Sunday, December 31, 2006
Minuteman supporter is removed from a city council meeting
A Minuteman supporter makes an idiot of himself at a city council meeting and is told to leave.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
RACISM GROWS
What does it mean for Black America that a hate preaching music duo could debut on the Billboard albums chart?
This week, the Billboard albums chart’s top five is packed with nothing but new releases, with Bakersfield, CA Pop duo Prussian Blue shocking the nation by taking ..4 after selling 91, 000 copies of “End of A Black World” its first week out. The album is also serving as the soundtrack to a remake of one of the most controversial movies in U.S. history “Birth Of A Nation”.
“End of A Black World” is the third and most successful album for 12 and 13 year old Lamb and Lynx, who have recently relocated to a private compound in Salt Lake City, Utah after their last album gained them national attention and death threats. The girls were lost, especially in December of 2005 when their father was shot twice by an AME Minister. However, their father survived and their career was revived by what seems to be an unfathomable paradigm shift in American values.
“It really breaks my heart to see those two girls spewing out that kind of garbage, ” said Ted Shaw, civil rights advocate and president of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund.
“This is bullsh*t. Right now I am more so shocked that an album advocating the extermination of the black race could be so widely received by America, ” continued Shaw, who plans to protest the girls’ album and call for black artists to boycott Billboard.
Jessie Jackson of The Rainbow PUSH Coalition gave the following statement, “White America has spoken. Billboard has spoken. This is only the beginning.”
The beginning is just what Lynx and Lamb, who have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April, are hoping for. “We hope to bring about change in our people, ” said Lamb. “We hope that our album and Birth Of A Nation will show our people exactly what needs to be done to make this country safe and white.”
When asked about their inspiration for their latest efforts, Lynx gave this response. “I saw white people hating white people. I was afraid that America wanted to be black, ” said Lynx. “I saw that funny ******’s show where he made a mockery of the KKK and white people were laughing. This broke my heart.”
Lynx was speaking of Actor/Comedian Dave Chapelle and his comic sketch depicting a blind, African American, Ku Klux Klan leader who was unaware that he was not white. Dave Chapelle is also believed to be the inspiration of their single, “Funny ******, ” which describes the gruesome fate of blacks who taunt whites. Dave Chapelle was not availible for comment.
Prussian Blue appear to have gone from one of America’s dirty little secrets to Pop princesses overnight. The group is now fielding offers from major record labels such as MGM and Geffen. This may be only the beginning.
Track Listing for “End Of A Black World”
1) Dawn of A New White World
2) Birth Of A Nation
3) Purest Soul
4) Tainted Blood
5) Affirmative Blaction
6) Reggin & Ekik
7) The Cleansing (interlude)
8) Short Drop and A Quick Stop
9) Burning Cross
10) N.A.A.C.P. (Nigger’s Against A Colorless People)
11) Funny Rich Nigger’s) Crack Babies
13) Nigger Lovers
14) No Darkie In Me
15) End Of A Black World
Source: ThinkConscious
Young Singers Spread Racist Hate
Oct. 20, 2005 — - Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.
They may remind you of another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.
Known as "Prussian Blue" -- a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes -- the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.
"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white ... we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."
April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs -- specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.
"Because it's provocative," explains April of the cattle brand, "to him he thinks it's important as a symbol of freedom of speech that he can use it as his cattle brand."
Teaching Hate
Songs like "Sacrifice" -- a tribute to Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer -- clearly show the effect of the girls' upbringing. The lyrics praise Hess as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up."
"It really breaks my heart to see those two girls spewing out that kind of garbage," said Ted Shaw, civil rights advocate and president of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund -- though Shaw points out that the girls aren't espousing their own opinions but ones they're being taught.
On that point, April Gaede and Ted Shaw apparently agree.
"Well, all children pretty much espouse their parents' attitudes," she said. "We're white nationalists and of course that's a part of our life and I'm going to share that part of my life with my children."
Since they began singing, the girls have become such a force in the white nationalist movement, that David Duke -- the former presidential candidate, one-time Ku-Klux-Klan grand wizard and outspoken white supremacist -- uses the twins to draw a crowd.
Prussian Blue supporter Erich Gliebe, operator of one of the nation's most notorious hate music labels, Resistance Records, hopes younger performers like Lynx and Lamb will help expand the base of the White Nationalist cause.
"Eleven and 12 years old," he said, "I think that's the perfect age to start grooming kids and instill in them a strong racial identity."
Gliebe, who targets young, mainstream white rockers at music festivals like this past summer's "Ozzfest," says he uses music to get his message out.
But with names like Blue-Eyed Devils and Angry Aryans, these tunes are far more extreme than the ones sung by Lamb and Lynx.
"We give them a CD, we give them something as simple as a stick, they can go to our Web site and see other music and download some of our music," said Gliebe. "To me, that's the best propaganda tool for our youth."
A Taste for Hate
Gliebe says he hopes that as younger racist listeners mature, so will their tastes for harder, angrier music like that of Shawn Sugg of Max Resist.
One of Sugg's songs is a fantasy piece about a possible future racial war that goes: "Let the cities burn, let the streets run red, if you ain't white you'll be dead."
"I'd like to compare it to gangsta rap," explained Sugg, "where they glorify, you know, shooting n****** and pimping whores."
Sugg shrugs off criticism that music like his should not be handed out to schoolyard children, arguing that "it's just music, it's not like you're handing out AK-47s."
Perhaps not, but Shaw says it's the ideas in the music that are dangerous.
"When you talk about people being dead if they're not white," said Shaw, "I don't think there is much question that that is hateful."
A Place to Call Home
Despite the success of Prussian Blue and bands like Max Resist within the White Nationalism movement, most Americans don't accept their racist message.
Like many children across the country, Lamb and Lynx decided to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina -- the white ones.
The girls' donations were handed out by a White Nationalist organization who also left a pamphlet promoting their group and beliefs -- some of the intended recipients were more than a little displeased.
After a day of trying, the supplies ended up with few takers, dumped at a local shop that sells Confederate memorabilia.
Last month, the girls were scheduled to perform at the local county fair in their hometown. But when some people in the community protested, Prussian Blue was removed from the line-up.
But even before that, April had decided that Bakersfield was not "white" enough, so she sold her home, and hopes that she and the girls can find an all-white community in the Pacific Northwest.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
Source: ABCNews
Thursday, December 28, 2006
4 men held on hate crime charges
By Ashraf Khalil and Sharon Bernstein, Times Staff Writers
December 13, 2006
Four men who authorities say are members of a white supremacist group were charged Tuesday with attempted murder for allegedly stabbing a black man at a Claremont shopping center over the weekend, a case prosecutors have labeled a hate crime.
Police say the four were passing through Claremont Friday night on their way to a white supremacist rally the next day outside the federal building in Westwood when the incident occurred.
"They were most likely just here for a pit stop," said Claremont Police Lt. Paul Davenport.
Police arrested the suspects at the rally near UCLA the next day.
A white supremacist Internet bulletin board detailed the arrests and predicted that authorities will have trouble convicting the men.
Chad Timothy Milson, 20, of Yucca Valley; Anthony Scott Allen, 23, of Big Bear City; Ryan Christopher White, 28, of Joshua Tree; and Joseph Dale McCool, 20, of Yucca Valley are being held on $1-million bail apiece. Attorneys for the suspects could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Each man faces charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. All eight charges are considered hate crimes, according to the complaint filed by Deputy Dist. Atty. George Castello, a distinction that would add several years to the sentence if the men are convicted.
According to police, the men were among a large group of white men who attacked two black men Friday night outside near the intersection of Indian Hill Boulevard and San Jose Avenue.
Authorities said the white men exchanged words with the two black men before the violence occurred.
