Category: Hate Crimes

  • Press freedom groups are raising alarm after New York police arrested and charged videographer Samuel Seligson for allegedly filming pro-Palestinian activists hurling red paint at the homes of top officials of the Brooklyn Museum, part of a campaign by activists demanding the institution divest from Israel. Seligson faces eight counts of criminal mischief with a hate crime enhancement…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    Australians are being urged to stay united following the horrific events in Sydney last week, reports the ABC’s Saturday Extra programme.

    Five women and one man were killed in a mass stabbing at Bondi Junction last Saturday by a man with a history of mental illness, and a nine-month-old baby baby was among the eight people wounded.

    The attacker was shot by a police officer and died at the scene.

    Two days later at a church in Wakeley, a suburb in Western Sydney, controversial Assyrian Orthodox preacher Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel suffered lacerations to his head when he was attacked during a sermon that was being live-streamed. Nobody was killed.

    Three other unrelated knife attacks took place in Sydney this week. Only the Wakely church attack was officially described as a “terror” attack although there had been widespread media speculation.

    Those attacks coupled with anger and division caused by the war on Gaza as well as the polarising impact of the Voice referendum last year and Australians are seeing their sense of community and social cohesion challenged.

    The ABC has spoken to a panel of analysts about the solutions to staying united and their comments were broadcast yesterday.

    The panel included Khairiah A Rahman, an intercultural communications commentator from Auckland University of Technology who is also secretary of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a member of Muslim Media Watch.

    The programme highlighted New Zealand’s experience in March 2019 when an Australian gunman entered two mosques in Christchurch and killed 51 people while they were praying.

    Asked what her message had been to the New Zealand government through the Royal Commission established to look into the mass killing, Rahman replied:

    “Overall, social cohesion when we think about it has got to do with the responsibility of all people and groups at all levels of society. So we can’t actually leave it to the government or the leaders, the Muslim leaders.

    “At the end of the day, the media also had a hand in all of this and my research had to do with media representation of Islam and Muslims prior to the attack. One of the things I found was unfair reporting, so pretty much what you have experienced in your media reporting of Bondi.

    “The route that extremists take from hate to mass murder is a proven one, and you need to report fairly and stay calm in a society.”

    Interviewees:

    Dr Jamal Rifi, Lebanese Muslim Community leader, Sydney

    Tim Southphommasane, Australia’s former race discrimination officer

    Khairiah A Rahman, intercultural communications researcher, Auckland University of Technology

    Producer: Linda LoPresti

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The emergence of the United States-based Stop Asian Hate movement since 2021 has catalyzed various forms of organization and grassroots mobilization that pivot on demands for increased policing, enhanced hate crimes legislation and other forms of state-centered grievance. Stop Asian Hate’s militant, public-facing liberalism has momentarily overshadowed numerous radical projects and networks formed…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Southern California business owner Laura “Lauri” Ann Carleton was shot and killed Friday evening by a man who disparaged and attempted to remove the rainbow flag displayed at her clothing store. Carleton, 66, was a mother to nine and an ally to LGBTQ people. A local food co-op, Mountain Provisions, called her a “a pillar in [her] community [and] an immovable force in her values for equality, love…

    Source

  • Indigenous communities have deep histories of gender nonconforming and trans mobs, argues Ethan Lyons.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.



  • Joined by Democratic House colleagues and activists outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday—the first full day of Ramadan—Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar announced a new resolution condemning Islamophobia and commemorating the recent anniversary of the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacre.

    Omar’s office said the resolution—which is co-sponsored by more than 20 House Democrats—”comes after continued violence and threats made against religious minorities, particularly Muslims,” while adding that the March 15, 2019 murder of 51 Muslim worshippers at the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch by an Australian white supremacist “was a stated source of inspiration for mass shootings in the United States.”

    These include the deadly synagogue shooting in Poway, California; the massacre of 23 people, most of them of Mexican origin, at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; and the murder of 10 people by a white supremacist in a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

    Omar said:

    As we begin the holy month of Ramadan, we must reaffirm that all people of faith should have the right to worship without fear. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, anti-Muslim hate crimes and attacks are at an all-time high. The attack in Christchurch, motivated by an extremist ideology of white supremacy, anti-Muslim hate, and the so-called replacement theory resonates deeply for Muslims in nearly every corner of the globe.

    We also know that this increase in hate is not isolated to only Muslims. Church bombings, synagogue attacks, and racial hate crimes are also on the rise.

    “In order to confront the evils of religious bigotry and hatred, we must come to understand that all our destinies are linked,” Omar added. “That’s why I’m proud to lead my colleagues in condemning the rise in Islamophobia and affirming the rights of religious minorities in the United States and around the world.”

    Robert McCaw, director of government relations at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also spoke at Thursday’s event, saying that “it is with a heavy heart that CAIR welcomes Omar’s resolution,” which “recognizes the threat posed by rising global Islamophobia to American Muslims and Muslims in other countries across the world, as well as the threat white supremacism poses to all people.”

    “It is incredibly important for Congress to lead the way in rejecting these hateful and dangerous ideologies, and CAIR calls on both sides of the aisle to co-sponsor and adopt this resolution,” McCaw added. “As we remember the lives lost in Christchurch, we must continue to work towards a world where everyone is treated with humanity and dignity, regardless of their faith, ethnicity, or background.”

    In 2021, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed a resolution introduced by Omar aimed at combating Islamophobia after Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Col.) referred to her and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only two Muslim women in Congress—as the “jihad squad.”

    The House GOP, which now narrowly controls the chamber, voted last month to remove Omar from the foreign affairs panel. Just before the vote, the congresswoman said that Republicans “are not OK with having a Muslim have a voice on that committee.”

    Omar’s new federal resolution stood in stark contrast with Texas state Rep. Tony Tinderholt’s (R-94) vote against a legislative resolution celebrating Ramadan.

    “As a combat veteran, I served beside many local translators who were Muslims and good people,” the Iraq War veteran explained. “I can also attest that Ramadan was routinely the most violent period during every deployment.”

