Hate Crimes US Overview, June 29, 2016
Lucy Maness Warner

One conclusion I have come to in looking at these articles is that I am not in favor of complete “freedom of speech;” and that if the society or the individuals within it are measurably harmed, it should be punishable as a crime. Making our nation a cesspool of vicious actions toward all “outsiders” is an introduction to a state of chaos if it continues. I certainly do not think all the racist and other hateful speech (“free speech”) that we are having lately is good for our country, despite the fact that the far Rightwing individuals, no matter what their party, tend to cry out that their “rights” are being abridged.

Such a diatribe about unbounded individual rights is not a rational means of solving our growing societal problem; is directly harmful to the victims even if the assault isn’t physical in nature; and it’s hateful to all decent people who have a sense of fairness and empathy for other life forms. One of my father’s sayings was (misquoted) “Your rights end where my nose begins.” A better quotation comes from http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/15/liberty-fist-nose/ is “Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins.” According to “quoteinvestigator,” four (at least) men have been given as the possible originator of this statement, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.? John B. Finch? John Stuart Mill? Abraham Lincoln? Zechariah Chafee, Jr.?” Whoever said it, it is apropos. We are at a point at which we must move forward toward a greater level of civilization or fall back into barbarism. It’s fish or cut bait. There is much too much open hostility out on the streets these days.

The article below by “civilrights.org” is very long, but also detailed and informative, which gives me some idea as to where our laws in this country should go to work against the hate filled society that we are rapidly becoming again. When I was growing up in the 1950s it was a problem, but not one that was in the newspaper particularly, or at least not spoken in open terminology as it is today. It was more that the old Jim Crow laws were still on the books, with separate facilities in most public arenas and widespread white on black abuse was simply not punished. Consider the movie from a couple of years ago called “The Help.” People weren’t as socially aware as we are today, so pretty bad things happened with little or no penalty against the abuser.

We are, thank goodness, in a different generation now, with the current problems including subtler issues such as exclusion on the basis of a surprising group issue, such as the case recently of a Christian-owned bakery refusing to bake the cake for a gay couple’s wedding based on the owner’s personal religious convictions. That isn’t good, but it’s less harmful than requiring Black people to use a separate bathroom, which was still the case in Thomasville, NC in 1963.



http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/initiatives_awards/students_in_action/debate_hate.html
http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/nature-and-magnitude.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/free-speech-isnt-free/283672/
http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/nature-and-magnitude.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/



SO WHEN IS SPEECH ACTIONABLE?


http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/initiatives_awards/students_in_action/debate_hate.html

Students In Action
Debating the “Mighty Constitutional Opposites”

Debating Hate Speech

Hate speech is speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits. Should hate speech be discouraged? The answer is easy—of course! However, developing such policies runs the risk of limiting an individual’s ability to exercise free speech. When a conflict arises about which is more important—protecting community interests or safeguarding the rights of the individual—a balance must be found that protects the civil rights of all without limiting the civil liberties of the speaker.

In this country there is no right to speak fighting words—those words without social value, directed to a specific individual, that would provoke a reasonable member of the group about whom the words are spoken. For example, a person cannot utter a racial or ethnic epithet to another if those words are likely to cause the listener to react violently. However, under the First Amendment, individuals do have a right to speech that the listener disagrees with and to speech that is offensive and hateful.

Think about it. It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in a free society, you also have a duty to defend speech to which you may strongly object.

Acts Speak Louder than Words

One way to deal effectively with hate speech is to create laws and policies that discourage bad behavior but do not punish bad beliefs. Another way of saying this is to create laws and policies that do not attempt to define hate speech as hate crimes, or “acts.” In two recent hate crime cases, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that acts, but not speech, may be regulated by law.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), involved the juvenile court proceeding of a white 14-year-old who burned a cross on the front lawn of the only black family in a St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood. Burning a cross is a very hateful thing to do: it is one of the symbols of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that has spread hatred and harm throughout this country. The burning cross clearly demonstrated to this family that at least this youth did not welcome them in the neighborhood. The family brought charges, and the boy was prosecuted under a Minnesota criminal law that made it illegal to place, on public or private property, a burning cross, swastika, or other symbol likely to arouse “anger, alarm, or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender.” The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Minnesota law was unconstitutional because it violated the youth’s First Amendment free speech rights.

Note that the Court did not rule that the act itself—burning a cross on the family’s front lawn—was legal. In fact, the youth could have been held criminally responsible for damaging property or for threatening or intimidating the family. Instead, the law was defective because it improperly focused on the motivation for—the thinking that results in—criminal behavior rather than on criminal behavior itself. It attempted to punish the youth for the content of his message, not for his actions.

In the second case, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476 (1993), Mitchell and several black youth were outside a movie theater after viewing Mississippi Burning, in which several blacks are beaten. A white youth happened to walk by, and Mitchell yelled, “There goes a white boy; go get him!” Mitchell and the others attacked and beat the boy.

In criminal law, penalties are usually based on factors such as the seriousness of the act, whether it was accidental or intentional, and the harm it caused to the victim. It is also not unusual to have crimes treated more harshly depending upon who the victim is. For example, in most states battery (beating someone) is punished more harshly if the victim is a senior citizen, a young child, a police officer, or a teacher.

Under Wisconsin law, the penalty for battery is increased if the offender intentionally selects the victim “because of the race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation and national origin or ancestry of that person.” The Supreme Court ruled in Wisconsin v. Mitchell that this increased penalty did not violate the free speech rights of the accused. The Court reasoned that the penalty was increased because the act itself was directed at a particular victim, not because of Mitchell’s thoughts.

Libertarian and Communitarian Perspectives

There is a range of approaches to when hate speech might be regulated. On one end is the libertarian perspective; on the other, the communitarian. In both R.A.V. and Mitchell, the Supreme Court took the libertarian approach.

Libertarians believe that individuals have the right to free speech and that government should be able to limit it only for the most compelling reasons. Most libertarians recognize fighting words as an example of a sufficiently compelling reason to limit free speech. Notwithstanding the libertarian viewpoint, the courts have been careful to interpret this exception narrowly.

Communitarians take a different approach. They believe that the community’s well-being is society’s most important goal and that an individual’s right to free speech may be limited in the interests of community harmony. They believe that treating people with fairness and dignity justifies at least some free-speech restrictions-that eliminating or reducing hate speech is a sufficiently compelling goal to justify government regulation. Communitarians would expand the fighting words doctrine to allow for increased government regulation.

Can a middle ground be found—a way to accommodate both the communitarian and libertarian perspectives? Perhaps so. Government has the obligation to protect speech by disallowing laws that are too restrictive, yet it can also encourage individuals to respect each other.

Success on Campus

Here’s how one community recently approached an incidence of hate speech by calling attention to it rather than attempting to suppress it—by encouraging speech that pointed out how out of place the hate speech was in a community that values the dignity of all.

Matt Hale, a notorious racist, was recently asked to speak at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Hale is the leader of the World of the Creator, a white supremacist group. His presence on campus was controversial. Several students, faculty, and community members thought that the university should cancel his appearance. Instead, he was allowed to speak. Hale’s audience was not impressed. He came across as having a confusing set of beliefs that were out of place in a democratic, multicultural society. Several faculty and students spoke out against his message of hatred.

By allowing Hale to speak, the university recognized free speech rights but also provided a means for community members to respond. Communitarian and libertarian goals were both met.

Activities

Activities related to the hate speech debate.



http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/free-speech-isnt-free/283672/

Free Speech Isn't Free -- A system that tolerates "hate speech" is probably superior to the alternatives, but defenders of an absolute right can't pretend no one gets hurt.

GARRETT EPPS
FEB 7, 2014

Photograph -- Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church protest outside a prayer rally in Houston in 2011. (Richard Carson/Reuters)
RELATED STORY -- Jonathan Rauch: The Case for Hate Speech


Millions of Americans support free speech. They firmly believe that we are the only country to have free speech, and that anyone who even questions free speech had damn well better shut the #$%& up.

Case in point: In a recent essay in The Daily Beast, Fordham Law Professor Thane Rosenbaum notes that European countries and Israel outlaw certain kinds of speech—Nazi symbols, anti-Semitic slurs, and Holocaust denial, and speech that incites hatred on the basis of race, religion, and so forth. The American law of free speech, he argues, assumes that the only function of law is to protect people against physical harm; it tolerates unlimited emotional harm. Rosenbaum cites recent studies (regrettably, without links) that show that "emotional harm is equal in intensity to that experienced by the body, and is even more long-lasting and traumatic." Thus, the victims of hate speech, he argues, suffer as much as or more than victims of hate crime. "Why should speech be exempt from public welfare concerns when its social costs can be even more injurious [than that of physical injury]?"

I believe—strongly—in the free-speech system we have. But most of the responses to Rosenbaum leave me uneasy. I think defenders of free speech need to face two facts: First, the American system of free speech is not the only one; most advanced democracies maintain relatively open societies under a different set of rules. Second, our system isn't cost-free. Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it. The only mature way to judge the system is to look at both sides of the ledger.

Most journalistic defenses of free speech take the form of "shut up and speak freely." The Beast itself provides Exhibit A: Cultural news editor Michael Moynihan announced that "we're one of the few countries in the Western world that takes freedom of speech seriously," and indignantly defended it against "those who pretend to be worried about trampling innocents in a crowded theater but are more interested in trampling your right to say whatever you damn well please." To Moynihan, Rosenbaum could not possibly be sincere or principled; he is just a would-be tyrant. The arguments about harm were "thin gruel"—not even worth answering. Moynihan's response isn't really an argument; it's a defense of privilege, like a Big Tobacco paean to the right to smoke in public.

In contrast to this standard-issue tantrum is a genuinely thoughtful and appropriate response from Jonathan Rauch at The Volokh Conspiracy, now a part of the Washington Post's web empire. Rauch responds that painful though hate speech may be for individual members of minorities or other targeted groups, its toleration is to their great collective benefit, because in a climate of free intellectual exchange hateful and bigoted ideas are refuted and discredited, not merely suppressed .... That is how we gay folks achieved the stunning gains we've made in America: by arguing toward truth.

