Trans Woman Attacked in Hollywood Hate Crime Speaks Out, Cops Offer Reward

Los Angeles police are offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of four men who brutally assaulted a transgender woman last month.


The Los Angeles Police Department's Hollywood division is offering a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of four men allegedly involved in a brutal attack on a transgender woman in Hollywood last month. In hopes of identifying the suspect, the LAPD released video and still images of the assault and assailants.

Vivian Diego, a 22-year-old transgender woman, was walking toward the Metro transit station on Hollywood Boulevard at about 2:30 a.m. on May 31 when a group of four men jumped her and began punching and kicking her, Diego says. Diego spent a week in the hospital after the attack.

CBS's Los Angeles affiliate spoke with Diego, whose mouth is wired shut as she recovers from a broken jaw, shattered cheekbone, and two cracked ribs suffered as a result of the attack.

“Right when they see me, they started being malicious, verbally, abusing me verbally with words,” Diego told the station. Mere minutes later, one man shoved Diego from behind while others began beating her. “I was being kicked on and punched on,” she said. “And then, I wake up in the hospital.”

Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime, and offering a $25,000 reward for anyone with information leading to an arrest. LAPD investigators have set up a special email account for anyone with information to contact them: hollywoodcrimetips@gmail.com. Anyone with knowledge of the attack can contact LAPD's Hollywood Area Detective Division at (213) 972-2967, or (877) LAPD-24-7 during non-business hours or weekends.

Despite the assault, Diego says she is resilient. "I'm not letting this incident, this attack, stop me from living my life," she told the station. "As you can see, I'm still fabulous. You guys didn't stop no show."

Juan Pablo Galavis, 'Bachelor' Star, says gays perverts

When asked whether or not he thought the hit ABC reality show featuring a gay or bisexual bachelor would be a "good idea," Juan Pablo Galavis reportedly told The TV Page's Sean Daly, "No... I respect [gay people] but, honestly, I don't think it's a good example for kids..."

Galavis, the 18th man to score the coveted role of "The Bachelor," continued his conversation with Daly -- but not before pointing out his gay friend Peter (because if you have a gay friend, you can't be homophobic, right?) -- and added:

"Obviously people have their husband and wife and kids and that is how we are brought up. Now there is fathers having kids and all that, and it is hard for me to understand that too in the sense of a household having peoples… Two parents sleeping in the same bed and the kid going into bed… It is confusing in a sense."

Galavis, who is the show's first Latino bachelor, also stated that "there's this thing about gay people... it seems to me, and I don't know if I'm mistaken or not... but they're more 'pervert' in a sense. And to me the show would be too strong... too hard to watch."





He later apologizes:



People,

I want to apologize to all the people I may have offended because of my comments on having a Gay or Bisexual Bachelor. The comment was taken out of context. If you listen to the entire interview, there's nothing but respect for Gay people and their families. I have many gay friends and one of my closest friends who's like a brother has been a constant in my life especially during the past 5 months. The word pervert was not what I meant to say and I am very sorry about it. Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish and, because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself. What I meant to say was that gay people are more affectionate and intense and for a segment of the TV audience this would be too racy to accept. The show is very racy as it is and I don't let my 5 year old daughter watch it. Once again, I'm sorry for how my words were taken. I would never disrespect anyone.

Sinceramente,

Juan Pablo Galavis.

White Supremacists Use Black-on-White Crime as Propaganda Tool

Long a source of irritation for white supremacists, angry claims of an epidemic of black-on-white crime (often simply referred to as "black crime") have drifted closer to the mainstream since the controversial shooting in Florida of Trayvon Martin, a young African-American male, by George Zimmerman (who has been described in the media as a white Hispanic). Following the assertions, extremists have repeated their claims that a large number of white victims are being ignored. And now even some mainstream commentators have taken up the issue and have used rhetoric similar to that used by the white supremacists to attack the media for allegedly discounting white victims of crime.
White supremacists calls for action against "black crime"

Even as they deny "whiteness" to George Zimmerman, white supremacists have been busy exploiting the controversy caused by Zimmerman's alleged act of self-defense against an African-American. White supremacists have renewed their calls for actions against so-called "black crime," which they equate with hate crimes. Hate crimes, however, have a very specific meaning: they are criminal offenses against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. White supremacists believe that any crime committed by an African-American against a white person is motivated by race.