    “Texas and America were founded on Christian principles and my faith as a Christian prevents me from celebrating Ramadan,” Tinderholt added.

    Responding to Tinderholt’s statement, CAIR tweeted: “Every elected official has the right to express their own sincerely held religious beliefs—and we welcome that. But to insult another religion is uncalled for and harmful.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • A man was set on fire after leaving a mosque in Edgbaston, Birmingham on 20 March. Police said counter-terrorism officers are investigating the attempted murder, and they have arrested one man. This comes after a different incident where somebody set an 82-year-old man on fire outside a mosque in West London in February.

    In the latest attack, police believe the suspect sprayed the victim with an unknown substance before setting his jacket on fire. The fire burned his face, and he was taken to hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries.

    Terrifying scenes

    BBC News reported that the victim’s nephew, Tayyab Riaz, said everyone was “very upset,” and added:

    For 35 years he’s been going to that mosque to pray and there’s never been a problem.

    Suddenly this happens. His hair, beard and eyebrows are badly burnt. We’re praying he’s OK.

    Meanwhile, Monsur Alam – who lives on the road where the attack happened – said:

    I heard screaming and my daughter was screaming as well… My wife ran outside with a bucket of water and a man poured over [the victim].

    It was very scary.

    Sahir Aziz Adam, secretary general of Dudley Road Mosque told Channel 4 News that he spotted a man behaving suspiciously in the mosque:

    As I came inside, I spotted the gentleman who was sitting on the side, and I thought he was a worshipper whose actually come to worship. But he was just sitting there, he wasn’t doing nothing… he wasn’t praying and he was sitting in the wrong direction.

    Adam greeted the man, who didn’t respond and left the mosque. Adam then called the police. With Ramadan approaching, Adam emphasised:

    It’s the beginning of Ramadan, and this makes an effect not just here in this mosque. It makes an effect nationwide. Now the whole of England will be shaking. Wherever they hear about this, they will be frightened now this is what’s happening.

    Islamophobia

    A recently released European Islamophobia Report set out the scale of the problem across Europe. Aristotle Kallis, who wrote the chapter on Islamophobia in the UK, wrote:

    Government hate crime statistics for England and Wales recorded a 42% rise in religiously motivated offences against Muslims in 2021-22. Half of the UK’s places of worship for Muslims have experienced some form of vandalism in recent years, while more than a third have been facing this reality every year.

    Attacks on Muslim places of worship are a racist intrusion. They are intended to show how unwelcome Muslims are in the fabric of Britain. The very fact that, when reporting on a story about a man being set fire outside a mosque, we had to distinguish from a similar incident earlier in the year says much about Britain’s attitude towards Islamophobia.

    The motivations of this particular attacker are not yet clear, but what is clear is that Britain is violently Islamophobic. Whilst it may be tempting to attribute blame for the problem of Islamophobia on a handful of wrong-headed individuals, this would be a mistake. In fact, as Kallis argued:

    New research has confirmed that anti-Muslim prejudice – religious and racial/ethnic – has become normalised and that this trend is even more evident among people of higher socioeconomic status – a ‘dinner table prejudice’ indeed.

    Too often, those discussing racism will cast racists as uneducated, working class, and uninformed. That’s simply not the case, though. Islamophobia, and racism more broadly, are so normalised that you can’t conceive of Britain without them. However, racism is not an offshoot of ignorance. It’s a choice – a worldview that casts Muslims as inferior and dangerous subjects that don’t belong. Attacks like this one at a mosque in Birmingham are horrific, but commonplace.

    Look up

    Racism transcends class backgrounds. However, it’s worth mentioning that if we want to cast blame, we’d do well to look at elites. Kallis identified the role of the media in enabling the government’s Islamophobia:

    The current government and its friendly press are determined to exaggerate the ‘Islamist’ danger while playing down the threat from the far right.

    That they also demand government strategy to ‘refocus’ on the former while continuing to concede space to the latter to carry on their divisive local and online activities highlights the enormity of the challenge that lies ahead.

    The Shawcross review of Prevent urged the government to focus more on Muslim “extremism,” and to turn away from right-wing extremism. That’s entirely in line with a pattern of behaviour from the government which seeks to minimise far-right elements. They’re determined to continue their persecution of Muslims, and we must be determined to fight back. A core part of that fight back has to be recognising all the levels of Islamophobia that are rotting British society.

    Featured image by Felton Davis/Wikimedia Commons via CC 2.0, resized to 770×403

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Shocking video footage of three white girls brutally attacking a Black schoolgirl went viral this week. The attack took place outside Thomas Knyvett College, a secondary school in Surrey, on Monday 6 February. It has since stirred up concerns, particularly within Black communities, over anti-Blackness and racism in schools.

    The Independent reported that police have arrested five people so far in relation to the incident, including an adult man and woman and three minors.

    Protest

    Understandably, the video has caused anger and prompted protests from Black communities. People gathered outside the school on 8 February to show solidarity and demand accountability:

    Melissa Sigodo, reporter for the Mirror, shared:

    According to the Independent, around 200 people attended the protest, which was organised by community activist Raspect from the grassroots collective Forever Family.

    Raspect said at the protest:

    We’ve seen the video. These situations that our children are facing … they’re not going to face it alone. We’re letting the little girl know that we’re proud of you! You’re a warrior, you had five hyenas trying to bite at your ankles and you’re a lioness that stood up!

    […] Us standing here today sends a ripple effect, to every person in and outside of this community, about what happens when you try to oppress the children. That’s why we’re here.

    Condemnation and calls to action

    The horrifying video has prompted widespread condemnation online. Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy said:

    Meanwhile, British rapper Dave demanded that the school sacks staff members who were complicit in the attack. He included a still from the video showing adults standing by instead of intervening to stop the assault:

    On 8 February, the school put out a statement calling the attack an “isolated incident”. However, people have slammed this response as inadequate and have demanded that principal Richard Beeson is sacked:

    Moreover, the school’s statement referred to the assault as a “violent altercation”. But as Independent journo Nadine White said:

    Public sentiment certainly doesn’t appear to be in Beeson’s favour, since a petition demanding the police question him has been signed by over 78,000 people:

    Anti-Blackness

    Of course, this racist attack has renewed concerns over racism in schools more broadly – and anti-Blackness in particular. As journalist Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff shared:

    Moreover, reports circulated on Twitter suggesting the attackers have Irish Traveller heritage, which added a layer of complexity to the issue:

    But while some (white) people used this to dismiss the incident as ‘minority on minority crime’, Black people have long been calling out anti-Blackness among non-Black ethnic minorities.