I think he's right. But the argument isn't complete without conceding something most speech advocates don't like to admit:

Free speech does do harm.

It does a lot of harm.

And while it may produce social good much of the time, there's no guarantee—no "invisible hand" of the intellectual market—that ensures that on balance it does more good than harm. As Rauch says, it has produced a good result in the case of the gay-rights movement. But sometimes it doesn't.

Europeans remember a time when free speech didn't produce a happy ending. They don't live in a North Korea-style dystopia. They do "take free speech seriously," and in fact many of them think their system of free speech is freer than ours. Their view of human rights was forged immediately after World War II, and one lesson they took from it was that democratic institutions can be destroyed from within by forces like the Nazis who use mass communication to dehumanize whole races and religions, preparing the population to accept exclusion and even extermination. For that reason, some major human-rights instruments state that "incitement" to racial hatred, and "propaganda for war," not only may but must be forbidden. The same treaties strongly protect freedom of expression and opinion, but they set a boundary at what we call "hate speech."

It's a mistake to think that the U.S. system goes back to the foundation of the republic. At the end of World War II, in fact, our law was about the same as Europe's is today. The Supreme Court in Beauharnais v. Illinois (1952) upheld a state "group libel" law that made it a crime to publish anything that "exposes the citizens of any race, color, creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy." European countries outlawed fascist and neo-Nazi parties; in the 1951 case Dennis v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute that in essence outlawed the Communist Party as a "conspiracy" to advocate overthrowing the U.S. government. Justice Robert H. Jackson, who had been the chief U.S. prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, concurred in Dennis, warning that totalitarianism had produced "the intervention between the state and the citizen of permanently organized, well financed, semi-secret and highly disciplined political organizations." A totalitarian party "denies to its own members at the same time the freedom to dissent, to debate, to deviate from the party line, and enforces its authoritarian rule by crude purges, if nothing more violent." Beauharnais, Dennis, and similar cases were criticized at the time, and today they seem grievously wrong. But many thoughtful people supported those results at the time.

[COMMENT: I have inserted this definition because the term “obloquy” was unfamiliar to me. Definition: Simple Definition of “obloquy” -- 1: harsh or critical statements about someone, 2: the condition of someone who lost the respect of other people]


U.S. law only began to protect hateful speech during the 1960s. The reason, in retrospect, is clear—repressive Southern state governments were trying to criminalize the civil-rights movement for its advocacy of change. White Southerners claimed (and many really believed) that the teachings of figures like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X were "hate speech" and would produce "race war." By the end of the decade, the Court had held that governments couldn't outlaw speech advocating law violation or even violent revolution. Neither Black Panthers nor the KKK nor Nazi groups could be marked off as beyond the pale purely on the basis of their message.

Those decisions paved the way for triumphs by civil rights, feminist, and gay-rights groups. But let's not pretend that nobody got hurt along the way. The price for our freedom—a price in genuine pain and intimidation—was paid by Holocaust survivors in Skokie and by civil-rights and women's-rights advocates subjected to vile abuse in public and private, and by gay men and lesbians who endured decades of deafening homophobic propaganda before the tide of public opinion turned.

Free speech can't be reaffirmed by drowning out its critics. It has to be defended as, in the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "an experiment, as all life is an experiment."

I admire people on both sides who admit that we can't be sure we've drawn the line properly. In Dennis, the case about Communists, Justice Felix Frankfurter voted to uphold the convictions. That vote is a disgrace; but it is slightly mitigated by this sentence in his concurrence: "Suppressing advocates of overthrow inevitably will also silence critics who do not advocate overthrow but fear that their criticism may be so construed .... It is a sobering fact that, in sustaining the convictions before us, we can hardly escape restriction on the interchange of ideas." When Holmes at last decided that subversive speech should be protected, he did so knowing full well that his rule, if adopted, might begin the death agony of democracy. "If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community," he wrote in his dissent in Gitlow v. New York, "the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way."

The reason that we allow speech cannot be that it is harmless. It must be that we prefer that people harm each other, and society, through speech than through bullets and bombs. American society is huge, brawling, and deeply divided against itself. Social conflict and change are bruising, ugly things, and in democracies they are carried on with words. That doesn't mean there aren't casualties, and it doesn't mean the right side will always win.

For that reason, questions about the current state of the law shouldn't be met with trolling and condescension. If free speech cannot defend itself in free debate, then it isn't really free speech at all; it's just a fancier version of the right to smoke.



This Atlantic article above on the problems of tolerating hate speech alongside the constitutionally declared freedom of speech looks at the pros and cons of completely free speech. I personally do value free speech in general, because how else can we discuss and decide controversies? However, hate speech of any kind is not a valid part of that approach to a meeting of the minds, and instead stirs up such a dangerous level of discord that we could find ourselves living in an environment like the old Western stories – Gunsmoke, etc. – in which a gang of riotous gun-carrying men totally disrupt order, and then an equally violent good guy steps in and guns the bad guys down. That may stop the immediate problem, but it isn’t justice.

In modern times the “good bad guy” might be Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character, for instance. His law is might over right. The image of police in our current art forms such as movies and TV, as being more and more violent is not harmless. Many people’s minds are subject to being swayed by such presentations. Hate speech is an instantaneous trigger to a great deal of group and/or individual violence, and therefore should be illegal. That’s the typical cause of religious radicalization nowadays. ISIS puts thrilling, beautifully produced and violent videos on the Internet, and young immature men who “want to belong” to a larger cause, obediently go down to the bank, pull out their cash and take off to Syria, or take their AK47s and shoot up a gay bar. That’s the effect of hate speech.

Recent “free speech” advocates, mainly from the Tea Party, White Supremacists, anti-government types like the Sovereign Citizen groups, the Religious Right -- who are advocating setting up Christianity as the American state religion – as well as the numerous if ragtag Militia groups, all of whom have been complaining about the abridgement of their rights to discriminate against anyone; and that everyone -- against whom we who are liberal or Progressive in our views must speak out -- has a perfect right to be a part of the mob cheering at a lynching. I have to disagree with that viewpoint. I am strongly of the opinion that if our exercise of “Rights” results in grievous harm to anyone else, then it is not defensible as a “right” at all. We need to sit down together and rewrite those darned laws to prevent such an unfair event from happening.

In Europe of the WWI and WWII years, it was Hitler and his cohorts raging against all the terrible things that “Jews do” – like “eat babies” -- but it’s the same thing as our situation today. Hitler had the backing of many, many European Christians, or he couldn’t have carried that off. It wasn’t just that Hitler was a bad, bad man, but that the society itself had at least that one very, very bad characteristic.

His people were elected democratically, as our Tea Partiers have been here. Coup by democracy! I want to say that’s different because this is the USA, but I don’t think it is. People are people, and people are deeply flawed. We are vulnerable as a population and as a government to drifting into a condition of deep evil, and we must recognize that, so we don’t have an American Holocaust of our own. This threat to democracy is taking place within our country, and the source is us. That makes me sad. Allowing someone like Trump to be elected will be a disaster, because it’s clear where he wants to lead us.

We need to stop that. The well-known exceptions to totally free speech, such as the “crowded theater” example, the advocating of the overthrow of the government and the concept of “fighting words,” do modify such a right. To me, hate speech is clearly and uncontrovertibly “fighting words” rather than “free speech,” and as such it definitely shouldn’t be allowed. What’s the difference between calling someone a “retard” and calling them a “Kike” or a “Nigger?” There really isn’t much difference. The only reason for such language is that we’re too angry to care what we say, and of course, to deeply wound our sparring partner.

Likewise, refusing service to, and otherwise denying equal civil rights to anyone, on the basis of any group identity or personal characteristic, is harmful to society as a whole and inexcusable. It breaks up our group unity, which is based on shared positive beliefs, into splinter groups with very sharp edges, and removes from us our humanity, at least temporarily. To me, that means that it shouldn’t be allowed legally, in addition to the basic immorality of such things. It is very difficult to convince people rationally and emotionally to refrain from doing hateful, unfair and damaging acts based on some innate physical characteristic, but it absolutely should not be sanctioned under the law. That’s why the 1964 Civil Rights Law and the Voter Rights law were necessary to our society, though many of my Southern family and friends may disagree. To have the law allow one CLASS within society to have all the rights and the other classes to have none, results in a shameful situation, and merely compounds the problem, giving bullies the legal right to abuse. That’s simply disgusting.

Injured parties can bring a lawsuit if the country has fair and strong laws to prevent gross unfairness, but if the damaging behavior is allowed by some loopholes in the law, then there is no way to stop the emotional/verbal/physical damages from abuse from occurring over and over again.

That’s why civil rights marches, even if they are somewhat “disorderly,” (like closing down a street to traffic as compared to a formal debate), should by all means be legal. It is absolutely necessary, in fact. That’s how the American Revolution began, we should remember, and having the right to protest and otherwise test laws will, I believe, give us the social flexibility to avoid a bloody and very physical revolution.

I do believe that we are close to a dangerous tipping point on this “freedom to offend” trend in our society at this time. What happens when people are abused over and over again is that they get to the point that they will fight rather than talk, and blood will be spilled. If they are angry enough, they won’t cower down in fear, either. They’ll pick up a brick and throw it. That level of genuine “disorder,” and the obscene dishonesty and unfairness of things like segregating all human functions by race, is the situation we are facing today, with the Tea Party and Patriot and White Supremacy groups on one end of the spectrum; and idealistic ethically oriented people on the other. People who have criticized or laughed at Bernie Sanders for being foolishly idealistic have it wrong. He is a soldier.

Those in the far Right want to wage a war against all liberal thought – just as ISIS does -- which will tear our people and government apart. Real Christians shouldn’t be fostering hate over love. Maybe love is too difficult to achieve, but we should be able to commit ourselves fully to fairness at least. Life must NOT be solely about “winning and losing.” Our way of life in this country, and human decency itself, are at stake if we can’t manage to do that.

