have rallied around a common strategy: "Attrition through Enforcement."
Turning Up the "Heat" on Immigrants
"Attrition through enforcement" as a restrictionist framework for immigration reform has been percolating within the anti-immigration institutes in Washington, DC for the last couple of years. But it wasn't until the restrictionist movement beat back proposals for legalization that the strategy has taken hold as a unifying framework for restrictionism in America.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) took the lead in developing this strategic framework. In April 2006 this restrictionist think tank published, "Attrition through Enforcement: A Cost-Effective Strategy to Shrink the Illegal Population," which lays out the main components of a war of attrition against immigrants along with the estimated cost of a multi-front campaign to wear down immigrant residents and dissuade would-be immigrants.
CIS analyst Jessica Vaughn opens the report with this observation: "Proponents of mass legalization of the illegal alien population, whether through amnesty or expanded guestworker programs, often justify this radical step by suggesting that the only alternative-a broad campaign to remove illegal aliens by force-is unworkable."
"The purpose of attrition through enforcement," according to Vaughn, "is to increase the probability that illegal aliens will return home without the intervention of immigration enforcement agencies. In other words, it encourages voluntary compliance with immigration laws through more robust interior law enforcement."
Key components of the war of attrition include:
* Eliminating access to jobs through employer verification of Social Security numbers and immigration status.
* Ending misuse of Social Security and IRS numbers by immigrants in seeking employment, bank accounts, and driver's licenses, and improved information sharing among key federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, in the effort to identify unauthorized residents.
* Increasing federal, state, and local cooperation, particularly among law enforcement agencies.
* Reducing visa overstays through better tracking systems.
* Stepping up immigration raids.
* Passing state and local laws to discourage illegal immigrants from making a home in that area and to make it more difficult for immigrants to conceal their status.
CIS predicts that a $2 billion program would over five years substantially reduce immigration flows into the United States while dramatically increasing the one-way flow of immigrants back to their sending communities. According to CIS, the attrition war would require a $400 million annual commitment-"less than 1% of the president's 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security."
Without driver's licenses and without work because of employment-centered enforcement, immigrants will leave the country-as many as 1.5 million annually, predicts the CIS study. "A subtle increase in the 'heat' on illegal aliens can be enough to dramatically reduce the scale of the problem within just a few years," says Vaughn.
War of Attrition
"Attrition through enforcement" represents an aggressive step forward for restrictionism. The "attrition through enforcement" strategy signals the advance of the anti-immigration advocates from defensive and hold-the-line positions to a long-term offensive aimed at definitively taking the battlefield.
Tasting the blood of their victory over liberal immigration reform, the restrictionist movement, led by Washington, DC institutes including the Center for Immigration Studies, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Numbers USA, has opted for a war of attrition as the best strategy for rolling back immigration.
The "attrition through enforcement" is a strategic framework that builds on tactical approaches. To counter proposals for legalization, restrictionists successfully argued that any proposals for increased legal immigration-either through legalization or guestworker programs-should not be considered until the borders were secured and current immigration law fully enforced.
The "secure borders" and "enforcement first" frameworks for discussing immigration have been largely accepted by politicians of both parties, eliminating approval of any immigration reform initiatives that would address the plight of the 12 million-plus undocumented residents of the United States.
Over the past six months, the restrictionists have moved beyond "enforcement first" to the more aggressive "attrition through enforcement" strategy. And the federal government, state government, and Congress seem to be marching in lockstep with the restrictionists as they all harden their anti-immigration posture.
Anti-immigration groups are propagating "attrition through enforcement" as the sensible, practical "middle ground" or "third way" in immigration reform. Rather than calling for a costly and morally repugnant mass deportation of millions of immigrants, the restrictionists have united behind a strategy aimed at wearing down the will of immigrants to live and work in the United States.
Immigration raids in the interior of the country and imprisonment by immigration officials of those crossing the border illegally combined with pervasive enforcement of the "rule of law" by police and government bureaucrats will slowly but surely drive all undocumented immigrants out of the country. Restrictionists increasingly argue that mass deportation will be unnecessary since an ever-increasing number of immigrants will "self-deport."
"Attrition through enforcement" also addresses another weak point in previous restrictionist strategy. Having long demanded that the federal government gain control of the southern border, the restrictionists found that as border control increased more immigrants were staying in the United States, fearing that if they left they would never be able to return. Border control has actually increased the number of undocumented immigrants who have opted for permanent residency.
Although still demanding tighter border control with more agents and more fences (virtual and real), restrictionists also have in "attrition through enforcement" what they consider to be a pragmatic and palatable solution to ridding the country of "illegal aliens." Permanent residency in the United States, if this strategy is fully implemented, will become a permanent nightmare.
Attrition on the Campaign Trail
All the Republican Party candidates have to some degree adopted a restrictionist agenda. Even John McCain, an original sponsor with Sen. Kennedy of comprehensive immigration reform, has said that he now supports an "enforcement first" approach.
Fred Thompson won the plaudits of restrictionists when he released his immigration platform, which explicitly adopts the "attrition through enforcement" strategy. According to Thompson, "Attrition through enforcement is a more reasonable and achievable solution [than] the 'false choices' of 'either arrest and deport them all, or give them all amnesty.'"
This more "reasonable" solution supported by candidate Thompson includes measures such as denying federal money to states and local governments that provide social services to undocumented residents, and ending federal educational aid to public universities that provide in-state tuition to undocumented residents.
FAIR is spearheading the attrition war on the state level, working closely with a new group called State Legislators for Legal Immigration. Formed by right-wing restrictionists in the Pennsylvania state legislature, the group says nothing about legal immigration in its mission statement. Rather, the founders say the group "represents a 21st century Declaration of Independence."
"Similar to the American Revolution, the personal and economic safety of Pennsylvanians and all American citizens depends upon definitive action being taken by our federal, state, and local governments to end the ongoing invasion of illegal aliens through our borders," declares the legislators' organization. By turning back this invasion, they say they will protect U.S. citizens from " property theft, drug running, human trafficking, increased violent crime, increased gang activity, terrorism, and the many other clear and present dangers directly associated with illegal immigration."
State Legislators for Legal Immigration and FAIR intend to take the war of attrition to every state. According to this restrictionist group, "Once the economic attractions of illegal jobs and taxpayer-funded public benefits are severed at the source, these illegal invaders will have no choice but to go home on their own." FAIR says that the legislators' group "will be teaming up with FAIR to develop state-based initiatives to deal with the national problem of mass illegal immigration."
The war of attrition is already leaving a trail of divided communities and split families in its wake. Detentions and deportations are shattering immigrant communities and families as restrictionists applaud and call for ever-harsher measures. It is also ramping up the fear and loathing on the campaign trail.
As this war against the country's most vulnerable population deepens, the American people will need to ask themselves if they feel any safer or more secure, if they have more hope to find better-paying jobs, if their neighborhoods and town economies are more or less vibrant as immigrants leave, and if they are proud of themselves and their country.
Tom Barry is a senior analyst with the Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy.
Planning the War on Immigrants
http://www.counterpunch.com/barry12172007.html
By TOM BARRY
Politics can be an ugly affair, and it doesn't get any uglier than when politicians try to best one another in the politics of hate and scapegoating.
That's what is happening in America, as politicians and political candidates at all levels of government join the anti-immigration bandwagon. Meanwhile, immigrants who do the dirtiest work in America are living in fear as they face a generalized immigration crackdown and stepped-up immigration raids.
The war against immigrants and immigration is being fought on three main fronts: in Congress, in local and state government, and on the campaign trail. While the anti-immigration movement that is coursing through American politics is beyond the control of any individual or organization, the leading restrictionist policy institutes in Washington are setting the policy agenda of the anti-immigration forces at all levels of U.S. politics.
Following their success in stopping a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate that included legalization provisions, immigration restrictionists have rallied around a common strategy: "Attrition through Enforcement."
Turning Up the "Heat" on Immigrants
"Attrition through enforcement" as a restrictionist framework for immigration reform has been percolating within the anti-immigration institutes in Washington, DC for the last couple of years. But it wasn't until the restrictionist movement beat back proposals for legalization that the strategy has taken hold as a unifying framework for restrictionism in America.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) took the lead in developing this strategic framework. In April 2006 this restrictionist think tank published, "Attrition through Enforcement: A Cost-Effective Strategy to Shrink the Illegal Population," which lays out the main components of a war of attrition against immigrants along with the estimated cost of a multi-front campaign to wear down immigrant residents and dissuade would-be immigrants.
CIS analyst Jessica Vaughn opens the report with this observation: "Proponents of mass legalization of the illegal alien population, whether through amnesty or expanded guestworker programs, often justify this radical step by suggesting that the only alternative-a broad campaign to remove illegal aliens by force-is unworkable."
"The purpose of attrition through enforcement," according to Vaughn, "is to increase the probability that illegal aliens will return home without the intervention of immigration enforcement agencies. In other words, it encourages voluntary compliance with immigration laws through more robust interior law enforcement."
Key components of the war of attrition include:
* Eliminating access to jobs through employer verification of Social Security numbers and immigration status.
* Ending misuse of Social Security and IRS numbers by immigrants in seeking employment, bank accounts, and driver's licenses, and improved information sharing among key federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, in the effort to identify unauthorized residents.