One of the victims required hospitalization for treatment of multiple stab wounds. That man, Charles Washington, has since been released from the hospital, Davenport said.
Detectives, with the help of witnesses, identified a suspect vehicle and several potential suspects. The next day, UCLA police spotted the suspects' vehicle in a university garage. More than 20 people were detained before the rally until a witness to Friday's attack could be taken to the rally to make identifications, Davenport said.
Two other participants in the rally were detained for parole violations.
The Saturday rally at the Federal Building was part of Martyr's Day, a nationwide series of protests and events commemorating an iconic 1980s neo-Nazi group called Bruder Schweigen, also known as the Order.
Order founder Robert Matthews was killed in a shootout with the FBI in 1984 in Washington state.
Several other group leaders remain incarcerated and are considered by the neo-Nazi movement to be political prisoners.
The group was known for robbing banks to raise funds for white supremacist activists.
ashraf.khalil@latimes.com
sharon.bernstein@latimes.com
Source: LATimes
Saturday, December 23, 2006
57 white supremacists arrested in sweep
By David Haldane
December 14, 2006
We met early this morning and fanned out across the county
Fifty-seven members of a white supremacist gang were arrested in Orange County early Thursday in a sweep by hundreds of officers investigating alleged death threats against county law enforcement officials. 'We met early this morning and fanned out across the county,' said Sgt. Rick Martinez, a spokesman for the Anaheim Police Department, one of numerous city, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies from Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties that participated in the sweep. Martinez did not specify which agencies were involved but all told, he said, about 300 officers representing 25 agencies served search warrants at 75 locations countywide. 'It was a very broad operation,' he said. A spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department said his agency had participated but could provide no further details. 'Anaheim was really the lead agency,' Lt. Hans Strand said. 'We just provided support.' The investigation culminating in Thursday's raids began about a month ago, Martinez said, when law enforcement organizations learned that 'a number of Orange County law enforcement officials' had been the target of death threats by members of Public Enemy Number 1, a white supremacist gang also known by the acronym PEN1. Martinez could not say where the gang is based or how many members it has, though a report by the Anti-Defamation League describes the group as a 'street-based skinhead gang.'
He also declined to give specific information regarding the nature of the threats or at whom they were aimed, except to say that those threatened included officers and other law enforcement personnel, but not any elected officials. As a result, Martinez said, several law enforcement agencies from throughout Southern California began working together to investigate the threats and other criminal activities allegedly involving the gang.
About nine gang members, he said, were arrested before Thursday's sweep on various charges.
Those arrested Thursday, he said, were being held at various correctional facilities throughout Orange County for a variety of suspected violations, including possession of illegal weapons, narcotics violations, forgery and identity theft. He said it was unclear whether any of those arrested had been directly involved in the death threats, but said the investigation was continuing. 'We'll have to see where this will go,' Martinez said. 'It's possible there may be more arrests.' According to the Anti-Defamation League website, the gang is one of several 'very large skinhead groups' in California, with a membership in the hundreds.
In addition, a 2004 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center said the gang specializes in identity theft and drug dealing, sometimes working for two other racist groups, the Aryan Brotherhood and the Nazi Low Riders. That report said the gang's founder, Donald 'Popeye' Mazza, was convicted in 2003 of the attempted murder of a drug informant.
The Southern California racist groups, according to the Anti-Defamation League, resemble traditional street gangs and often have ties to racist prison gangs.
david.haldane@latimes.com
Copyright © 2006 Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved.
Source: Topix
Sunday, December 17, 2006
White supremacist teenagers sentenced
KHOU-TV
Keith Turner
Keith Turner was the second teen convicted of aggravated sexual assault in the April attack at a house in Spring, north of Houston. David Henry Tuck, 18, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on Nov. 16.
Turner was convicted late Friday after about 90 minutes of deliberations. The jury took about five hours over two days to reach the sentence of 90 years.
Turner will have to serve at least 30 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Although Turner was the younger of the assailants and didn’t have the history of racial attacks that colored Tuck’s past, it was his idea to use the patio umbrella pole in the attack.
Turner, Tuck, the victim and two other teens were partying at a house in Spring, drinking and taking cocaine and Xanax. Twelve-year-old Danielle Sons, who was at the party at her house, told the other boys that the victim had tried to kiss her, prompting the attack.
Tuck shouted racial slurs and “white power” as he and Turner kicked the then 17-year-old, cut him with a knife, sodomized him with a plastic pipe and poured bleach on him in an assault that lasted up to five hours. The victim was left bleeding in the backyard until dawn, when Sons and her brother, Gus, finally woke their mother, who slept through it.
During Turner’s trial, jurors saw a videotaped statement by Turner in which he admitted to being the first one to grab the umbrella pole and joking about using it to sodomize the victim.
Source: KHOU
__________________________________________________
'Evil' teen jailed for savage party beating
POSTED: 8:08 a.m. EST, November 18, 2006
HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- A teenager described as a white supremacist was sentenced Friday to life in prison for savagely beating and sodomizing a Hispanic boy at a drug-fueled party.
David Henry Tuck, 18, was convicted Thursday of aggravated sexual assault in the near-fatal attack. Witnesses testified that he hurled racial insults and shouted "white power" while sodomizing the 17-year-old victim with the plastic pole of a patio umbrella.
Prosecutor Mike Trent told the jury that Tuck's history of violence showed he is beyond rehabilitation and would commit more attacks if released.
"He is an evil person, and he is not going to change or get better," Trent said. "We need protection from him. You are the only ones that provide that."
"Even if you give him life in prison, it will be more mercy than he showed to [the victim] that night," Trent said.
After the jury imposed the sentence, Tuck's mother, Sharon, hugged the victim's mother in the courtroom.
"I am so sorry," Sharon Tuck said as they both cried. She also hugged the victim, whom The Associated Press has not identified because he a juvenile sexual assault victim.
The assault took place at a party in the Houston suburbs where several youths had gathered to drink alcohol and take drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and the anti-anxiety medication Xanax.
According to testimony, the attack was triggered by the victim's drunken pass at a 12-year-old girl and his attempt to steal drugs.
Doctors did not initially expect the boy to live. He was hospitalized for more than three months and underwent 20 to 30 operations. He testified Wednesday that he remembered nothing of the assault.
Defense attorney Chuck Hinton appealed to the jury's religious faith, saying that Jesus would show Tuck mercy.
"I know that justice has to be done. I know a terrible thing happened. Justice needs to be done, but with mercy," Hinton said.
He also said Tuck had an abusive, absent father and was raised by a single working mother. His only role model, Hinton said, was his older brother, a skinhead who is in jail.
Teacher testifies
Prosecutors presented a chain of witnesses Friday to describe more than a half-dozen other attacks in which Tuck assaulted people, including a Hispanic man who was punched and kicked at a convenience store by three skinheads.
Linda Cabbell, a special education teacher who taught Tuck in elementary school, said he was violent when he was as young as 9 or 10, recalling how he punched her in the eye and kicked her in the groin. Tuck was later expelled.
Tuck will be eligible for parole in 30 years. The other teen charged in the beating, Keith Robert Turner, 17, is set to go to trial next month.
The victim's father said Tuck should never be released from prison.
"He deserved what he got. This will be with us for the rest of our lives. There's no healing," said the father. The AP has not identified the parents because doing so could identify the victim.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Source: CNN
__________________________________________________
White Supremacists Attack Hispanic Teen in Texas
Posted: May 2, 2006
Two teenagers, including an apparent racist skinhead, have been arrested in Spring, Texas, for brutally beating and sexually assaulting a 17-year old Hispanic boy who tried to kiss a 12-year-old girl at a party, according to authorities.
