Archive for the ‘pennsylvania’ Category
When a Conspiracy is Denied, Full Justice is Denied : Luis Ramirez Case
8:37 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|pennsylvania · 1 Comment
1 Feb 2011Last week marked the end of criminal cases surrounding the racist killing of Luis Ramirez. Last Thursday, A jury issued a split verdict against three former Shenandoah police officers accused of obstructing justice in the investigation of a fatal beating. Former police Chief Matthew R. Nestor was found guilty of falsifying records, hindering a federal investigation. Former police Lt. William Moyer was found guilty of making false statements.
Perhaps more importantly than the charges the former officers were found guilty of is what they were acquitted of. Former police Chief Matthew R. Nestor, Former police Lt. William Moyer, and Former police Officer Jason R. Hayes were all found not guilty of conspiracy.
While Nestor faces up to 20 years in prison and Moyer faces up to five years incarcerated, this should be interpreted as injustice for multiple reasons. One, after the horrendous killing of Mexican immigrant/hermano Luis Ramirez, we have continued to see attacks on the Latino community, especially the immigrant Latino community. The list of our dead continues to grow, Marcelo, Jose, Brisenia. The lack of a conviction on the conspiracy charges supports the claim that walls do indeed kill those in our communities. In this case it was the “blue wall of silence” The blue wall is a collective process embedded in police forces around the United States. It allows criminal officers to cover their tracks and threatens those within their ranks who would attempt to break that wall with labels like “snitch” and “rat”.
Take for example the police brutality case here in NYC of Anthony Baez. After the young Puerto Rican was choked to death by former NYPD officer Francis X. Livoti, former NYPD officer Daisy Boria, refused to go along with the cover up that concocted a story blaming Anthony for his own death in an illegal police chokehold. On the stand, Boria revealed the conspiracy and found herself fearful for her own life. That police conspiracy to lie and cover up was never investigated and the blue wall of silence continues to surround the NYPD. It clearly extends beyond the 5 boroughs, wraps around Shenandoah and parallels the U.S. border with Mexico.
While the officers in Shenandoah did not kill Ramirez with their own hands, the collusion, the working together to protect “boys” they considered “part of their own kind” contributed and continues to contribute to an environment of anti-immigrant/anti-Latino hate. As birthright bills and the case against the killers of a 9 year old Arizona Latina girl with her own dreams not referenced in Obama’s last State of the Union Address carry on, the temperature continues to rise. You do not have hate crimes against Latinos in a vacuum. So long as 287(g) and Secure Communities are the answer the Obama administration gives the community to cries for “immigration reform”, the blue wall of silence will continue to choke, stab, and shoot our own.
Justice (?) for Luis Ramirez
10:46 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|pennsylvania · 11 Comments
18 Oct 2010
Last week, a jury in a Federal Court in Pennsylvania convicted Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky of violating the civil rights of Luis Ramirez, when the two former high school football players from Shenandoah, PA beat and kicked the Mexican immigrant to death in July 2008.
From the Cypress Times:
The jury found the defendants guilty of violating the criminal component of the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it a crime to use a person’s race, national origin or ethnicity as a basis to interfere, with violence or threats of violence, with a person’s right to live where he chooses to live. In addition, the jury found that Donchak conspired to, and did in fact, obstruct justice.
The Feds stepped in with Hate Crime charges after the state court allowed Donchak and Piekarsky to get away with murder. Now the two face life in prison. Sentencing will be Jan. 24, 2011.
Is this the road to justice though?
Luis Ramirez Federal Hate Crime Trial Underway
8:13 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|pennsylvania · 3 Comments
9 Oct 2010The Federal Hate Crime trial against Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak, accused of beating Luis Ramirez to death because he was Mexican/Latino is underway.
This trial comes after indictments in December of last year that charge the two men and three police officers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania of violating Luis Ramirez’s civil rights and conspiring to cover up that violation. In the original criminal trial held last summer, Piekarsky was found not guilty of third degree murder, while Donchak was acquitted of aggravated assault.