On Stormfront, a popular white supremacist Internet forum, one poster recently asked people to join in a planned rally against black crime in Knoxville, Tennessee, scheduled for June 2012. The purpose of the rally would be to protest against new trials for black assailants who allegedly tortured and murdered a young white couple in that city in 2007. At that time, the incident mobilized the white supremacist community, which held rallies and distributed flyers that accused the media of ignoring what they considered to be a heinous hate crime. Police in Knoxville who investigated the crime said that the victims had not been targeted because of their race.

In May 2012, the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) announced that it would investigate a number of alleged incidents around the country in which whites were reportedly the victims of crimes committed by black youths or other minorities. In particular, the NSM mentioned an alleged attack against two white reporters by black youths in Norfolk, Virginia, and assaults against white men in Mobile, Alabama, and Baltimore, Maryland. The NSM has called for hate crime charges to be filed in these cases and wrote on its Web site that "if the roles had been reversed and it was a White mob that had attacked a Black citizen, it would have been labeled a 'lynching' by the major media…We have discovered a disturbing pattern of the systematic cover up and refusal of prosecutors to prosecute offenders under these [hate crime] statutes when the perpetrators are Black and the victims are White."   Read More Hate

Black on White

• Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Upset about a racial name-calling that occurred earlier that night, several black men savagely beat a random white man who had had nothing to do with the incident. He slipped away from his attackers, but they forced him to swim into a lake to escape. He drowned. The three men were sentenced to less than a year in jail.
  
• Massachusetts. Four black men decided to murder the next white person they saw. That unlucky soul was a college student from Boston, whom the men stabbed to death.
  
  
• Indiana. A black man was arrested for killing seven white people with a shotgun. He explained that he murdered his victims due to his “deep-rooted hatred” of white people.
  
  
• Miami, Florida. The leader of a black supremacist sect (i.e., the “Yaweh ben Yaweh cult”) was convicted of the murders of several white people. He ordered his followers to kill any and all “white devils.” They killed at least seven white people, bringing back body parts to their leader.
  
  
• North Carolina. Seven black men kidnapped a white woman, raped her, put her in a tub of bleach, shot her five times, and dumped her body. The murderers said they did this for racial reasons.
  
  
• North Carolina. Four black teenagers lured a white, ten-year-old girl into an empty house. “There, they sodomized her, strangled her with a cable wire, and beat her to death with a board. In the past few weeks, the trials in the Tiffany Long case have received extensive coverage in the North Carolina press. But with two of the three defendants already sentenced to lifelong prison terms, and the third now standing trial, the national media have all but ignored the story. Only the Associated Press has reported on the trials, in a single, cursory piece. The AP, of course, failed to mention the race of the people involved — an oversight it seldom if ever committed in the case of Amadou Diallo.
  
  
• Boulder, Colorado. After discovering that one of their members had never had intercourse with a white woman, an Asian gang went looking for one. When they found a white University of Colorado student, the six men gang raped her in their minivan for two hours.   At their trial, “Detectives described the woman’s night of terror, including repeated threats to kill her.“The woman leaped out of the minivan after one of the men raped her. Naked, she sprinted across Lefthand Canyon Road before Steve Yang tackled her, authorities said.“‘They were all screaming at her, calling her names and hitting her,’ Detective Jane Harmer testified.“Yang put her in a headlock and dragged her back into the van, where she was raped repeatedly, Harmer said.“‘It was a free-for-all,’ Harmer testified.“One man threatened to ‘cut and burn her,’ and another put a gun barrel to the back of her head when they released her, Harmer said.
  