    That the perpetrators of such a vicious attack belong to a persecuted – albeit white – minority has little bearing on the trauma, both individual and collective, this incident has caused:

    One Twitter user summed up the reality of Black people not receiving as much as they give in terms of solidarity from other oppressed communities:

    Black Lives Matter

    MP Janet Daby reportedly raised the Thomas Knyvett incident in parliament on 9 February:

    But this issue, of course, goes far deeper than the practices of any one school or institution.

    Black Lives Matter‘ has been, in some instances tokenistically, recognised by white institutions in the UK from around 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd. However, this is yet to be backed up with real, tangible solidarity from non-Black people.

    Simply saying or tweeting ‘Black Lives Matter’ isn’t good enough. If the video of a lone Black girl getting violently piled on by three white girls, as people look on, tells us anything, it’s that those who might otherwise claim to oppose racism and anti-Blackness need to step up when it counts.

    This applies to white people as much as it does to non-Black racial or ethnic minorities. The conversation we need to have is much broader than bullying or racism in schools. It’s about recognising and calling out the anti-Blackness that is endemic in our society, and then actively working to put an end to it.

    Featured image via UnSplash – Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona, cropped to 770 x 403 pixels

    By Afroze Fatima Zaidi

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A new judicial inquiry into gay and transgender hate crimes from 1970 to 2010 will look into the indifference of the NSW Police. Rachel Evans reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Malik Miah looks at the significance of the historic guilty verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery hate crime case.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • For a rather unusual look at human rights as a “market”see the following:

    On 25 February 2022 the annual “Human Rights Organizations Global Market Report 2022 report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering.

    The global human rights organizations market is expected to grow from $16.60 billion in 2021 to $17.47 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3%. The growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges.

    The market is expected to reach $20.53 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 4.1%.

    The human rights organizations market consists of revenue generated through human rights services by entities that are engaged in promoting causes associated with human rights either for a broad or a specific constituency.

    Establishments in this industry address issues such as protecting and promoting broad constitutional rights and civil liberties of individuals and those suffering from neglect, abuse, or exploitation, promoting the interests of specific groups such as children, women, senior citizens, or persons with disabilities, improving relations between racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, and promoting voter education and registration.

    The main types of human rights organizations are nongovernmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, governmental organizations and international organizations. Governmental human rights organizations are run by government bodies and are involved in the protection of human rights and the reduction of human rights violations.

    The different modes of donation include online, offline. The organization locations can be domestic, international and have various applications in areas such as all humans, children, women, disabled, LGBTQ, others.

    Asia Pacific was the largest region in the human rights organizations market in 2021. North America was the second largest region in the human rights organizations market. The regions covered in this report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa.

    The rise in hate crimes is expected to drive the human rights organizations market. Hate crime is a form of criminal violence upon a person or property, caused in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.

    As per the annual report of FBI published in 2019, physical attacks against individuals have risen, accounting for 61% of the 7,120 cases reported by law enforcement authorities nationally as hate crimes in the USA. Government and non-governmental organizations aim to curb the abuses that challenge people’s human rights, which further aids in the growth of the human rights organizations market. Increasing attacks against human rights defenders are anticipated to hinder the human rights organization market. Attacks against human rights organizations that strive to safeguard human rights are rising at an alarming rate.

    For instance, in 2019, the Business and Human Rights Resource Center has tracked around 572 attack cases that were related to business-related activities. These attacks cause a sense of fear and timidness among individuals who work for human rights protection and challenges human rights protection activities, which thereby impedes the growth of the market. See alsO: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/02/18/business-network-on-civic-freedoms-and-human-rights-defenders-launches-new-website/

    Organizations and human rights defenders are working towards protecting the digital human rights of individuals.

    Companies” mentioned in the report inlcude:

    • Amnesty International
    • Human Rights Watch
    • Civil Rights Defenders
    • Human Rights Without Frontiers International
    • Physicians for Human Rights
    • Anti-Slavery International
    • Global Rights
    • UN Watch
    • European Centre for Minority Issues
    • International Federation for Human Rights

    For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/a3tco8

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Police in riot gear get in formation to abuse the citizenry

    “Hate” may be a real feeling, but it’s a distorting and inaccurate diagnosis for the never-ending violence routinely inflicted on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, trans, queer, disabled, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and other marginalized communities. To fully grasp the wrongheadedness of the diagnosis and its consequences, we must look at the political sleight of hand embedded in the hate frame.

    “Hate frame” here refers to a conceptual path intended to shape public understanding of an issue — in this case, the root cause of violence — and how society should respond to it. The hate frame identifies sources of violence in ahistorical ways, attributing violence to individuals or groups whose beliefs and actions are extreme and abhorrent to “respectable” society. This frame relies on carceral methods — policing, prosecution, punishment and surveillance — to respond to violence. When we attribute violence to “hate,” we are ignoring or minimizing the structural/systemic violence and inequality that produce unjust racial, class and gender hierarchies. The hate frame particularly ignores the fact that violence and inequality are foundational to the criminal legal system. Ironically, this helps to explain the hate frame’s popularity: It changes nothing in ways that might disrupt the social, economic and political status quo. In brief, the hate frame lets us off the hook: We don’t have to do anything but scream for more police, more training and resources for police.

    The flim-flam at the heart of the hate frame becomes evident when we take a closer look at its popularity and political utility. From 1981 to today, the implied promise that hate crime laws will interrupt and exact meaningful retribution for long histories of supremacist-inflicted harassment and vigilante violence has held sway. In that time, the federal government, nearly every state, the District of Columbia and two territories have enacted hate crime laws.