In other words, they got away with murder and will continue to get away with murder.
Anti-Immigrant Law Does Not Stand in Hazleton
5:10 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|pennsylvania · Comments Off
9 Sep 2010
Upholding a federal court decision from 2007, today the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Hazleton, Pennsylvania may not enforce a law which denies business permits to companies that employ illegal immigrants, fines landlords who rent to them and requires legal tenants to register and pay for a rental permit.
The mayor is promising to appeal.
Via / Immigration Impact y WHPTV
More States Step Up Against SB1070 and Copycat Laws
10:43 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Iowa|pennsylvania|utah · 1 Comment
5 Jul 2010As Macha’s post earlier this morning pointed out, there are cities and states across the country taking a stand against Arizona’s SB1070 and copycat measures that are popping up all over the country.
Last week, a network of lawmakers so far representing 28 states announced their rejection of Arizona’s law which essentially legalizes racial profiling against Latinos. They are doing this by pushing pro-migrant legislation as opposed to laws that, to steal a phrase from Obama’s speech on immigration last week, put more “boots on the ground”.
In Iowa, for example, wage-enforcement legislation that expands opportunities and defends the rights of all workers passed the State Senate in 2008. Although it was not enacted, legislators will introduce a similar bill in 2011. The legislation, proposed by Utah State Senator Luz Robles would enable legal immigrant children to receive preventive medical care through the federally-funded Medicaid and State Child Health Plus (SCHIP) programs without the current five year waiting period for immigrants included in President Obama’s recently passed health care package. In Pennsylvania, legislators have taken the lead in efforts to introduce and advance community policing and anti-racial profiling legislation. Such measures would bar state and local law enforcement officers from taking on the added responsibility of enforcing federal immigration laws, while helping to curb incidents of racial profiling in the event they are required to by courts or the law.
The Partial Justice of the DOJ Indictment in the Luis Ramirez Case
7:04 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Justice|New York City|pennsylvania|Uncategorized|Violence · 7 Comments
21 Dec 2009When Anthony Baez as killed by former NYPD officer Francis Livoti 14 years ago tomorrow, the blue wall of silence, the blue wall of collusion and covering up went up but soon was knocked down thanks to a powerful coalition of grassroots organizations and attorneys that worked to support Anthony’s mother Iris.
While the death of Luis Ramirez wasn’t at the hands of police in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the recent Federal indictments of five people, including three police officers, for their roles in the death and subsequent cover up, remind us that the blue wall of silence is related to the border wall and the hateful rhetoric surrounding immigration, especially Latino immigration.
From an email from the National Alliance for Immigrant Rights Coordinating Committee:
The federal indictment comes from a statute that that makes it a federal offense to interfere with a person’s housing rights on the basis of race through threat or force. Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky were also accused, along with members of the local police department of scheming to obstruct the investigation of the attack. According to the Department of Justice both civilian defendants could get life in prison for the hate crime charge, while Donchek faces additional prison time for his role in the conspiracy to obstruct justice. Three police officers, including Shenandoah Police Chief Mathew Nestor were indicted for conspiring to obstruct justice in the investigation of the attack and face up to 20 years in prison. One of the three also faces charges of making false statements to the FBI. Nestor and his second in command face additional federal corruption and civil rights charges related to another matter.
6 Months and 10 Days : What Courts Value Latino Lives At
8:22 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · crime|Immigration|media justice|Obama|Ohio|pennsylvania|Politics|race|Violence · 7 Comments
18 Jun 2009This morning in my inbox I received another email telling me, and whoever else was on this advocacy org’s coveted mailing list, that I should be vigilant about the rising tide of hate crimes and yet again the point of reference was the Holocaust Museum shooting.
Do I really need a reminder? Do I need to hear the frenzied 911 call of a mother after seeing her husband and daughter shot and killed? I know that audio is going around some blogs and media sites and I have refused to listen for my own personal sanity as a Latina mother but also as a statement against the exploitation of the pain of Latinas for the sake of “the story”
Would Hate Crimes legislation made a difference? Would it have prevented a Latino young man from having a noose placed around his neck and dragged around a parking lot in Ohio? Maybe if the young man would have died his lie would have been worth more than the paltry sentence his horror was met with.