* Increasing federal, state, and local cooperation, particularly among law enforcement agencies.
* Reducing visa overstays through better tracking systems.
* Stepping up immigration raids.
* Passing state and local laws to discourage illegal immigrants from making a home in that area and to make it more difficult for immigrants to conceal their status.
CIS predicts that a $2 billion program would over five years substantially reduce immigration flows into the United States while dramatically increasing the one-way flow of immigrants back to their sending communities. According to CIS, the attrition war would require a $400 million annual commitment-"less than 1% of the president's 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security."
Without driver's licenses and without work because of employment-centered enforcement, immigrants will leave the country-as many as 1.5 million annually, predicts the CIS study. "A subtle increase in the 'heat' on illegal aliens can be enough to dramatically reduce the scale of the problem within just a few years," says Vaughn.
War of Attrition
"Attrition through enforcement" represents an aggressive step forward for restrictionism. The "attrition through enforcement" strategy signals the advance of the anti-immigration advocates from defensive and hold-the-line positions to a long-term offensive aimed at definitively taking the battlefield.
Tasting the blood of their victory over liberal immigration reform, the restrictionist movement, led by Washington, DC institutes including the Center for Immigration Studies, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Numbers USA, has opted for a war of attrition as the best strategy for rolling back immigration.
The "attrition through enforcement" is a strategic framework that builds on tactical approaches. To counter proposals for legalization, restrictionists successfully argued that any proposals for increased legal immigration-either through legalization or guestworker programs-should not be considered until the borders were secured and current immigration law fully enforced.
The "secure borders" and "enforcement first" frameworks for discussing immigration have been largely accepted by politicians of both parties, eliminating approval of any immigration reform initiatives that would address the plight of the 12 million-plus undocumented residents of the United States.
Over the past six months, the restrictionists have moved beyond "enforcement first" to the more aggressive "attrition through enforcement" strategy. And the federal government, state government, and Congress seem to be marching in lockstep with the restrictionists as they all harden their anti-immigration posture.
Anti-immigration groups are propagating "attrition through enforcement" as the sensible, practical "middle ground" or "third way" in immigration reform. Rather than calling for a costly and morally repugnant mass deportation of millions of immigrants, the restrictionists have united behind a strategy aimed at wearing down the will of immigrants to live and work in the United States.
Immigration raids in the interior of the country and imprisonment by immigration officials of those crossing the border illegally combined with pervasive enforcement of the "rule of law" by police and government bureaucrats will slowly but surely drive all undocumented immigrants out of the country. Restrictionists increasingly argue that mass deportation will be unnecessary since an ever-increasing number of immigrants will "self-deport."
"Attrition through enforcement" also addresses another weak point in previous restrictionist strategy. Having long demanded that the federal government gain control of the southern border, the restrictionists found that as border control increased more immigrants were staying in the United States, fearing that if they left they would never be able to return. Border control has actually increased the number of undocumented immigrants who have opted for permanent residency.
Although still demanding tighter border control with more agents and more fences (virtual and real), restrictionists also have in "attrition through enforcement" what they consider to be a pragmatic and palatable solution to ridding the country of "illegal aliens." Permanent residency in the United States, if this strategy is fully implemented, will become a permanent nightmare.
Attrition on the Campaign Trail
All the Republican Party candidates have to some degree adopted a restrictionist agenda. Even John McCain, an original sponsor with Sen. Kennedy of comprehensive immigration reform, has said that he now supports an "enforcement first" approach.
Fred Thompson won the plaudits of restrictionists when he released his immigration platform, which explicitly adopts the "attrition through enforcement" strategy. According to Thompson, "Attrition through enforcement is a more reasonable and achievable solution [than] the 'false choices' of 'either arrest and deport them all, or give them all amnesty.'"
This more "reasonable" solution supported by candidate Thompson includes measures such as denying federal money to states and local governments that provide social services to undocumented residents, and ending federal educational aid to public universities that provide in-state tuition to undocumented residents.
FAIR is spearheading the attrition war on the state level, working closely with a new group called State Legislators for Legal Immigration. Formed by right-wing restrictionists in the Pennsylvania state legislature, the group says nothing about legal immigration in its mission statement. Rather, the founders say the group "represents a 21st century Declaration of Independence."
"Similar to the American Revolution, the personal and economic safety of Pennsylvanians and all American citizens depends upon definitive action being taken by our federal, state, and local governments to end the ongoing invasion of illegal aliens through our borders," declares the legislators' organization. By turning back this invasion, they say they will protect U.S. citizens from " property theft, drug running, human trafficking, increased violent crime, increased gang activity, terrorism, and the many other clear and present dangers directly associated with illegal immigration."
State Legislators for Legal Immigration and FAIR intend to take the war of attrition to every state. According to this restrictionist group, "Once the economic attractions of illegal jobs and taxpayer-funded public benefits are severed at the source, these illegal invaders will have no choice but to go home on their own." FAIR says that the legislators' group "will be teaming up with FAIR to develop state-based initiatives to deal with the national problem of mass illegal immigration."
The war of attrition is already leaving a trail of divided communities and split families in its wake. Detentions and deportations are shattering immigrant communities and families as restrictionists applaud and call for ever-harsher measures. It is also ramping up the fear and loathing on the campaign trail.
As this war against the country's most vulnerable population deepens, the American people will need to ask themselves if they feel any safer or more secure, if they have more hope to find better-paying jobs, if their neighborhoods and town economies are more or less vibrant as immigrants leave, and if they are proud of themselves and their country.
Tom Barry is a senior analyst with the Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy.
Christmas for Kids In Texas Prisons
Sundown Action Brings Toys to Imprisoned Children
Crossing the Line in Texas
http://www.counterpunch.com/moses12172007.html
By GREG MOSES
In an act of civil disobedience on Sunday marking the first anniversary of protests against the imprisonment of children at the T. Don Hutto immigrant prison in Taylor, Texas, 100 people carried holiday toys and wrapping paper into the prison lobby. The action at sundown was the first time this year that protesters carried their message onto prison property.
Jaime Martinez, National Treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens called for the toy march shortly after 5:30 p.m. Carrying a bullhorn, Martinez informed the protesters that prison officials had made a promise to come out and get the toys at 5 p.m.
When Martinez called for people to take the toys to the children, the crowd pressed forward across a yellow line painted on the driveway marking official prison property and walked up to the lobby of the prison. Accompanying the protesters was LULAC National President Rosa Rosales.
"Bring the toys!" called Martinez from the prison door as volunteers grabbed boxes and bags of toys along with rolls of wrapping paper and rushed to the prison door.
One of the volunteers, Georgetown resident Peter Dana, later described carrying a box of toys through a metal detector. He said he thought about his experience years ago helping to engineer a metal detector.
Inside the lobby, prison officials appeared to be accepting the toys for the imprisoned children. Previous reports from various sources say that the Hutto prison houses about 400 immigrants, half of them children.
On Friday, Georgetown activist Sherry Dana reported that Hutto prison held 142 people, more than half of them children: 13 men, 55 women, 31 boys (17 and under), and 43 girls (17 and under). The numbers can change on a daily basis.
The toy march was the high point of an active day that began with a longer march from downtown Taylor to the prison that lies upon a large, flat field at the outskirts of town, across the tracks.
Local LULAC Secretary Jose Orta began the day's preparations by parking a rented trailer across the street from the prison. The trailer served as a stage for speakers during an afternoon rally.
"The children were out playing when we first marched here from town," said Orta. "They saw us, but they were taken inside."
"Of all the sick and perverted acts committed in this country in the name of the United States is the imprisonment of innocent children by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff," said Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr. in a pre-event email. "ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests innocent children and their mothers and turns them over to a private 'for profit' prison which, as of today, receives some $20,000 per child...per month...to keep an innocent child in an 8' x 12' prison cell." Johnson-Castro joined the marchers on Sunday.
The Hutto prison is managed by Corrections Corporation of America which boasts itself as "founder of the private corrections industry and the nation's largest provider of jail, detention and corrections services to governmental agencies." CCA co-founder T. Don Hutto secured the first contract for private incarceration of immigrants in 1983 and spent New Year's Eve of that year searching for a motel in Houston that would yield rooms to the venture.
At sundown Sunday, the final speaker of the day, Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, asked the people to turn around and face the Hutto prison. By that time, most of the participants were holding lit candles as part of a sundown vigil.
Shortly after the crowd had turned around, Martinez began walking among the people with his bullhorn.
"Free the Children, Now!" chanted the crowd with Martinez. "Close Hutto Down!"
When marchers stepped toward the prison, they were accompanied by a banner that declared, "Schools not Prisons. Education not Incarceration. Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth."
The Department of Homeland Security says the Hutto prison is dedicated to immigrant families with children. Organizers agreed that protests will continue until the prison is closed and child imprisonment is brought to an end.
After the toy march, filmmakers Matthew Gossage and Lily Keber transformed the chilly night darkness into a screening of their 16-minute film, "Hutto: America's Family Prison" which can be viewed at: americasfamilyprison.com/Hutto.mov.
Keber was taping the day's protest, including the toy march, so perhaps a sequel will be forthcoming.
