Louis Ramirez - Apparently, it's OK in PA to Beat People to Death

How incredibly disgusting can the racist debate over illegal immigration get? How much further can or xenophobia plunge us into a love of lawlessness? Apparently, in my home state of Pennsylvania, it can get to the point where beating a man to death is OK. I received this e-mail yesterday:

KEVIN:

After they had beaten Luis Ramirez to death, the white teenagers who attacked him sent an ominous message to Luis' friends:

"Tell your f**king Mexican friends to get the f**k out of Shenandoah or you'll be f**king laying next to him."¹

Just over a week ago, two of Ramirez's killers were acquitted of all serious charges by an all white jury², with the jury foreman making it clear that justice for Ramirez had no chance in the small town of Shenandoah, PA:

"I believe strongly that some of the people on the jury were racist. I believe strongly that some of the people on the jury had their minds made up maybe before the first day of trial...And I believe the four boys that were involved the most are racist. I absolutely do..."³

The Department of Justice is now looking into Ramirez' death.⁴ But that's only part of what's needed. Where are the leaders in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania? Why has Governor Rendell had nothing to say? His silence is shameful.

Until our elected leaders speak up, we can expect more stories like Luis'--not just in Shenandoah, but across the country. Governor Rendell owes it to Pennsylvanians and Latinos everywhere to condemn and speak out on what's happened. Together we can demand that he does. Please click the link below to add your voice and ask your friends and family to do the same. It takes only a moment.

http://presente.org/ref/ad/14/campaigns/ramirez/org/keystone

If Luis Ramirez's death were an isolated event it would be outrageous enough. Sadly, it's part of a growing trend of racially motivated violence against Latinos, particularly in rural communities. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Latinos rose 35% between 2003 and 2006.⁵ And as author David Niewert writes, the target of hate crimes goes beyond their immediate victims: "The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them."⁶

That kind of intimidation only works only if the people who are targeted remain silent, and officials in positions of power remain unaccountable. That's why we need to speak out and let folks across the country know we won't tolerate hate and violence towards our communities. It starts with demanding that the Governor of Pennsylvania make clear that anti-immigrant hate has no place in Pennsylvania. It's time for him to show leadership now.

Join us in calling for him to speak out:

http://presente.org/ref/ad/14/campaigns/ramirez/org/keystone

Thank you and Adelante!

The Keystone Progress Team
and
The Presente.org Team

References

1. "Town struggles with fallout from immigrant's fatal beating," CNN, 7-31-2008
http://tinyurl.com/64u2sk

2. "Jury acquits teens of murder in Mexican immigrants' beating death," Associated Press, 5-2-2009
http://tinyurl.com/p8gusl

3. "Jury Foreman Calls Other Jurors Racist," WNEP, 5-2-2009
http://tinyurl.com/da6mcg

4. "Luiz Ramirez Hate Crime Petition," MALDEF, 5-5-2009
http://tinyurl.com/c24jvb

5. "The Year in Hate," Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2008
http://tinyurl.com/r6ldef

6. "A jury's hate-crime verdict in rural Pennsylvania reinforces the racial divide," Crooks and Liars, 5-3-2009
http://crooksandliars.com/node/27858/

Note that this letter includes references to articles detailing this information. This is not made up. This man really was beaten to death.

When I read this story, two things came to mind:

1. Do we really believe that being an illegal immigrant makes it OK for you to be beaten to death? I mean, really, we must consider that this was part of the thinking of the jury. Would these teens have been able to get away with this if this man was an average white 25 year old. I mean, just imagine a white man visiting Philadelphia from some other part of the state is waiting for a subway, when he gets into an argument with three black teens. The white man is beaten to death. We all know that those three black teens would be tried for felony crimes as adults. Connected to this, doesn't this underline the ways in which the immigration debate has created unsafe conditions for all Latinos in the United States, even those who have been U.S. citizens their entire lives? I mean, really, when you hear about these attacks, are the attackers first doing research to verify that their victims are indeed illegal immigrants?

2. I immediately flashed back to the Jena 6 incident, in which six black teens were charged with attempted murder for beating a white classmate. This, of course happened after a series of events left the African American community in Jena, LA, feeling threatened and targeted. These events included the hanging of a noose on a "whites only" tree that black students attempted to sit under, threatening words from the District Attorney seemingly directed toward black students, and an alleged incidents in which blacks students were threatened with a gun by white students, were able to take the gun, and then were charged with robbery for taking the gun. The real disgrace in the Jena 6 fiasco was not the exceedingly harsh level of the charges against the six black teens, but the fact that they came from a DA who showed a pattern of overacting to the actions of blacks, even when they were legal, but underreacting to violence against blacks. It is ironic that we here little about the Louis Ramirez incident, but we saw many Americans rush to the defense of the Jena DA.

What this really highlights is who can and cannot be a victim in this country. Black teenagers can't be victims. It just doesn't fit the archetype we've created. So when we look at their encounters with the law, we can't see the injustices perpetrated against them; we only see the wrong they've done. So, when the Jena story broke, almost all the focus was on the beating. On the rare occasion that anyone focused on the events leading up to that incident, the focused in on the hanging of the noose, something that dealt with race in the general. However, to focus on the way in which the legal system, particularly that corrupt DA, had victimized the black youth of Jena was virtually impossible.