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio – A central Ohio teenager accused of putting a noose around a Hispanic boy’s neck and dragging him in a parking lot has been sentenced to 10 days in jail.
The 18-year-old was sentenced Wednesday in juvenile court in Mount Vernon, a city of 15,000 residents an hour’s drive northeast of Columbus. He dropped his original plea of not guilty and pleaded no contest to ethnic intimidation.
A charge of aggravated menacing was dropped.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell Asks Attorney General Eric Holder to Pursue Civil Rights Charges Against the Murderers of Luis Ramirez
9:30 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Justice|pennsylvania · Comments Off
30 May 2009
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendel sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder recommending that the Department of Justice pursue civil rights charges against the murderers of Luis Ramirez, Piekarsky and Donchak.
While this is good news, as any movement towards justice is, after reading the letter, I remain concerned with how Ramirez’s death and the actions of those who killed him are framed in isolation. Ramirez’s death is framed as a hate crime, with the governor drawing connections to the Yankel Rosenbaum and Rodney King cases. However where is the mention of the long line of anti-Latino/immigrant hate crimes? Where is the line connecting Ramirez’s death to the anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric that we are seeing now used even against Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor?
The entire letter is after the jump.
The Luis Ramirez Murder: A Logical Step in the Process of Establishing a Subhuman Class
8:38 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism|crime|Immigration|Justice|media justice|pennsylvania|Politics|race|Violence · 1 Comment
13 May 2009
Seems like every org and their mother want to take the recent injustice in the Luis Ramirez murder case and use it for toned down cries for justice separated from the multiple places that breed the kind of hate and disrespect that led to the crossroads we as a community find ourselves at now. This is why The Sanctuary (of which I am a proud member) hoy draws a line in the sand.
The process of defining a subhuman class and institutionalizing discrimination and violence against that group is not new. How quickly and conveniently some of us allow our collective memory to cover its own tracks. Parasite, diseased, leeching, dangerous, over-breeding, vermin. These terms and this imagery have been deployed for ages, on various groups of people, on various pieces of land, in the service of various endeavors; and always to bring about the same ends. To demonize and dehumanize a group of people so that other people come to understand that the social compact with the demonized group is broken; that discrimination and violence against the dehumanized class now carries no moral consequence. That is the meaning of this latest ruling by an all-white jury in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Racial murder of a Mexican carries the same consequence as walking up to a white person and punching them in the belly: simple assault.
Are you down to make the commitment to radical cambio for our lives? Then read the entire post here.
Luis Ramirez and Every Mother’s Sons and Daughters : Seeking Justice by All Means Necessary
7:31 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism|crime|Immigration|Justice|media justice|pennsylvania|Politics|race|Violence · 6 Comments
8 May 2009
in 1991, in the rapidly changing immigrant community of Corona, Queens, NYC 19 year old son of Dominican immigrants, Manny Mayi Jr. was beaten to death.
Last year, Marcelo Lucero was killed.
At the start of the new year Wilter Sanchez was nearly killed.
In February of this year Jose Sucuzhañay, an Ecuadorian immigrant was beaten to death.
Speaking Spanish can get you beaten.
And most recently, Luis Ramirez was beaten and killed and those accused got away with murder.
I could go through recent and not so recent history and clearly see a pattern and practice of hate that has been growing. A pattern and practice of racism, nativism, fueled by the media and government, eaten up by the mainstream public.
People in Shenandoah celebrated, went out into the streets and rejoiced after an all-white jury found Brandon J. Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick M. Donchak, 19, guilty of lesser charges and acquitted them of criminal homicide and aggravated assault.
And then people have the nerve to ask why are more Latinos not more active in the fight for immigration change?
This is not just about laws, this about lives.
So what do we as a community do?
Hola!
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