    Belief in that false promise is fueled by the pent-up fury, incalculable pain and cavernous senses of loss embedded in those histories. It is driven by good intentions and the sincere hope still held by so many that sufficient policing, prosecution and harsher penalties will somehow put a significant dent in that violence. And it is driven by the conviction that this will mitigate at least some of the grief by “sending a message” that society doesn’t accept it. Finally, as journalist Michelle Chen once critically described the emotional impetus for such laws, “Sometimes it just feels good to punish someone.”

    In the wake of sudden, lethal violence — the murders of six Asian women at massage parlors, or nine Black people in a church, or the recurring murders of transgender women of color — people who are frightened, angry, grieving and fed up with uninterrupted histories of violence just want somebody, dammit, to finally do something. They want this violence to stop. “Hate crime” is the only policy framework on serious offer from the politicians, foundations and philanthropies, and more than a few large nonprofit organizations who so uncritically promote it.

    When the only choice appears to be “this” or “nothing,” many people sign on, wanting to believe that the “experts” know best. But best for whom? Why? And how?

    These questions matter because hate crime laws, many on the books for decades, fail to produce anything close to what their supporters promise: more justice and less violence for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, trans and queer, disabled, and other vulnerable communities. But, as I once wrote, “It’s easier to blame violence on criminal misfits, loners, and crackpots than to challenge the unspoken public consensus that permits broader cultures and structures of violence to exist.” Accordingly, as sociologist Tamara Nopper, African American studies scholar Naomi Murakawa, and journalist Chalay Chalermkraivuth and abolitionist organizer Heena Sharma have recently pointed out, hate crime laws produce results that harm these same communities. And it’s getting worse.

    Why the Hate Frame Is Expanding

    Since 2015, there has been demonstrable, resurgent enthusiasm for new and strengthened hate crime laws and for expensive projects that underscore the supposed need for better, more frequent police data-gathering and media reporting of “hate incidents” — verbal slurs, varied forms of harassment and intimidation, vandalism, assault and murder. In part, this is posited as a “solution” to the kinds of violence that accompanied the deployment of openly racist and xenophobic rhetoric that Donald Trump relied upon to fuel his campaign and drive his presidency. But this isn’t the only motivation that drives hate frame expansion. Across the political spectrum, the landscape is littered with proposals and projects that strengthen the hate frame. Right-wing interests, for whom hate crime bills were once anathema, now eagerly embrace the template for their own purposes: expanding police powers and casting police, white people, corporations, even government itself as victims of hatred, intolerance and violence.

    This resurgence, with its intensified focus on policing, punishment and surveillance, is occurring now because in recent years, the brutal symbiosis between structural law enforcement violence and white supremacist violence has become much more publicly visible. Meanwhile, protests and public uprisings against police violence have been gaining momentum, along with abolitionist demands to #DefundThePolice and prioritize public health and social supports through strategies that redistribute wealth and political power.

    Political and economic elites respond to this destabilizing tension by doubling down on hate crime laws and related measures. While publicly agreeing with the need for reform, they are unwilling to embrace the change required to dismantle the racism inherent in policing and the criminal legal system as a whole. The troubling result is the promotion of a larger, more expansively criminalizing hate frame that goes far beyond hate crime laws.

    A version of centrist-extremist theory informs the hate frame. Political researchers and analysts Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons note that this theory, formulated in the 1950s, conflates dissidents of the left and right as irrational, criminal extremists who represent a danger to a purported stable and just democratic elite that guards “the vital center.” Just as hate crime laws may be enforced against far right perpetrators of violence against racially marginalized communities, now right-wingers are advocating for hate crime laws to be used to target activists on the left for protesting and resisting police. In the words of Berlet and Lyons, the hate frame “denies the structural oppression at the core of U.S. society; it obscures this country’s long history of brutality and genocide; it lumps popular movements that fight oppression and supremacy with those that reinforce it.” It’s a theory tailor-made for defenders of the social, political and economic status quo, one that justifies repressive law enforcement violence by criminalizing those who work for structural change.

    How the Hate Frame Expands

    Recent expansions of the hate frame began with the post-Ferguson push by police unions to include police as a protected status category in hate crime law and the related proliferation of “Blue Lives Matter” laws. The alleged stomping on a “Back the Blue” sign put a Utah teen, described by a sheriff’s deputy as “smirking in an intimidating way,” in the hate crime crosshairs. A 2021 Florida “anti-riot” law severely criminalizes public protest, characterized as “civil unrest,” including protests against police violence. It includes a provision that encourages vigilante violence by granting civil legal immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a road. And since 2017, a torrent of legal initiatives severely criminalizing protest have been proposed or enacted through state or federal legislative action or executive authorization.

    Proposals to increase capacity and law enforcement resources for addressing “domestic terrorism” are proliferating, supported by many centrists and liberals, despite the opposition of more than 150 civil rights and civil liberties organizations.

    The founding of the self-proclaimed “neutral and independent” Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in 2018 is equally concerning. NCRI’s big-data mission is to “track and expose the epidemic of virtual deception, manipulation, and hate,” as it spreads between social media communities and into the real world. It shares data and analyses with media, governmental authorities, and others. This expands and institutionalizes unregulated systems of surveillance. Along the way, it conflates open calls for racist, antisemitic and patriarchal violence with the use of anti-police slogans, the existence of “militant anarcho-socialist networks,” and more. Housed at Rutgers University, NCRI is affiliated with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the organization that developed and actively promotes the hate crime framework, Open Society Foundations, and the Libertarian/right Charles Koch Foundation. The Institute claims that these affiliations — strikingly similar to the kinds of “strange bedfellows” alliances that drive problematic criminal legal system reform campaigns — demonstrate that NCRI “has no political agenda.” Matthew Lyons notes, however, that based on its list of leadership and strategic advisers, “NCRI represents a convergence of academia (mainly psychologists and artificial intelligence experts), big tech (notably Google’s director of research), and security agencies (with current or former people from the U.S. military, Department of Homeland Security, National Security Agency, New York City Police Department, and private firms).”