David Henry Tuck, 18, and Keith Robert Turner, 17, are both charged with aggravated sexual assault in the attack that left the victim in critical condition with massive internal injuries.
According to investigators, the suspects dragged the victim from a house party on April 22, 2006, and then stomped on his head with steel-toed boots, sodomized him with a patio-umbrella pipe, tried to carve something in his chest and doused his body in bleach.
The suspects allegedly kicked the pipe into the victim so deeply that it damaged many vital organs. Investigators also discovered burns on his back. The victim, who was not discovered until 10 hours after the attack, is in critical condition.
Tuck and Turner allegedly shouted racial epithets during the attack, but prosecutors are not currently pursuing the incident as a hate crime because it would have no effect on sentencing.
“I don’t know that the very beginning of the attack was racial, but there’s no question that they were venting quite a bit of hatred in their hearts,” said prosecutor Mike Trent.
Tuck, who reportedly has multiple swastika tattoos, would regularly host gatherings at his home that included ceremonies with chants of “sieg heil.” Tuck and this group reportedly intimidated minorities in the neighborhood; in one incident, they shouted racial slurs at a 4-year old African-American girl. Neighbors said that Tuck once paraded around the neighborhood with a swastika flag on Martin Luther King Day.
Both suspects are being held without bond in Harris County Jail. If the victim dies, the suspects will be eligible to receive the death penalty.
Source: ADL
Poll: Most Americans see lingering racism -- in others
Story Highlights
• Poll shows most Americans consider racism a problem• Blacks more than twice as likely to call racism a "very serious" problem
• Almost half of whites and blacks say they know someone who is racist
• Only a few of either race say they are racially biased themselves
(CNN) -- Most Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people who are racist, according to a new poll.
But few Americans of either race -- about one out of eight -- consider themselves racist.
And experts say racism has evolved from the days of Jim Crow to the point that people may not even recognize it in themselves. (Watch how many blacks are still afraid to stop in a Texas town 
)
A poll conducted last week by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN indicates that whites and blacks disagree on how serious a problem racial bias is in the United States.
Almost half of black respondents -- 49 percent -- said racism is a "very serious" problem, while 18 percent of whites shared that view. Forty-eight percent of whites and 35 percent of blacks chose the description "somewhat serious." (See the poll results)
Asked if they know someone they consider racist, 43 percent of whites and 48 percent of blacks said yes.
But just 13 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks consider themselves racially biased.
The poll was based on phone interviews conducted December 5 through Thursday with 1,207 Americans, including 328 blacks and 703 non-Hispanic whites.
Blind to bias?
University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.
"We've reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don't recognize," Dovidio said.
He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.
"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.
That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations.
A three-year undercover investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance found that real estate agents steered whites away from integrated neighborhoods and steered blacks toward predominantly black neighborhoods.
"Racism here is quite subtle," e-mailed CNN.com reader Blair William, originally from Trinidad, who now lives in Lexington, South Carolina. "I think that the issue is twofold. I believe that white America's perception of blacks is still generally negative based on their limited interaction with blacks, whether this is via the media or in person. ...
"On the other hand, black Americans need to stop devaluing themselves and their people," he added. "Another race can only respect you if you respect yourself and currently, I find that blacks still devalue and disgrace each other and themselves."
Applicants' names may sway employers
Racism also can be a factor in getting a job. (Watch how poll respondents feel about race and the top job in the U.S. )
Candidates named Emily O'Brien or Neil McCarthy were much more likely to get calls back from potential employers than applicants named Tamika Williams and Jamal Jackson, even though they had the same credentials, according to a study by the University of Chicago.
Racial bias may even determine whether you can flag a cab.
New York Times writer Calvin Sims recently wrote about his experiences in the city.
"If a cab passes you by, obviously it is frustrating, it's degrading and it's just really confusing, because this is akin to being in the South and being refused service at a lunch counter, which is what happened in the '60s and '70s," he said.
'Differences ... make this world exciting'
The Opinion Research poll shows that blacks and whites disagree on how each race feels about the other.
Asked how many whites dislike blacks, 40 percent of black respondents said "all" or "many." Twenty-six percent of whites chose one of those replies.
On the question of how many blacks dislike whites, 33 percent of blacks said "all" or "many," while 38 percent of whites agreed -- not a significant difference statistically because of the poll's 5 percent margin of error.
About half of black respondents said they had been a victim of discrimination because of their race. A little more than a quarter of whites said they had been victims of racial discrimination.
"I am a firm believer that racism is rampant in the United States," wrote another CNN.com reader, Mark Boyle, of Muncie, Indiana.
"The concept of 'race' is flawed," he added. "Our differences as human beings are what make this world exciting and interesting. If we were all of the same culture, how boring would that be? The world needs to take a page from the atmosphere in Hawaii -- the most racially diverse place in which I have lived."
Source: CNN
Monday, December 11, 2006
White supremacists to hold Mexican flag burning event
Note that "BorderWatch" recommends that if anyone does not want to be "recognized" to wear a mask:
The following image is of a previous event in which several violent white supremacists from Save Our State burned a Mexican flag while calling for a civil/racial war in the streets of America to "rid America of the 3rd world scum."
Source: SaveOurState
Sunday, December 10, 2006
School desegregation efforts under attack
The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with other major civil rights organizations, supports voluntary assignment plans that encourage school integration. The Center underwrote a social science statement submitted in October to the Supreme Court with the signatures of 553 social scientists and researchers, urging the Court to permit the continuation of voluntary race-conscious student assignment plans in American public schools.
The Spring 2007 issue of Teaching Tolerance magazine will include the following commentary on the issue by Teaching Tolerance interim director Jennifer Holladay.
Then and Now
Visit the Department of Education's website, and you'll discover (if you didn't know already) that educational equity is among the Bush Administration's top mandates: "Because of No Child Left Behind, closing the achievement gap is now a national priority."
And yet this year, the Educator-in-Chief instructed the Justice Department to file a Supreme Court brief opposing a social practice shown, time and again, to advance life opportunities for students of color: school integration.
That's right. The "pro-minority" Bush Administration opposes the creation of racially diverse schools where students of color are most likely to thrive and where all students are most likely to learn respect for differences.
It all started with some white parents in Kentucky and Washington state who were upset that their school districts took race into account when assigning students to schools. The parents filed a lawsuit, and, on December 4, their attorneys stood before the Supreme Court and argued that the districts' practice violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The stakes are high. If race-conscious assignment plans are outlawed, segregated schooling in America will escalate, and with it the perils of a society's racism left unchecked.
As the late Justice Blackmun noted, "To get beyond racism, we must first take account of race." Persistent patterns of residential segregation (and race-neutral assignment schemes) create a two-tiered system of education in the world's greatest democracy.
As the 21st century got under way, education for African Americans was more segregated than it had been two decades earlier; one-sixth of our nation's black children attend what researchers call "apartheid schools" -- schools that are virtually all non-white and that are plagued by poverty, limited resources, social strife and health problems. Apartheid schooling also jeopardizes the futures of millions of Latino students whose educational opportunities are limited by ethnicity and class and, often, by linguistic difference.
Integration is the necessary equalizer.
In a social science brief submitted to the Court, 553 of the nation's leading researchers concluded:
Segregated minority schools... have more teachers without credentials who teach subjects in which they are not certified, more instability caused by rapid turnover of both students and faculty, more limited academic curriculum, and more exposure to crime and violence in the school's neighborhood. Accordingly, the educational outcomes in segregated schools tend to be lower in terms of scores on achievement tests and high school graduation rates… Integration prevents the educational harms for students enrolled in these schools.The social scientists noted other benefits of integrated schooling: modest achievement gains among students of color (with no corresponding decline among white students), elevated parental involvement in schools, the enrichment of students' critical thinking skills and increased access for students of color to the social and professional networks that historically have benefited white youths alone.