Near the end of the screening, a few people made two more attempts to deliver more toys to the front door of the Hutto prison. The first attempt was rebuffed by a security guard, but the second attempt succeeded as a young man carrying a child took bags of toys past the guard to the front door. Inside the lobby, it appeared that people dressed in civilian clothes were processing the toys for delivery to the children inside.
Texans United for Families (TUFF) was lead organizer of the first protest in 2006 and co-sponsor of Sunday's event. One of TUFF's organizers, Bob Libal maintains a watchdog blog, Texas Prison Bid'ness. Over the past year, several blogs and web spaces have been dedicated to the protest against imprisonment at the Hutto prison.
During more than a dozen protests since Dec. 16, 2006 security guards have jealously guarded the perimeter of the prison to discourage protesters from walking on prison grounds. A few participants Sunday evening held themselves back from the toy march for fear of arrest.
Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime's Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net.
Crossing the Line in Texas
http://www.counterpunch.com/moses12172007.html
By GREG MOSES
In an act of civil disobedience on Sunday marking the first anniversary of protests against the imprisonment of children at the T. Don Hutto immigrant prison in Taylor, Texas, 100 people carried holiday toys and wrapping paper into the prison lobby. The action at sundown was the first time this year that protesters carried their message onto prison property.
Jaime Martinez, National Treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens called for the toy march shortly after 5:30 p.m. Carrying a bullhorn, Martinez informed the protesters that prison officials had made a promise to come out and get the toys at 5 p.m.
When Martinez called for people to take the toys to the children, the crowd pressed forward across a yellow line painted on the driveway marking official prison property and walked up to the lobby of the prison. Accompanying the protesters was LULAC National President Rosa Rosales.
"Bring the toys!" called Martinez from the prison door as volunteers grabbed boxes and bags of toys along with rolls of wrapping paper and rushed to the prison door.
One of the volunteers, Georgetown resident Peter Dana, later described carrying a box of toys through a metal detector. He said he thought about his experience years ago helping to engineer a metal detector.
Inside the lobby, prison officials appeared to be accepting the toys for the imprisoned children. Previous reports from various sources say that the Hutto prison houses about 400 immigrants, half of them children.
On Friday, Georgetown activist Sherry Dana reported that Hutto prison held 142 people, more than half of them children: 13 men, 55 women, 31 boys (17 and under), and 43 girls (17 and under). The numbers can change on a daily basis.
The toy march was the high point of an active day that began with a longer march from downtown Taylor to the prison that lies upon a large, flat field at the outskirts of town, across the tracks.
Local LULAC Secretary Jose Orta began the day's preparations by parking a rented trailer across the street from the prison. The trailer served as a stage for speakers during an afternoon rally.
"The children were out playing when we first marched here from town," said Orta. "They saw us, but they were taken inside."
"Of all the sick and perverted acts committed in this country in the name of the United States is the imprisonment of innocent children by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff," said Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr. in a pre-event email. "ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests innocent children and their mothers and turns them over to a private 'for profit' prison which, as of today, receives some $20,000 per child...per month...to keep an innocent child in an 8' x 12' prison cell." Johnson-Castro joined the marchers on Sunday.
The Hutto prison is managed by Corrections Corporation of America which boasts itself as "founder of the private corrections industry and the nation's largest provider of jail, detention and corrections services to governmental agencies." CCA co-founder T. Don Hutto secured the first contract for private incarceration of immigrants in 1983 and spent New Year's Eve of that year searching for a motel in Houston that would yield rooms to the venture.
At sundown Sunday, the final speaker of the day, Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, asked the people to turn around and face the Hutto prison. By that time, most of the participants were holding lit candles as part of a sundown vigil.
Shortly after the crowd had turned around, Martinez began walking among the people with his bullhorn.
"Free the Children, Now!" chanted the crowd with Martinez. "Close Hutto Down!"
When marchers stepped toward the prison, they were accompanied by a banner that declared, "Schools not Prisons. Education not Incarceration. Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth."
The Department of Homeland Security says the Hutto prison is dedicated to immigrant families with children. Organizers agreed that protests will continue until the prison is closed and child imprisonment is brought to an end.
After the toy march, filmmakers Matthew Gossage and Lily Keber transformed the chilly night darkness into a screening of their 16-minute film, "Hutto: America's Family Prison" which can be viewed at: americasfamilyprison.com/Hutto.mov.
Keber was taping the day's protest, including the toy march, so perhaps a sequel will be forthcoming.
Near the end of the screening, a few people made two more attempts to deliver more toys to the front door of the Hutto prison. The first attempt was rebuffed by a security guard, but the second attempt succeeded as a young man carrying a child took bags of toys past the guard to the front door. Inside the lobby, it appeared that people dressed in civilian clothes were processing the toys for delivery to the children inside.
Texans United for Families (TUFF) was lead organizer of the first protest in 2006 and co-sponsor of Sunday's event. One of TUFF's organizers, Bob Libal maintains a watchdog blog, Texas Prison Bid'ness. Over the past year, several blogs and web spaces have been dedicated to the protest against imprisonment at the Hutto prison.
During more than a dozen protests since Dec. 16, 2006 security guards have jealously guarded the perimeter of the prison to discourage protesters from walking on prison grounds. A few participants Sunday evening held themselves back from the toy march for fear of arrest.
Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime's Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net.
Shoot Them On The Spot!
Rewarding War Crimes
"Shoot Them on the Spot"
http://www.counterpunch.com/nairn12142007.html
By ALLAN NAIRN
Last June, when President/General Susilo of Indonesia visited one of his provinces, in the Moluccas, he was greeted by local residents performing a traditional dance for him, a ritual often repeated around the world when powerful rulers travel, the implicit message being: this is us, but to you, we bow.
This time, however, something went wrong, and to the evident astonishment of the visiting democrat (Gen. Susilo was just awarded a democracy medal by the International Association of Political Consultants. See posting of November 13, 2007, "Vomiting to Death on a Plane. Arsenic Democracy."), the dancers unfurled a freedom flag with an entirely different implicit message: it was the banned four-color banner that symbolizes Moluccan independence from Indonesia.
After the performers were hauled off to jail by Indonesia's POLRI national police ("I want the performers of the dance [to] be investigated," Susilo ordered,"If the dancers have certain purposes, there should be a resolute action against them." "President Yudhoyono orders investigation into 'unscheduled dance'", Antara [official Indonesian government news agency], June 29, 2007), the area police and army commanders were both sacked for inexcusable laxness.
They had apparently let arise an atmosphere so loose that prohibited thought could not only be thought, but could be so bold as to find expression before the very eyes of the visiting sovereign.
Fortunately for national stability, as it is called in Jakarta, Washington, and elsewhere, that problem has now been cured with the appointment of regional army commander Gen. Rasyid Qurnuen Aquary who has informed his TNI (Indonesian national armed forces) troops to "act firmly against anyone engaging in separatist actions, and if need be, shoot them on the spot." (The General's spokesman, Maj. Sukriyanto, quoted in AFP, Jakarta, "Indonesia General Says Separatists Could Be Shot," Dec. 12, 2007, via Joyo Indonesia News Service).
Fortunately for those dissident dancers -- and perhaps also for the President, whose shirt might have gotten spattered red that day -- the order comes too late to have gotten them shot-on-spot (they merely sit, untried, in prison), but not too late for a bold 19 year old Moluccan man just shot by TNI troops on Saturday (he's apparently still alive) for the offense of hanging a similar flag on a tree near which they were working.
In a time and in a place where some authority was bothering to enforce the murder laws, such a public "shoot them on the spot" order against dissidents might be seen to constitute a war crime, or -- since the Moluccas are arguably not in a state of war -- an equally prosecutable, under international law, crime against humanity.
But that's not the case in today's Indonesia, or in most of the world's geography, where official murder -- and even public orders to commit it -- goes unpunished, and is, instead, rewarded. The US Congress is looking to do that this week as they process a Foreign Operations bill that would ship further US taxpayers' millions in lethal assistance to TNI (202-224-3121 is the Congressional switchboard number).
Allan Nairn can be reached through his blog.
http://www.newsc.blogspot.com/
"Shoot Them on the Spot"
http://www.counterpunch.com/nairn12142007.html
By ALLAN NAIRN
Last June, when President/General Susilo of Indonesia visited one of his provinces, in the Moluccas, he was greeted by local residents performing a traditional dance for him, a ritual often repeated around the world when powerful rulers travel, the implicit message being: this is us, but to you, we bow.
This time, however, something went wrong, and to the evident astonishment of the visiting democrat (Gen. Susilo was just awarded a democracy medal by the International Association of Political Consultants. See posting of November 13, 2007, "Vomiting to Death on a Plane. Arsenic Democracy."), the dancers unfurled a freedom flag with an entirely different implicit message: it was the banned four-color banner that symbolizes Moluccan independence from Indonesia.
After the performers were hauled off to jail by Indonesia's POLRI national police ("I want the performers of the dance [to] be investigated," Susilo ordered,"If the dancers have certain purposes, there should be a resolute action against them." "President Yudhoyono orders investigation into 'unscheduled dance'", Antara [official Indonesian government news agency], June 29, 2007), the area police and army commanders were both sacked for inexcusable laxness.