I will point up one more thing. Speech is inevitably a form of persuasion. Persuasion to incite violent harm, from assault of any person to “the overthrow of the US government,” is not allowed, so it seems to me that the wording in the Constitution should be broadened considerably to prevent also the growing hate movements of today from ranting about “the Jews,” etc., as being actionable in a court of law. I don’t know how great a penalty I would assign to it, but it is far from being unimportant or harmless.

The vileness that has emerged in the last 30 years or so is making our country difficult to live within, in my opinion, and I dread the thought of an actual “race war” as some Rightists have been predicting lately – and they do it almost with glee. That is not only infuriating, it’s frightening. Race war wouldn’t be acceptable on any level, except to those who want to fight in it. We need to consider the likely results when we vote this November. A really dangerous man is hoping he will win, and I’m praying that he won’t!

As for those more radical Tea Partiers and Militia groups who are actually advocating the overthrow of the government, I found the following. Speech is not yet totally free on this subject.



http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread556577/pg1

Planning on Overthrowing the government? It's a Crime!

uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 115 > § 2384

Seditious conspiracy

“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

You could be subject to a fine. Or you could be jailed for up to 20 years.

Sorry, your little song and dance with the Declaration of Independence doesn't cut it. It in fact is a crime to conspire to bring down the United States Government by force. Sorry internet revolutionaries. But those are the facts. In fact in a way you are putting a lot of liability on the ownership of ATS for discussing such things on a public forum.”



This article gives a broader view on how our justice system and laws are constructed. The article above speaks of “organic law” and “natural law.”:

https://www.quora.com/Do-U-S-citizens-have-the-right-to-overthrow-the-U-S-government-If-so-please-provide-proof-the-constitution

Gary Porter, I teach Saturday Seminars on the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions.
1.7k Views · Gary has 120+ answers in U.S. Constitution

The Constitution is not our only document of government in this country. Four documents have been declared by Congress to represent our "Organic Law:" The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and The Northwest Ordinance of 1787. While the Supreme Court has rendered conflicting opinions as to the legal effect that should be given to Organic Law, we should note that the Declaration is on equal footing with the Constitution in that context.

The Court has called the Declaration the "thought and spirit" of our law while the Constitution is the body and letter of our law. The Constitution was a voluntary compact of either the states or the people, depending on your point of view, but both agree it was voluntary. Compacts entered voluntarily can generally be exited voluntarily unless the exit is positively proscribed by the compact. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits the voluntary withdrawal of a state or a portion of the people from the Constitution’s compact (The Articles of Confederation were declared to create a “perpetual league of friendship,” but were of course replaced by the Constitution. The Declaration, on the other hand, positively expresses a right, based on natural law, [see below] of replacing one government with another when the former has proven, through a long "train of abuses and usurpations" to have become tyrannical.

Unfortunately, Americans have largely abandoned natural law theory and it was forcefully displaced in most law schools by “legal positivism” in the late 1800’s by the efforts of Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of the Harvard Law School.

To abandon natural law in a legal system does not mean it no longer exists, only that it no longer enjoys the prominence it once did. Natural law is making a resurgence in some quarters.

If you want the American people to believe they can still replace one governmental system with another (which is what is generally afoot when an “overthrow” occurs) you should re-introduce them to natural law.



http://www.dictionary.com/browse/northwest-ordinance

Northwest Ordinance

noun
1.
the act of Congress in 1787 providing for the government of the Northwest Territory and setting forth the steps by which its subdivisions might become states.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2016.
Cite This Source
Northwest Ordinance in Culture Expand
Northwest Ordinance definition

A law passed in 1787 to regulate the settlement of the Northwest Territory, which eventually was divided into several states of the Middle West. The United States was governed under the Articles of Confederation at the time. The Northwest Ordinance organized the territory into townships of thirty-six square miles each and provided for self-government and religious toleration in the territory. Slavery was prohibited.



http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-positivism/

Legal Positivism
First published Fri Jan 3, 2003

“Legal positivism is the thesis that the existence and content of law depends on social facts and not on its merits. The English jurist John Austin (1790-1859) formulated it thus: “The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry. …. Whether a society has a legal system depends on the presence of certain structures of governance, not on the extent to which it satisfies ideals of justice, democracy, or the rule of law. What laws are in force in that system depends on what social standards its officials recognize as authoritative; for example, legislative enactments, judicial decisions, or social customs. …. According to positivism, law is a matter of what has been posited (ordered, decided, practiced, tolerated, etc.); as we might say in a more modern idiom, positivism is the view that law is a social construction. Austin thought the thesis “simple and glaring.” While it is probably the dominant view among analytically inclined philosophers of law, it is also the subject of competing interpretations together with persistent criticisms and misunderstandings.”



http://www.dictionary.com/browse/natural-law

natural law

Examples Word Origin
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com

noun
1.
a principle or body of laws considered as derived from nature, right reason, or religion and as ethically binding in human society.

AD 1350-1400; Middle English

Compare “positive law.”



British Dictionary definitions for natural law

noun
1.
an ethical belief or system of beliefs supposed to be inherent in human nature and discoverable by reason rather than revelation
2.
a nonlogically necessary truth; law of nature See also nomological (sense 2)
3.
the philosophical doctrine that the authority of the legal system or of certain laws derives from their justifiability by reason, and indeed that a legal system which cannot be so justified has no authority



National Socialist Party of America, march in Skokie IL in 1977, a current name for what is actually a NeoNazi group.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie

National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977) (also known as Smith v. Collin; sometimes referred to as the Skokie Affair), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with freedom of assembly. The outcome was that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the use of the swastika is a symbolic form of free speech entitled to First Amendment protections and determined that the swastika itself did not constitute "fighting words." Its ruling allowed the National Socialist Party of America to march.[1]

Background[edit]

In 1977 Frank Collin, the leader of National Socialist Party of America, announced the party's intention to march through Skokie, Illinois. In the predominantly Jewish community, one in six residents was a Holocaust survivor or was directly related to one.[2] Originally, the NSPA had planned a political rally in Marquette Park in Chicago; however the Chicago authorities blocked these plans by requiring the NSPA to post a public safety insurance bond and by banning political demonstrations in Marquette Park.

On behalf of the NSPA, the ACLU challenged the injunction issued by the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois that prohibited marchers at the proposed Skokie rally from wearing Nazi uniforms or displaying swastikas. The ACLU was represented by civil rights attorney Burton Joseph.[3][4] The challengers argued that the injunction violated the First Amendment rights of the marchers to express themselves.

Prior history[edit]
Both the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court refused to stay the injunction. The case was sent to the Supreme Court of the United States.[1]

On June 14, 1977, the Supreme Court ordered Illinois to hold a hearing on their ruling against the National Socialist Party of America, emphasizing that "if a State seeks to impose a restraint on First Amendment rights, it must provide strict procedural safeguards, including immediate appellate review... Absent such review, the State must instead allow a stay. The order of the Illinois Supreme Court constituted a denial of that right."[1] On remand, the Illinois Appellate Court eliminated the injunction against everything but the swastika. The Illinois Supreme Court heard the case again, focusing on the First Amendment implications of display of the swastika. Skokie attorneys argued that for Holocaust survivors, seeing the swastika was like being physically attacked.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the use of the swastika is a symbolic form of free speech entitled to First Amendment protections and determined that the swastika itself did not constitute "fighting words." Its ruling allowed the National Socialist Party of America to march.[1]

Effect of the decision[edit]
In the summer of 1978, in response to the Supreme Court's decision, some Holocaust survivors set up a museum on the Main Street of Skokie to commemorate those who had died in the concentration camps. Ultimately the NSPA failed to carry through its march in Skokie. (Gaining permission in Chicago, they marched there instead).

See also[edit]
Skokie (film)



This last article by civilrights.org is fascinating, but long, so read as much of this as you can tolerate, and if you want even more, go to their website. The things that are in this blog explain fully why I have become fairly “radical,” politically lately. I read the news almost every day and pick what seem to me to be the most important articles, and in so doing I have uncovered things that shock me. I always knew I didn’t like the Tea Partiers (or Tea Baggers as a friend of mine calls them), but I now outrightly fear them. They have brought with them such a collection of anti-American, anti-democratic, and anti-humanitarian views that I don’t know what this country is going to look like in ten years.



http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/nature-and-magnitude.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Confronting the New Faces of Hate: Hate Crimes In America 2009
LCCR Education Fund

Hate Crimes in America: The Nature and Magnitude of the Problem

For many Americans, the election of President Barack Obama appeared to close the book on a long history of inequality. But the spate of racially-motivated hate crimes and violence against minorities and immigrants that occurred in the final weeks before and after Election Day makes clear that a final victory over prejudice and racial hostility remains elusive.

Violence committed against individuals because of their race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation remains a serious problem in America. In the nearly twenty years since the 1990 enactment of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA), the number of hate crimes reported has consistently ranged around 7,500 or more annually, or nearly one every hour of the day. These data almost certainly understate the true numbers of hate crimes committed. Victims may be fearful of authorities and thus may not report these crimes. Or local authorities do not accurately report these violent incidents as hate crimes and thus fail to report them to the federal government.

All Americans have a stake in reducing hate crimes. These crimes are intended to intimidate not only the individual victim, but all members of the victim's community, and even members of other communities historically victimized by hate. By making these victims and communities fearful, angry, and suspicious of other groups — and of the authorities who are charged with protecting them — these incidents fragment and isolate our communities, tearing apart the interwoven fabric of American society.

In one of the most disturbing developments of recent years, some anti-immigration groups, claiming to warn people about the impact of illegal immigration, have inflamed the immigration debate by invoking the dehumanizing, racist stereotypes and bigotry of hate groups. It is no coincidence that as some voices in the anti-immigration debate have demonized immigrants as "invaders" who poison our communities with disease and criminality, haters have taken matters into their own hands.