  
• Kansas City, Missouri. An Ethiopian immigrant shot two white coworkers — killing one and critically injuring the other — at his workplace, then turned the gun on himself. At his residence, police found a three-page, signed note he had written in which he railed at “black blood sucker supreme white people” for oppressing him and black people in general.
  
• New York City. In a Midtown office building, a white woman was assaulted, raped, and anally raped by a black man who called her racist names during the attack. Police refused to label it a hate crime.
  
• Alexandria, Virginia. A black man walking through a neighborhood went over to a white eight-year-old boy playing in his great-grandparents’ front yard and slit the child’s throat, killing him. A witness says that the attacker shouted racial epithets during the attack, and the main suspect in the case owns anti-white hate literature and had written a note about killing white children. He had been previously arrested for attacking an unarmed white stranger with a hammer. (During the attack, he called his victim “Whitey.”)

Dealing With Hate

I once had a conversation with someone about their hate for the political opposition. I told him that those you call enemy are often your brothers, sisters, and neighbors. They wish you no harm, they only believe differently. Are there bad people in government on the left and right? Of course there are. There are those who will do anything to have their way.

Sometimes it's easy to see only left/right with no gray. We are all a mixture of many beliefs. Often we seek those who best echo our own beliefs and run away those who think differently. I love talking to people from the extreme left because I can learn how they think – why they believe the things they do. Too often it is those on the right who share many of my beliefs that I find the most mystifying. They protest in the name of liberty one day and the next the same people are calling gays and transgendered vile names. I try to understand they are living under the delusion of a religion that supports that hatred. While the Christians who hate aren't a majority, there are too many that do and make some fear for their lives. The Christian way should be to protect those in danger from the hatred of of their brothers and sisters.

As someone on the libertarian right I have one goal only, and that is less government in our lives. Many on the right seem to place that second as they apparently want society to conform to their brand of morality. Many Conservatives fight for their brand of morality while condemning those like me with more libertarian beliefs.

No one will ever be 100% correct on all issues. We exist to learn and evolve our thinking. It is when our thinking becomes stagnant that we begin to hate. It often takes great inner strength to not have prejudices and to hold no hate for others. In the past two years I have been hurt deeply, while some I have forgiven and some I haven't. Those for whom I can't find the strength to forgive I simply don't think about them and have faith that karma will be their judge.

Charges Dropped in Transgender Woman Islan Nettles' Murder: What Now?

(Huffington Post)  In the early hours of Aug. 17, Islan Nettles, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was beaten to death. She was attacked across the street from New York City's Police Service Area 6 precinct in Harlem, the life pummeled from her in a fit of violence.

In the days that followed, the police arrested a suspect, 20-year-old Paris Wilson.
According to reports, Wilson knocked Nettles to the ground and began beating her with his fists as she lay helpless on the ground. Witnesses alleged that Wilson's outburst began when he realized that Nettles was transgender, and that he continued hitting her as he hurled transphobic and homophobic slurs at her. The attack ultimately resulted in her death in the hospital days later.
Wilson was charged with misdemeanor assault. Many in the transgender community were outraged. How could such a violent act be considered a misdemeanor?

Yesterday, even the tiny bit of justice that would have come from a misdemeanor assault conviction was taken from us. Judge Steven Statsinger announced that the charges against Wilson would be dropped as the prosecution didn't have clear evidence that Wilson was the man who had committed the crime. Mind you, there were several witnesses at the scene, with multiple people identifying Wilson as the perpetrator. Still, this wasn't enough for Judge Statsinger and prosecutors.
After his arrest, Wilson's mother sought out another man who had allegedly committed the crime. This man offered a confession, though claiming that he could not remember much detail of the incident, as he was supposedly intoxicated at the time of the crime. This was enough to sway prosecutors away from pursuing charges against Wilson, even though police initially believed this man's confession to be false.