They had apparently let arise an atmosphere so loose that prohibited thought could not only be thought, but could be so bold as to find expression before the very eyes of the visiting sovereign.
Fortunately for national stability, as it is called in Jakarta, Washington, and elsewhere, that problem has now been cured with the appointment of regional army commander Gen. Rasyid Qurnuen Aquary who has informed his TNI (Indonesian national armed forces) troops to "act firmly against anyone engaging in separatist actions, and if need be, shoot them on the spot." (The General's spokesman, Maj. Sukriyanto, quoted in AFP, Jakarta, "Indonesia General Says Separatists Could Be Shot," Dec. 12, 2007, via Joyo Indonesia News Service).
Fortunately for those dissident dancers -- and perhaps also for the President, whose shirt might have gotten spattered red that day -- the order comes too late to have gotten them shot-on-spot (they merely sit, untried, in prison), but not too late for a bold 19 year old Moluccan man just shot by TNI troops on Saturday (he's apparently still alive) for the offense of hanging a similar flag on a tree near which they were working.
In a time and in a place where some authority was bothering to enforce the murder laws, such a public "shoot them on the spot" order against dissidents might be seen to constitute a war crime, or -- since the Moluccas are arguably not in a state of war -- an equally prosecutable, under international law, crime against humanity.
But that's not the case in today's Indonesia, or in most of the world's geography, where official murder -- and even public orders to commit it -- goes unpunished, and is, instead, rewarded. The US Congress is looking to do that this week as they process a Foreign Operations bill that would ship further US taxpayers' millions in lethal assistance to TNI (202-224-3121 is the Congressional switchboard number).
Allan Nairn can be reached through his blog.
http://www.newsc.blogspot.com/
Immigration Backlash
Immigration Backlash: Violence Engulfs Latinos
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?site_area=1&aid=292
By Brentin Mock
There's no doubt that the tone of the raging national debate over immigration is growing uglier by the day. Once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists, vicious public denunciations of undocumented brown-skinned immigrants are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, radio hosts and politicians. While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as "invaders," "criminal aliens" and "cockroaches."
The results are no less tragic for being predictable: Although hate crime statistics are highly unreliable, numbers that are available strongly suggest a marked upswing in racially motivated violence against all Latinos, regardless of immigration status. According to hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI, anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available. In California, the state with the largest population of Latinos in the country, anti-Latino hate crimes almost doubled in the same period.
What follows is a representative sampling of some of the more egregious examples of physical and psychological violence waged against Latinos over the past two-and-a-half years. The perpetrators range from racist skinheads to rogue Border Patrol agents to otherwise everyday citizens who took it upon themselves to repel an "invader," terrorize a "criminal alien," or exterminate a "cockroach."
JAN. 9, 2004
Dateland, Ariz.
Pedro Corzo, a Cuban-born regional manager for Del Monte Fresh Produce, is gunned down by two Missouri residents — 16-year-old Joshua Aston and his 24-year-old cousin Justin Harrison — who traveled with Aston's younger brother, 15-year-old Nicholas Aston, to a remote section of southern Arizona with the specific intent of randomly killing Mexicans. The brothers shaved their heads before embarking on their odyssey. Corzo was ambushed after he stopped at a roadblock the group constructed from boulders. Joshua Aston, the ringleader, is later tried as an adult and receives two life sentences for the murder. Harrison also is sentenced to life. Charges are eventually dropped against the younger Aston brother.
DEC. 29, 2004
Redlands, Calif.
Two Latino men and a Latina woman are beaten and kicked in the parking lot of a strip club by a "gang of about 10 skinheads," as later reported by the San Bernardino County Sun. The neo-Nazi skinheads yell racial slurs at their victims, prompting the Redlands police chief to declare that hate crime charges will be pursued if and when the perpetrators are caught.
MAY 7, 2005
Maryville, Tenn.
A Mexican grocery store is vandalized by five white men who shatter windows, damage a refrigerator and spray-paint neo-Nazi symbols, causing over $17,000 in damage. Two men — Thomas Lovett and Jacob Reynolds — eventually plead guilty and are each sentenced to six months in prison.
FEB. 17, 2005
Fabens, Texas
Osvaldo Aldrete-Dávila, who is unarmed and fleeing apprehension on foot, is shot at 15 times by two U.S. Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. One bullet strikes Aldrete-Dávila in the buttocks, severs his urethra and lodges in his groin. Though seriously wounded, he manages to escape into Mexico.
Though the border patrol officers later find that the van driven by Aldrete-Dávila contained a shipment of marijuana, they are unaware of this fact when they open fire. Ramos and Compean attempt to cover up their actions by cleaning up the spent shell casings and failing to report the use of their firearms to their superiors, as required by Border Patrol regulations. The two agents also fail to report the shooting in their incident reports. El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Luis Barker later testifies that Compean told Barker that he and Ramos covered up the shooting because they "knew [they] were going to get in trouble."
After the shooting comes to light a month later, Ramos and Compean are arrested and eventually convicted by a federal jury of felony assault charges, discharging a firearm in a crime of violence, civil rights violations, and obstruction of justice. They're sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively.
Ramos and Compean will eventually be transformed by a major right-wing misinformation campaign into high-profile martyrs of the anti-immigration movement. The agents, for their part, will remain unrepentant. Ramos tells a Texas Monthly writer in 2007 that Aldrete-Dávila "got what he deserved."
JULY 12, 2005
Patchogue, N.Y.
A 61-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant is badly beaten by three white men as he pushes a shopping cart through the streets collecting cans. Before the attack, the man was asked if he had a green card. "Then they started pummeling him," Suffolk County Hate Crimes Det. Robert Reecks tells reporters. The man, whose name is not made public, suffers a broken eye socket and facial bruises.
JULY 15, 2005
Keansburg, N.J.
Octavio Vivanco is riding his bike to his restaurant job when Joshua Ramgoolam and James Schmidtberg chase him down and punch him in the face. About 15 minutes later, Rosalino Novorrete is attacked by the same duo as he rides his bike to work, this time with a plastic baseball bat. According to Monmouth County Prosecutor Luís Valentín, Vivanco and Novorette were attacked "solely because of their Latino ethnicity." Ramgoolam later pleads guilty to second-degree bias intimidation, third-degree aggravated assault and third-degree weapons possession for unlawful purposes. Schmidtberg is found guilty of the same charges, plus fourth-degree weapons possession. Both are sentenced to five years in state prison.
SEPT. 30, 2005
Tifton, Ga.
Six Mexican immigrants — Mateo Gomez, his son José Luís Tías, Felipe Mauricio Esparza, Guadalupe Sanchez, Armando Perez Martínez and Mauricío Florindo — are murdered, and at least five others are badly injured, when a group of African-American robbers rampage through four trailer parks known for housing immigrant workers. The parks are also known for home invasions; over 20 homes there have been have been invaded in the months prior to the murders.
Three suspects — Jennifer Wilson, Stacy Sims and Jamie Underwood — are arrested and charged with six counts of murder each. Sims and Underwood are also charged with rape and aggravated assault. District Attorney Paul Bowden announces he will seek the death penalty.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Vernon Keenan tells CNN that the victims "are easy targets because they do not speak English. They're undocumented workers. They keep cash on their persons [and] in their homes. And they are reluctant to report crimes to law enforcement."
When Tifton's mayor Paul Johnson decides to display the Mexican flag over City Hall out of respect and sympathy for the victims, callers to a local radio station bristle with anger and resentment.
OCT. 16, 2005
Sacramento, Calif.
Six people are injured by three white men who crash a private party with the intent of "beating up Mexicans," according to police. One of the assailants uses brass knuckles after shouting racial epithets and "white pride."
MARCH 30, 2006
North Bergen, N.J.
After a series of pro-immigrant marches and demonstrations bring out hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters in cities across the country, an acerbic neo-Nazi radio host makes an appeal for people to carry out the mass murder of any "illegal aliens" sighted.
"All of you who think there's a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We're going to have to start killing these people," Hal Turner writes on his website. "I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done."
Laine Lawless
APRIL 3, 2006
Tucson, Ariz.
One of the founding members of the Minuteman movement, Laine Lawless, exhorts the leadership of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) to launch a campaign of violence and intimidation against Latino immigrants. "Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place. … Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school," Lawless writes in a private E-mail to Mark Martin, "SS commander" of the NSM"s western Ohio chapter. "Be creative. … Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border."
The goal?
"Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status."
APRIL 22, 2006
Houston, Texas
David Ritcheson
David Ritcheson, 16, is attacked by racist skinheads at a house party after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. David Henry Tuck breaks Ritcheson's jaw, knocking him unconscious, while screaming, "White power!" and calling Ritcheson a "spic" and "wetback." Keith Robert Turner joins in, and the two attackers burn Ritcheson with cigarettes, kick him with steel-toed boots, attempt to carve a swastika into his chest, pour bleach on him and finally violently sodomize him with a patio umbrella pole. It takes 30 surgeries before Ritcheson, confined to a wheelchair and wearing a colostomy bag, is able to return to school.
Tuck is later sentenced to life in prison. Turner gets 90 years.