With society and individuals under increasing stress due to unemployment and hard economic times, a tough law enforcement response to hate crimes, as well as education and programming to reduce violent bigotry, is urgently needed. In 1992, the American Psychological Association reported that "prejudice and discrimination" were leading causes of violence among American youth.1 Failure to address this unique type of crime could cause an isolated incident to explode into widespread community tension.

Eliminating prejudice requires that Americans develop respect for cultural differences and establish dialogue across racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious boundaries. Education, awareness, and acceptance of group differences are the cornerstones of a long-term solution to prejudice, discrimination, and bigotry. Hate crime laws and effective responses to hate violence by public officials and law enforcement authorities can play an essential role in deterring and preventing these crimes, creating a healthier and stronger society for all Americans.

Hate In America: A 2009 Environmental Scan

Since Congress enacted the Hate Crime Statistics Act in 1990, the FBI has been mandated to collect hate crime data from law enforcement agencies across America. Although the FBI's annual HCSA report clearly undercounts hate crimes, as will be discussed below, it still provides the best snapshot of the magnitude of the hate violence problem in America. As the 2007 HCSA report, the most recent available, makes clear, violence directed at individuals, houses of worship, and community institutions because of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin remains unacceptably high and continues to be a serious problem in America.

As documented by the FBI's 2007 HCSA report:

Approximately 51 percent of the reported hate crimes were race-based, with 18.4 percent on the basis of religion, 16.6 percent on the basis of sexual orientation, and 13.2 percent on the basis of ethnicity.

Approximately 69 percent of the reported race-based crimes were directed against blacks, 19 percent of the crimes were directed against whites, and 4.9 percent of the crimes were directed against Asians or Pacific Islanders. The number of hate crimes directed against individuals on the basis of their national origin/ethnicity increased to 1,007 in 2007 from 984 in 2006.

For the fourth year in a row, the number of reported crimes directed against Hispanics increased — from 576 in 2006 to 595 in 2007.

Though the overall number of hate crimes decreased slightly, the number of hate crimes directed at gay men and lesbians increased almost six percent — from 1,195 in 2006 to 1,265 in 2007.

Religion-based crimes decreased, from 1,462 in 2006 to 1,400 in 2007, but the number of reported anti-Jewish crimes increased slightly, from 967 in 2006 to 969 in 2007 — 12.7 percent of all hate crimes reported in 2007 — and 69 percent of the reported hate crimes based on religion.

Reported crimes against Muslims decreased from 156 to 115, 8.2 percent of the religion-based crimes. This is still more than four times the number of hate crimes reported against Muslims in 2000.2

The FBI HCSA Data Undercounts the Number of Hate Crimes

In 2007, 13,241 U.S. law enforcement agencies participated in the FBI's HCSA data collection effort — the largest number of police agencies in the seventeen-year history of the Act. Yet, only 2,025 of these participating agencies — 15.3 percent — reported even a single hate crime to the FBI.

As in past years, the vast majority of the participating agencies (84.7 percent) reported zero hate crimes. This does not mean that they failed to report; rather, they affirmatively reported to the FBI that no hate crimes occurred in their jurisdiction. In addition, more than 4,000 U.S. police agencies did not participate in this HCSA data collection effort — including at least four agencies in cities with populations of over 250,000 and at least 21 agencies in cities with populations between 100,000 and 250,000.

In contrast to the FBI's HCSA data, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2005 reported sharply higher numbers of hate crimes committed in the U.S.:

An annual average of 210,000 hate crime victimizations occurred from July 2000 through December 2003. During that period an average of 191,000 hate crime incidents involving one or more victims occurred annually. Victims also indicated that 92,000 of these hate crime victimizations were reported to police. These estimates were derived from victim reports to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).3

Studies by independent researchers and law enforcement organizations reveal that some of the most likely targets of hate violence are also the least likely to report these crimes to the police. There are many cultural and language barriers to reporting hate crimes to law enforcement officials. Some immigrant hate crime victims fear reprisals or deportation if incidents are reported. Many new Americans come from countries in which residents mistrust and would never call the police — especially if they were in trouble. Gay, lesbian, and transgender victims, facing hostility, discrimination, and, possibly, family pressures may also be reluctant to come forward to report these crimes.

All this evidence strongly suggests a significant underreporting of hate crimes in the United States.

The Legal Landscape: The Scope of Hate Crime Laws in America

The vast majority of hate crimes are investigated and prosecuted by state and local law enforcement officials. In general, a hate crime is a criminal offense intentionally directed at an individual or property in whole or in part because of the victim's actual or perceived race, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability. However, each state defines the criminal activity that constitutes a hate crime differently, and the breadth of coverage of these laws varies from state to state.

Hate crimes are generally not separate and distinct criminal offenses. At present, 45 states and the District of Columbia have enacted hate crime penalty enhancement laws, many based on a model statute drafted by the Anti-Defamation League in 1981. Under these laws, a perpetrator can face more severe penalties if the prosecutor can demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the victim was intentionally targeted by the perpetrator on the basis of his or her personal characteristics. Almost every state penalty enhancement hate crime law explicitly includes crimes directed against an individual on the basis of race, religion, and national origin/ethnicity. Currently, however, only 30 states and the District of Columbia include sexual orientation-based crimes in these hate crimes statutes; only 26 states and the District of Columbia include coverage of gender-based crimes; only eleven states and the District of Columbia include coverage of gender identity-based crimes; and only 30 states and the District of Columbia include coverage for disability-based crimes.


Next Section: The State of Hate: Escalating Hate Violence Against Immigrants
http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/escalating-violence.html

The State of Hate: Escalating Hate Violence Against Immigrants

The increase in hate crimes directed against Hispanics for the fourth consecutive year is particularly noteworthy and worrisome because the number of hate crimes committed against other racial, ethnic, and religious groups has over the same period shown either no increase or a decrease.

Anti-Hispanic Hate Crime Incidents
Chart showing the number of anti-Hispanic hate crimes rising from 426 in 2003 to 595 in 2007.
Source: FBI data

The increase in violence against Hispanics correlates closely with the increasingly heated debate over Comprehensive Immigration Reform and an escalation in the level of anti-immigrant vitriol on radio, television, and the Internet. While reasonable people can and will disagree about the parameters of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, in some instances, the commentary about immigration reform has not been reasonable; it has been inflammatory. Warned an April 2009 assessment from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), "in some cases, anti-Immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent."

This toxic environment, in which hateful rhetoric targets immigrants while the number of hate crimes against Hispanics and others perceived to be immigrants steadily increases, has caused a heightened sense of fear in communities around the country.

The Role of Extremist Anti-Immigration Groups

Some groups opposing immigration reform, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA, have portrayed immigrants as responsible for numerous societal ills, often using stereotypes and outright bigotry. While these groups, and other similar organizations, have strived to position themselves as legitimate, mainstream advocates against illegal immigration in America, a closer look at the public record reveals that some of these organizations have disturbing links to or relationships with extremists in the anti-Immigration movement. These seemingly "legitimate" advocates against illegal immigration are frequently quoted in the mainstream media, have been called to testify before Congress, and often hold meetings with lawmakers and other public figures. This is one of the most disturbing developments of the past few years: the legitimization and mainstreaming of virulently anti-immigrant rhetoric that veers dangerously close to — and too often crosses the line beyond civil discourse over contentious immigration policy issues.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) have become increasingly concerned about the virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric employed by a handful of groups and coalitions that have tried to position themselves as legitimate, mainstream advocates against illegal immigration in America. Recently, SPLC published The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance4 , which investigated three of these groups and found:

Three Washington, D.C.-based immigration-restriction organizations stand at the nexus of the American nativist movement: the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. Although on the surface they appear quite different — the first, the country's best-known anti-immigrant lobbying group; the second, an "independent" think tank; and the third, a powerful grassroots organizer — they are fruits of the same poisonous tree.

FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the "puppeteer" of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots. Tanton has for decades been at the heart of the white nationalist scene. He has met with leading white supremacists, promoted anti-Semitic ideas, and associated closely with the leaders of a eugenicist foundation once described by a leading newspaper as a "neo-Nazi organization." He has made a series of racist statements about Latinos and worried that they were out-breeding whites. At one point, he wrote candidly that to maintain American culture, "a European-American majority" is required.

FAIR, which Tanton founded and where he remains on the board, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has also hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

CIS was conceived by Tanton and began life as a program of FAIR. CIS presents itself as a scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies meant to serve "the broad national interest." But the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked, and it has frequently manipulated data to achieve the results it seeks. Its executive director last fall posted an item on the conservative National Review Online website about Washington Mutual, a bank that had earlier issued a press release about its inclusion on a list of "Business Diversity Elites" compiled by Hispanic Business magazine. Over a copy of the bank's press release, the CIS leader posted a headline — "Cause and Effect?" — that suggested a link between the bank's opening its ranks to Latinos and its subsequent collapse.

Like CIS, NumbersUSA bills itself as an organization that operates on its own and rejects racism completely. In fact, NumbersUSA was for the first five years of its existence a program of U.S. Inc., a foundation run by Tanton to fund numerous nativist groups, and its leader was an employee of that foundation for a decade. He helped edit Tanton's racist journal, The Social Contract, and was personally introduced by Tanton to a leader of the Pioneer Fund. He also edited a book by Tanton and another Tanton employee that was banned by Canadian border officials as hate literature and on one occasion spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group which has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity."

Together, FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA form the core of the nativist lobby in America. In 2007, they were key players in derailing bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that had been expected by many observers to pass. Today, these organizations are frequently treated as if they were legitimate, mainstream commentators on immigration. But the truth is that they were all conceived and birthed by a man who sees America under threat by nonwhite immigrants. And they have never strayed far from their roots.5

The Infiltration of Mainstream Media

The increasing number of shrill anti-Immigration reform commentaries from high profile national media personalities, including CNN's Lou Dobbs and Talk Show Network's The Savage Nation host Michael Savage, correlates closely with the increase in hate crimes against Hispanics. There is a direct connection between the tenor of this rhetoric and the daily lives of immigrants, and many fear that the unintended consequence of media celebrities vilifying immigrants will be an atmosphere in which some people will act on these demonizing screeds, violently targeting immigrants and those perceived to be immigrants.