Further, as the Supreme Court noted in its historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, schools have an obligation to prepare children for "good citizenship." In a diverse democracy, and in a global economy, "good citizenship" requires unlearning prejudice and embracing tolerance. Attending a diverse school is perhaps the most effective way for young people to learn these lessons.
Decades of research have proven that, when people from diverse backgrounds interact, prejudices and stereotypes can melt away. Students in integrated schools reveal higher comfort levels interacting with members of different groups, when compared to peers whose educational experiences are racially isolated.
Integrated schooling may be particularly important for white youths who are relatively unlikely to have meaningful interactions with people of color elsewhere. Research confirms that white students in integrated schools possess higher levels of racial tolerance, and recent studies conducted in seven large districts (including those targeted by the current lawsuits) found these youths better equipped to participate in diverse workplaces and in a multicultural society. Unfortunately, given the contemporary state of school segregation, few white students are afforded these opportunities. Only 14 percent of them attend multiracial schools.
Next year, our nation will honor nine black school children who braved virulent racism and angry white mobs to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. It was nearly 50 years ago -- 1957 -- and three years after the Supreme Court deemed separate schools "inherently unequal."
Then and now, integration doesn't come easily. Then and now, segregated schooling is inherently unequal. Now, let's hope the Supreme Court sees these truths just as it did then.
Jennifer Holladay is the interim director of Teaching Tolerance and the senior adviser for strategic affairs at the Southern Poverty Law Center.Source: SPLCenter
Border vigilante ordered to pay damages in SPLC-sponsored suit
Nov. 27, 2006 -- An Arizona jury, acting in a lawsuit sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, ordered border vigilante Roger Barnett to pay $98,750 to a family of Mexican-Americans he terrorized in 2004.
The verdict marks the first time Barnett, 62, has been held legally responsible for his violent treatment of Latinos.
Barnett, who controls 22,000 acres in southern Arizona through ownership and state leases, is one of the most prominent border vigilantes along the U.S.-Mexico border. He claims to have captured more than 10,000 people who crossed his land, and publicity about his personal campaign helped inspire other self-appointed groups of border watchers like the Minutemen.
The jury deliberated just three hours on Nov. 22 before ruling against Barnett for threatening two Mexican-American hunters and three young children with an assault rifle and insulting them with racial epithets.
"The Center's support of the case was critical to our success," said Jesus Romo Vejar, an attorney who received financial support from the Center in order to bring the civil action.
On Oct. 30, 2004, Ronald Morales and his father, Arturo, were deer hunting with Ronald's two daughters, who were 11 and 9 at the time, and another 11-year-old girl. All members of the family are Mexican-Americans born in the United States.
Barnett spotted the family's pickup truck through binoculars and radioed his brother, Donald, asking him to investigate. Ronald Morales and one of his daughters were still out hunting when Donald Barnett made contact with others in the party at their truck, informed them they were on Barnett property and asked them to leave.
By the time Ronald Morales and his daughter returned to the truck, Roger Barnett had arrived and was, by all accounts, livid.
According to witness testimony, Roger Barnett erupted in flurry of profanities and racial epithets, calling the two men and three young girls dirty, ignorant Mexicans. When Ronald Morales asked, "What is your name, sir?" Roger Barnett marched over to his truck, and pulled out an AR-15 assault rifle.
"He said, 'My f---ing name is Roger Barnett. If you don't get off my property, I'm gonna shoot you and shoot you and shoot you,' " Morales testified.
"When I heard the bullet chamber I knew then that we were really in trouble. All he had to do was pull that trigger and spray us."
According to a psychiatrist who testified at the trial, all three children suffer from chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the encounter. The lawsuit sought punitive damages for negligence, false imprisonment and emotional distress.
The Center awarded Vejar, the Arizona attorney representing the hunting party, a grant to fund his out-of-pocket litigation costs, including expert fees and depositions. The grant project was created to help local lawyers bring civil rights and other important cases that otherwise might not move forward.
Although a deputy sheriff who investigated the incident at the time found evidence to charge Roger Barnett with eight felony counts of aggravated assault and 10 misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and intimidation, the Cochise County prosecutor refused to file criminal charges against the Barnett brothers. Morales says the county attorney simply told him "no jury in Cochise County will ever convict Roger Barnett."
The Barnetts have several businesses in the area, including a tow-truck service that contracts with the Border Patrol, and both are former deputy sheriffs. In a documentary released last year, El Inmigrante, Roger Barnett expresses his fears of unchecked immigration, namely that "the white race is going to be gone."
The ruling against Barnett marks the second court victory won by the Southern Poverty Law Center against anti-immigrant vigilantes in the past two years. In August 2005, two Salvadorans who were illegally detained and assaulted on a Texas ranch in 2003 were awarded a 70-acre ranch near Douglas, Ariz., that formerly belonged to their attackers.
Source: SPLCenter
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Klan Border Watch 28 years later...
by Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse
 |  |
| In 1977, David Duke and a handful of his Knights of the Ku Klux Klan got tremendous media attention when they inaugurated their 'Klan Border Watch.' The patrol turned out to be little more than a publicity stunt. | |
|
Klansmen were on the Mexican border 28 years before the Minutemen co-opted the concept. And they were talking about the Hispanic immigration threat more than five decades before that.
In 1926, Klan Imperial Wizard H.W. Evans warned that "to the South of us thousands of Mexicans, many of them Communist, are waiting a chance to cross the Rio Grande and glut the labor marts of the Southwest."
In an article that traces the history of the Klan in San Diego from the 1920s through the 1970s, The Journal of San Diego History describes an atmosphere of fear that persisted for decades. "Any Mexican worker who challenged authority or appeared suspicious of one thing or another would forfeit his life," Mercedes Acasan Garcia, a maid during the 1920s, said in a 1979 interview. Garcia tearfully recalled lynchings, whippings and burnings of Hispanics. "Since they were ragged wetbacks, nobody cared who they were and nothing was done about it."
With such a history of anti-immigrant violence, Klan boss David Duke and his California leader, Tom Metzger, had little trouble directing the energies of their followers to the Mexican border a half century later.
In 1977, after shoring up their ranks with Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan kicked off its Klan Border Watch. Klansmen were supposed to drive the border from Texas to the Pacific Ocean in a caravan, instructed to report suspicious people to the Border Patrol. Media attention was huge, and cameras at times outnumbered Klansmen eight to one. The event wasn't much more than a publicity stunt, although Metzger boasted of leading 500 volunteers from four states.
Metzger split with Duke in 1979, critical of what he saw as Duke's showmanship and inveterate womanizing. But, in the spring of 1980, Metzger formed his own rogue Klan chapter and led a "security force" of around 40 Klansmen to John Landes Park in Oceanside, vowing to rid it of Mexicans. Metzger's followers carried black shields emblazoned with "KKK" in white letters. They wielded bats, chains and nightsticks and wore hockey masks and helmets. Some brought attack dogs. Protesters met the Klansmen at the park and pelted them with rocks. Seven people were injured.
That same year, Metzger parlayed the attention he had gained, along with growing anti-immigrant sentiment, into a victory in the Democratic primary for his local congressional district. He got some 33,000 votes, although he lost the general election handily.
Today, Metzger is dismissive of the staying power of the Minutemen. "They remind me of the big splash about the militias a few years ago," he told the Intelligence Report. "When the Murrah Building in OKC went up they all disappeared. The Minutemen are similar and when the blood really flows on the border, most will be long gone. They go out of their way to claim not to be racist. They are hypocrites of the worst order. They go on and on that they want no racists among them. What a joke."