    Coordinated right-wing attacks on critical race theory (CRT) and accompanying calls to ban its teaching in schools also expand the hate frame by claiming that it promotes racial division, intolerance and discrimination. The Heritage Foundation not only claims that CRT is a vehicle for inculcating “intolerance” in schools, workplaces and cultural venues, but that it “[e]xplains how the Black Lives Matter organizations built an aggressive political movement on CRT’s racially focused ideas — ideas apologists can use to justify violent riots.” The attack on CRT is moving forward aggressively in Texas and other states.

    In 2021, Stop AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Hate published a report of harassment and violence directed against Asian people in the U.S. Although anti-Asian violence in the U.S., structural as well as vigilante-based, has a long history, reported surges have been linked to COVID-19 fear-mongering that casts China as a scapegoat. Instead of confronting the deep and abiding impact of anti-Asian racism in the United States, Congress members introduced the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, with the enthusiastic support of the Biden administration and little Republican opposition. It mandates expedited federal review of hate crimes and reports; federal guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies related to better reporting, data collection and educational outreach; and grants to state and local governments to beef up already inaccurate hate crime reporting and law enforcement.

    Around the same time the Stop AAPI Hate report was issued, President Joe Biden met with leaders from several major U.S. Jewish organizations. Mari Cohen of Jewish Currents reported that the meeting occurred “in response to a letter expressing concerns about a ‘surge in antisemitic attacks,’ which the groups connect to popular discourse and protest surrounding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell announced their intention to introduce a bill combatting antisemitic hate crimes.” Instead of confronting the reality of persistent antisemitism in this country, lawmakers have dangerously conflated antisemitism with anti-Zionism and sought ways to criminalize Palestinian solidarity activism.

    Growing Opposition to the Hate Frame

    Despite its successes and resurgence, embrace and expansion of the hate frame across the political spectrum is not unstoppable.

    At the height of the 2021 Stop Asian Hate demands for strengthened law enforcement, more than 100 Asian and LGBTQ organizations issued a statement publicly rejecting “hate crime legislation that relies on anti-Black, law enforcement responses to the recent rise in anti-Asian bias incidents across the US.” Instead, noting that the roots of anti-Asian violence and racism are found in the colonization of the Americas, the statement laid out an analysis and vision calling for solidarity strategies with “Black, Brown, undocumented, trans, low-income, sex worker, and other marginalized communities whose liberation is bound together.” And the organizations called for shifts of resources from law enforcement to community well-being, removing police from communities and ending all forms of community policing.

    For the past two decades, as the hate frame has expanded, opposition to hate crime laws and the hate frame has also been growing. Originally mounted by individuals (most of them queer, trans and people of color) and organizations with long experience of fighting police violence, that opposition has mushroomed in recent years. We can chart its expansion: from a letter to the editor of a newspaper by a then-board member of the Audre Lorde Project; to the first public challenge to hate crime laws generally by a progressive Quaker organization; to the publication of “Stonewalled,” a landmark Amnesty International Report on law enforcement misconduct and abuse against LGBTQ people in the United States; to progressive/radical organizational rejection of particular hate crime laws; to Against Equality’s work in compiling and sharing selected articles and resources linking opposition to hate crime laws; to abolitionist perspectives on prisons and police violence from 1999 to 2013, and more.

    Growing opposition is fueled by the gritty, on-the-ground realities of grassroots organizing, the influence of abolitionist analysis and discourse, popular uprisings against police violence, and the failure of reforms to reduce the violence and inequality foundational to the U.S. criminal legal system.

    While this opposition is not yet strong enough to derail the current push for more hate crime laws and broader repressive application of the hate frame, we now have the opportunity to bring new strategic analyses and insight into our own organizing on many fronts — and to build stronger cross-movement relationships to push for structural justice.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Police made sweeping arrests of Israel’s large minority of Palestinian citizens after protests rocked the country in May during Israel’s 11-day attack on Gaza. Officers were documented beating demonstrators, and in some cases torturing them while in detention. Police also failed to protect the Palestinian minority from planned, vigilante-style attacks by far-right Jewish extremists.

    This was the damning verdict of an Amnesty International report published last week. The findings indicate that Israeli police view the country’s Palestinian minority, a fifth of the population, as an enemy rather than as citizens with a right to protest.

    The report echoes what Palestinian leaders in Israel and local human rights groups have long said: that the default policing of the Palestinian community in Israel is racist and violent. It reflects the same values of Jewish supremacism seen in the Israeli army’s brutal treatment of Palestinians under occupation.

    The contrast between how police responded to protests by Palestinian citizens and supportive statements from their leaders, on the one hand, and to incitement from Israeli Jewish leaders and a violent backlash from the Jewish extreme right, on the other, is stark indeed.

    More than 2,150 arrests were made following May’s inter-communal violence. But according to reports cited by Amnesty, more than 90 percent of those detained were Palestinian – either citizens of Israel or residents of occupied East Jerusalem.

    Most face charges unrelated to attacks on people or property, despite how their demonstrations were widely portrayed by police and the Israeli media. Rather, Palestinian protesters were indicted on charges such as “insulting or assaulting a police officer” or “taking part in an illegal gathering” – matters related to the repressive policing faced by the Palestinian minority.

    ‘Torture room’

    Amnesty cites repeated examples of unprovoked police assaults on peaceful protesters in cities such as Nazareth and Haifa. That contrasts with the continuing indulgence by police of provocations by the Jewish far-right, such as their march through Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem on 15 June, during which participants chanted: “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn.”

    Amnesty also documents testimony that Israeli police beat bound detainees in Nazareth’s police station – setting up what the local legal rights group Adalah has described as an improvised “torture room”.

    In addition, a protester in Haifa appears to have been tied to a chair and deprived of sleep for nine days, using torture techniques familiar to Palestinians in the occupied territories.

    In contrast, Israeli police were alerted in real time to messages from Jewish far-right groups about precise plans to smash up “Arab” shops and assault Palestinian citizens on the street. And yet, police either ignored those warnings or were slow to respond. An investigation by Haaretz has further suggested that police subsequently failed to use film footage to identify these Jewish vigilantes and, as a result, made few arrests.