Too often, this is what happens when someone dies at the hands of anti-transgender violence. Victims are forgotten, perpetrators are let free, and the world moves on as though nothing happened.
Today is the 15th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when we can reflect and memorialize those who were so unjustly taken from the world for no reason other than being themselves. We look back on so many lives cut so short.

What happened to Islan Nettles is neither unique nor remarkable. What happened to her happens far more often to trans women of color than we will ever truly know. The official body count this year is 238, though that number is likely a gross underestimate.

There are days to fight on other important transgender-specific issues like housing discrimination, employment discrimination, harassment and media representation. This is not that day. This is the day that we need to look at the violence that so many of our trans sisters of color fall victim to and ask, "What can we do to stop this?"

I wish I had an answer to that. I wish there was something I could say or do to protect the lives of victims past, present and future, but I find myself lost and near speechless. No one should die because of who they are, ever.     Read more Hate

New Black Panther Declares: We Will Hunt ‘Pink A**es’ Down, ‘Kill ‘Em

General T.A.C.O. (middle) & Two Masked Panthers

(The Blaze)“That’s our brother, brother General Taco!” the New Black Panther radio host announced.

General T.A.C.O. (Taking All Capitalists Out) of the New Black Panther Party had some less than encouraging words for white people this week.  Mr. Taco, speaking on NBPP Radio on Sunday, decided to let white America know that the NBPP will “hunt” their “pink asses down.”  Hunting white people down will serve to accomplish General Taco’s other stated goal of “destroying white supremacy and capitalism.”

Gen. Taco also justifies his killing of white people because of their “history” of pushing “crack, AIDS and unemployment” on black men and women in order to “exterminate” them.

But simply hunting and killing the white person does not satisfy Mr. Taco:

“Once [white people] die, we should dig ‘em up, and kill ‘em again, bury ‘em, dig ‘em up, and kill ‘em again, and again, and again!”

Hate crime charge for California boy accused of setting transgender teen on fire

By Ronnie Cohen

OAKLAND, California Thu Nov 7, 2013 9:36pm EST

(Reuters) - A 16-year-old California boy accused of setting fire to a transgender teen's skirt as the victim slept on a public bus in the city of Oakland earlier this week was charged as an adult on Thursday with committing a hate crime.

Richard Thomas was charged with aggravated mayhem, felony assault and a hate-crime "enhancement" after telling a police officer he committed Monday's attack "because he was homophobic," according to the criminal complaint.

The 18-year-old victim, Luke Fleischman, who was born male but identifies himself as gender neutral and goes by the name of Sasha, remained hospitalized in San Francisco with severe burns on Thursday and was listed in stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The teen will require several surgeries to recover, according to a website posted by family members to raise money for the victim's medical treatment.

"The intentional and callous nature of the crime is shocking and will not be tolerated in our community," Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley said in a statement.

Thomas stood in a glass cage in Superior Court out of view of observers and told Judge Gregory Syren that his relatives were trying to hire a lawyer to defend him against the charges.

A woman who identified herself as the suspect's grandmother begged the judge for more time to find an attorney. Syren postponed proceedings for entering of a plea until Tuesday and ordered Thomas to remain in custody without bail.

Outside the courtroom, Thomas's mother, who gave her name only as Ms. Jackson, denied that her son was homophobic or that he meant to hurt anyone.

"My son is not a hateful person," she said. "He's not homophobic. He was joking, and he didn't know it would go that far."

"I am very sorry, very sorry for my son's actions," Jackson told reporters, adding that her son, too, was remorseful and was drafting a letter of apology to the burn victim. "I did not raise him that way."

Police arrested Thomas at Oakland High School, where he is a student, on Tuesday after examining surveillance video from the city bus that allegedly showed him setting the victim's skirt on fire.

Tiffany Woods, a liaison between the transgender community and Oakland police, said Fleischman identified as gender neutral or "agender" and was a "well-liked kid."

Trevor Cralle, director of the Maybeck High School in Berkeley, where Fleischman is a senior, described the teen as a "wonderful, exceptional student."

