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Posts Tagged ‘luis Ramirez’

6 Months and 10 Days : What Courts Value Latino Lives At

18 Jun 2009

This 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

ap_luis_ramirez_080718_mn 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

13 May 2009

banner165new 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

8 May 2009

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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?

When $300 necklaces mean something

11:28 am By la Macha · Family| Immigration| U.S.-Mexico Border| Violence| economy · 1 Comment

4 May 2009

While I was reading this post comparing the brutal murders of men of color and town reactions to the murders from Elle PhD, I came across this older article about the murder of Luis Ramirez in Pennsylvania.

By May, Ramirez had settled in Shenandoah, working two jobs after spending six months picking berries in Georgia.

“He worked hard so his kids would have more than he had growing up,” Dillman said. “He talked a lot about how we take so much for granted here.”

His diamond-encrusted religious medal, which cost him $300, now hangs over the fireplace in the three-story home on Main Street where Dillman and the children live.

“I just don’t understand how you can beat someone so badly when you don’t even know them,” Dillman said. “People here are just ignorant. They think life begins and ends in Shenandoah.”

It made me so sad to read this section. Earlier in the article, the author mentions that Ramirez had been kicked so hard by his murderers that the cross from that necklace left a cross mark on his chest.

Even as the article let’s the reader in on a detailed understanding of the lives of the “boys” accused of murdering Ramirez (honor students, football stars, etc), the one detail it tells us about Ramirez is that he spent $300 on a diamond encrusted necklace.

Oh, and he had two children out of wedlock. With a white woman. And was last seen walking down the street with a teenage girl.

Does it surprise anyone that the men accused of killing Luis Ramirez have been found not guilty?

Is it murder when you’re just doing something that everybody imagines doing themselves?

What right do dirty Mexicans have to “ruin the lives” of good boys, clean boys, who are doing their best to live day to day in a world that rewards criminals (with $300 necklaces) and denies jobs to hardworking “real Americans?”

Is it justice to punish those poor boys? Or is it justice that the visible display of Ramirez’s arrogance was used against him to destroy him?

Elle notes in her post:

Dr. King once said something to the effect of the arc of history** is long, but it bends towards justice.

Right now, I’m just stuck on how achingly long it is.

And all I can say is me too.

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