A year after the attack, Ritcheson, who up to that point has not been identified in press accounts by name, goes public and speaks out to the U.S. House of Representative's Judiciary Committee. In wrenching testimony, the boy recalls the horrific experience for lawmakers deliberating over strengthening federal hate crime laws. "With my humiliation and emotional and physical scars came the ambition and strong sense of determination that brought out the natural fighter in me," Ritcheson testifies. "I am glad to tell you today that my best days still lay ahead of me."
Less than three months later, the teenager commits suicide, jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico. Before his death, he assisted the Anti-Defamation League in creating an anti-hate program at his alma mater, Klein Collins High School.
APRIL 28, 2006
Salt Lake City, Utah
A West High School student identified only as Felipe is attacked while walking to school by two white men who he says call him a "stupid wetback" and tell him, "Go back to your country, you don't belong here." He survives the jumping with a black eye, cut lip and head swelling, reports the Deseret Morning News. The boy is not a documented citizen, according to his mother, who tells reporters, "The fact that you're an immigrant here doesn't mean they get to do that."
APRIL 29, 2006
East Hampton, N.Y.
Three Latino teenagers are lured into a shed by a neo-Nazi skinhead (also a teenager) and then threatened and terrorized with a chainsaw and a machete. The victims are held for 90 minutes while the skinhead and his friends yell racial slurs, including "White power!" and "Heil Hitler!"
"This is how you run across the border," one of the skinheads shouts as he chases the Latino youths around with the running chainsaw. The skinhead is later charged as a juvenile with reckless endangerment and menacing.
MAY 4, 2006
Southampton Village, N.Y.
Jonathan Cedillo is having lunch near a 7-Eleven when cab driver Robert Rossetti slaps his sandwich from his hand and then begins calling him derogatory racial names. Rosetti then begins ramming into Cedillo, who has American Indian and Mexican ancestry, with his taxi. Cedillo's right knee is injured. "He was cursing at me, telling me I'm an immigrant and to get out of this country," Cedillo tells reporters. Rossetti is later convicted of misdemeanor aggravated harassment.
JUNE 12, 2006
Rocky Point, N.Y.
Two Mexican men fishing at a jetty are asked for their green cards, and then beaten and robbed by four teens — William Foley, Nicholas Provenzano, Daniel Sturgis and Jesse Ward — posing as federal agents. The teens rob money from the victims while accusing them of stealing jobs from U.S. citizens. All four are charged with felony robbery and assault as hate crimes. Sturgis eventually pleads guilty to third-degree assault as a hate crime and second-degree robbery and is sentenced to two years in state prison. Provenzano is convicted of charges related to the attack, but his sentencing is deferred. Foley and Ward are charged as juvenile offenders.
JUNE 15, 2006
Yonkers, N.Y.
Miguel Vega, a native of Peru, is walking down the street where he lives when he's attacked and murdered by five men who also steal his wallet. The killers — Abraham Ghaly, David Bendezu, Alexander Mitchell, Joel Lopez and Rodolfo Ponciano — are charged with murder and robbery. Bendezu, Mitchell, and Lopez have their murder charges upgraded to hate crimes after an investigation finds that they specifically sought a Mexican to rob that night. All five plead guilty and are sentenced to between five and 15 years.
JULY 20, 2006
Dayton, Tenn.
Gilberto Mejía, owner of the Mexican grocery store Carnicería Los Primos, is verbally assaulted by anti-immigration activist June Griffin, who barges into the store and tears down a Mexican flag. Griffin then allegedly harasses Mejía and leaves threatening phone messages, which Mejia saves for police.
"It was an act of war," says Griffin, who has unsuccessfully run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican. Charged with civil rights intimidation, phone harassment, theft and vandalism, Griffin is released after witnesses fail to turn up at a court hearing.
"I'm not ashamed of anything I did," Griffin tells The Herald-News.
JULY 25, 2006
Albertville, Ala.
The windows of six businesses owned by Guatemalans or Mexicans are shot out early in the morning, while white-owned businesses on the same street in this northern Alabama town of 17,000 go untouched. A year later, the crime is still unsolved. Albertville police say the attack wasn't racially motivated, although many observers, pointing to which businesses were targeted, suspect otherwise. "We have sporadic, random incidences of windows shot out," says Chief Detective J.T. Cartee.
JULY 30, 2006
Bradenburg, Ky.
Jordan Gruver
Jordan Gruver, a 16-year-old boy of Panamanian descent, is attacked by members of the Imperial Klans of America who are recruiting for the IKA at the Meade County Fairgrounds. Unprovoked, the Klansmen call the far smaller Gruver a "spic," then beat him severely, leaving Gruver with two cracked ribs, a broken left forearm and jaw injuries requiring extensive dental repair. Two Klansmen, Jarred R. Hensley, 24, and Andrew R. Watkins, 26, plead guilty to second-degree assault and are each sentenced to three years in prison. The Southern Poverty Law Center files a lawsuit against the attackers that is later amended to add IKA, its national leader Ron Edwards, and another high-ranking IKA official.
AUG. 20, 2006
Hahnville, La.
Two men, one from El Salvador and the other described by St. Charles Parish sheriff's deputies as "Hispanic," are shot in the legs by Mark Gautreau as they fish in a floodway near Lake Pontchartrain. Witnesses say Gautreau announced he was going to "shoot some Mexicans" before breaking into his own truck (he had locked himself out) to pull out a shotgun and fire at the anglers, who are 500 feet away. Gautreau is booked on two counts of first-degree attempted murder as a hate crime. The case is later dismissed when the victims and witnesses fail to appear for court.
SEPT. 9, 2006
Rockfield, Ky.
A cross is burned on the front lawn of Nelson Espinoza's house in this Louisville suburb next to a sign reading, "My country maybe, my neighborhood NO WAY!!!" Espinoza, a native of El Salvador, lives with his wife in the United States as part of a legal temporary worker program. Almost a year later, the investigation remains open. "We suspect it was probably just kids from the neighborhood," says Warren County Sheriff's Deputy Daniel Alexander.
SEPT. 10, 2006
Hampton Bays, N.Y.
Carlos Rivera, a construction worker from Honduras, is stabbed multiple times outside a bar by Thomas Nicotra and Kenneth Porter, who yell racial epithets during the attack. Nicotra and Porter, who witnesses say also yelled racial slurs at other patrons a night earlier, are both charged with felony robbery and assault with hate crime enhancements. Porter is sentenced to one year in Suffolk County Jail for first-degree assault after testifying against Nicotra. Nicotra is sentenced to nine years in state prison after finally pleading guilty to first-degree assault and robbery.
SEPT. 17, 2006
Laguna Beach, Calif.
A truck driven by two men reportedly hits two Latino workers at a day labor center, and one of the workers is also assaulted. The men in the truck, Artem Soloviev and Dennis Katpilniy, came to the center offering work, but Soloviev ends up in a scuffle with the workers, apparently after they decline his terms. Although witnesses say Soloviev and Katpilniy shouted racial epithets at the workers during the fight, no charges are filed and Soloviev and Katpilniy are released. "We investigated it top to bottom, having collected third-party and the actual defendants' statements, but we did not have enough evidence to support the case," Susan Schroeder, of the Orange County's District Attorney's office, says later.
OCT. 23, 2006
Annapolis, Md.
Hose Aldana and Wilfredo Rodriguez are stabbed and called ethnic slurs by two white men in a pickup truck, according to police. But county police officer Sara Schriver tells local newspapers that since Latinos are technically classified as white, the attack wasn't racially motivated.
"That's crazy," retorts Angela Arboleda, director of criminal justice policy for the National Council of La Raza. "The [victims were] called names and slurs that were derogative to [their] race. That is the most clear-cut evidence that that crime was in fact a hate crime."
NOV. 18, 2006
San Diego, Calif.
Latino workers Estanislao Gonzales and Robert Peña are allegedly assaulted by San Diego Minuteman John Monti at the Rancho Peñasquitos day labor center during a Minuteman surveillance operation. Prosecutors say Monti started the fight after grabbing one of the laborers and chasing him into the street. But jurors later acquit Monti of three counts of battery and one count of filing a false police report.
JAN. 12, 2007
Naco, Ariz.
Javier Dominguez-Rivera, a construction worker from Mexico, is shot dead at close range while on his knees by Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett. Corbett claims he fired in self-defense from the front of his vehicle when Dominguez-Rivera picked up a rock, but surveillance footage shows Corbett confronting Dominguez-Rivera at the rear of his vehicle. In addition, autopsy reports show the bullet was fired from between three inches and 2 1/2 feet away, and that it entered below Dominguez-Rivera's armpit and traveled down through his heart, stomach and liver into his lower abdomen.
Dominguez-Rivera was crossing the border with his two brothers and sister-and-law when Corbett apprehended them. The group's eyewitness accounts match the results of the forensic investigation and medical examiner's conclusions. As a result, Corbett is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide. Cochise County Attorney Edward Rheinheimer tells reporters: "The evidence shows that at the time he was shot, Mr. Dominguez-Rivera presented no threat to Agent Corbett."
FEB. 7, 2007
Casper, Wyo.