(Reporting by Ronnie Cohen; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Steve Gorman and Ken Wills

Holocaust Survivor

Read this Jewish woman's eyewitness account of the loss of freedom in her native Austria: 

 --------------------------------------------------------

December 22, 2012 - “What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or read in history books,” she likes to tell audiences.

“I am a witness to history.

“I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.

If you remember the plot of the Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family escaped over the Alps rather than submit to the Nazis. Kitty wasn’t so lucky. Her family chose to stay in her native Austria. She was 10 years old, but bright and aware. And she was watching.

 

“We elected him by a landslide – 98 percent of the vote,” she recalls.

She wasn’t old enough to vote in 1938 – approaching her 11th birthday. But she remembers.

“Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.”

No so.

Hitler is welcomed to Austria

“In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unem- ployed. We had 25 percent inflation and 25 percent bank loan interest rates.

Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were go- ing from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs.

“My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.’

“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.

Austrian girls welcome Hitler

“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.

“Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

“We were overjoyed,” remembers Kitty, “and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and
everyone was fed.

Austrians saluting

“After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

“Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teach- ing profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been re- quired to give up for marriage.

“Then we lost religious education for kids

Poster promoting "Hitler Youth"

“Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school.. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,’ and had physical education.

“Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.”
And then things got worse.

“The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free.

“We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

“My mother was very unhappy,” remembers Kitty. “When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.

“I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing.

A pro-Hitler rally

“Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time, unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.

“It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of hu- manistic philosophy.

“In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death.

“Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

“Soon after this, the draft was implemented.

Young Austrians

“It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps,” remembers Kitty. “During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.

“They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.
“When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.
“Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

“When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately es- tablished child care centers.
“You could take your children ages four weeks old to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, seven days a week, under the total care of the government.

“The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

“Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna..
“After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything.

“When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.

“If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the med- ical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

“As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80 percent of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families.

“All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

“We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables.
“ Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because peo- ple might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands.

“Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

“We had consumer protection, too

Austrian kids loyal to Hitler

“We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

“In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated.

“So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good man- ual work.

“I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van.

“I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months.

“They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

“As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.

“Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

“No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”

“This is my eye-witness account.

“It’s true. Those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.

“America is truly is the greatest country in the world. “Don’t let freedom slip away.

“After America, there is no place to go.”

Kitty Werthmann

New York man charged with hate crimes for seven 'knockout' assaults

New York (CNN) -- A 35-year-old New York man has been charged with hate crimes in connection with seven "knockout" assaults, including attacks on two elderly women and a mother walking with her daughter, police said Saturday.

Barry Baldwin, a Brooklyn resident, was charged with six counts of assault as a hate crime, six counts of aggravated harassment as a hate crime, and other crimes for a spate of attacks between November 9 and December 27 in predominantly Jewish sections of Brooklyn, police said.

Possible 'knockout' game victim: 'The whole group of kids laughed'

On November 9, Baldwin allegedly punched a 78-year-old woman who was pushing a stroller -- apparently as part of the "knockout" assault game, where people try to knock a random stranger unconscious with a single blow. The victim was knocked to the ground.

FBI agent quotes Texas man bragging about 'knockout'

On December 7, he allegedly struck again, punching a 20-year-old woman in the back of the head in Brooklyn.

Between December 21 and December 27, Baldwin allegedly assaulted five more women, including a 33-year-old woman who was walking with her young daughter and another 78-year-old woman.

After the attack on the woman walking with her 7-year-old daughter in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, police released a sketch of the suspect. The mother was punched in the back of the head and knocked down, police said. She sustained minor injuries to her knees and hands. The suspect fled on foot.

Police keep close eye on reports of disturbing 'knocking' game

Baldwin was arrested December 29 by hate crimes detectives canvassing the neighborhoods where the previous attacks occurred, police said. He was charged after witnesses identified him in a police lineup.

At least nine suspected "knockout" attacks have been reported since October in New York, but police have said they see no evidence of a trend.