Source: SPLCenter
Thursday, December 07, 2006
White supremacist to assassinate members of Congress
'Assassination' schedule announced for Congress
Radio-show host says leaders won't be allowed to 'betray' nation
Posted: December 6, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
 Hal Turner |
A radio talk-show entertainer whose earlier statements that he "may" have to assassinate members of Congress if the wrong people were elected Nov. 7 now has set a timetable for those killings.
In a statement on his website, Hal Turner noted that a newspaper has reported that a bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens is expected to be enacted in January, when the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate and House.
"ANY MEMBER OF CONGRESS WHO INTRODUCES, CO-SPONSORS OR VOTES IN FAVOR OF ANY SUCH AMNESTY WILL BE DECLARED A DOMESTIC ENEMY AND WILL BE CONSIDERED A LEGITIMATE TARGET FOR ASSASSINATION," Turner posted on his website.
"Members of Congress and the Senate will NOT be permitted to BETRAY our nation by simply GIVING AWAY the most cherished aspect of America, Citizenship, to millions of people who cared so little for what Citizenship means that they came here against our law," he continued.
Several weeks ago, Turner incited much discussion when he posted the following:
"We may have to ASSASSINATE some of the people you elect on Nov. 7! This could be your LAST ELECTION CHANCE, to save this Republic…
"Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary," he wrote.
But he defined his position as commentary instead of advocacy when one supporter wrote to Turner's website, "Hey Hal instead of saying 'may' SAY you WILL KILL THEM!!!"
"No no no no no. Words mean things," Turner wrote at the time. The difference between 'may' and 'will' is the difference between an opinion and a threat," he concluded. "One is lawful, the other is not!"
In the current posting, Turner has taken an aggressive stance against any effort by Congress to legalize or provide a "path to citizenship" for the millions of aliens who are in the United States illegally.
"Congress will not be permitted to BETRAY our nation by giving Citizenship to tens of thousands who didn't give a s--- about our other laws as they murdered, raped, robbed, dealt illegal drugs, drove without licenses or insurance, stole the social security numbers and/or identities of millions of lawful citizens and most of whom don't give a s--- enough about our country to even learn our language!"
Asked about procedures involving suspected threats to members of Congress, the U.S. Secret Service told WND that it would be interested only if the threat involved someone the Service protects. All other cases would be referred to local police jurisdictions.
When WND's question specifically referred to a website statement, Secret Service spokesman Darrin Blackford told WND: "We have no comment on that statement."
Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the FBI, said he couldn't confirm what investigations are being pursued.
"The Internet does not give anyone a license to espouse violence, but there is a certain amount of protection, First Amendment protections, that are built in and we're mindful of those," he said.
He called it a "fine line," and said what the agency would do is look at all the information available and "make a determination" whether any crime might have been committed.
In the earlier situation FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said such circumstances generally are turned over to a "duty agent" to review, but she couldn't provide other information until and unless a charge would be filed in any case.
In the current rant, Turner calls it a "right" for Americans to act in self-defense of their nation.
"Members of The United States House of Representatives or United States Senate who try to grant any form of Amnesty to millions of illegal aliens are hereby notified they may as well paint a bulls-eye target on themselves. Our Bullets don't care about their sovereign power," he wrote.
"This seems to be 'it' folks. I'm going to do what I have to do to protect my nation from its government. I know where all of my New Jersey Congressmen and Senators live. Do you know where yours live? If not, you better find out before January so you can scope out their neighborhoods and prepare yourselves," he said.
"Those of you who, for years, have said you're 'gonna do this' or 'gonna do that' when the time comes; are about to face ugly reality. In January, 'the time' will come. In January the entire world will find out if you're real or just a bigmouth coward," he said.
One reader who responded on his comment sheet asked Turner, "who's gonna pick up the fruits and clean your toilet?" To which Turner said, "Machinery can pick the crops; I clean my own toilet."
Turner also declined a suggestion to post a list of addresses and provide maps "so people can protest at their homes" by saying, "Once I publish such a list, they would undoubtedly feel the need and take steps to secure themselves. If we forewarn them by publicly publishing a list, we lose the element of surprise."
One other reader said, "I'm sitting here now with my 30.06 stripped down. Can do this in the dark. Don't want any grains of sand in the mechanism," he wrote.
Still another said he'd forwarded Turner's comments to the FBI, to which Turner responded with a laugh.
"You called the FBI about me? BIG DEAL! One can only illegally 'incite' violence when what is said is uttered in a context which lends itself to IMMINENT lawlessness. I will not be arrested because I have thus far committed no crime. Just because you don't understand the subtle delineations of the law does not mean I have broken the law. The FBI has been receiving reports about me from morons like you for six years. I'm still here. Your posting did, however, give me a chuckle!"
But his posting also continued further into his plans, and his expectations for the consequences.
"The pro-white movement has a habit of making martyrs of folks who take action. They hold rallies for them. They put up web sites about them. Just so we're clear, the only people authorized to do that for me after I become a martyr (alive or dead) are those who stand with me when the fight takes place. Because if you are, TODAY, 'pro-white' and you fail to stand with me in confronting our renegade government, then I say you are a coward and I don't want my name being uttered by cowards," he wrote.
He said the "amnesty" would mark "the actual end of our nation."
"That will erase us as a nation and I will not permit it. What about you?" he asked.
One reader was quick with his response: "Where can we get some polonium-210?" he asked.
Turner also carries on his website a disclaimer noting that he is considered a "public figure" which means a lot of places carry of lot of comments about him over which he has no control, including some with "virulent" perspectives.
"This being the case, Mr. Turner feels it necessary to – and hereby does – DISCLAIM AND REPUDIATE any affiliation with or support of such groups."
Even he didn't take his earlier statements that he may have to assassinate about half of the members of Congress and three members of the U.S. Supreme court seriously. He told WND he never bothered to make a hit list because he never planned to kill anyone.
Turner also told WND earlier he'd been investigated by the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service and others in the past, without results.
He said that's because he's very careful to "use words such as 'may have' (or) 'might' which are opinions/observations rather than threats."
"I am totally familiar with three specific U.S. Supreme Court decisions and those parameters govern what I say and write," he said. He said his comments are "uttered in a context which does not lend itself to imminent lawlessness," do not constitute a "true threat," and could be considered "political hyperbole."
____________________________________________________
MEDIA MATTERS
Assassinate half of Congress, urges Web-radio hatemonger
'If you re-elect people who have committed these wrongs against us … then we may have to simply kill them!'
Posted: October 29, 2006
9:59 p.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – An anti-Semitic white supremacist who conducts an Internet radio show says if Americans return incumbents to Washington in the Nov. 7 election, he may just have to assassinate them.
Hal Turner describes himself as "outspoken, opinionated and brutally blunt." The biography on his website says he was a registered Republican until this month, when he changed his registration to unaffiliated.
If that's true, he has fallen hard and fast from the Republican ranks.
"As the November 7 Election approaches, I decided to write a few lines to my fellow Americans about the state of our nation and the ugliness that may have to occur if the people who caused these problems are re-elected: They may have to be assassinated," he writes in his Oct. 27 screed.
Just so there can be no mistaking his intentions, Turner repeats his premise several times and even offers fairly detailed plans involving five-men strike forces to carry out their wet work in wiping out half the U.S. Congress and at least three members of the Supreme Court.
In his "Last Chance America" plea, he also says: "If you re-elect the same people who have gotten us into the mess we're in, folks like me may have to assassinate them!"
Turner lists his beefs with the government:
- curtailment of political speech through campaign finance law restrictions;
- killing innocent people in Iraq;
- that members of Congress don't read the legislation they pass;
- that elected officials ignore the will of the people;
- that politicians lie to get themselves elected;
- spending is breaking the nation's financial back;
- disapproves of USA Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act of 2006;
- eminent domain ruling jeopardizing property rights.
