Dismantling Racism Team

from the Death Penalty Information Center

On July 15, the House of Representatives of North Carolina voted 61-53 to pass the Racial Justice Act. A similar bill already passed the state senate, though that bill contained an amendment to bypass some objections to the state's execution process.  The new law, if finally approved, would allow judges to consier whether racial bias played a role in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty.  "This is a fairness bill," said Rep. Larry Womble, the Forsyth Democrat who helped champion the bill. "If we're going to kill people, we must be as fair and objective as we can. This allows one more chance for justice to be blind. ... It's not a get-out-of-jail free card for anybody."

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has urged Congress to investigate growing evidence that racial extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

In a letter to committee chairpeople with oversight over homeland security and the armed services, the SPLC said it recently found dozens of personal profiles on a neo-Nazi website where individuals listed "military" as their occupation — the latest evidence of extremist infiltration gathered by the SPLC. It also cites FBI and Department of Homeland Security reports supporting the SPLC's concerns.

from the Institute for Southern Studies

In September 2007 more than 40,000 demonstrators descended on the small town of Jena, La. to protest unequal justice for the Jena Six, a case in which charges were brought against six black teens following a series of racially charged incidents sparked by the hanging of nooses in a public schoolyard. Facing South followed the case closely as it thrust a small central Louisiana town into the national spotlight and drew the eyes of the country to the lines of racial inequality still present in the modern-day South.

Low-income Latino immigrants in the South are routinely the targets of wage theft, racial profiling and other abuses driven by an anti-immigrant climate that harms all Latinos regardless of their immigration status, according to a report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report — Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South — documents the experiences of Latino immigrants who face increasing hostility as they fill low-wage jobs in Southern states that had few Latino residents until recent years. "This report documents the human toll of failed policies that relegate millions of people to an underground economy, where they are beyond the protection of the law," said Mary Bauer, author of the report and director of the SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project. "Workplace abuses and racial profiling are rampant in the South." Under Siege is based on a survey of 500 low-income Latinos — including legal residents, undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens — at five locations in the South. The locations were Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural southern Georgia, and several towns and cities in northern Alabama.

by David Holthouse

The swine flu outbreak in Mexico and the frightening possibility of it becoming a global pandemic have provided a little something for just about everyone on the U.S. radical right.

Most predictable are the panic-stricken calls for the military to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border entirely. They’re coming from nativist extremist groups including the San Diego Minutemen and the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR). CCIR head Barbara Coe, however, kicked the insanity up a notch by openly suggesting that God infect Barack Obama, members of his staff and their families with the deadly virus in retribution for Obama’s support of immigration reform.

Southern Poverty Law Center Report

Three Washington, D.C., organizations most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 are part of a network of groups created by a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance describes how the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA were founded and funded by John Tanton, a retired Michigan ophthalmologist who operates a racist publishing company and has written that to maintain American culture, "a European-American majority" is required.

by David Holthouse
Southern Poverty Law Center

Four reputed white supremacist gang members have been arrested in connection with the vicious beating of a Latino man on Nov. 19 in Hemet, Calif. The victim, a 19-year-old whose name police would not release, was knocked unconscious and then repeatedly stomped and kicked in the head. He suffered permanent brain damage and has been placed in a long-term care facility. According to investigators, the attack was random, unprovoked and motivated purely by racial hatred.

Hemet is located in the region of California known as the Inland Empire, which has become a hotbed of white supremacist activity during an ongoing phase of rapid demographic shifts.