Tulsa Resident: "We Can't Just Hate One Another"

Tulsa residents are expressing shock and relief after the arrest of two men in five shootings. Jake England and Alvin Watts were arrested for allegedly killing three black people and wounding two early Friday.

Fla. Police Probe Possible Hate Crime

A South Florida woman is recovering from a horrific attack that she says was motivated by the color of her skin.

Obama Signs, Hails Expansion of Hate Crimes Law

By: Ben Feller, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed and celebrated hate crime legislation that extends protection to people based on sexual orientation, sealing a long-fought victory to gay advocates. The president spoke of a nation becoming a place where "we're all free to live and love as we see fit."

  Obama Signs, Hails Expansion of Hate Crimes Law....

Atty. General Holder Wants New Hate Crimes Law

By: Devlin Barrett, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Citing recent killings in Arkansas, Kansas and the nation's capital, Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday said new hate crimes law were needed to stop what he called "violence masquerading as political activism."

The attorney general's call for Congress to act came as a civil rights coalition said there has been a surge in white supremacist activity since the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn.

"Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed brazen acts of violence committed in places that many would have considered unthinkable," Holder told the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.

He cited separate attacks over a two-week period that killed a young soldier in Little Rock, an abortion provider in Wichita and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Federal agents and prosecutors already are involved in the local investigations of each attack.

Atty. General Holder Wants New Hate Crimes Law....

Barnes and Noble: Display a 'Hate Crime'

By: BlackAmericaWeb Staff

The founder and chairman of Barnes and Noble said the customer who placed a placed a book on monkeys among a display on President Barack Obama and the first family committed "nothing short of a hate crime, which should be punishable under federal statutes."

Officials from the book retailer claim an unknown person placed a copy of "Monkeys: A Captivating Look at These Fascinating Animals" in the display then snapped a photo. Store workers removed the book as soon as someone noticed it, decrying claims that it was put there by an employee.

“This malicious and despicable act is nothing short of a hate crime, which should be punishable under federal statutes,” said Leonard Riggio, founder and chairman of Barnes and Noble, in a statement.

Barnes and Noble: Display a 'Hate Crime'....

HATE CRIMES ESCALATE 8 PERCENT

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

Hate crimes in the USA increased 8% in 2006, but some groups, including gays, Muslims and people with mental disabilities, experienced larger spikes in attacks, the FBI says.
There were 7,722 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2006. A hate crime is one motivated by a bias against a person's race, gender or other status.

Some significant increases:

•A 19% increase in crimes motivated by religious bias. Attacks on Muslims increased 22% to 156 last year. Attacks on Catholics increased by almost a third to 76. Almost seven in 10 were crimes against Jews, which were up 14% to 967.

•An 18% increase in crimes against gay men and lesbians to 1,195 in 2006.

•Attacks on people with mental disabilities were up 94% to 62 in 2006.

•Hate crimes against Hispanics were up 10% to 576 incidents.

"Hate crimes impacted a wide range of groups," says Jack Levin, a sociology and criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "It seems as though Americans are more suspicious of any group or members of a group seen as foreign, outsiders or intruders."

Acts against Hispanics have risen by double digits for several years. Now, Levin says, anti-immigrant feelings have extended to other groups, such as Muslims and gays, that may be seen as a threat to mainstream culture.

The number of hate crimes reported in 2007 is likely to grow, Levin says, fostered by the immigration debate, concerns about terrorism and high-profile racial conflicts.

Hate crimes have gotten more attention this year, since six black students at a high school in Jena, La., were charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.

The beating followed several racial encounters, including one in which white students hung nooses from a tree. That was not reported as a hate crime, partly because the FBI said the evidence did not prove the students were motivated by bias.

Since July, the Justice Department has investigated more than 40 noose hangings in schools and workplaces.

The FBI is the only agency that collects data on hate crimes, but numbers are flawed because victims are often afraid to report crimes and the number of police agencies participating fluctuates, says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

He cites a Bureau of Justice Statistics study that used police reports and surveys of 77,200 households from 2000 to 2003 to estimate that 191,000 hate crimes occur annually.

The FBI's 2006 hate crime stats.

THOUSANDS SHOW UP FOR HATE CRIMES MARCH

Thousands of demonstrators from across the U.S. heeded a call by Rev. Al Sharpton Friday and marched around the Justice Department in Washington D.C. to demand a government crackdown on hate crimes.