    This picture of police turning a blind eye to planned Jewish violence echoes scenes from the time of the protests. Footage showed police officers allowing armed Jewish thugs – many bused in from settlements – to wander freely around Palestinian neighbourhoods during a curfew on the city of Lod. There was even footage of police and Jewish far-right extremists conducting what looked like joint “operations”, with police throwing stun grenades as Jewish extremists threw stones.

    Jewish politicians who incited against the Palestinian minority – from Israel’s former president, Reuven Rivlin, and Lod’s mayor, Yair Revivo, to far-right legislator Itamar Ben-Gvir – have faced no consequences.

    Charged with ‘terror acts’

    Instead, police arranged what amounted to a provocative, entirely unnecessary assault by special forces on the home of a Palestinian community leader, Kamal al-Khatib, to arrest him. The deputy head of the northern Islamic Movement was charged with supporting terrorism after he expressed pride at what he called the minority’s solidarity with the people of Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.

    And last week, apparently too late for inclusion in the Amnesty report, Israel’s racist policing moved in new directions.

    Small numbers of Palestinian citizens suspected of attacking Jews were charged with “terror acts”, in some cases without any physical or DNA evidence tying them to the crime. In several cases, the defendants were indicted based on confessions made after prolonged interrogation by Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet.

    Israel’s legal system is treating inter-communal violence as an act of terror when Palestinian citizens are involved, and as an ordinary law-and-order issue – assuming it is dealt with at all – when Israeli Jews are involved.

    Underlining this distinction is the decision to place Palestinian citizens of Israel under administrative detention, jailing them without charge and not allowing lawyers to see the supposed evidence against their clients. This draconian move – with one such order approved last week by Defence Minister Benny Gantz – is usually reserved for Palestinians under occupation, not Israeli citizens.

    Settling scores

    In its report, Amnesty pointed to public statements from Israeli police commanders indicating that the current harsh crackdown is really about “settling scores”. And in part, that is true.

    Nearly two decades ago, a judicial-led public inquiry concluded that Israeli police treated Palestinian citizens as “the enemy”. Nothing has changed since. Police regard it as their primary job to protect the privileges of the Jewish majority by keeping the Palestinian minority crushed and obedient, as a subordinate community inside a self-declared Jewish state.

    The eruption of protests in May, which caught police off-guard, was implicitly a sign that they had failed in that role. Police interpreted the demonstrations as a public humiliation for which “deterrence” needed to be urgently restored.

    Israeli politicians, including the then-police minister, Amir Ohana, as well as the Jewish far-right, viewed the protests in much the same light. They argued at the time that police were being held back by legal niceties, and that it was the job of Jewish citizens to back police by taking the law into their own hands.

    Yet, the “settling of scores” with the Palestinian minority relates to a separate matter. External observers, such as Amnesty, tend to notice Israel’s racist policing only when direct violence is used against Palestinian citizens. But the Palestinian minority’s experience of discrimination from police is much broader.

    For years, the minority has been taking to the streets in large numbers to protest against not only the violent policing of dissent, but a complementary near-absence of policing towards Palestinian communities in Israel when it comes to tackling crime.

    The harsh repression seen in recent weeks contrasts strongly with police inaction as a crime wave has swept Palestinian communities, with each year bringing a record number of violent deaths. Both Palestinian and Jewish criminal gangs have exploited the policing void in Palestinian towns and villages, knowing that they are free to act as long as the violence is “Arab-on-Arab”.

    Even during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Palestinian community leaders kept up the pressure, leading go-slow convoys of dozens of cars along Israel’s busiest roads to draw attention to Israel’s racist policing priorities.

    These presented a different kind of humiliation for police. Unusually, commanders were forced onto the back foot, swallowing unrelenting criticism and condemnation for failing to deal with crime in Palestinian communities. It even became one of the top issues for Palestinian parties in Israel’s string of recent elections.

    Now, police are having their moment of revenge. “You want more active policing? We’ll give you more active policing. See how you like this!” seems to be the new message of the mass round-ups.

    Jewish supremacism

    The reality is that both kinds of policing towards Palestinian citizens – the violent policing of dissent, and the lack of policing of crime – are rooted in the same, ugly ideology of Jewish supremacism.

    This is the same supremacism highlighted in a report early this year by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. It broke new ground in the human rights community by explicitly identifying Israel as an apartheid state, one that treats Palestinians as inferior, whether in the occupied territories or inside Israel, and Jews as superior, whether in Israel or in the illegal settlements.

    The new Amnesty report is the latest snapshot of a society where everything follows that apartheid logic, including policing. That should surprise no one, because apartheid is, by definition, systematic.

    Most Jewish Israelis, whether they identify with the left or right, have shown little interest in the lethal crime wave that for years has washed over Palestinian communities near their own, despite the regular protest campaigns by the Palestinian minority.

    And now – through their silence – most ordinary Jewish Israelis and their politicians have demonstrated that they support, or are at least indifferent to, the current crackdown by police on the Palestinian minority. The deeper causes of May’s protests, and the violent backlash from the far right, appear to have provoked little self-reflection.

    The Israeli Jewish public seems equally unconcerned by the fact that Jewish far-right thugs have chanted “death to Arabs” on their streets, that videos show police cooperating with those thugs, or that police have been making mass arrests of Palestinian citizens for weeks on end, while failing to search for the Jews who were filmed attacking Palestinians.

    Belligerent occupation

    The truth is that Israeli police get away with racist, violent policing because wider Israeli Jewish society approves. Police regard themselves as defenders of a Jewish supremacism that many ordinary Jewish citizens see as their birthright.

    The Palestinian minority hoped that it had opened a tentative conversation with Israeli Jews both about the responsibilities of police in a state claiming to be a democracy, and about the right of Israel’s 1.8 million Palestinian citizens to personal security.

    There was much fanfare at Mansour Abbas’s United Arab List becoming last month the first party representing Palestinian citizens to enter an Israeli government coalition, ousting former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power. Like other Palestinian parties, Abbas put changes to the racist police culture in Israel at the top of his platform.