Richard Serafin, who has identified himself as "commanding officer" of a unit of the "Central Wyoming Militia," is arrested after illegally selling a short-barreled AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to an undercover ATF agent. Earlier, he told the agent that he planned to travel to the Arizona border to harm immigrants and boasted that "there may be fewer illegal Mexicans" after his trip. Serafin pleads guilty to possessing two illegal firearms — two of the short-barrel AR-15s — and is later convicted in federal court of possessing firearms to further a crime of violence. He faces a minimum of five years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines.
FEB. 23, 2007
Wright City, Mo.
A Latino immigrant is attacked and robbed by three men yelling, "Immigration enforcement!" who barge into his mobile home armed with a piece of lumber. The immigrant suffers injuries to his right eye and nose. Ryan Scott Harlan, 18, eventually pleads guilty to first-degree burglary and second-degree assault and is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Richard Bryant Lindaman, 17, pleads guilty to the same charges and is sentenced to eight years. The third suspect, Christopher Michael Skelton, is still awaiting trial at press time.
APRIL 18, 2007
Flagstaff, Ariz.
James Wesley Cheek submits a comment to the Arizona Daily Sun threatening to attack a Cinco de Mayo event in a manner similar to the Virginia Tech University rampage just a few days earlier that left 32 people dead. FBI agents arrest Cheek for sending a threatening interstate communication and find that Cheek possesses a collection of firearms and has distributed fliers for the Ku Klux Klan. If convicted, Cheek faces a maximum sentence of five years and up to a $250,000 fine.
MAY 1, 2007
Washington, D.C.
Tyler Froatz Jr., a member of the Herndon (Va.) Minutemen, is arrested after a physical confrontation with human rights activists at a rally. When apprehended by police, he has several knives, a flare gun and a stun gun, and police find a loaded rifle in his vehicle. Days later, investigators search Froatz's apartment and find an additional 15 guns, a Molotov cocktail, a grenade and large amounts of ammunition. Initially jailed on weapons and assault charges, Froatz, 24, is released to his parents in New Jersey a month later to await trial.
MAY 4, 2007
Gaithersburg, Md.
A long-established day-labor center for Latino immigrant workers is set on fire, causing about $2,000 in damage. The center is run by Casa de Maryland, an immigrant assistance organization that has been the subject of many protests and threats. Without any evidence or rationale to support his allegation, Brad Botwin, director of an anti-immigration group called Help Save Maryland, tells The Washington Post that the laborers may themselves have started the fire.
MAY 10, 2007
Dunlap, Tenn.
Frankie Bowman, who in 2005 launched an unsuccessful petition drive to prevent a Mexican nightclub from moving into his neighborhood, is arrested for offering an undercover Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent $2,500 to burn down Mexico de Noche. Bowan, 52, allegedly told the agent he didn't care whether the building was empty or occupied when the fire was set. He faces trial on charges of solicitation to commit aggravated arson.
Mountain Minuteman founder Robert Crooks E-mails a video to several prominent anti-immigration activists that appears to shows a Minuteman tracking a group of Mexicans through a gun's night vision scope. In the video, an unidentified man can be heard calling the Mexicans "cockroaches" and then firing off a shotgun. "This video shows how to keep a Home Depot parking lot empty," Crooks writes in his cover E-mail, snidely suggesting that recipients know how to "Talk the Talk" but not "Walk the Walk" of effectively fighting illegal immigration. A few days later, a very similar night-vision video surfaces, this one purporting to show a Minuteman hitting a lone Mexican with a sniper shot. Crooks, who initially denies making the videos but then admits it, later says the second video was faked. Although state and federal law enforcement officials look into the incident, no victims are found.
AUG. 8, 2007
Garden Grove, Calif.
Felipe Alvarado, an immigrant working as a janitor at a fast-food restaurant, is taunted with racist threats and then attacked by three men, one of whom is carrying a loaded gun. James Joseph Kelly, Justin Louis Mullins and Cheyne Danica Wilson are arrested and charged with felony assault with hate crime enhancements for allegedly beating Alvarado after yelling, among other things, "Go back to Mexico, you wetback!" Wilson is also charged with illegally possessing a handgun.
AUG. 12, 2007
West, Texas
A Latino man is struck in the face several times after getting into a hostile exchange of words outside a convenience store with a group of white men and women who later tell police that they are affiliated with Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi hate group. The victim, who has not been identified publicly, fled but is attacked a second time later the same night by several assailants who beat, stomp and cut him. The alleged leader of the attacks, Stephen Ray Chapman, is arrested and charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The police continue to search for five other suspects.
AUG. 23, 2007
Montgomery County, Md.
Victor Hernandez, a Honduran immigrant dishwasher, is walking home from work when he is kicked into unconsciousness by teenagers who rob him of $160. The two teens arrested tell police they were "amigo shopping" — seeking vulnerable Hispanic workers to rob. The Washington Post reports "alarmingly common" anti-immigrant crimes in the area of Washington, D.C., and its Virginia suburbs. Police from Montgomery County, Md., and neighboring counties tell the newspaper that the majority of local robbery victims since 2006 have been Latino.
SEPT. 30, 2007
Avon Park, Fla.
José Gonzales returns home to find his car and garage destroyed by a fire set by an arsonist who also spray-painted "Fuck Puerto Rico" on the garage walls. Gonzales, a U.S. citizen and a mechanic, loses all of his tools in the fire. No arrests are made in the town, which is famous for its passage of harsh anti-immigrant laws.
OCT. 8, 2007
Omaha, Neb.
Eduardo Garcia wakes up to find his truck and his wife's car set ablaze. Two other cars are also vandalized and have the words "white power" and a swastika spray-painted on them. No one is immediately arrested.
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http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?site_area=1&aid=292
By Brentin Mock
There's no doubt that the tone of the raging national debate over immigration is growing uglier by the day. Once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists, vicious public denunciations of undocumented brown-skinned immigrants are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, radio hosts and politicians. While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as "invaders," "criminal aliens" and "cockroaches."
The results are no less tragic for being predictable: Although hate crime statistics are highly unreliable, numbers that are available strongly suggest a marked upswing in racially motivated violence against all Latinos, regardless of immigration status. According to hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI, anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available. In California, the state with the largest population of Latinos in the country, anti-Latino hate crimes almost doubled in the same period.
What follows is a representative sampling of some of the more egregious examples of physical and psychological violence waged against Latinos over the past two-and-a-half years. The perpetrators range from racist skinheads to rogue Border Patrol agents to otherwise everyday citizens who took it upon themselves to repel an "invader," terrorize a "criminal alien," or exterminate a "cockroach."
JAN. 9, 2004
Dateland, Ariz.
Pedro Corzo, a Cuban-born regional manager for Del Monte Fresh Produce, is gunned down by two Missouri residents — 16-year-old Joshua Aston and his 24-year-old cousin Justin Harrison — who traveled with Aston's younger brother, 15-year-old Nicholas Aston, to a remote section of southern Arizona with the specific intent of randomly killing Mexicans. The brothers shaved their heads before embarking on their odyssey. Corzo was ambushed after he stopped at a roadblock the group constructed from boulders. Joshua Aston, the ringleader, is later tried as an adult and receives two life sentences for the murder. Harrison also is sentenced to life. Charges are eventually dropped against the younger Aston brother.
DEC. 29, 2004
Redlands, Calif.
Two Latino men and a Latina woman are beaten and kicked in the parking lot of a strip club by a "gang of about 10 skinheads," as later reported by the San Bernardino County Sun. The neo-Nazi skinheads yell racial slurs at their victims, prompting the Redlands police chief to declare that hate crime charges will be pursued if and when the perpetrators are caught.
MAY 7, 2005
Maryville, Tenn.
A Mexican grocery store is vandalized by five white men who shatter windows, damage a refrigerator and spray-paint neo-Nazi symbols, causing over $17,000 in damage. Two men — Thomas Lovett and Jacob Reynolds — eventually plead guilty and are each sentenced to six months in prison.
FEB. 17, 2005
Fabens, Texas
Osvaldo Aldrete-Dávila, who is unarmed and fleeing apprehension on foot, is shot at 15 times by two U.S. Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. One bullet strikes Aldrete-Dávila in the buttocks, severs his urethra and lodges in his groin. Though seriously wounded, he manages to escape into Mexico.
Though the border patrol officers later find that the van driven by Aldrete-Dávila contained a shipment of marijuana, they are unaware of this fact when they open fire. Ramos and Compean attempt to cover up their actions by cleaning up the spent shell casings and failing to report the use of their firearms to their superiors, as required by Border Patrol regulations. The two agents also fail to report the shooting in their incident reports. El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Luis Barker later testifies that Compean told Barker that he and Ramos covered up the shooting because they "knew [they] were going to get in trouble."
After the shooting comes to light a month later, Ramos and Compean are arrested and eventually convicted by a federal jury of felony assault charges, discharging a firearm in a crime of violence, civil rights violations, and obstruction of justice. They're sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively.
Ramos and Compean will eventually be transformed by a major right-wing misinformation campaign into high-profile martyrs of the anti-immigration movement. The agents, for their part, will remain unrepentant. Ramos tells a Texas Monthly writer in 2007 that Aldrete-Dávila "got what he deserved."
JULY 12, 2005
Patchogue, N.Y.