"We have so many people, we surrounded the Justice Department and two blocks more," the Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN as the orderly crowd marched around the building where newly sworn-in Attorney General Michael Mukasey was working. "This is a real outcry, a real outrage from people around this country."

In a statement, Mukasey said the Justice Department shares their vision of wiping out hate.

"Although there are limitations and challenges in bringing successful hate crimes prosecutions, the department takes each case seriously," Mukasey said. "As long as hatred and racism exist, the Justice Department will continue its hard and effective work on behalf of all victims of hate crimes," he said.

Led by Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and members of Sharpton's National Action Network, marchers walked from Freedom Plaza to the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, which they circled seven times in an ode to the biblical story of the fall of Jericho.

The protest was sparked by a series of racially-charged incidents over the past 18 months: the police shooting of an unarmed man in New York, hours before his wedding, in November 2006; the appearance of nooses in several workplaces and schools; the case of a black teen charged with child molestation after having sex with another willing teen; and the story of a black West Virginia woman whom six white people allegedly raped, tortured and forced to eat animal feces as they berated her with racial slurs.

In a fact sheet released Thursday, the Justice Department said its Civil Rights Division "has set records and achieved notable successes in prosecuting defendants for civil rights violations."

It said 189 defendants had been convicted of civil rights violations in fiscal year 2007, "the largest number ever in the history of the department," breaking the previous year's record of 181 defendants convicted.

Meanwhile, the number of reported hate crimes has declined, according to the FBI. In 2005, when the latest FBI figures were released, the bureau said that the number of hate crimes reported that year was the lowest in a decade.

NOOSE FOUND AROUND NECK OF TUPAC STATUE

A noose was discovered around the neck of a bronze statue of late rapper Tupac Shakur, which sits in the Peace Garden inside of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Vandals have also defaced the building and later further damaged the statue with "handbills of garbled rants that include references to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as well as vague threats against various record companies and rappers," read a statement from The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation (TASF).

The attacks, which all took place between the early hours of Saturday, Oct. 20 and 2 a.m. Monday Oct. 22, are currently being investigated as hate crimes by the De Kalb County Sheriff's Office.

"We thank everyone for their prayers and support. Although our hearts are temporarily in pain, our spirits have already forgiven the perpetrators," said Tupac's mother and TASF founder, Afeni Shakur. "Hate comes in all colors and genders, therefore we will use this act of hate and ignorance to bring our community together and to pray for the healing of those who harbor such feelings. With God's guidance, the work of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts and Peace Garden will continue to positively impact and transform our community."

The Foundation is currently raising money to construct a fence around the parameters of the Center to prevent these types of incidents from occurring again.

Meanwhile, the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts will kick off its 2nd Bi-Annual Film Screening with a re-dedication service of the Peace Garden on Saturday, Nov. 10 at 1 p.m. Following the service will be a film screening and panels from film industry experts. Both events are free to the public.

Donations can be sent to TASF, 5616 Memorial Drive, Stone Mountain, GA 30083 or at http://www.tasf.org and http://www.2PACLegacy.com.

SHARPTON WANTS MALL MARCH AGAINST RASH OF HATE CRIMES

Reverend Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King, III, Charles Steele and Warren Ballantine will meet in the ATL this morning to announce plans for a Nov. 16th March on Washington to protest the outbreak of hate crimes around the country.

The four are scheduled to appear at 10 a.m. today outside of the Richard B. Russell Federal Building in Atlanta (75 Spring St. S.W.) and demand federal intervention into the sudden rise of noose hangings and swastikas.

According to a statement from Sharpton's National Action Network, the group will call on the Justice Department to protect the civil rights of U.S. citizens in the wake of these incidents, which seem to have been triggered by the noose hung in a tree in Jena, Louisiana by three white students.

'JENA 6' CASE IN LOUISIANA SPURS COPYCATS

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY
On the campus of the University of Maryland, where a third of the students are minorities, a noose is found hanging from a tree in front of a building that houses black organizations.
At the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., seven students, six white and one black, assault a black student and scrawl KKK and swastikas all over him.

The incidents are among at least a dozen racial incidents across the country found in news reports since the case of the "Jena Six." The six black teens were charged with beating a white student after a series of racial incidents that included white students hanging nooses from a schoolyard tree.

Most of the dozen occurrences in the past two months involved a noose left anonymously at a school or workplace, including nooses found in a Long Island, N.Y., police locker room, at a Pittsburgh bus maintenance garage and at several high schools.