"All these things took place right under your nose, but YOU have done NOTHING about it," says Turner. "Well, you may be willing to give up YOUR rights, but folks like me will not allow you to give away OUR rights. … So again I say, if you re-elect the people who have committed these wrongs against us and our Constitution, then we may have to simply kill them!"
Turner evidently believes the time is right for a violent overthrow of the federal government because the U.S. military is so overextended around the world it would not be in a position to defend officials.
"In watching the military campaigns of the past 25 years, I have come to admire 'surgical strikes,'" he writes. "When force is applied in a specific, limited way, the results can be magnificent. Such is my HYPOTHETICAL thinking for our present circumstance."
He poses the hypothetical scenario that half the members of Congress represent "problems" – a total of 267. He also sees at least three "problems" on the Supreme Court.
"Imagine if you will, teams of 5 committed citizens each, who were fed up with these 'problems,'" he writes of the assassination squads he envisions. He says it can be done with just 1,350 "committed citizens."
"Do you think that in America, a nation of 300,000,000 people, there are 1,350 committed citizens willing to put it all on the line to 'correct' these 'problems' and thus save the nation?" he asks. "I do," he answers.
Turner even has a name for his kind of political mass murder: "It could be called 'patriotic assassination,'" he writes.
He says these teams of super-patriot hitmen would gather information on the assigned targets – learning "daily schedules, public appearances, travel routes to and from work, etc. ... Once the data was collected and analyzed a time and date could be set for 'solving' these 'problems.'"
"Then, one night, perhaps in the wee hours of the morning, these HYPOTHETICAL heavily armed teams of five committed citizens each, would move," he continues. "I envision a surgically precise, lightning strike: Front doors kicked-in, entry, locating the target, solving the problem and out within 90 seconds. Within minutes, all 270 'problems' would be 'solved.'"
He explains that since most of the "problems" live in and around Washington, "the local police would be overwhelmed immediately and unable to respond to all the calls for help. This means only a limited police response and limited ability to 'apprehend' anyone. Even if there was a local security detail, taking them out at the start of such an operation wouldn’t be a problem; they would be 'collateral damage.' By the time police from neighboring towns, the county or even the state police were told what was happening, it would be too late. The feds at FBI, ATF, the military, et al would be useless because they too would all arrive long after it was over."
Turner hypothesizes that the president – who is not targeted in this scenario – would "roll over and behave quite nicely" in the aftermath of such a coup.
"Sure some of those involved in such a 'corrective action' may be arrested, tried, convicted, jailed or even killed during such an operation, but it would have been for a worthwhile endeavor; an effort that would go down in history!" says Turner. "This is not far fetched. It can be done. In my opinion, it might have to be done."
As if to cover his tracks, Turner also says he renounces and repudiates the use of force and violence to affect political change – "for now."
In closing, just remember, you may be willing to live under tyranny, but I am not. You may be willing to give up your rights, but I won't let you give up MY rights.
"I don't want to see such an attack against our government," he concludes. "I have no plans (at this time) to kill anybody. But I can – and I am willing to – if it comes down to it."
The Washington field office of the FBI did not return a phone call about the matter tonight.
Elsewhere, Turner advocates targeting vehicles full of illegal aliens with rifle fire or tire spikes forcing them to crash. He also calls for a meeting in Atlanta featuring Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League to be disrupted "by any means necessary."
"Let's confront these filthy k---- and all their supporters immediately," he writes. "I wouldn't shed a tear of (sic) that hotel was BOMBED or if someone walked into their meeting hall with fully-automatic firearms and sprayed all of them with bullets. I would laugh if someone firebombed their meeting halls with Molotov Cocktails carried concealed in a coat."
If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.
Source: WorldNetDaily
Source: WorldNetDaily
Thursday, November 23, 2006
An open letter to anti-immigrant groups
This letter is aimed primarily at the Minutemen and S.O.S., but the content applies equally to any anti-immigrant group that has taken up vigilante like actions. I have grown weary of constant complaints from your groups that you are mischaracterized as racist simply because you are "trying to enforce the law." Let us put aside the fact that statements like Joe Turners' about "cultures that are inferior" are inherently racist. Let us put aside the fact that your activities have emboldened, encouraged, garnered praise from and even drawn participation from white supremacist groups. Let us suspend the understanding that scapegoating immigrants under an ideology that they somehow threaten the middle class is frighteningly reminiscent of basic fascist tenets. Lastly let us ignore the fact that while your memberships occasionally hint at targeting northern or other borders, your focus to date has been on one border and against one group of people.
Instead let us examine your assertion you are merely enforcing the law. More importantly let us explore the economic reasons behind your claim. Towards this end I suggest a simple and modest proposal that you may have overlooked in a fervor of nationalism. If you were to adopt this methodology, you could accomplish your stated goals while avoiding the correct and necessary labeling of racism stemming from you current activities. I suggest you marshal your membership and resources and take on the following tasks.
Your claim that undocumented immigrant labor "steals" jobs from able bodied "American" workers could simply be dealt with. Using your pools of enthusiastic membership you could find all these un/underemployed Americans and match them with these jobs. I am quite sure, following your logic, that there is an unending supply of Americans ready and willing to do this work. They merely need your help in locating it and maybe assistance with transportation.
Your groups could easily handle this task. By doing this you accomplish several things. You eliminate the economic incentive for undocumented labor because all the positions will be filled by Americans. Who would be willing to break immigration laws when all incentive to do so would be gone? Secondly, you further demonstrate your patriotic nationalism and avoid being labeled as racists because you have opened employment to thousands of Americans who otherwise would have had their jobs "stolen" by immigrants.
Additionally, by eliminating all economic incentive for undocumented labor to come here, you address two major factors you cite for your current activities. Since all potential jobs currently held by undocumented labor would now be held by U.S. citizens, it is highly doubtful that many undocumented people would want to come here. This would deal with your complaint that undocumented immigrants utilize public services at the tax payer expense. While this conception proves untrue since undocumented labor contributes much more to the tax pool then it ever uses, it wouldn't mater since they wouldn't be here.
This also takes care of your concerns that local communities are being turned into what the S.O.S. website terms "third world cesspools" (and you wonder why you are called racists).
Surely communities of red blooded Americans working at the same wage scales as undocumented labor does now would be the epitome of what Mr. Turner calls "great American culture."
You could call the effort something like "American Labor for American Jobs." Think of the benefits that your efforts would reap. Instead of long nights in the desert with binoculars, Minutemen membership could witness the joy on the face of a fellow American when they are matched with a much desired job in California's fruit picking industry. Instead of long hours in the sun protesting a misunderstood phrase on a train station monument, S.O.S. members could hear the praises of Americans happily employed in Los Angeles garment sweatshops.
Since Mr. Turner has already targeted a large home improvement chain for its loose association with day laborers, that would be a great place to start. Instead of ineffectual flag waving, why not show up with a group of able bodied Americans to take back the work from these job stealing day laborers?
There are so many jobs that you could open up in the agricultural, textile, construction, service, and janitorial fields to your fellow "legal" American citizens, and it is certain that they would be eternally grateful for the opportunity.
Think about it. All of your concerns: stolen jobs, tax expenditures, over-utilization of public services, so called dilapidation of local communities, and immigration law enforcement would all be addressed in one fell swoop if you and your memberships were to undertake this task. Avoiding the labeling of racism, you might even become heros through eliminating what you state as the cause of so many social ills in this country. In light of this I call on you, in fact I defy you, to drop all your current activities and resolutely take up the program of action stated above. Prove that our characterization of your racism is patently false. Prove us wrong in our understanding that it is our economic system, not undocumented immigrants, that causes misery in our society.