A 61-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant is badly beaten by three white men as he pushes a shopping cart through the streets collecting cans. Before the attack, the man was asked if he had a green card. "Then they started pummeling him," Suffolk County Hate Crimes Det. Robert Reecks tells reporters. The man, whose name is not made public, suffers a broken eye socket and facial bruises.
JULY 15, 2005
Keansburg, N.J.
Octavio Vivanco is riding his bike to his restaurant job when Joshua Ramgoolam and James Schmidtberg chase him down and punch him in the face. About 15 minutes later, Rosalino Novorrete is attacked by the same duo as he rides his bike to work, this time with a plastic baseball bat. According to Monmouth County Prosecutor Luís Valentín, Vivanco and Novorette were attacked "solely because of their Latino ethnicity." Ramgoolam later pleads guilty to second-degree bias intimidation, third-degree aggravated assault and third-degree weapons possession for unlawful purposes. Schmidtberg is found guilty of the same charges, plus fourth-degree weapons possession. Both are sentenced to five years in state prison.
SEPT. 30, 2005
Tifton, Ga.
Six Mexican immigrants — Mateo Gomez, his son José Luís Tías, Felipe Mauricio Esparza, Guadalupe Sanchez, Armando Perez Martínez and Mauricío Florindo — are murdered, and at least five others are badly injured, when a group of African-American robbers rampage through four trailer parks known for housing immigrant workers. The parks are also known for home invasions; over 20 homes there have been have been invaded in the months prior to the murders.
Three suspects — Jennifer Wilson, Stacy Sims and Jamie Underwood — are arrested and charged with six counts of murder each. Sims and Underwood are also charged with rape and aggravated assault. District Attorney Paul Bowden announces he will seek the death penalty.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Vernon Keenan tells CNN that the victims "are easy targets because they do not speak English. They're undocumented workers. They keep cash on their persons [and] in their homes. And they are reluctant to report crimes to law enforcement."
When Tifton's mayor Paul Johnson decides to display the Mexican flag over City Hall out of respect and sympathy for the victims, callers to a local radio station bristle with anger and resentment.
OCT. 16, 2005
Sacramento, Calif.
Six people are injured by three white men who crash a private party with the intent of "beating up Mexicans," according to police. One of the assailants uses brass knuckles after shouting racial epithets and "white pride."
MARCH 30, 2006
North Bergen, N.J.
After a series of pro-immigrant marches and demonstrations bring out hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters in cities across the country, an acerbic neo-Nazi radio host makes an appeal for people to carry out the mass murder of any "illegal aliens" sighted.
"All of you who think there's a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We're going to have to start killing these people," Hal Turner writes on his website. "I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done."
Laine Lawless
APRIL 3, 2006
Tucson, Ariz.
One of the founding members of the Minuteman movement, Laine Lawless, exhorts the leadership of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) to launch a campaign of violence and intimidation against Latino immigrants. "Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place. … Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school," Lawless writes in a private E-mail to Mark Martin, "SS commander" of the NSM"s western Ohio chapter. "Be creative. … Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border."
The goal?
"Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status."
APRIL 22, 2006
Houston, Texas
David Ritcheson
David Ritcheson, 16, is attacked by racist skinheads at a house party after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. David Henry Tuck breaks Ritcheson's jaw, knocking him unconscious, while screaming, "White power!" and calling Ritcheson a "spic" and "wetback." Keith Robert Turner joins in, and the two attackers burn Ritcheson with cigarettes, kick him with steel-toed boots, attempt to carve a swastika into his chest, pour bleach on him and finally violently sodomize him with a patio umbrella pole. It takes 30 surgeries before Ritcheson, confined to a wheelchair and wearing a colostomy bag, is able to return to school.
Tuck is later sentenced to life in prison. Turner gets 90 years.
A year after the attack, Ritcheson, who up to that point has not been identified in press accounts by name, goes public and speaks out to the U.S. House of Representative's Judiciary Committee. In wrenching testimony, the boy recalls the horrific experience for lawmakers deliberating over strengthening federal hate crime laws. "With my humiliation and emotional and physical scars came the ambition and strong sense of determination that brought out the natural fighter in me," Ritcheson testifies. "I am glad to tell you today that my best days still lay ahead of me."
Less than three months later, the teenager commits suicide, jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico. Before his death, he assisted the Anti-Defamation League in creating an anti-hate program at his alma mater, Klein Collins High School.
APRIL 28, 2006
Salt Lake City, Utah
A West High School student identified only as Felipe is attacked while walking to school by two white men who he says call him a "stupid wetback" and tell him, "Go back to your country, you don't belong here." He survives the jumping with a black eye, cut lip and head swelling, reports the Deseret Morning News. The boy is not a documented citizen, according to his mother, who tells reporters, "The fact that you're an immigrant here doesn't mean they get to do that."
APRIL 29, 2006
East Hampton, N.Y.
Three Latino teenagers are lured into a shed by a neo-Nazi skinhead (also a teenager) and then threatened and terrorized with a chainsaw and a machete. The victims are held for 90 minutes while the skinhead and his friends yell racial slurs, including "White power!" and "Heil Hitler!"
"This is how you run across the border," one of the skinheads shouts as he chases the Latino youths around with the running chainsaw. The skinhead is later charged as a juvenile with reckless endangerment and menacing.
MAY 4, 2006
Southampton Village, N.Y.
Jonathan Cedillo is having lunch near a 7-Eleven when cab driver Robert Rossetti slaps his sandwich from his hand and then begins calling him derogatory racial names. Rosetti then begins ramming into Cedillo, who has American Indian and Mexican ancestry, with his taxi. Cedillo's right knee is injured. "He was cursing at me, telling me I'm an immigrant and to get out of this country," Cedillo tells reporters. Rossetti is later convicted of misdemeanor aggravated harassment.
JUNE 12, 2006
Rocky Point, N.Y.
Two Mexican men fishing at a jetty are asked for their green cards, and then beaten and robbed by four teens — William Foley, Nicholas Provenzano, Daniel Sturgis and Jesse Ward — posing as federal agents. The teens rob money from the victims while accusing them of stealing jobs from U.S. citizens. All four are charged with felony robbery and assault as hate crimes. Sturgis eventually pleads guilty to third-degree assault as a hate crime and second-degree robbery and is sentenced to two years in state prison. Provenzano is convicted of charges related to the attack, but his sentencing is deferred. Foley and Ward are charged as juvenile offenders.
JUNE 15, 2006
Yonkers, N.Y.
Miguel Vega, a native of Peru, is walking down the street where he lives when he's attacked and murdered by five men who also steal his wallet. The killers — Abraham Ghaly, David Bendezu, Alexander Mitchell, Joel Lopez and Rodolfo Ponciano — are charged with murder and robbery. Bendezu, Mitchell, and Lopez have their murder charges upgraded to hate crimes after an investigation finds that they specifically sought a Mexican to rob that night. All five plead guilty and are sentenced to between five and 15 years.
JULY 20, 2006
Dayton, Tenn.
Gilberto Mejía, owner of the Mexican grocery store Carnicería Los Primos, is verbally assaulted by anti-immigration activist June Griffin, who barges into the store and tears down a Mexican flag. Griffin then allegedly harasses Mejía and leaves threatening phone messages, which Mejia saves for police.
"It was an act of war," says Griffin, who has unsuccessfully run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican. Charged with civil rights intimidation, phone harassment, theft and vandalism, Griffin is released after witnesses fail to turn up at a court hearing.
"I'm not ashamed of anything I did," Griffin tells The Herald-News.
JULY 25, 2006
Albertville, Ala.
The windows of six businesses owned by Guatemalans or Mexicans are shot out early in the morning, while white-owned businesses on the same street in this northern Alabama town of 17,000 go untouched. A year later, the crime is still unsolved. Albertville police say the attack wasn't racially motivated, although many observers, pointing to which businesses were targeted, suspect otherwise. "We have sporadic, random incidences of windows shot out," says Chief Detective J.T. Cartee.
JULY 30, 2006
Bradenburg, Ky.
Jordan Gruver
Jordan Gruver, a 16-year-old boy of Panamanian descent, is attacked by members of the Imperial Klans of America who are recruiting for the IKA at the Meade County Fairgrounds. Unprovoked, the Klansmen call the far smaller Gruver a "spic," then beat him severely, leaving Gruver with two cracked ribs, a broken left forearm and jaw injuries requiring extensive dental repair. Two Klansmen, Jarred R. Hensley, 24, and Andrew R. Watkins, 26, plead guilty to second-degree assault and are each sentenced to three years in prison. The Southern Poverty Law Center files a lawsuit against the attackers that is later amended to add IKA, its national leader Ron Edwards, and another high-ranking IKA official.
AUG. 20, 2006
Hahnville, La.
Two men, one from El Salvador and the other described by St. Charles Parish sheriff's deputies as "Hispanic," are shot in the legs by Mark Gautreau as they fish in a floodway near Lake Pontchartrain. Witnesses say Gautreau announced he was going to "shoot some Mexicans" before breaking into his own truck (he had locked himself out) to pull out a shotgun and fire at the anglers, who are 500 feet away. Gautreau is booked on two counts of first-degree attempted murder as a hate crime. The case is later dismissed when the victims and witnesses fail to appear for court.
SEPT. 9, 2006
Rockfield, Ky.