The frequent appearance of extremist groups such as FAIR on mainstream media programs and even at Congressional hearings is extremely worrisome. After reviewing FAIR's virulent rhetoric, SPLC found:

None of this — or any other material evidencing the bigotry and racism that courses through the group — seems to have affected FAIR's media standing. In 2008, the group was quoted in mainstream media outlets nearly 500 times. FAIR staff have been featured several times on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," along with countless appearances on other television news shows. Dobbs even ran his radio program from a FAIR event in Washington, D.C. this past September. And, perhaps most remarkably of all, FAIR has been taken seriously by Congress, claiming on its home page that it has been asked to testify on immigration bills "more than any other organization in America."6

As Alex Nogales, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) has noted, "We are very respectful of the First Amendment and free speech, but the hateful rhetoric, particularly against the immigrant minority communities, espoused by irresponsible TV and radio talk show hosts on American airwaves needs to be addressed." NHMC has undertaken a study to quantify hate speech in commercial radio, petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open an inquiry into hate speech on the nation's airwaves, and requested that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) update its 1993 report, The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crime.7 In that report, NTIA found "deeply troubling" examples where "telecommunications has been used to advocate or encourage the commission of hate crimes." But the report concluded that "the extent to which such messages (of hate) actually lead to the commission of crimes is unclear."8

On July 5, 2007, Michael Savage [SEE below Wikipedia on Savage] suggested America would be a better place if students staging a hunger strike in the hope of securing immigration reform legislation starved to death:

SAVAGE: Then there's the story of college students who are fasting out here in the Bay Area. They're illegal aliens and they want green cards simply because they're students. I don't understand what — how this two and two adds up. I would say, let them fast until they starve to death, then that solves the problem. Because then we won't have a problem about giving them green cards because they're illegal aliens; they don't belong here to begin with. They broke into the country; they're criminals.9

Like Savage, Lou Dobbs has also stated on his CNN show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, "illegal aliens are criminals." (Lou Dobbs Tonight transcript, 4/6/05). As NCLR has pointed out, illegal immigrants are not considered criminals under current U.S. law. NCLR has chronicled many of Lou Dobbs's other comments made on CNN about immigrants and immigration reform:

Dobbs has used the term "anchor babies" to refer to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, suggesting inaccurately that having a U.S. citizen child is a means of acquiring legal immigration status or being protected from deportation. (Lou Dobbs Tonight transcript, 3/31/05).

. . . .

After Obama's election victory in November, white supremacist online activity spiked, with people posting hundreds of messages to online forums. White supremacist groups and individuals claimed that the Obama presidency, the immigration issue, and tough economic times would serve as powerful catalysts for recruiting more people to the white supremacist movement. Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement, the largest Neo-Nazi group in America, said interest in the NSM "has really spiked up," but would not reveal by how much.18 Don Black, a 55 year-old former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, claimed more than 2,000 people joined his website on the day after Obama's election, up from 80 on an ordinary day. Started in 1995, Black's website is one of the oldest and largest hate group sites, now claiming 110,000 members. As David Duke, a former Klan leader who was once a member of the Louisiana legislature, has said, Obama is a "visual aid" that galvanizes the white supremacist movement.19

According to Schoep, extremists are also exploiting the economic crisis, spreading propaganda that blames minorities and immigrants for the subprime mortgage meltdown. "Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that's how movements like ours gain a foothold," he said. "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people."20 Membership in the National Socialist Movement has grown by 40 percent in recent months, according to Schoep, the "most dramatic growth" since the mid-1990s, mostly because of the nation's dire economic circumstances. "You have an American work force facing massive unemployment. And you have presidents and politicians flinging open the borders telling them to take the few jobs left while our men are in soup kitchens."21

In Pennsylvania, where the Hispanic population has increased 41 percent from 2000 through 2007, "Keystone United," a hate group that recently changed its name from "Keystone State Skinheads," has used the immigration issue to recruit new members. "A lot of these small working-class towns are being invaded by different types of people," said Douglas Myers, one of Keystone United's founders. USA Today described Keystone United as a group that "speaks out for the rights of whites being pushed aside by newcomers." The group plans family-friendly outings, meets in public libraries, and avoids the violence traditionally associated with skinheads. "It's not the footage from the ‘80s with people burning crosses. It's a very healthy environment," said Myers.22

Ann Van Dyke of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission said of Keystone United: "It appears they are tapping into and fanning the flames of mainstream America's fear of immigrants. They are increasingly using the language of Main Street, things like, ‘We want safe communities to raise our children.'"23

"Many white supremacist groups are going more mainstream," said Jack Levin, a Northeastern University criminologist who studies hate crime. "They are eliminating the sheets and armbands. … The groups realize if they want to be attractive to middle-class types, they need to look middle-class." Levin estimated fewer than 50,000 people are members of white supremacist groups, but he says their influence is growing with a more sophisticated approach.24

DHS assesses that since the 2008 election, right-wing extremists "have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers."


The State of Hate: Exploiting the Internet to Promote Hatred

Extremists have taken advantage of the open forums and venues on the Internet, as well as new technologies, to promote their bigoted ideology. Whereas hate mongers once had to stand on street corners and hand out mimeographed leaflets to passersby, the Internet has allowed extremists to access a potential audience of millions — including impressionable youth. It has also facilitated communication among like-minded bigots across borders and oceans, anonymously and cheaply enhancing their ability to promote and recruit for their cause.

During the period 2005-2008, white supremacists spread their hate messages and recruited new members through the use of social networking on mainstream sites such as MySpace or Facebook and extremist sites such as NewSaxon. Thousands of white supremacists have flocked to these sites, which allow them to link to other individuals much more easily than web-based forums or discussion groups. The two white supremacists arrested in the fall of 2008 for plotting a racist shooting spree and assassination attempt on Barack Obama were reportedly introduced to each other by a mutual friend on a social networking website. Even members of racist prison gangs have flocked to these sites and use them regularly.

In 2008, there has been a marked increase in anti-Semitic material in online discussion groups hosted on such mainstream websites as Yahoo!, Google, and AOL. Although there have been anti-Semitic comments on various online groups for some time, the number of these postings has doubled on Yahoo! Finance message boards as a result of the global economic crisis in the United States and the Bernard Madoff financial scandal. In addition, the recent comments have been more virulently anti-Semitic. These anti-Semitic postings have continued as the financial crisis has deepened. Yahoo!, however, has taken down many of the comments after they have been posted.

Haters are finding new and creative ways to spread their message. Many online newspapers allow readers to post comments after each article. Extremists are taking advantage of these open online venues to post anti-Semitic and racist comments, often completely unrelated to the article to which they are attached. In the wake of the Madoff scandal, the Florida-based Palm Beach Post had to disable its comments section due to the avalanche of anti-Semitic comments.

Anti-Semites and racists have found video-sharing websites, such as YouTube and MySpace Video, an effective means to promote propaganda and hateful material that might not otherwise be seen by the public. Internet users who search video-sharing sites will often find anti-Semitic and racist videos when looking for information completely unrelated to the videos due to misleading tags and titles that extremists attach to the videos when uploading them to the sites.

Extremist groups and individuals are reformatting their websites to make them accessible to as many people as possible on Internet-enabled cell phones through Mobile Web. For example, Stormfront, the largest and most popular white supremacist forum on the Internet, and the Vanguard News Network forum, another popular white supremacist site, are fully accessible and searchable via a cell phone.

Although hate speech is offensive and hurtful, the First Amendment usually protects such expression. Beyond spreading hate, however, there is a growing, disturbing trend to use the Internet to intimidate and harass individuals on the basis of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin. When speech contains a direct, credible threat against an identifiable individual, organization, or institution, it crosses the line to criminal conduct. Hate speech containing criminal threats is not protected by the First Amendment.

Criminal cases concerning hate speech on the Internet have, to date, been few in number. The Internet is vast and perpetrators of online hate crimes hide behind anonymous screen names, electronically garbled addresses, and websites that can be relocated and abandoned overnight. Those who send threatening e-mail communications through the Internet may convey these messages anonymously across state lines to victims in another part of the country. Prosecutors face the daunting task of identifying the perpetrator, collecting and preserving evidence, and establishing jurisdiction over the criminal act.



[Note: This article is too long to include any more of it here, but go to it for further reading. It’s all excellent. Who is Michael Savage? See Wikipedia below.]


Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Savage,

Michael Alan Weiner (born March 31, 1942), better known by his professional name Michael Savage, is an American radio host, author, activist, nutritionist, and conservative political commentator. He is the host of The Savage Nation, a nationally syndicated talk show that aired on Talk Radio Network across the United States until 2012, and in 2009 was the second most listened-to radio talk show in the country with an audience of over 20 million listeners on 400 stations across the United States.[2][3] Since October 23, 2012, Michael Savage has been syndicated by Cumulus Media Networks. He holds master's degrees from the University of Hawaii in medical botany and medical anthropology, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in nutritional ethnomedicine.

