Post-9/11, Sikhs say they are mistaken targets

Google News
By TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press
8 hours ago

ELK GROVE, Calif. (AP) — Kamaljit Atwal's neighborhood seems like an unlikely place for a hate crime. His street in this Sacramento suburb seems a model of diversity.
Atwal and his family are one of two Sikh families on the block from India. On Atwal's street alone, there's a Vietnamese family, a Mexican family, a black woman and a white man.
But in March, Atwal's 78-year-old father Gurmej Atwal and his 67-year-old friend Surinder Singh were shot and killed while taking an afternoon stroll in the neighborhood.

Full Story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzz-XAYwvzj_CYYReJRk_eEghlTA?docId=b22e183771724a509c5ab653f8ffbfde

Remaining vigilant on civil rights

IndyStar.com
November 7, 2009
Indiana's latest cross-burning case illustrates challenge facing state and feds
By Jon Murrayjon.murray@indystar.com

Cross burnings may seem like a relic from a dark chapter in American history, but an incident in Indiana resulted this week in prison sentences of a year or more for three Muncie men.
At least two other Indiana cross-burning cases, in Muncie and Mishawaka, have been prosecuted in the past two years. All three were motivated by racism, federal prosecutors say.
During a Friday visit to Indianapolis, the top civil rights lawyer for the U.S. government pointed to those cases and increases in reported hate crimes as reason for vigilance. Thomas E. Perez, confirmed by the U.S. Senate last month as assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, cited a recent expansion of the federal hate-crimes law as an important tool.
"Recent history here in Indiana and across the nation reminds us that we continue to have people who, frankly, have issues with the diversity of our country and with the inclusion that is our nation's strength," Perez said during a news conference with other federal officials, including acting U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison.
The case that ended this week was spurred by a cross set afire in a yard in July 2008 as a black family slept inside their home in a Muncie neighborhood. Sentenced Thursday were Richard LaShure, 41; his son, Richard Logue, 20; and Aaron Latham, 20.

Full Story: http://www.indystar.com/article/20091107/NEWS02/911070358/Authorities+cooperate+to+battle+crimes+of+hate

Support Hate Crimes Protections

AAUW Action Network
April 09, 2009

Last week, Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 1913), and the House is expected to vote on it at the end of April. This critical piece of legislation will provide much-needed protections and tools to combat-and help eliminate-hate and bias crimes. Help protect women who are not currently protected under the justice system by urging your representative to cosponsor and support this important legislation.

Current law only allows federal involvement in the prosecution of non-federal hate crimes when the victim was targeted because of race, color, religion, or national origin. This legislation would fill a gap in the law by also allowing the Department of Justice to take on cases motivated by the victim's actual or perceived gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability.

While progress has been made in responding to crimes such as domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault, more can be done. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act is necessary to ensure an appropriate response when local law authorities cannot or will not give gender-based hate crime victims the protection they deserve. By strengthening protections against bias-motivated crimes and removing some restrictions on when the federal government can assist local authorities in the prosecution of such hate crimes, fewer of these disturbing cases will slip through the cracks.

The bill passed both the House and Senate during the 110th Congress, but a presidential veto threat kept it from being enacted. AAUW Action Network and our Capitol Hill Lobby Corps members have supported this bill in the past, and we ask you to join AAUW again now in sending a clear signal that hate-motivated violence carried out against any individual will not be tolerated.

Take Action!
To urge your representative to support the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, click on the "Take Action" link in the upper right corner, or copy and paste the following URL into your Internet browser. Then, follow the instructions to send an email to your representative. http://capwiz.com/aauw/issues/alert/?alertid=13107436

For more information, read AAUW's letter to representatives urging them to cosponsor this legislation, and read AAUW's full position on preventing hate crimes.

http://www.aauw.org/publications/washupdate/index.cfm

More Than Half Of Campus Hate Crimes Involve Race

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
By Charles Dervarics
Nov 25, 2008, 07:21

Reports of increased hate crimes nationwide – including incidents on college campuses after Barack Obama’s victory – are prompting calls for universities to step up hate crime reporting and for more federal action on the issue.