A cross is burned on the front lawn of Nelson Espinoza's house in this Louisville suburb next to a sign reading, "My country maybe, my neighborhood NO WAY!!!" Espinoza, a native of El Salvador, lives with his wife in the United States as part of a legal temporary worker program. Almost a year later, the investigation remains open. "We suspect it was probably just kids from the neighborhood," says Warren County Sheriff's Deputy Daniel Alexander.
SEPT. 10, 2006
Hampton Bays, N.Y.
Carlos Rivera, a construction worker from Honduras, is stabbed multiple times outside a bar by Thomas Nicotra and Kenneth Porter, who yell racial epithets during the attack. Nicotra and Porter, who witnesses say also yelled racial slurs at other patrons a night earlier, are both charged with felony robbery and assault with hate crime enhancements. Porter is sentenced to one year in Suffolk County Jail for first-degree assault after testifying against Nicotra. Nicotra is sentenced to nine years in state prison after finally pleading guilty to first-degree assault and robbery.
SEPT. 17, 2006
Laguna Beach, Calif.
A truck driven by two men reportedly hits two Latino workers at a day labor center, and one of the workers is also assaulted. The men in the truck, Artem Soloviev and Dennis Katpilniy, came to the center offering work, but Soloviev ends up in a scuffle with the workers, apparently after they decline his terms. Although witnesses say Soloviev and Katpilniy shouted racial epithets at the workers during the fight, no charges are filed and Soloviev and Katpilniy are released. "We investigated it top to bottom, having collected third-party and the actual defendants' statements, but we did not have enough evidence to support the case," Susan Schroeder, of the Orange County's District Attorney's office, says later.
OCT. 23, 2006
Annapolis, Md.
Hose Aldana and Wilfredo Rodriguez are stabbed and called ethnic slurs by two white men in a pickup truck, according to police. But county police officer Sara Schriver tells local newspapers that since Latinos are technically classified as white, the attack wasn't racially motivated.
"That's crazy," retorts Angela Arboleda, director of criminal justice policy for the National Council of La Raza. "The [victims were] called names and slurs that were derogative to [their] race. That is the most clear-cut evidence that that crime was in fact a hate crime."
NOV. 18, 2006
San Diego, Calif.
Latino workers Estanislao Gonzales and Robert Peña are allegedly assaulted by San Diego Minuteman John Monti at the Rancho Peñasquitos day labor center during a Minuteman surveillance operation. Prosecutors say Monti started the fight after grabbing one of the laborers and chasing him into the street. But jurors later acquit Monti of three counts of battery and one count of filing a false police report.
JAN. 12, 2007
Naco, Ariz.
Javier Dominguez-Rivera, a construction worker from Mexico, is shot dead at close range while on his knees by Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett. Corbett claims he fired in self-defense from the front of his vehicle when Dominguez-Rivera picked up a rock, but surveillance footage shows Corbett confronting Dominguez-Rivera at the rear of his vehicle. In addition, autopsy reports show the bullet was fired from between three inches and 2 1/2 feet away, and that it entered below Dominguez-Rivera's armpit and traveled down through his heart, stomach and liver into his lower abdomen.
Dominguez-Rivera was crossing the border with his two brothers and sister-and-law when Corbett apprehended them. The group's eyewitness accounts match the results of the forensic investigation and medical examiner's conclusions. As a result, Corbett is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide. Cochise County Attorney Edward Rheinheimer tells reporters: "The evidence shows that at the time he was shot, Mr. Dominguez-Rivera presented no threat to Agent Corbett."
FEB. 7, 2007
Casper, Wyo.
Richard Serafin, who has identified himself as "commanding officer" of a unit of the "Central Wyoming Militia," is arrested after illegally selling a short-barreled AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to an undercover ATF agent. Earlier, he told the agent that he planned to travel to the Arizona border to harm immigrants and boasted that "there may be fewer illegal Mexicans" after his trip. Serafin pleads guilty to possessing two illegal firearms — two of the short-barrel AR-15s — and is later convicted in federal court of possessing firearms to further a crime of violence. He faces a minimum of five years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines.
FEB. 23, 2007
Wright City, Mo.
A Latino immigrant is attacked and robbed by three men yelling, "Immigration enforcement!" who barge into his mobile home armed with a piece of lumber. The immigrant suffers injuries to his right eye and nose. Ryan Scott Harlan, 18, eventually pleads guilty to first-degree burglary and second-degree assault and is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Richard Bryant Lindaman, 17, pleads guilty to the same charges and is sentenced to eight years. The third suspect, Christopher Michael Skelton, is still awaiting trial at press time.
APRIL 18, 2007
Flagstaff, Ariz.
James Wesley Cheek submits a comment to the Arizona Daily Sun threatening to attack a Cinco de Mayo event in a manner similar to the Virginia Tech University rampage just a few days earlier that left 32 people dead. FBI agents arrest Cheek for sending a threatening interstate communication and find that Cheek possesses a collection of firearms and has distributed fliers for the Ku Klux Klan. If convicted, Cheek faces a maximum sentence of five years and up to a $250,000 fine.
MAY 1, 2007
Washington, D.C.
Tyler Froatz Jr., a member of the Herndon (Va.) Minutemen, is arrested after a physical confrontation with human rights activists at a rally. When apprehended by police, he has several knives, a flare gun and a stun gun, and police find a loaded rifle in his vehicle. Days later, investigators search Froatz's apartment and find an additional 15 guns, a Molotov cocktail, a grenade and large amounts of ammunition. Initially jailed on weapons and assault charges, Froatz, 24, is released to his parents in New Jersey a month later to await trial.
MAY 4, 2007
Gaithersburg, Md.
A long-established day-labor center for Latino immigrant workers is set on fire, causing about $2,000 in damage. The center is run by Casa de Maryland, an immigrant assistance organization that has been the subject of many protests and threats. Without any evidence or rationale to support his allegation, Brad Botwin, director of an anti-immigration group called Help Save Maryland, tells The Washington Post that the laborers may themselves have started the fire.
MAY 10, 2007
Dunlap, Tenn.
Frankie Bowman, who in 2005 launched an unsuccessful petition drive to prevent a Mexican nightclub from moving into his neighborhood, is arrested for offering an undercover Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent $2,500 to burn down Mexico de Noche. Bowan, 52, allegedly told the agent he didn't care whether the building was empty or occupied when the fire was set. He faces trial on charges of solicitation to commit aggravated arson.
Mountain Minuteman founder Robert Crooks E-mails a video to several prominent anti-immigration activists that appears to shows a Minuteman tracking a group of Mexicans through a gun's night vision scope. In the video, an unidentified man can be heard calling the Mexicans "cockroaches" and then firing off a shotgun. "This video shows how to keep a Home Depot parking lot empty," Crooks writes in his cover E-mail, snidely suggesting that recipients know how to "Talk the Talk" but not "Walk the Walk" of effectively fighting illegal immigration. A few days later, a very similar night-vision video surfaces, this one purporting to show a Minuteman hitting a lone Mexican with a sniper shot. Crooks, who initially denies making the videos but then admits it, later says the second video was faked. Although state and federal law enforcement officials look into the incident, no victims are found.
AUG. 8, 2007
Garden Grove, Calif.
Felipe Alvarado, an immigrant working as a janitor at a fast-food restaurant, is taunted with racist threats and then attacked by three men, one of whom is carrying a loaded gun. James Joseph Kelly, Justin Louis Mullins and Cheyne Danica Wilson are arrested and charged with felony assault with hate crime enhancements for allegedly beating Alvarado after yelling, among other things, "Go back to Mexico, you wetback!" Wilson is also charged with illegally possessing a handgun.
AUG. 12, 2007
West, Texas
A Latino man is struck in the face several times after getting into a hostile exchange of words outside a convenience store with a group of white men and women who later tell police that they are affiliated with Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi hate group. The victim, who has not been identified publicly, fled but is attacked a second time later the same night by several assailants who beat, stomp and cut him. The alleged leader of the attacks, Stephen Ray Chapman, is arrested and charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The police continue to search for five other suspects.
AUG. 23, 2007
Montgomery County, Md.
Victor Hernandez, a Honduran immigrant dishwasher, is walking home from work when he is kicked into unconsciousness by teenagers who rob him of $160. The two teens arrested tell police they were "amigo shopping" — seeking vulnerable Hispanic workers to rob. The Washington Post reports "alarmingly common" anti-immigrant crimes in the area of Washington, D.C., and its Virginia suburbs. Police from Montgomery County, Md., and neighboring counties tell the newspaper that the majority of local robbery victims since 2006 have been Latino.
SEPT. 30, 2007
Avon Park, Fla.
José Gonzales returns home to find his car and garage destroyed by a fire set by an arsonist who also spray-painted "Fuck Puerto Rico" on the garage walls. Gonzales, a U.S. citizen and a mechanic, loses all of his tools in the fire. No arrests are made in the town, which is famous for its passage of harsh anti-immigrant laws.
OCT. 8, 2007
Omaha, Neb.
Eduardo Garcia wakes up to find his truck and his wife's car set ablaze. Two other cars are also vandalized and have the words "white power" and a swastika spray-painted on them. No one is immediately arrested.
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