"For a dozen incidents to come to the public's attention is a lot," says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "I don't generally see noose incidents in a typical month. We might hear about a handful in a year."

Several of the recent events are being investigated by police as hate crimes — crimes motivated by prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.

Criminologists and civil rights advocates say there is usually a spike in hate crimes after events such as the Jena case, although recent data are unavailable. The most recent statistics are for 2005.

"Any time you have a case that receives national notoriety, you see an uptick in copycat offenses," says Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

After 9/11, FBI reports showed the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes shot up from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001.

Copycat offenses are most often committed by men under 22 who are bored or drunk and looking for attention, Levin says. They generally are not members of hate groups, he says, but they harbor racial animosity or feel threatened by racial groups they think have unfair advantages, such as affirmative action.

"Those prejudices are already there for the most part, and what the Jena incident did was give them a green light on repeating this novelty," Levin says. "It's a way of reasserting their importance."

Scholars and civil rights advocates say the rash of episodes reflects the country's continued tensions over race.

"It's something in our culture that never goes away even though all this progress has been made," says Philip Dray, a New York writer on black history who authored At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. "Below the surface remains a hostility and distrust that can be easily awakened. … You can have a situation where people go along for years, and then an incident triggers it and you have this kind of eruption."

He says nooses are an unmistakable act of hostility toward blacks, given the country's history of 4,000 lynchings of black men in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Model Secondary School, where half of the 175 students are minorities, hired a consultant after the Sept. 29 attack to train the faculty and staff to deal with racism, says Dean Kathy Jankowski.

She says the school already sponsored diversity assemblies and cultural festivals and assigns students to sit at different tables during lunch so they can learn about other groups.

That's why the attack was so surprising, she says.

"It's very disappointing," Jankowski says. "We've have done so much to promote diversity, and it still happens. … It tells me we need to do more."

On Sept. 20, the day more than 20,000 people from across the country rallied in Jena, La., to support the Jena Six, Rosalyn Carpenter of Nashville couldn't believe it when she saw a red pickup drive by with a noose hanging from the back.

She and other demonstrators were in Alexandria, near Jena, waiting for their tour bus home.

"It was so bizarre," says Carpenter, president and CEO of the Urban League of Middle Tennessee. "To me it spoke to where we were, in the Deep South, and what is acceptable and what is allowed. … We need to get it together when it comes to issues of race."

Two males, 18 and 16, were arrested. The older teen was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, driving while intoxicated and inciting to riot.

In Winchester, Ky., four teens were charged in August with terroristic threats for taunting a black classmate with drawings of a noose, a Confederate flag and someone being whipped and lynched. The mother of one says her 17-year-old son wasn't doing it because of Jena.

"I know he meant nothing by it," says Lois Cotton. "I know he's not racist. He said he was just joking around. They were passing time in class."

She says her son didn't understand the impact of the drawings and has apologized. "I think he understands how serious this thing is," Cotton says.

BLACK DEAF STUDENT VICTIM OF RACIST ATTACK

A black student at a secondary school for the hearing impaired in Washington D.C. was held against his will and marked with racist comments during an incident last weekend.

The words "KKK" and swastikas were drawn on the skin of the deaf victim, who was tied up for about 45 minutes before being released, according to Metro Police Chief Cathy Lanier. He quickly notified dorm and school authorities, who called police.

Police have identified and interviewed the students involved and the "investigation is ongoing," Lanier said Wednesday. As of press time, no charges had been filed, and no names have been released. The incident, however, could result in criminal charges with "enhanced penalties for a hate crime," said Lanier.

Trouble started brewing when a group of black students and a group of white students began rough-housing in a dorm. "My understanding is the two groups engaged in friendly horseplay," Lanier said. But, she added, the groups got "angry with each other."

The two groups separated, she said, but later, six white students and one black student -- all between the ages of 15 and 19 -- took one of the black students into a dorm room and "held him there against his will."

"They used markers to write 'KKK' and draw swastikas on the student," Lanier said. They also tied up his hands so he was unable to communicate in sign language.

The residential high school is located on the campus of Gallaudet University, a higher education facility for deaf and hard of hearing people. The high school is administered as a division of the university's Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center.

Dean of Clerc Center Katherine A. Jankowski said the seven students who participated in the incident were sent home. Gallaudet provost Stephen Weiner said the school does "not tolerate any action, behavior of this type."

"We are taking action," he said. "We are looking at programs to help students understand we are a school with a diverse population. …This incident is intolerable. That's why the Metro police are involved. That's how serious we are about this incident."