“Even as we celebrate the demonstration of diversity in this country by electing the first African American president, the vestiges of a tragic period in our history continues to rear its hideous head,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington bureau, at a conference Monday focusing attention on hate crimes nationwide.

Within higher education, four North Carolina State University students scribbled anti-Obama comments in a tunnel reserved for free speech expression. One comment said, “Let’s shoot that (N-word) in the head.” A University of Alabama professor said an Obama poster on her office door was replaced by a poster defaced with a death threat and a racial slur.

Hate speech on school buses and the beating of a New York teenager on election night by four white men shouting ‘Obama’ are among other recent youth-focused hate incidents.

“Schools and colleges are the third most frequent location for hate crimes,” said Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League.

Full story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11996.shtml

Hate crimes up on campuses, group says

philly.com
By Susan Snyder
Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted on Sat, Nov. 15, 2008

La Salle University has disciplined a fraternity and suspended several students over an off-campus fight last weekend in which several black students said they were assaulted and subjected to racial slurs that drew on the presidential election.
The Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, also known as Fiji, has lost its privileges pending the outcome of the investigation, and 12 to 15 students are expected to face disciplinary charges, school officials said. University officials declined to say whether the students were members of the fraternity.
Meanwhile, students at St. Joseph's University were planning a candlelight vigil and other events to strike back against racially charged graffiti found in a campus classroom on Oct. 29.
At Lehigh University, the Black Student Union and others called for curriculum changes and the hiring of a chief diversity officer following reports of racial taunts being made toward black students after the election.
The actions come as two national groups report a surge of similar acts on campuses and elsewhere around the country, all in the wake of Barack Obama's election as president. [Full story:

http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20081115_Hate_crimes_up_on_campuses__group_says.html?adString=ph.living/education;!category=education;&randomOrd=111608075601>

Three Quinnipiac students arrested in threats

The New Haven Register
One charged with hate crime, held on $100,000 bail
Thursday, October 30, 2008 5:12 AM EDT
By Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

HAMDEN — Police have arrested three Quinnipiac University students for allegedly making threatening phone calls, including a freshman who has been charged with a hate crime, according to Capt. Ronald Smith.
Charles Merritt, 18, of Clifton, Maine, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly making threatening and harassing telephone calls to three black basketball players on Monday, Smith said. Merritt is a roommate of two of the athletes and knows the third, Smith said.
Merritt was charged with three counts each of intimidation based on bigotry and bias, first-degree harassment and disorderly conduct. Smith said the threats rose to the level of a hate crime because they involved the victims’ ethnicity.
Just before midnight Tuesday, police arrested Emily Loschiavo, 19, of West Newbury, Vt., and Courtney Stellwag, 19, of Newburgh, N.Y. They were both charged with first-degree harassment, conspiracy to commit first-degree harassment and disorderly conduct.
According to Smith, two friends of the women’s intended victim answered the telephone in a Quinnipiac dorm room and were threatened with bodily harm. The intended victim, a resident assistant, was not at home at the time, he said. Smith said he did not know the race of the R.A.Quinnipiac security, assisted by Hamden police, determined who allegedly made the threatening telephone call.Quinnipiac’s administration turned the case over to police Monday. They followed the discovery of racially bigoted words written outside dorm rooms and on a board outside the victims’ dorm.According to a statement by Quinnipiac President John L. Lahey, all three were expelled from the university."All of us are grateful for the work of the Hamden Police Department which resulted in these arrests," Lahey said. "While they are significant achievements, the investigation continues in connection with the recent hate speech/crimes. I also want to extend my appreciation for the excellent police work by our own security officers."I cannot state strongly enough that this university has absolutely no tolerance for acts of this kind and will do everything in its power to prevent them."Merritt, who was being held at police headquarters on $100,000 bail, is scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Meriden on Nov. 6. Stellwag and Loschiavo were released after posting $2,500 bail. They are scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 12. [To read the entire story, go to: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2008/10/30/blogs/doc4908d3abaee45707759776.txt]