As Michael Weiner, he has written books on nutrition, herbal medicine, and homeopathy; as Michael Savage, he has written four political books that have reached The New York Times Best Seller List.[4][5][6][7] . . . . Savage has summarized his political philosophy in three words: borders, language, and culture. Savage has characterized his views as conservative nationalism,[8] while critics have characterized them as "fostering extremism or hatred."[9] He opposes illegal immigration to the United States, supports the English-only movement and argues that liberalism and progressivism are degrading American culture. . . . . Since 2009, Savage has been barred from entering the United Kingdom, for allegedly "seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred."[9][10][11][12] . . . . Mark de la Viña of the San Jose Mercury News wrote of Savage, "In contrast to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Schlessinger, Bay Area-based Savage mixes conservative diatribe and blunt observations with acerbic humor and the gift of gab."[16]

MSNBC television show[edit]
Savage was hired by MSNBC president Erik Sorenson to do a one-hour show beginning March 8, 2003, despite Savage's previous criticism of the network in his book The Savage Nation and the objections of NBC employees including news anchor Tom Brokaw, who asked NBC executives, "Is this the sort of man who embodies the values of NBC?"[25] Sorenson, at the time, called Savage "brash, passionate and smart," and promised that he would provide "compelling opinion and analysis with an edge."[44]

Four months later, on July 7, Savage was fired from his MSNBC television show after remarks made in response to a caller, later identified as prank caller Bob Foster, who insulted Savage's teeth. Savage then asked if Foster was a "sodomite", to which the caller answered, "Yes, I am." Savage then said to the caller,

Oh, so you're one of those sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig; how's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig? You got nothing better to do than to put me down, you piece of garbage? You got nothing to do today? Go eat a sausage, and choke on it. Get trichinosis. Now do we have another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today? Put another, put another sodomite on....no more calls?...I don't care about these bums; they mean nothing to me. They're all sausages.[45][46]

The day after being fired, Savage apologized on his radio program and on his website. He explained that he believed that MSNBC had gone to commercial to cover the gaffe of the attempted sabotage by a prank caller and that he was off the air at the time of the offensive comments, despite the fact that clips of the segment show Savage going to commercial after he made the comments. He also said his remarks were meant only to insult the caller, not all people with AIDS.[47]

Political views[edit]
Michael Savage calls himself an "independent-minded individualist" and says that he "fits no stereotype."[33] He has also cited Barry Goldwater as an influence.[48] Savage criticizes big government as well as liberalism and liberal activism, and accuses the mainstream news media of liberal bias.[8] He considers the three aspects that define a nation as borders, language, and culture; those aspects inspired the motto of the Paul Revere Society.[49]

In 2003, Savage said that he voted in 2000 for George W. Bush "quite reluctantly, incidentally."[50] In 2004, Savage and the Revere Society hosted a party at Schroeder's Cafe in San Francisco celebrating the re-election of Bush.[49] Savage donated $5,600 to the campaign of Democratic candidate Jerry Brown in the 2006 California Attorney General election.[51]

Regarding candidates for the 2012 Republican primaries, Savage said that Ron Paul had "great ideas" but expressed hope that Rick Perry would be the nominee.[52] On December 12, 2011, he offered Newt Gingrich "1 million dollars" to withdraw from the United States Presidential contest. He stated that only Mitt Romney had a chance to beat Barack Obama, a man he had previously described as a "quasi-pseudo-crypto Marxist" and a possible foreign usurper,[53] in the 2012 election.[54]

Since he announced his candidacy in June 2015, Savage has supported Donald Trump, a frequent guest on his talk show, in the United States 2016 presidential election.[55]


Bias-motivated violence has been on the rise in many countries across Europe, the former Soviet Union, and North America — in some cases more than doubling in the last five years. Racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim and anti-Roma bias, religious intolerance, disability bias, and homophobia are among the prejudices that have fueled hate crimes in those countries. That trend toward rising violence continued in 2007 and 2008 for several types of hate crime, including anti-Semitic, racist, and homophobic attacks. Although official data is available only for a minority of countries — mostly on racist violence alone — there were moderate to high rises in the officially recorded numbers of such attacks in 2006 and 2007 in Finland, Ireland, the Slovak Republic, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Information from nongovernmental monitors showed rising levels of racist violence in Greece, Italy, the Russian Federation, Spain, Switzerland, and Ukraine. A 2007 European crime victimization survey of people of immigrant background revealed high levels of hate crimes in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, despite the virtual absence of official data in those countries.

People of African origin and Roma were the targets of particularly frequent and extreme acts of racist and xenophobic violence in 2007 and 2008. Refugees and asylum seekers were also victims of numerous racist attacks. Anti-Muslim violence fueled by both racism and religious hatred continued at high levels, notably in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Mosques were desecrated or set alight, cemeteries were vandalized, and Muslim religious leaders, ordinary Muslims, and those perceived to be Muslim were targeted for sometimes deadly assaults.

The level of personal violence motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice remains historically high in many countries of Europe and North America. Anti-Semitic violence rose in Canada, Germany, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Violent attacks on persons as a proportion of overall incidents continued to rise in the United Kingdom and remained at high levels in France. Hundreds of Jewish cemeteries and memorials were vandalized throughout much of the region, mostly with impunity.

In the Russian Federation, Turkey, and the Central Asian republics, bias attacks on minority Christian faiths were increasingly common. Adherents of religions deemed by governments to be nontraditional in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union were among those targeted for violence, sometimes in the context of government restrictions on religious activities and official rhetoric that vilifies such groups.

In Ireland and the United Kingdom, a new pattern of violence emerged in which Eastern European immigrants from the newly expanded E.U. were targeted with violent assaults, firebombs, and murder. In Germany, Greece, and Switzerland, anti-immigrant political campaigns generated new waves of racist violence against immigrants. In Switzerland, there were at least six firebomb or gunfire attacks on housing for asylum seekers in 2007.

In Italy, in 2007 and 2008, anti-Roma rhetoric by top leaders combined with aggressive anti-Immigration policies to help generate racist violence at a level unprecedented in recent history. In several Italian cities, pogroms devastated Roma communities housing both Italian nationals and Roma immigrants. Attackers terrorized Roma and burned their settlements to the ground as police in some cases stood by. Some public officials added fuel to the fire by calling to eradicate the presence of Roma in towns and cities in official statements both before and after the attacks.

In Ukraine and the Russian Federation, extreme nationalists targeted immigrants and national minorities considered to be "dark-skinned" for assaults and, increasingly, murders. In the Russian Federation — where the leading NGO monitor of hate crimes documented nearly 100 racist or other bias-motivated murders in 2008 — racial chauvinist attackers, in a new phenomenon, video-taped the execution style murders and attacks of minority victims.

Continuing violence motivated by hatred and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity, though still largely unseen, is an intimidating day-to-day reality for people across Europe and North America. As in the past, the years 2007 and 2008 saw the greatest public visibility for LGBT persons in the form of gay pride parades, although that visibility triggered violence and other manifestations of intolerance in several countries. While gay pride events in Eastern Europe have frequently been targeted for verbal and physical attacks, increased official protection was reported in 2007 and 2008 in a number of countries in contrast to previous years, including Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania. In others, such as Moldova and the Russian Federation, the authorities themselves continued to contribute to the danger faced by the participants in gay pride parades. In Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia, violent attacks occurred despite police action to protect the marchers.

Government and Intergovernmental Responses

Overall, government responses to the rise of bias-motivated violence have been inadequate. Despite making official commitments to combat hate crime, many governments have yet to introduce necessary legislative tools, carry out official monitoring of incidents, or implement police training, educational, and community engagement programs that would contribute to a more robust response to the problem.

While more governments are now responding to hate crime violence with monitoring and reporting systems, these governments still represent a significant minority. Some 40 governments (among the 56 states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — the OSCE) do not collect and report expressly on violent hate crimes of any kind, or do so in an extremely limited manner. Even where data on racist violence may be developed, official data is often poorly disaggregated and does not cover certain bias crime, such as anti-Roma and anti-Muslim violence. Civil society groups help to fill these gaps in many countries, and have been instrumental in pointing out failures in government responses.

. . . .

Some governments have responded to hate crime violence by strengthening their criminal justice response. This has included new legislation addressing hate crimes in Croatia (defining hate crimes to include a broad range of bias motivations, including sexual orientation and disability bias), Latvia (defining racist motivation as an aggravating circumstance), Portugal (on sexual orientation bias crimes). Others, like France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have seen the benefit of major initiatives by law enforcement and prosecution services to introduce training and procedures making the implementation of hate crime legislation a major priority.

European countries' criminal law most commonly addresses hate crimes motivated by racism (including bias motivated by national origin, ethnicity, and xenophobia) and religious intolerance. Hate crime laws extend to sexual orientation bias in twelve of the 56 OSCE countries, with disability bias covered in only seven.

On an intergovernmental level, the OSCE has addressed hate crimes as a human rights issue and as a threat to regional security. In a series of high-level decisions, OSCE participating states have made commitments to monitor hate crimes and to regularly report on these findings and measures taken to combat them. The organization — particularly through its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights' (ODIHR) Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Unit — has provided a unique forum to address hate crimes that brings together the governments of Europe, Central Asia, and North America. Among other initiatives, the OSCE has hosted a series of international conferences, round tables, and consultations on anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia, anti-Roma bias, and anti-Muslim bias; appointed three personal representatives to the Chairman-in-Office on combating various forms of discrimination; provided training for law enforcement and civil society groups monitoring hate crimes; and produced regular reporting on hate crimes and measures to combat them.

. . . . The new publication, Hate Crime Laws: A Practical Guide, provides practical and accessible advice for lawmakers, community-based organizations, and law enforcement personnel charged with prevention and effective response to bias-motivated violence. The Guide is drafted to reflect the many different legal systems and traditions from the 56 nations that comprise the OSCE. The Guide has been already been used by ODIHR as the basis for legislative reviews and training sessions and has been translated into several languages, including French, Russian, and German.

International Policy Recommendations for the Government of the United States

To demonstrate international leadership and reduce the number of hate crimes worldwide, the United States should take the following steps:

Demonstrate International Leadership at the OSCE

Take a leading political role in advancing the OSCE's tolerance and nondiscrimination agenda

. . . .

Provide for extrabudgetary contributions, secondment of personnel, and other in-kind support for OSCE programs to combat violent hate crimes, including making available its law enforcement expertise . . . .

