I - Long Island group charged with hate crimes

What breeds hate?  Why would a group of kids decide to go looking for someone to hurt? Where do they hear that it is OK to beat someone? 

Oftentimes a resentment grows when they hear people around them complain over and over again about a particular group.  Like Lou Dobbs.  The venom he speaks is projected deliberately to make people angry.  The more angry, the more attached they are to Dobbs program...  He is emphatic to their rage.  His insults towards immigrants are well regarded.  Did the guys from Long Island watch Lou Dobbs?

A word of concern for the media.  Think about the long term effects of the things you publish or broadcast.  If you are one of those journalists or editors - do you ever wonder if one of the Long Island 6 watched Lou Dobbs?
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November 21, 2008

New York Times
6 Long Island Teens Charged With Hate Crimes
By CARA BUCKLEY

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Every now and then, perhaps once a week, seven young friends got together in their hamlet of Medford, on eastern Long Island, to hunt down, and hurt, Hispanic men. They made a sport of it, calling their victims “beaners,” a reference to the staple Hispanic dish of rice and beans, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Nov. 8 was a particularly long and violent day, the prosecutors said. Two of the teenagers set out in their car at dawn and one of them fired a BB gun at a Hispanic man in his driveway, striking him several times. That evening, the group, now seven strong, drank beer in a park and searched for more victims. They found and beat a Hispanic man in neighboring Patchogue, but he was able to escape.

Then, shortly before midnight, prosecutors said, they caught sight of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant walking with a friend near the train station in Patchogue. The teenagers surrounded, taunted and beat Mr. Lucero, who tried to fight back. One of the youths fatally stabbed Mr. Lucero, 37, a worker at a dry cleaning store and 16-year resident of the United States who regularly sent money to his ailing mother in Ecuador.

Six of the seven teenagers, now defendants charged with multiple counts of gang assault and hate crimes, were arraigned Thursday in Suffolk County Criminal Court.

“To them, it was a sport,” Thomas J. Spota, Suffolk County’s district attorney, said in a news conference after the defendants were arraigned. “We know for sure that there are more victims out there.”

Moments earlier, one by one, the youths were led before a courtroom packed with their parents and high school friends, as well as Mr. Lucero’s relatives, many of whom wept as the prosecution detailed the chilling sequence of events.

A grand jury indictment, also unsealed on Thursday, laid out additional charges that the defendants now face for what prosecutors described as earlier crimes against Hispanics.

A seventh defendant, Jeffrey Conroy, 17, a star high school athlete, was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter as a hate crime in Mr. Lucero’s death. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

The judge set bail for five of the youths at $250,000 cash or $500,000 bond, and bail was denied to a sixth defendant, Christopher Overton, 16, who has a felony conviction for a 2007 burglary in which an East Patchogue man was killed.

All seven defendants have pleaded not guilty in the attack on Mr. Lucero.

In the courtroom, at a news conference and in the indictment itself, the prosecutors detailed the following chronology of events that preceded Mr. Lucero’s death.

Mr. Spota said three defendants, Anthony Hartford, Kevin Shea and Jose Pacheco, all 17, went out driving five days before Mr. Lucero was killed with the intent of, in their words, “beaner hopping.”

They found a Hispanic man that day whom Mr. Pacheco admitted to punching and knocking out cold, Mr. Spota said. That victim has not stepped forward. Mr. Pacheco later told the police, “I don’t go out and do this very often, maybe once a week,” Mr. Spota said.

About 5 a.m. on Nov. 8, Nicholas Hausch and Jordan Dasch, both 17, fired a BB gun at Marlon Garcia, hitting him several times. In the evening, the seven friends got together and, after failing to find potential victims in Medford, set off for Patchogue, where they saw Hector Sierra walking downtown. They caught up to him and punched him before he ran away.

Shortly before midnight, the teens saw Mr. Lucero and his friend, Angel Loja. They got out of their car and taunted the men with racist slurs. Mr. Loja fled, but the group surrounded Mr. Lucero and punched him in the face. Trying to defend himself, Mr. Lucero removed his belt and swung it, striking Mr. Conroy in the head. Enraged, Mr. Conroy rushed at Mr. Lucero and plunged a knife into his chest. The youths fled, but were soon caught by the police.

Mr. Conroy was the only one charged with murder, Mr. Spota said, because the other six defendants were initially unaware that he had stabbed Mr. Lucero...continued

II - Long Island group charged with hate crimes

Con't

November 21, 2008

New York Times
6 Long Island Teens Charged With Hate Crimes
By CARA BUCKLEY

Lawyers for the six defendants arraigned on Thursday argued that their clients were being unfairly charged with crimes committed by others in the group. They also said that the defendants were not racist and pointed to the young men’s friends, black, white and Hispanic, filling the courtroom seats.

Chris Kirby, the lawyer for Mr. Pacheco, said in court that his client was of Hispanic descent and therefore incapable of a racist attack. “The idea that he, of Hispanic heritage, would beat up another Hispanic is patently absurd,” Mr. Kirby said.

