Archive for the ‘pennsylvania’ Category
6 Months and 10 Days : What Courts Value Latino Lives At
8:22 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration| Obama| Ohio| Politics| Violence| crime| media justice| pennsylvania| race · 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| Immigration| Justice| Politics| Violence| crime| media justice| pennsylvania| race · 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| Immigration| Justice| Politics| Violence| crime| media justice| pennsylvania| race · 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?
Breaking News: Republic Senator Arlen Specter is Now a Democrat
12:14 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia| Politics| pennsylvania · 3 Comments
28 Apr 2009Bad news for the Republican Party. Long-time GOP senator Arlen Specter let President Obama know this morning that he is switching parties and becoming a Democrat, citing that he “no longer feels comfortable” with his party. CNN broke the story about an hour ago (video above), and reports that some of the Senator’s Pennsylvania constituents were to meet him this morning when the news leaked, at which point Specter emerged from his office amid roaring applause from them. The UK’s Guardian has more:
“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Specter said in a statement posted on a website devoted to Pennsylvania politics and confirmed by his office. Several Senate officials said a formal announcement could come later today or tomorrow. [...]
“I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate,” he said in the statement.
“I don’t have to say anything to them. They’ve said it to me,” Specter said, when asked in a Capitol corridor about abandoning the conservatives.
The Guardian reports that President Obama contacted Specter by phone shortly after to say he was “thrilled to have” him and give him his “full support” (more coverage from MSNBC after the jump).
CNN just reported that Republican Senator for Maine Olympia Snowe was quoted as saying that Specter’s switch is “devastating” for the GOP and symptomatic of the dominance of the extreme right within the party.
Specter had been a Republican since 1966.
Read more…
Palin Biden Debate Fever Causes Blindness to Continued ICE Terrorism
2:19 pm By Maegan La Mala · Money| Politics| US Presidential Race 2008| pennsylvania · Comments Off
2 Oct 2008
While everyone (myself included) VP debate drinking games, the U.S. federal government and ICE hope that their continued acts of terrorism against immigrant communities fly beneath the radar.
In a week’s time, ICE arrested 78 people in Pennsylvania and Delaware. The media is playing up the fact that some of those arrested had criminal records and in an effort to stir up fear, called an emergency meeting in the communities where the arrests happening.
The emergency of immigrant familias?
Hola!
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- Rihanna interview
- One of Marcelo Lucero’s Attackers Pleads Guilty
- Remembering Marcelo Lucero : One Year Later, The List of Hate Crimes Grows Longer
- Rihanna Speaks
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- Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th
- Vigil for Marcelo LuceroThis Evening in Patchogue, Long Island, NY
- VL At The Cine: The Fourth Kind
- Rihanna interview
- One of Marcelo Lucero’s Attackers Pleads Guilty
- Remembering Marcelo Lucero : One Year Later, The List of Hate Crimes Grows Longer
- Rihanna Speaks
- A Message To Maine
- Maine Voters Said Yes on 1 and Yes to Marriage Inequity
- New York City Wakes Up to Four More Years of Bloomberg