The Geography of Hate

November 25, 2007
Op-Chart
The Geography of Hate

By MARK POTOK, LUKE VISCONTI, BARBARA FRANKEL and NIGEL HOLMES

FROM the 1880s to the 1960s, at least 4,700 men and women were lynched in this country. The noose remains a terrifying symbol, and continues to be used by racists to intimidate African-Americans (who made up more than 70 percent of lynching victims).
In the past decade or so, only about a dozen noose incidents a year came to the attention of civil rights groups. But since the huge Sept. 20 rally in Jena, La., where tens of thousands protested what they saw as racism in the prosecution of six black youths known as the “Jena 6,” this country has seen a rash of as many as 50 to 60 noose incidents. Last Tuesday, for example, a city employee in Slidell, La., was fired after being accused of hanging a noose at a job site a few days earlier.
These incidents are worrying, but even more so is the social reality they reflect. The level of hate crimes in the United States is astoundingly high — more than 190,000 incidents per year, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.
And the number of hate groups, according to the annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has shot up 40 percent in recent years, from 602 groups in 2000 to 844 in 2006.
It seems that the September rally in Jena — much as it was seen by many civil rights activists as the beginning of a new social movement — signaled not a renewed march toward racial and social justice, but a surprisingly broad and deep white backlash against the gains of black America.
The graphic, above, shows some of the reported sightings of nooses in the past two years.
Mark Potok is the director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Luke Visconti is the co-founder and Barbara Frankel is the executive editor of the magazine DiversityInc. Nigel Holmes is a graphic designer. [To view the accompanying graphic/map where noose incidents have occurred, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25potok.html?th&emc=th

Few Answers About Nooses, but Much Talk of Jim Crow

The New York Times
By PAUL VITELLO
BALDWIN, N.Y., Oct. 19 —

All the nooses are different, the police say. Some are coiled six times, some eight. Some are simple knots. The one found here the other day, suspended from a fence in a Highway Department yard, was wrapped with duct tape. All are blunt instruments of racial intimidation because of what they represent.
“They represent terrorizing black people and keeping them in their place,” said Ruth Roberson, a parks employee who is black, pausing on Friday morning while raking leaves. “Now they don’t lynch you. It’s all about jobs.”
At least seven times in the past few weeks, nooses have been anonymously tossed over pipes or hung on doorknobs in the New York metropolitan area — four times here on Long Island, twice in New York City, once at a Home Depot store in Passaic, N.J. The settings are disparate. One noose was hung in a police station locker room in Hempstead, where the apparent target was a black police officer recently promoted to deputy chief. Another was draped over the doorknob of the office of a black professor at Columbia University.
The question of why these things were happening — whether linked to events somewhere else, like in Jena, La., or part of some new homegrown vernacular of race hate — seemed to wait in line last week behind the question of where the next noose would be found.
Three noose episodes took place on Long Island in three days. On Wednesday, two were found at a sanitation garage in the Town of Hempstead — one of them looped around the neck of a stuffed animal with its face blackened. On Thursday, a noose was discovered hanging in a Nassau County highway department yard in Baldwin. On Friday, a worker at the Green Acres shopping mall in Valley Stream found one slung over a door at a construction site.
Public officials said they were outraged, determined to catch the culprits — and stumped.
“It would diminish the seriousness of these events to call any of them copycat situations,” said Kate Murray, the supervisor of the Town of Hempstead, a sprawling township of 750,000 residents, about 15 percent of them black, where all of last week’s incidents occurred. “But I’m not a sociologist. I am surprised by it.”

[To see the entire article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/nyregion/21noose.html?th&emc=th ]