Likewise, in the United States, an illegal immigrant (at leas a brown illegal immigrant) cannot be a victim. These white teenagers essentially had a free pass to do just about anything to Louis Ramirez, because there is almost no way that a jury would unanimously agree to seriously punish them for attacking an illegal immigrant. This incident is just the latest illustration of a truth that minorities have know for the entire history of this country: when it comes to certain people, the rule of law just does not apply.

News: US Citizens Illegaly Deported

From ABC News / The Associated Press:

Pedro Guzman has been an American citizen all his life. Yet in 2007, the 31-year-old Los Angeles native — in jail for a misdemeanor, mentally ill and never able to read or write — signed a waiver agreeing to leave the country without a hearing and was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant.

He's not the only one:

In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases.

It is illegal to deport U.S. citizens or detain them for immigration violations. Yet citizens still end up in detention because the system is overwhelmed, acknowledged Victor Cerda, who left Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2005 after overseeing the system. The number of detentions overall is expected to rise by about 17 percent this year to more than 400,000, putting a severe strain on the enforcement network and legal system.

The result is the detention of citizens with the fewest resources: the mentally ill, minorities, the poor, children and those with outstanding criminal warrants, ranging from unpaid traffic tickets to failure to show up for probation hearings. Most at risk are Hispanics, who made up the majority of the cases the AP found.

Read More

"... o're the land of the free, and the home of the brave," right?

So, essentially, over the past eight years, US citizens have not been free in their own land. People who are citizens of this country, and disproportionately the mentally ill, children, and minorities, are being kicked out for no reason. If you think back to the Stat of the Day that centered on the increase in hate crimes, on of the new factors is crimes against Latinos due to the recent immigration debate.

So, we can see one of the nasty effects of racism in this country: people automatically assume that Latinos or Asians or blacks with African accents are here illegally. Are people so paranoid when it comes to someone with a British accent? Do we fear being taken over by the French and Germans? No. Clearly this debate on immigration is racially tinged, and is spilling over to impact the lives of American citizens. To make it worse, I fully expect the many will pay such offenses little mind, because racism has so warped our minds to think that such actions are justified, just as after 9/11 many felt it was completely reasonable to profile anyone who appeared Middle-Eastern.

The more I read and learn the more a realize how little this country has actually changed.

Speak For Yourself: Buchanan thinks more Latinos bad for US

Is Pat Buchanan racist? Is he a xenophobe who wants only whites to live in the United States? Well, there are lots of clips I could show you to let him answer that question for himself, but I'll post this more recent exchange with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchel.

Pat Buchanan, speak for yourself:

So, Buchanan sees a rising Latino population as a threat to the United States? Well, that's what he just said, isn't it? Not surprising, considering his earlier statements (I just can't help but post them):

I could probably make too many comments on this just for one post. But I must say that I am appalled by the notion that Buchanan thinks in order for the US to be successful as a nation, we must all, essentially, become white. It seems to me that he's saying we must all be assimilated into "traditional American" culture, which, let's face it, means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, a culture that has traditional accepted white male dominance. He openly hopes to return to earlier periods in our history, when immigration quotas favored western Europeans and essentially blocked Asians from coming to the United States. He sees a growing Latino population as a threat to our way of life. He referred to the 1960s as a time when cultural changes ruined our nation's culture. By the way, such changes included letting black people vote, letting brown people come to the United States, and treating women like children. They also included a shift in academics in which non-white people were actually taught about themselves in school, and actually learned that not everything good that was done in history was done by white people. People also started talking about oppressive things done to non-whites in history, such as slavery, colonization, and continued racism. Oh, the horrors.

Buchanan is very explicit in his argument that we must keep America white. My only question is, why is he still so respected? Trust that I'll have more to say on this in the coming days and weeks.

Stat of the Day: Hate Crime Increase

So, obviously, I'm not going to be able to do these EVERY day.

Also, feel free to submit a stat, and you can even submit one to counter one that I've posted, just be sure to include a source.

In 2006, the FBI reports a 7.8% increase in the number of hate crimes from the previous year.
Source: Human Rights First

As I can gather, this is the most recent information available.

After reading the Human Rights First analysis and then thinking about what has been going on over the past few years that could cause such an increase, the following comes to mind.

1. Persistent anger about 9/11. There's still a lot of people out there who are angry about the terrorist attacks and blame all Muslims or Middle-Easter persons.
2. Immigration. In 2006, people were hot about this issue. I suspect that the recent economic crisis doesn't help things. (side note: does this make anyone else think about about then Senator and candidate Obama's "bitter" remarks?). I fear that many Latinos have and will continue to fall victim to hate crimes because they are associated with illegal immigration, even if they themselves are U.S. citizens.
3. LGBT Rights. As this has become a more publicly contested issue, I suspect that more violence has been committed against members of the LGBT community. It was September of 2005 that NBA star Shaquille O'Neal helped arrest a man accused of attacking a gay couple (he does everything but shoot free throws well).

Overall, this is a disturbing trend, because it suggest not only that hatred is on the rise, not the decline, in this country, but that it is increasingly manifesting itself in violent and criminal behavior. While Latinos make up an increasing share of the U.S. population, they face increased violence. While members of the LGBT community gain more rights, they also face more violence. And, while we have a black president, we also have a population that has generated more threats on his life than for a typical president.

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.