Advocate in Bilateral Relationships and Offer Technical Assistance

Promote stronger government responses to violent hate crime among OSCE participating states through U.S. reporting as well as the bilateral relationships of the United States with those countries, by:

Maintaining strong and inclusive State Department monitoring and public reporting on racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, homophobic, anti-Roma, and other bias-motivated violence — including by consulting with civil society groups as well as providing appropriate training for human rights officers and other relevant mission staff abroad.

Raising violent hate crime issues with representatives of foreign governments and encouraging, where appropriate, legal and other policy responses, including those contained in Human Rights First's ten-point plan for governments to combat violent hate crime.

Offering appropriate technical assistance and other forms of cooperation, including training of police and prosecutors in investigating, recording, reporting and prosecuting violent hate crimes.

Support Civil Society Organizations

Expand funding and other support to build the capacity of civil society groups in the OSCE region to combat violent hate crimes, by:

Providing extrabudgetary support to expand ODIHR's civil society training program on combating hate crimes.

Ensuring that groups working to combat all forms of violent hate crime have access to support under existing U.S. funding programs, including the Human Rights and Democracy Fund and programs for human rights defenders.


Hate Crimes Against African Americans

. . . . According to the FBI's HCSA report, more than twice as many hate crimes were reported against African Americans as against any other group.

From lynching, to burning crosses and churches, to murdering a man by chaining him to a truck and dragging him down a road for three miles, anti-black violence has been and still remains the prototypical hate crime, intended not only to injure and kill individuals but to terrorize an entire group of people. Hate crimes against African Americans have an especially negative impact upon society for the history they recall and perpetuate, potentially intimidating not only African Americans, but other minority, ethnic, and religious groups.

Examples of recent hate crimes committed against African Americans include:

On Election Night 2008, Ralph Nicoletti and Michael Contreras, both 18, and Brian Carranza, 21, of Staten Island, New York decided shortly after learning of Barack Obama's election victory "to find African Americans to assault," according to a federal indictment and other court filings. The men then drove to a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Staten Island, where they came upon a 17 year-old African American who was walking home after watching the election at a friend's house. One of the defendants yelled "Obama!" Then, the men got out of the car and beat the youth with a metal pipe and a collapsible police baton, injuring his head and legs. The men went on to commit additional assaults that night.

Their hate crime spree culminated with crashing their car into a man who they mistakenly believed to be African-American, causing his body to shatter the windshield. While the victim ultimately survived the attack, he was in a coma for a period of time.26 Brian Carranza pleaded guilty to conspiring to assault Staten Island residents after the election of President Obama and faces 10 years in prison. Nicoletti and Contreras pleaded not guilty.27

Justin Sigler, 19, of Natchitoches, Louisiana, pleaded guilty in December 2008 to conspiring with two other individuals to violate the civil rights of a man in Lena, Louisiana who was the first African American to move into a home in the neighborhood. Sigler and two others fired shotguns at a target on a field adjacent to the victim's property before one member of the group turned his shotgun away from the target and toward the victim and his house. The next evening, Sigler, dressed in a white robe as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, went with his coconspirators to a field adjacent to the victim's residence and shouted, "White Power!" and "White Knights!" Shaken by these events, the family eventually sold their home.28

William A. "Bill" White, the self-proclaimed Commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a neo-Nazi group, was indicted by a federal grand jury for, among other charges, using intimidation to delay or prevent the testimony of African-American tenants in an official court proceeding. The tenants were involved in a discrimination case against their landlord. On May 23, 2007, White allegedly mailed letters to the African-American tenants at their Virginia Beach, Virginia homes. The letters displayed the letterhead of the White National Socialist American Working Party, a Nazi swastika and White's signature and title. The letters read, in part: "I do not know [name redacted] but I do know your type of slum nigger, and I wanted you to know that your actions have not been missed by the white community ... and we know that you are and will never be anything other than a dirty parasite — and that our patience with you and the government that coddles you runs thin." In addition to the letter, White also included a copy of the ANSWP Magazine titled "The Negro Beast and Why Blacks Who Work Aren't Worth the Cost of Welfare."

The indictment also charged that White threatened to injure "LP," an African-American journalist. On June 3, 2007, at approximately 11 p.m., White called LP's personal telephone at his Bowie, Maryland home and spoke with LP's wife. Fifteen minutes later, White sent LP an e-mail, which read, in part: "You and your fellow black filth are quickly losing ground and I look forward to the rapidly approaching day when whites once again rise up and slaughter and enslave your ugly race to the last man, woman and child. Itz [sic] coming." White then listed LP's personal home phone number, date of birth, home address, and wife's name on overthrow.com and other websites frequented by white supremacists. At the end of the post, White wrote, "His wife gets very upset when you call."

Another count of the indictment charged White with threatening to injure "CT," the African-American mayor of a town in New Jersey. On March 1, 2008, White contacted CT via telephone and spoke with CT's wife. He identified himself as the Commander of a Neo-Nazi organization and told CT's wife that he knew where she lived and was going to put a swastika on her front yard.

Soon after, White sent an e-mail to CT, which read, in part, as follows: "I recently read of the racism you've faced in New Jersey, and I wanted to make something perfectly clear:

1.You are a nigger unworthy to govern over any white man; and,
2. Fuck you. You've gotten exactly what you deserve from your constituents.

"Unfortunately, the days when white men would simply burn the local newspaper and run the nigger officials out with tar and feathers are past. However, your incidents give me hope that perhaps we shall see them again. … ps: we know where you live at [CT's address and phone number]. I just spoke to your wife [CT's wife's name]. I hope you got my message."29


Benjamin Haskell, 22, Michael Jacques, 24, and Thomas Gleason, 21, all of Springfield, Mass., were arrested on January 16, 2009 for allegedly burning and entirely destroying the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, a predominantly African-American congregation's nearly completed new church building. The building was burned to the ground on Nov. 5, 2008, hours after the election of President Barack Obama. Investigators determined the fire was caused by gasoline applied to the exterior and interior of the building.30 The three men were indicted by a federal grand jury on January 27, 2009 for conspiring to burn the church in retaliation for the election results.31

. . . .


Hate Crimes Against Hispanics

. . . . Of hate crimes in 2007 motivated by bias due to the victim's ethnicity or national origin, nearly 60 percent were committed against Hispanics, up nearly 50 percent from 2003. This alarming increase, and its correlation to increasingly virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, is discussed above in The State of Hate: Escalating Hate Violence Against Immigrants. Other examples of recent hate crimes committed against Hispanics include:

In Brooklyn, New York on December 7, 2008, Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhañay, a 31 year-old Ecuadorian and father of two, was walking home from a bar and a church party with his brother, their arms around each other, as is common among men in many Latino cultures. Three men drove up to the brothers yelling anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs. While his brother escaped, Sucuzhañay, who ran a local real estate agency and had lived in New York for a decade, was struck on the head by a beer bottle and fell to the ground. Another attacker beat his head with an aluminum baseball bat. . . . The two men were charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and assault, all as hate crimes, and could face 78 years to life in prison. Both men claim that they are not guilty.34

On Long Island, New York on November 8, 2008, Marcelo Lucero, a 37 year-old Ecuadorian real estate agent, was beaten and fatally stabbed by seven teenagers who were driving around to "go find some Mexicans to f— up." The teens spotted Lucero and a friend, then proceeded "[l]ike a lynch mob...got out of their car and surrounded Mr. Lucero," beating and stabbing him, according to the local prosecutor. The teenagers, all 17 and 16 years old, were charged with felony gang assault. One of them was also charged with manslaughter as a hate crime. Steve Levy, the County Executive of Suffolk County, where the murder occurred, has frequently and forcefully spoken out against immigrants, including on Lou Dobbs Tonight.

The New York Times editorialized about Lucero's death and hate crimes against Latinos:

A possible lynching in a New York suburb should be more than enough to force this country to acknowledge the bitter chill that has overcome Latinos in these days of rage against illegal immigration.

The atmosphere began to darken when Republican politicians decided a few years ago to exploit immigration as a wedge issue. They drafted harsh legislation to criminalize the undocumented. They cheered as vigilantes streamed to the border to confront the concocted crisis of Spanish-speaking workers sneaking in to steal jobs and spread diseases. Cable personalities and radio talk-show hosts latched on to the issue.

. . . .

A campaign of raids and deportations, led by federal agents with help from state and local posses, has become so pervasive that nearly 1 in 10 Latinos, including citizens and legal immigrants, have told of being stopped and asked about their immigration status, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Now that the economy is in free fall, the possibility of scapegoating is deepening Hispanic anxiety.35


Next Section: Hate Crimes Against Jews

Hate Crimes Against Jews

In 2007, there were 969 reported hate crimes committed against Jews, according to the FBI, constituting 12.7 percent of all hate crimes reported and 69 percent of religious bias hate crimes reported.

The Jewish community — unlike some new immigrant communities — has long understood the importance of reporting crimes directed against community members and institutions. The Anti-Defamation League has been collecting information on anti-Semitic incidents since 1979. Using official crime statistics and information provided to ADL's regional offices by victims, law enforcement officials, and community leaders, the ADL's Audit provides an annual snapshot of this activity and helps identify possible trends. In 2007 (the most recent report available), the League reported 1,460 incidents — 761 directed at individuals and 699 directed at institutions.36

The Nazi swastika, one of the most powerfully-enduring symbols of anti-Semitism and religious and ethnic hatred, has been present in hundreds of attacks against buildings, synagogues, cemeteries, and private homes over the past few years. In September 2007, for example, a massive swastika, the size of a football field, was carved into a New Jersey cornfield.

. . . . There are thousands of hate sites on the Internet, and they continue to multiply. Many of these sites include Internet radio shows and downloadable music and games with anti-Semitic themes and propaganda. Extremists also continued to exploit social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs, using text messages and videos to propagate anti-Semitism.

Examples of recent anti-Semitic hate crimes include:

. . . .

That night, President Obama issued a statement saying, in part, "This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms. No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world." Later in the week, the House of Representatives passed H Res 529 (pdf) and the Senate passed S Res 184 (pdf) to condemn the attack, support the important work of the Holocaust Museum, and express condolences to the family of Officer Johns.