Demonstrate that you really are just concerned with the law through removing all incentive for people to break it. Now that you have an easy and foolproof solution to your concerns, anything less would be disingenuous. Anything less will continue to expose you for what you really are.
RD Skeels
This letter has been up since July 14, 2005 and yet nobody including sos have taken any action.
So stop protesting, flag waving, posting on forums and talking and start doing something.
But then again it's easier to post and talk then to do something about it.
Source: SaveOurState
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Long Beach teens face hate crime charges
2:41 PM PST, November 22, 2006
Los Angeles County prosecutors today filed hate crimes charges against eight black teenagers accused of beating up three white women on Halloween night in a case that has startled and divided Long Beach.
Authorities said they took the action after concluding that the teens attacked and beat the women in the upscale Bixby Knolls area because they were white.
The case has been the subject of a wrenching public dialogue over the last few weeks in the racially diverse city of 460,000, with civil rights groups like the NAACP condemning the teenagers' alleged actions and the city holding a public forum meant to ease tensions. The attack occurred on a block known for fancy Halloween decorations.
According to police, a mob of mostly girls, ages 12 to 17, allegedly hurled racial insults at the women, threw small pumpkins and lemons at them, and then knocked them to the ground with kicks, punches and swings of a skateboard.
The attack left the women, two 19-year-olds and a 21-year-old bloodied and with broken bones, internal bruises and cuts, before a black passerby stopped his car and pulled their assailants away.
"What could have possibly gone through their mind to make them think this kind of behavior was OK?" asked Long Beach Police Officer Jackie Bezart. The girls, who face felony assault charges, appeared in court today.
Their attorneys said the girls are good students and have no history of violence or criminal behavior. One of the girls won a full athletic scholarship to USC and had represented the United States in a track meet in China, her attorney told the court. He urged the judge to allow the girl out of Juvenile Hall so she could take the SATs.
A case of modern-day racial segregation
10:04 PM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.
The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."
Judge Sam Lindsay's opinion paints an unflattering picture of the elementary school and a principal who was so desperate to appease the school's affluent white parents that she turned back the clock on school desegregation 50 years.
In April, Hispanic parents sued, claiming illegal segregation. The three-week trial concluded in late August. On Thursday, Judge Lindsay declared that the school's principal violated the rights of minority children by assigning them to classrooms based on race.
The judge ordered Mrs. Parker to pay $20,200 to Lucrecia Mayorga Santamaría, the lone named plaintiff, who sued on behalf of her three children.
Although the judge did not find the Dallas school district liable for Mrs. Parker's actions, he strongly criticized DISD administrators for being "asleep at the wheel."
"The court is convinced that several of the area superintendents knew, or should have known, about the illegal segregation at Preston Hollow," the judge wrote in his 108-page ruling.
The district has until Jan. 17 to remedy the segregation at the school. Mrs. Parker did not return messages left at her home and school Friday.
District spokesman Celso Martinez said Mrs. Parker would remain the school's principal "until further notice."
Mr. Martinez said the school has undertaken steps to comply with the court order, namely relying on student language scores to place students.
"The truth is we have initiated quite a few changes at the school already," he said. "We need to compare those changes with the court order. We may well be in total compliance."
However, when asked if there are still classes at Preston Hollow containing only white students, Mr. Martinez replied: "That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that."
Desegregation plan
In 2003, a federal judge released the district from its court-ordered desegregation plan. That plan, however, focused on the allocation of resources and treatment of black students. In the 30 years the district operated under the order, whites fled and Hispanics have grown to become the majority. Blacks make up less than a third of the district; whites about 6 percent.
Preston Hollow's unwritten policy of clustering whites together was known for years among parents and teachers, according to testimony. In fact, Mrs. Parker's subordinates – including teachers and her assistant principal – raised concerns about it multiple times. One even wrote a letter to Superintendent Michael Hinojosa about it. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, the judge wrote.
"I began to see something very strange," Ms. Santamaría. "The difference was that the Anglo students would go to lunch together while the Latinos went with the Asians and the African-Americans." That, she said, raised a question in her mind "because the children don't know what segregation is."
Once the Hispanic families sued, Mrs. Parker tried to cover her tracks, according to testimony. For example, on the day an investigator was to observe classes at the school, Mrs. Parker "reshuffled" the student's classroom assignments, according to assistant principal Robert McElroy.
Mrs. Parker also asked members of her staff to sign confidentiality agreements about how students were assigned to their classes, and paperwork detailing the classroom assignments was destroyed under mysterious circumstances, according to the judge's ruling.
Principal uncooperative
The judge also took exception to Mrs. Parker's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the court. At one point during the trial, the judge noted, Mrs. Parker testified that she didn't know whether Preston Hollow is a predominantly white neighborhood.
"The court finds it astounding that Principal Parker, who has served at Preston Hollow for five years, would testify that she knows nothing about the ethnic makeup of the immediate neighborhood surrounding her school."
The school's attendance zone is mostly north of Northwest Highway, east of Preston Road, south of Royal Lane, and just east of North Central Expressway. It includes affluent, mostly white single-family homes, as well as middle-class homes and apartments that are predominantly minority.
The judge also had sharp words for the district's attorneys, who argued that segregation would cause no harm to the minority students because their teachers used the same curriculum as those teaching white students.
"The court is baffled that in this day and age, that [DISD relied] on what is, essentially, a 'separate but equal' argument," the judge wrote.
Mr. Martinez, the district spokesman, said the district doesn't believe Mrs. Parker was segregating students, but he acknowledged that classrooms at the school need to be better integrated.
"It's our opinion that we were not segregating students at all," Mr. Martinez said. "In fact the judge found that we were not violating the constitutional rights of anybody. Do we need to integrate the classrooms? Yes, and we're doing precisely that."
Although the judge ruled against the school's principal in her personal capacity, he did not find the district, its trustees or Mrs. Parker liable in their "official capacities."
David Hinojosa, the parents' attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said he apparently didn't convince the judge that the district knew the segregation was happening.
"You just have a certain legal standard you have to meet, and unfortunately, the court didn't find that," he said. "We might appeal the issue if need be ... but we got the ultimate relief we wanted. The parents wanted to stop the segregation that was going on there."
PTA chief criticized
Judge Lindsay also criticized Meg Bittner, the school's PTA president, who wanted to lure more affluent white families out of private schools and back to Preston Hollow.
More white families would result in a healthier PTA, she testified, bigger fundraisers and, ultimately, more money for the school. The best way to lure back white families, teachers and others testified, was to put white children together in the same classrooms.
Teacher Janet Leon told the court that "neighborhood classes" were predominantly made up of white students because "the people who live in the Preston Hollow neighborhood, who are the majority being white, would want their children grouped together."
To aid in the recruitment of more affluent whites, the school's PTA created a brochure for parents that featured almost all white students. Hispanic parents had shown up at the school the day photos were being taken for the brochure, but the principal blocked their entry into the classroom where the photos were being taken, the judge's ruling states.
Additionally, the PTA, in conjunction with the school, held separate open houses and kindergarten recruitments for white parents. And when PTA members gave prospective parents tours of the school, they were never taken down the "Hispanic halls" where the minority classes were housed, teachers testified.
Mrs. Bittner and other PTA officers did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
FROM THE RULING
"The court is left with the distinct impression that the primary objective of fairly educating students was lost and substituted in its place was an effort to prevent white flight from Preston Hollow. In reserving certain classrooms for Anglo students, Principal Parker was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."
The court also found that many English-speaking Latino students were inappropriately assigned to ESL classes, amounting to illegal segregation.
"In the end, the court found that principal Parker had intentionally segregated the Latino children on account of their race and national origin. Not only that, she had done so in a reckless and callous manner," said attorney David Hinojosa.