Authorities have reported similar incidents in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri and Washington.

Anti-Latino Hate Crimes Rise As Immigration Debate Intensifies

(Huffington Post) Juan Varela was shot in the neck in his front yard in Phoenix, Ariz., last May by his neighbor Gary Kelley. Moments before killing Varela in front of his mother and brother, Kelley yelled, "Go back to Mexico or die!" Varela was not an undocumented immigrant, but a fifth generation American of Mexican descent, said Carlos Galindo, the family's spokesperson in a phone interview.

In May 2009, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul Flores were murdered by members of a Minuteman vigilante group. The child and her father were both American-born U.S. citizens. Leader Shawna Forde broke into the Flores home in Arivaca, Ariz., with two men she recruited to help her fund her splinter Minuteman organization. After the group shot and killed her father, Brisenia pleaded with the Forde and her accomplices, saying, "Please don't shoot me." One of the masked figures then shot her in the face at point blank range, her mother, the lone survivor, said in her testimony. Forde was convicted of first degree murder in February of 2011 and sentenced to death.

Last November, two Mexican nationals, cousins Alex Cauich and Jose Omar Cauich, were brutally assaulted by a group of white men while standing in front of a bar in San Francisco. Witnesses on the scene heard the assailants yelling "run like you ran across the border" during the incident. Last week, three men with connection to a white supremacist group were convicted in the assault. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who worked as a police officer in Arizona and California for more than twenty years, told The Huffington Post that he perceives this crime and others like it to be part of rising anti-Latino sentiments around the country.

Recent studies conducted by the National Institute of Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the FBI and the Pew Research Center seem to show that these incidents were not isolated hate events, but part of a greater trend.

The preliminary findings of a congressionally-mandated study by the National Institute of Justice suggest that anti-Latino hate crimes rose disproportionally to other hate crimes between 2004 and 2008. The study estimates that in 2003 there were 426 hate crimes against Latinos, while in 2007 there were 595 nationally. According to the same study, California and Texas saw the most anti-Latino hate crimes, as well as more dramatic increases of such incidents than other states. Data collected by the FBI also indicates a steady rise in anti-Latino hate crimes across the country from 2003 to 2007.

A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Montgomery, contends that the number of "radical right groups" in America -- including hate groups, "Patriot" groups and nativist groups -- increased in 2010 for the second year in a row.Although recent studies indicate anti-Latino hate crimes have been on the rise over the last decade, many believe their numbers are even greater than those reported. Mark Potok, a spokesperson for the SPLC, said in an interview with The Huffington Post that, "one thing to understand is that Latinos, and in particular undocumented immigrants, are among the least likely to report hate crimes because they fear deportation." Read more Hate

Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Gay Hate Crime, Stuns a Town

Lawrence "Larry" King, murdered.

(NY Times) OXNARD, Calif. — Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.

In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.

“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”

The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.

“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.

Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”

Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”

The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”

The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, seventh-graders in the state are 50 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in 11th grade.

That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.

Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”

Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.

A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.

In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.

“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”

Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”

Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.

“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”

On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.

Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.

Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.

At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”

She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.

“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 27, 2008
An article on Saturday about the death of an eighth-grade boy in Oxnard, Calif., whose killing is being called a hate crime by prosecutors, misidentified the group that is pushing for a legislative review of anti-bias policies in California schools. It is the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, not the Gay-Straight Alliance. (The network coordinates clubs in California schools that operate under the name Gay-Straight Alliance.)

The article also misstated the margin by which a seventh-grade student in the state is more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than an 11th grader. It is 50 percent higher, not 3 percent. (According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, nine percent of seventh graders and six percent of 11th graders were victims of such harassment.)

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People are always hating one another for a variety of reasons. We don't want to call out individuals but want to bring attention to the hate that is prevalent in the world today, and especially on the internet. Below is a prime example of the hate displayed by a one time GOP operative. It should be noted that this is not a partisan website. There is hate coming from both sides of the political spectrum.

We want to talk about and expose some of that hate.