. . .

In December 2007, four Jewish students from Hunter and Baruch Colleges in New York City were assaulted on a subway train by a group of eight assailants as they wished people a happy Hanukkah. At least two victims were punched in the face, and a knife was pulled. Police arrested the assailants after the train was stopped.
In January 2008, more than 50 headstones were overturned and vandalized in a northwest Chicago Jewish cemetery. The headstones were sprayed with anti-Semitic images, such as swastikas and the Star of David hanging from a gallows. Some grave markers also contained white supremacist symbols. . . . .

Eyewitnesses reported that the murderer, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, forced his way through a security door and announced "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel" as he began shooting. The perpetrator told a 911 dispatcher "I want these Jews to get out….I'm upset at your foreign policy. These are Jews…." He was arrested and charged with fifteen felony counts, including murder. In June 2008, a jury deadlocked on the question of the insanity of the perpetrator. The King County prosecutor has promised to retry the case. The trial is scheduled for October 2009.37


Next Section: Hate Crimes Against Asian Pacific Americans

. . . .

This decline obscures an extremely disturbing fact: many of these hate crimes are perpetrated against Asian Pacific American children, often by other children. In a troubling article titled "Asian Youth Persistently Harassed By U.S. Peers," the Associated Press chronicled these hate crimes committed against Asian Pacific American youth:

. . . .

In Fresno, California at Edison High School, Hmong students had been taunted and had food thrown at them during lunch. On February 25, 2005, the taunts escalated into fights involving at least 30 students, resulting in numerous injuries, suspensions, and expulsions. Eight students were convicted of misdemeanor assault.39

Across the nation, the Associated Press found that Asian students say they are often beaten, threatened, and called ethnic slurs by other young people, and school safety data suggest that the problem may be worsening. Youth advocates say these Asian teens, stereotyped as high-achieving students who rarely fight back, have for years borne the brunt of ethnic tension as Asian communities expand and neighborhoods become more racially diverse.

. . . .

Other examples of hate crimes committed against Asian Pacific Americans include:

In August 2006, four New Yorkers of Chinese descent were attacked in Douglaston, Queens, New York by two white men shouting racial epithets. The white men beat two of the Chinese Americans with a steering wheel locking bar. Kevin M. Brown, 19, of Auburndale, and Paul A. Heavey, 20, of Little Neck, were charged with assault and hate crimes. Douglaston and other nearby communities are now almost one-third Asian, and tensions have escalated. "There's an undercurrent of suspicion of the new immigrant — what are they doing, what are they building, what are they putting in that store?" said Susan Seinfeld, the district manager of Community Board 11, which includes Douglaston. A local City Councilman has introduced legislation to require store owners to include English translations on signs.41

"It definitely doesn't shock me," said one white resident of the area about the attack. "The entire strip of Northern Boulevard in the past four or five years went from German and Italian to Korean."42

In Chicago in September 2007, Du Doan, a 62 year-old Vietnamese man, was pushed off a fishing pier into the icy waters of Lake Michigan, where he drowned. John Haley, 31, a self-described "skinhead,"43 was charged with first degree murder after he told police how he "pushed our victim in the water — that being taking both hands, shoving them in the back, and literally catapulting him into the water." Earlier, Haley reportedly pushed a second Asian man into Lake Michigan who was able to swim safely to shore and also tried to shove a third Asian man off the pier who fought him off. Despite these reports, police did not charge Haley with a hate crime and have not classified the murder as a hate crime incident.44

Next Section: Hate Crimes Against Arab Americans, Muslims, and Sikhs


American students by their classmates." Said Tsu after his beating, "Those guys looked like they could kill somebody. ... I was scared to go back to school."

. . . .

In Chicago in September 2007, Du Doan, a 62 year-old Vietnamese man, was pushed off a fishing pier into the icy waters of Lake Michigan, where he drowned. John Haley, 31, a self-described "skinhead,"43 was charged with first degree murder after he told police how he "pushed our victim in the water — that being taking both hands, shoving them in the back, and literally catapulting him into the water." Earlier, Haley reportedly pushed a second Asian man into Lake Michigan who was able to swim safely to shore and also tried to shove a third Asian man off the pier who fought him off. Despite these reports, police did not charge Haley with a hate crime and have not classified the murder as a hate crime incident.44

Next Section: Hate Crimes Against Arab Americans, Muslims, and Sikhs

Hate Crimes Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Individuals

. . . .

"What you get is this kind of immature desire to display power," said Jose Feito, a psychology professor at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California. "And so they go looking for easy victims, or suitable victims." "Suitable" in the Richmond case, according to Feito, meant a victim who the perpetrators could marginalize in their minds due to her sexual orientation and gender nonconformity. "That all ties into blaming the victim, who's seen as flaunting their homosexuality."56

. . . .

Next Section: Hate Crimes Against Individuals With Disabilities


Hate Crimes Against Individuals with Disabilities

In 2007, 79 hate crimes were reported against individuals with disabilities, one percent of the total reported. This represents a significant increase from the 44 hate crimes (0.44 percent of the total) reported in 2003.

Through much of our country's history and well into the twentieth century, people with disabilities — including those with developmental delays, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and other physical and mental impairments — were seen as useless and dependent, hidden and excluded from society, either in their own homes or in institutions. Now, this history of isolation is gradually giving way to inclusion in all aspects of society, and people with disabilities everywhere are living and working in communities alongside family and friends. But this has not been a painless process. People with disabilities often seem "different" in the eyes of people without disabilities. They may look different or speak differently. They may require the assistance of a wheelchair, a cane, or other assistive technologies. They may have seizures or difficulty understanding seemingly simple directions. These perceived differences evoke a range of emotions in others, from misunderstanding and apprehension to feelings of superiority and hatred.

Bias against people with disabilities takes many forms, often resulting in discriminatory actions in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Disability bias can also manifest itself in the form of violence — and it is imperative that a message be sent to our country that these acts of bias motivated hatred are not acceptable in our society.

>Numerous disability and criminology studies, over many years, indicate a high crime rate against people with disabilities. However, the U.S. Office on Crime Statistics reported in 2002 that in many cases, crime victims with disabilities have never participated in the criminal justice process, "even if they have been repeatedly and brutally victimized." There are a number of challenges for disability-based hate crime reporting. For instance, hate crimes against people with disabilities are often never reported to law enforcement agencies. The victim may be ashamed, afraid of retaliation, or afraid of not being believed. The victim may be reliant on a caregiver or other third party to report the crime, who fails to do so. Or, the crime may be reported, but there may be no reporting of the victim's disability, especially in cases where the victim has an invisible disability that they themselves do not divulge.

Perhaps the biggest reason for underreporting of disability-based hate crimes is that disability-based bias crimes are all too frequently mislabeled as "abuse" and never directed from the social service or education systems to the criminal justice system. Even very serious crimes — including rape, assault, and vandalism — are too-frequently labeled "abuse."

In one of the few disability-bias cases successfully prosecuted, in 1999, Eric Krochmaluk, a man with cognitive disabilities from Middletown, N.J., was kidnapped, choked, beaten, burned with cigarettes, taped to a chair, his eyebrows shaved, and ultimately abandoned in a forest. Eight people were subsequently indicted for this hate crime — making this one of the first prosecutions of a disability-based hate crime in America.

The special problems associated with investigating and prosecuting hate violence against someone with a disability makes the availability of federal resources for state and local authorities all that much more important to ensure that justice prevails. To address this need, the pending Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act (LLEHCPA), discussed below, will expand existing federal criminal civil rights protections to include disability-based hate crimes.

It is critical that people with disabilities are covered in the federal hate crimes statute in order to bring the full protection of the law to those targeted for violent, bias-motivated crimes simply because they have a disability.

Next Section: Hate Crimes Against Women


Hate Crimes Against Women

The number of hate crimes committed against women, as well as the rate of increase or decrease, is unknown. The reason is that the Hate Crime Statistics Act was passed, signed into law, and reauthorized without including hate crimes against women as a class. Other federal laws and many state hate crime statutes also exclude bias crimes targeting women.

In recent years, many women's advocates have spoken out about the alarming rate of violent physical and sexual assaults against women. Although the most common forms of violence against women have traditionally been viewed as "personal attacks," or even the victim's "own fault," there is growing recognition that many assaults against women are not "random" acts of violence but are actually bias-related crimes. As one advocate testified before Congress "women and girls.... are exposed to terror, brutality, serious injury, and even death because of their sex."

. . . .


Hate Crimes Against Juveniles

There is little published information about juvenile hate crime offenders. The FBI's annual Hate Crime Statistics Act report does not provide specific information about either juvenile hate crime offenders or victims. However, it does document that schools and colleges were the third most frequent locations for hate crimes in 2007 — as they have been in every year since 2000.

. . . .

Pending Federal Legislation

In those states without hate crime statutes, and in others with limited coverage, local prosecutors are not able to pursue hate crime convictions. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) would establish a new federal criminal code provision to complement and expand existing law and to provide additional tools for the federal government to combat bias-motivated violence. The LLEHCPA is designed to eliminate gaps in federal authority to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated crimes. This bill would provide a necessary backstop to state and local law enforcement by permitting federal authorities to provide assistance in these investigations — and by allowing federal prosecutions when necessary to achieve a just result.

Over the past eight years, this legislation has been approved on several occasions by bipartisan majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, but has been stymied by opposition and a veto threat from the Bush administration. The legislation has attracted the support of more than 300 religious, civil rights, education, professional, and civic groups — as well as every major law enforcement organization in America.

Public support for this legislation continues to grow. According to a May 2007 Gallup Poll, 68 percent of Americans support strengthening hate crimes laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity and giving local law enforcement the tools they need to prosecute these violent acts of bigotry.65

For more information about the LLEHCPA, visit http://www.civilrights.org/hatecrimes/.


The Nativist Lobby
Under Siege - A report that documents discrimination against Latino immigrants in the South