    But any signs of progress have been all too readily snuffed out by a reassertion of Jewish supremacism by police and their Jewish far-right allies, and by the silent complicity of wider Israeli Jewish society.

    Israel had a chance to address its racist policing policies, but that would have required the difficult work of examining the much wider apartheid structures that underpin them. Instead, most Israeli Jews are happy to reassert the status quo – oppressing all Palestinians under Jewish rule, whether they are subjects of a belligerent occupation or third-class citizens of a Jewish state.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post Israel: Racist, violent policing is at the heart of apartheid first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The killing of a Muslim family on June 6 in Ontario, Canada, again presented an opportunity for Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to brand himself as a voice of reason and communal harmony. However, Trudeau’s amiable and reassuring language is designed to veil a sinister reality which has, for many years, hidden the true face of Canadian politics.

    “This was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities,” Trudeau told Parliament, two days after a Canadian terrorist, Nathaniel Veltman, deliberately struck a Canadian Muslim family at an intersection in London, Ontario. Only a young boy survived the attack which killed his parents, sister and grandmother. The 9-year-old boy remains in critical condition.

    The Prime Minister, whose brand of friendly and progressive liberal facade is often juxtaposed with the rise of conservative, populist politics in much of the Western hemisphere, went on speaking as if an activist advocating human rights and equality for all. “If anyone thinks racism and hatred don’t exist in this country, I want to say this: How do we explain such violence to a child in a hospital? How can we look families in the eye and say ‘Islamophobia isn’t real’?”, Trudeau said.

    Ironically, it took years of pressure and concerted lobbying from many civil society organizations, progressive and Muslim groups to finally convince Trudeau to designate January 29 as the ‘National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia’. This specific date was chosen to commemorate the terrorist attack by a Canadian citizen on a Quebec City mosque in 2017. Six Canadian Muslims were killed and 19 others were injured in the hate crime in the Grand Mosque.

    That attack, too, was an opportunity for Trudeau to rail against terrorism and hate.  Ultimately, it was all empty rhetoric, as the Canadian government has done little to rectify the dangerous phenomenon. This lack of meaningful action makes the government complicit in the rising Islamophobia and hate crimes in Canada.

    By way of explaining his rejection of recognizing January 29 as the day of ‘action on Islamophobia’, Trudeau told Radio-Canada that, while it is “important to underline intolerance directed at people of faith,” he wished to “avoid that type of backlash that we’ve seen when we take these kinds of actions,” since the perpetrators of hate crimes are “still a small intolerant minority”. Jingoism aside, Trudeau was essentially arguing that recognition and action against Islamophobia were unnecessary as they may give too much attention to a small and hateful ‘minority’.

    Trudeau is utterly wrong. A report submitted by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief in November last year showed that a majority of Canadians – 52% – believe that Muslims cannot be trusted, while 42% feel that discrimination against Muslims – read: racism – is mainly the fault of Muslims themselves.

    The UN findings are part of a long trajectory of violence and racism targeting Canadian Muslims. A Gallup Poll published in 2011 has already debunked the ‘small minority’ claim. Canadian Muslims – 48% – along with American Muslims – 52 % – feel disrespected within their societies. This ‘disrespect’ manifests itself in numerous ways, much of it unreported, occasionally making news when it translates into outright violence. Indeed, there is plenty of that too.

    Official Canadian police reports demonstrate that hate crimes against Canada’s Muslims are on the rise, with 166 such incidents reported in 2018, 181 in 2019 and so on, with violent crimes becoming more intense and bloodier with time.

    Sadly, anti-Muslim terrorism in Canada is likely to increase in the future, not only because hate crime statistics show an upward trajectory, but because anti-Muslim sentiments often take center stage in government and media as well.

    Negative depictions of Islam and Muslims in Canadian media must not be grouped under the designation of ‘mainstream Western media bias’, as media fear-mongering is penetrating the very psyche of large sections of Canadian society. Many Canadian politicians, even in Trudeau’s own party, often exploit this alarming phenomenon to feed their political ambitions.

    Various Canadian provinces have either passed or drafted laws that specifically target Canada’s Muslim minorities, for example, Quebec’s Bill 62, which restricts the wearing of the niqab in public buildings. Outrageously, the Bill, which was passed by Quebec’s Liberal government in October 2017, followed the bloody attack on the Grand Mosque in Quebec City. Instead of fighting Islamophobia, Quebec’s officials provided it with a legal and moral justification.

    While feeding Islamophobia at home, Trudeau persistently rages against human rights violators in China, the Middle East and around the world. As Chinese columnist Mu Lu rightly argued in Global Times, Canada uses “human rights as a stick to beat others.” While the same claim can also be made regarding the misuse of human rights as a foreign policy tool by other Western leaders, Trudeau is often successful in presenting his human rights concerns as genuine.

    If Trudeau is, indeed, genuine in his desire to root out anti-Muslim terrorism from Canada, he should start by cleansing his own party of hate speech, end all attempts at criminalizing Islam and Muslims and ban hate speech against Muslims in the media.

    Terrorism will not end as a result of pomposity but through real action. Trudeau seems to have much of the former and none of the latter.

    The post Words Alone will not End Anti-Muslim Terror in Canada  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    A bomb believed to have been detonated by two suicide attackers in Indonesia exploded outside a Catholic cathedral in Makassar, South Sulawesi, on Sunday morning, wounding at least 20 and killing the assailants.

    According to the National Police, the bombers arrived at the cathedral on a motorbike, reports Gisela Swaragita in The Jakarta Post.

    A church security guard was trying to prevent the vehicle from entering the church’s grounds when the bomb exploded.

    “There were two people riding on a motorbike when the explosion happened at the main gate of the church. The perpetrators were trying to enter the compound,” National Police spokesman Brigadier General Argo Yuwono said.

    The blast occurred just after the congregants finished a service for Palm Sunday, which is the first day of Holy Week leading up to Easter and commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

    “I strongly condemn this act of terrorism and I have ordered the police chief to thoroughly investigate the perpetrators’ networks and tear down the networks to their roots,” President Joko Widodo said in an online broadcast following the attack, reports Al Jazeera.