For parents, vindication.
"We are very happy, because we won. For us, this is a victory, because we can say to all parents that together, we can do a lot of things," said Ann Gonzales, a parent.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Michael Richards reveals his true nature
Michael Richards accidentally failed to suppress his true racist nature towards blacks at a famous L.A. comedy club last Friday.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
What Makes Police Brutality Possible?
What should a large group of bystanders do if they see a handful of attackers unjustly assaulting and tormenting an unarmed individual?
The answer seems obvious: come to the victim’s aid by disarming and overpowering the attackers.
But on November 14, when UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was assaulted in the university library, about fifty shocked and angry students stood by, protesting and shouting but not intervening, though the assailants were much fewer in number and were armed only with nonlethal weapons.
Why didn’t the students intervene? Because the assailants were campus police.
When Tabatabainejad, unable to produce his student ID, was asked by a security guard to leave, he initially refused. The guard then contacted campus police. Here accounts diverge: the police say Tabatabainejad went limp and refused to leave, while most eyewitnesses agree with Tabatabainejad’s claim that he was leaving peacefully but protested when police tried to grab his arm as he did so.
In any case, the police then tasered Tabatabainejad repeatedly as he writhed screaming on the ground, in an incident captured on a bystander’s cellphone camera. When horrified students in the vicinity protested the brutal treatment and demanded the police officers’ badge numbers, the officers reportedly threatened to taser these peaceful bystanders as well. “Tabatabainejad encouraged library patrons to join his resistance,” one officer blandly explained.
Were campus police within their rights to demand that Tabatabainejad leave the library? Was he a victim of racial profiling? Did he go limp before or after being tasered? These questions, however important, are secondary. Whatever the answers, the fact remains that the officers’ brutal and repeated use of a dangerous weapon against someone who had neither used nor threatened violence is grossly disproportionate to whatever offense he allegedly committed.
“Stop fighting us!” the officers can be heard yelling on the recording. But by the police’s own account, the most that Tabatabainejad did by way of resistance was to “go limp.”
Whether he went limp deliberately or as an involuntary result of being tasered, in either case going limp is not “fighting” and does not constitute a threat to which tasering could be a legitimate self-defense response, especially given the disparity in numbers.
Being asked for one’s badge number, I need hardly add, is a lawful request and so likewise not an action to which a threat of tasering is a legitimate response.
In short, a group of armed assailants, refusing to identify themselves to bystanders, repeatedly inflicted violent and painful attacks on an unarmed library patron who had neither used nor threatened violence. Ordinarily anyone would think that in such a case the bystanders would have been within their rights to intervene forcibly to protect the victim. And ordinarily, I wager, these bystanders would have done precisely that.
But when the assailants are wearing police uniforms, they somehow become immune from the ordinary rules that apply to the rest of us. Did some bystanders refrain from intervening because they were afraid? Probably. But most of them, I suspect, never even considered forcibly intervening; the assailants’ uniforms prevented that ordinarily natural thought from so much as occurring.
There was a time when those in positions of legal authority were literally regarded as beings of an inherently superior order, entitled to a special status exempt from ordinary moral rules. That doctrine was known as the divine right of kings. Nowadays we profess to have given up that doctrine; the Declaration of Independence boldly declares that “all men are created equal.” But we are still all too quick to treat the bearers of official power as a breed apart.
Such inequality is arguably inherent in the institution of government itself. All governments, even purportedly democratic ones, reserve to their agents certain rights denied to the rest of the populace. And it is our acquiescence in government that lets us view police, even campus police, not as our equals but as our masters — which enables them to get away with abuses like this one.
Let’s pierce the veil of mystification and see this case as what it is: a small group of ordinary people attacking another ordinary person while a much larger group of ordinary people stands “helplessly” by. The profession of the attackers is irrelevant; providers of police services don’t need to be organised as an agency with superior authority — a “government” — in order to do their jobs. We don’t believe in kings and emperors any more. Isn’t it time to outgrow the idea of government as such?
Source: http://c4ss.org/content/21
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Town settles suit on Latino laborers
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff
Ending a three-year legal struggle with its day laborer population, Freehold Borough has settled a lawsuit that alleged the town targeted Latino immigrants in employment and housing code enforcement.
The settlement, which still has to be approved by a federal judge, requires the county seat of Monmouth to shell out $278,000 in attorney fees and reimbursement funds and establishes a police protocol for enforcing certain regulations against immigrants.
The settlement comes as Congress and the national political parties are debating what do about burgeoning immigration -- and the strains it is putting on local and state budgets. Critics of the Freehold crackdown called the agreement a huge victory and a cautionary tale for other communities employing similar hardball tactics against burgeoning immigrant populations.
"It's a victory for the rights of people," said Mahonnry Hidalgo, chairman of the immigration committee of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey. "At the same time, it's sad that taxpayers, including Latinos who live there, will have to deal with this expense. There are better ways to solve this, and we hope the next town in New Jersey that wants to do this will think twice."
Stan Organek, spokesman for Monmouth County Residents for Immigration Rights, one of the groups that sued the borough, agreed that other towns had been put on notice that "there can be consequences to taking steps that will be found unconstitutional."
But an unrepentant Mayor Michael Wilson vowed to continue enforcing the housing codes and laws of the borough.
"A little respect for the law-abiding citizens of Freehold would go a long way toward making our residents more understanding of how we can resolve these hard questions that are caused by national immigration policy," Wilson said.
The settlement, approved Monday night by the Borough Council, is the the result of long-simmering tensions that accompanied the explosion of the Latino population in the two-square-mile community. Some long-time residents blamed the new arrivals for swelling school populations and straining services, driving up taxes.
A gravel area between Conrail railroad tracks and Throckmorton Street, about a half mile from the central business district, became an impromptu muster zone for day laborers, many of them illegal immigrants from southern Mexico who sought work for contractors or landscapers.
As the zone expanded and residents stepped up complaints, Wilson announced plans in the fall of 2003 to shut it down on Jan. 1, 2004. Civil rights advocates sued the borough, and in March 2004, U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson ordered it to reopen a portion of the zone that is on public property.
But the issues went beyond the rights of the immigrants to gather for work, however, and the underlying civil lawsuit continued. Attorneys for the immigrant groups alleged borough officials and residents often targeted their living situations -- violating their civil rights in the process -- in an effort to drive them out of town.
Renee Steinhagen, executive director of the New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center, one of the organizations that sued, said Freehold agreed in the settlement to treat the immigrants lawfully and respect their rights.
She said housing-code inspectors will no longer be allowed to conduct inspections without resident consent. Owners will be given time to correct violations. And while a police officer will be allowed to accompany inspectors, he will not enter the premises unless an incident occurs.
Day laborers, meanwhile, will continue to use the public portion of the muster zone. The borough will set up a $33,000 fund to reimburse Latino residents fined for loitering or certain housing-code violations, dating back to Jan. 1, 2002. The borough will pay its adversaries' legal fees, estimated at $245,000.
Steinhagen said the settlement "has ramifications beyond Freehold as to the rights of people, regardless of their documentation status. It's sort of setting the parameters for the other debates about immigration."
Praising the outcome of negotiations in what he called a "difficult social situation," retired state Supreme Court Justice Daniel O'Hern, who served as mediator, acknowledged an ongoing statewide struggle in areas with growing immigrant populations.
"Immigration reform is a national issue. Persons who have entered this country without documentation are nonetheless persons entitled to the protections of the (U.S.) Constitution and laws of the United States and this state," he said in a prepared statement. "We have seen other communities that have reacted to this social migration with repression and outright harassment."
Staff writer Brian Dononue contributed to this report. Mary Ann Spoto may be reached at mspoto@starledger.com or (732) 462-8603.
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