Mr. Lucero’s killing has brought to the fore a fierce debate about race relations in Patchogue, a comfortable village of 11,700. Latinos make up a quarter of the population, according to the 2000 census. With the numbers of Latinos in the county growing and the economy weakening , some residents say there is a deepening resentment toward illegal immigrants, particularly day laborers.

County officials have insisted the attack was not connected to any simmering racial tensions in Patchogue or Medford. County Executive Steve Levy, long a proponent of crackdowns on illegal immigrants, called the defendants “white supremacists.” Michael Mostow, the superintendent of Patchogue-Medford School District, said there was no racial strife at the high school the teenagers attended and described the attack as “an aberration.”

The killing of Mr. Lucero yielded an outpouring of outrage and grief that rippled beyond the tightly knit Hispanic community here. His body was flown this week to his hometown, the mountain city of Gualaceo, Ecuador, and mourners by the hundreds met his coffin, Newsday reported

At a news conference after the arraignments, Hispanic leaders and members of Mr. Lucero’s family said they were pleased with the upgraded charges. At first, the defendants were accused of fewer crimes, and Mr. Conroy faced a charge of manslaughter, but not murder.

Cesar Perales, president and general counsel of the advocacy group Latino Justice P.R.L.D.E.F. said the new charges were important in restoring Hispanics’ faith in the county’s justice system.

Fernando Mateo, a spokesman for the Lucero family, said that while he was pleased that “justice would be served,” he did not believe recent reports that hate crimes had plummeted in the county in the last few years. “Hunting season is over for this group now,” Mr. Mateo said, as Mr. Lucero’s brother, Joselo, stood silently by his side. “It was a hobby to them, I know it started out as a game, but it turned into a murder.”

Fatal Results to a Political Ploy

"The atmosphere began to darken when Republican politicians decided a few years ago to exploit immigration as a wedge issue." NYT

The GOP used immigration baiting thinking it would help win elections. Now there is no doubt. They were wrong. Unfortunately... inciting hatred had its ramifications. Marcello Lucero suffered the consequences when seven teenage boys went "looking for Latinos to beat up."
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November 11, 2008
Editorial
A Death in Patchogue
New York Times

Marcello Lucero was killed late Saturday night near the commuter railroad station in Patchogue, N.Y., a middle-class village in central Long Island. He was beaten and stabbed. The friend who crouched beside him in a parking lot as he lay dying, soaked in blood, said Mr. Lucero, who was 37, had come to the United States 16 years ago from Ecuador.

The police arrested seven teenage boys, who they said had driven into the village from out of town looking for Latinos to beat up. The police said the mob cornered Mr. Lucero and another man, who escaped and later identified the suspects to the police. A prosecutor at the arraignment on Monday quoted the young men as having said: “Let’s go find some Mexicans.” They have pleaded not guilty.

The county executive, Steve Levy, quickly issued a news release denouncing this latest apparent hate crime in Suffolk County. That should be the first and least of the actions he and other leaders take.

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. Years of effort in Congress to assemble a responsible overhaul of the immigration system failed repeatedly. Its opponents wanted only to demonize and punish the Latino workers on which the country had come to depend.

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.

It is not yet clear how closely connected Mr. Lucero’s murder is to this broad wave of xenophobia. But there is both a message and opportunity here for officials like Mr. Levy, an immigration hard-liner whose relations with his rapidly growing Latino immigrant constituency have been strained by past crises and confrontations.

Deadly violence represents the worst fear that immigrants deal with every day, but it is not the only one. It must be every leader’s task to move beyond easy outrage and take on the difficult job of understanding and defending a community so vulnerable to sudden outbreaks of hostility and terror.

Wearing antiwar T-shirt gets 80 year old arrested

you can purchase this T-shirt at http://www.vegethics.com/peace.cgi/peace06/queerspiritart.30945709


Democracy Now informs us that an 80 year old clergyman was arrested at a mall in Long Island wearing an antiwar T-shirt. He was asked to turn it inside out and when he refused he was arrested. That just seems so strange to me.

It's bad enough that people get ejected from events and arrested for doing this when someone from the presidential administration is speaking - but at the mall?

As long as Bush is president, maybe we all should think twice about what we wear to a protest march, on a plane, to a speech or most any other public event.

just a few more months for his administration to end - 10 to be exact- hope we make it ok.


p.s. be sure not to wear an anti-war T-shirt to the Smith Haven Mall in Long Island.
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Democracynow.org
March 31, 2008


80-Year-Old Deacon Arrested at Mall for Antiwar T-Shirt

In Long Island, New York, an eighty-year-old church deacon was removed from a shopping mall Saturday and arrested after he refused to remove a t-shirt protesting the Iraq war. Deacon Don Zirkel was handing out antiwar pamphlets when he was approached by security guards at the Smith Haven Mall. The guards placed him under citizen’s arrest after he refused orders to turn his t-shirt inside out. When the local police arrived they charged him with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest.


for link to DN headlines click the title of this post

photo: http://images.cafepress.com/product/30945709_240x240_Front.jpg