    Father Wilhelmus Tulak, a priest who was leading mass at the time of the explosion, told Indonesian media the church’s security guards suspected two motorists who wanted to enter the church.

    Confronted by guards
    One of them detonated their explosives and died near the gate after being confronted by guards.

    He said the explosion occurred at about 10:30am (03:30 GMT) and that none of the worshippers was killed.

    Security camera footage showed a blast that blew flame, smoke and debris into the middle of the road.

    Makassar Mayor Danny Pomanto said the blast could have caused far more casualties if it had taken place at the church’s main gate instead of a side entrance.

    Police have previously blamed the JAD group for suicide attacks in 2018 on churches and a police post in the city of Surabaya that killed more than 30 people.

    Boy Rafli Amar, the head of the country’s National Counterterrorism Agency, described Sunday’s attack as an act of “terrorism”.

    Religious makeup
    Makassar, Sulawesi’s biggest city, reflects the religious makeup of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country with a substantial Christian minority and followers of other religions.

    “Whatever the motive is, this act isn’t justified by any religion because it harms not just one person but others, too,” Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Minister, said in a statement.

    Gomar Gultom, head of the Indonesian Council of Churches, described the attack as a “cruel incident” as Christians were celebrating Palm Sunday, and urged people to remain calm and trust the authorities.

    Indonesia’s deadliest attack took place on the tourist island of Bali in 2002, when bombers killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.

    In subsequent years, security forces in Indonesia scored some major successes in tackling armed groups but, more recently, there has been a resurgence of violence.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    A bomb believed to have been detonated by two suicide attackers in Indonesia exploded outside a Catholic cathedral in Makassar, South Sulawesi, on Sunday morning, wounding at least 20 and killing the assailants.

    According to the National Police, the bombers arrived at the cathedral on a motorbike, reports Gisela Swaragita in The Jakarta Post.

    A church security guard was trying to prevent the vehicle from entering the church’s grounds when the bomb exploded.

    “There were two people riding on a motorbike when the explosion happened at the main gate of the church. The perpetrators were trying to enter the compound,” National Police spokesman Brigadier General Argo Yuwono said.

    The blast occurred just after the congregants finished a service for Palm Sunday, which is the first day of Holy Week leading up to Easter and commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

    “I strongly condemn this act of terrorism and I have ordered the police chief to thoroughly investigate the perpetrators’ networks and tear down the networks to their roots,” President Joko Widodo said in an online broadcast following the attack, reports Al Jazeera.

    Father Wilhelmus Tulak, a priest who was leading mass at the time of the explosion, told Indonesian media the church’s security guards suspected two motorists who wanted to enter the church.

    Confronted by guards
    One of them detonated their explosives and died near the gate after being confronted by guards.

    He said the explosion occurred at about 10:30am (03:30 GMT) and that none of the worshippers was killed.

    Security camera footage showed a blast that blew flame, smoke and debris into the middle of the road.

    Makassar Mayor Danny Pomanto said the blast could have caused far more casualties if it had taken place at the church’s main gate instead of a side entrance.

    Police have previously blamed the JAD group for suicide attacks in 2018 on churches and a police post in the city of Surabaya that killed more than 30 people.

    Boy Rafli Amar, the head of the country’s National Counterterrorism Agency, described Sunday’s attack as an act of “terrorism”.

    Religious makeup
    Makassar, Sulawesi’s biggest city, reflects the religious makeup of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country with a substantial Christian minority and followers of other religions.

    “Whatever the motive is, this act isn’t justified by any religion because it harms not just one person but others, too,” Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Minister, said in a statement.

    Gomar Gultom, head of the Indonesian Council of Churches, described the attack as a “cruel incident” as Christians were celebrating Palm Sunday, and urged people to remain calm and trust the authorities.

    Indonesia’s deadliest attack took place on the tourist island of Bali in 2002, when bombers killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.

    In subsequent years, security forces in Indonesia scored some major successes in tackling armed groups but, more recently, there has been a resurgence of violence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • kNOwHATE is an education and awareness campaign created by OC Human Relations to promote the importance of diversity and eliminate prejudice, intolerance and discrimination.

    Here’s the link to the campaign.

    This post was originally published on CAHRO Blog – CAHRO – California Association of Human Relations Organizations.

  • White supremacist propaganda heavily targeted the Inland Empire and Southern California as a whole in 2019, according to an annual report released by the Anti-Defamation League.

    In communities across the nation, the distribution of white supremacist propaganda — in the form of flyers, leaflets, stickers and banners — reached an all-time high in the United States in 2019, the ADL reported Wednesday, Feb. 12. Last year, 2,713 incidents of propaganda were reported across the country compared to 1,214 in 2018 — a 120% increase….

    Los Angeles Daily News

    This post was originally published on CAHRO Blog – CAHRO – California Association of Human Relations Organizations.

  • The University of Connecticut violated two students’ free-speech rights by attempting to expel them from college housing for allegedly using a racial slur, a new lawsuit says, raising the question of whether a university has the authority to punish offensive speech on its campus.

    The students, Ryan Mucaj and Jarred Karal, both seniors, were arrested in October 2019 after the campus police tracked them down following the online posting of a video that allegedly shows the pair shouting a racial slur in a parking lot. They were charged with ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality, or race, according to the Hartford Courant….

    The Chronicle of Higher Education

    This post was originally published on CAHRO Blog – CAHRO – California Association of Human Relations Organizations.

  • The president’s order would allow the government to withhold money from campuses deemed to be biased, but critics see it as an attack on free speech….

    The New York Times

    This post was originally published on CAHRO Blog – CAHRO – California Association of Human Relations Organizations.

  • It was a busy fall morning at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C. Myrieme Churchill found a clearing in the arrivals hall and scanned the crowd.

    One by one, her people showed up: a black father and daughter from Tennessee. A white couple from Georgia. A Somali immigrant. Two South Asians — one from Canada, one from Britain. Churchill greeted them in a blend of languages: Salaam! Bonjour! Welcome to D.C.! …

    NPR

    This post was originally published on CAHRO Blog – CAHRO – California Association of Human Relations Organizations.