The anti-immigrant movement merged with anti-Latino sentiment under the guise of border security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Gallego said. In response, Latinos have felt compelled to engage politically to combat the wave of misperception and xenophobia.

“What you started seeing is coded language – especially in Arizona –where people were talking about ‘well, I’m not against Latinos, I’m against illegal immigrants,’ but basically using that term to cast everybody the same,” he said. “I think there’s no difference anymore, and they’re wrapped in the same, which is why you’re also seeing Latinos now more strongly standing up for immigrant rights.”

Anti-Latino and immigrant hate has more recently been exacerbated by national legislation and rhetoric heard after the 2016 election, Gallego said.

“I remember growing up hearing anti-Latino slurs being thrown at me as a Latino – being called derogatory terms throughout high school,” Gallego said. “I certainly saw more rhetoric thrown at me as a Latino elected after 2010 because once the politicians started talking in these terms, and some of them became even more and more pejorative and racist … a lot more people felt that it was OK and acceptable to engage in that in public.”

Nationwide, a 2018 report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino, California, found that anti-Latino hate crimes in America’s largest cities increased by 176 percent in the first two weeks after the 2016 election.

But politics from well before the Trump administration have done just as much to exacerbate the problem, said Gallego, who in the past has received death threats from white supremacists while trying to fight anti-immigration legislation when he served in the Arizona Legislature.

“I had death threats — personalized notes — left at my doorstep by white supremacists when I was at the statehouse because I was fighting to stop some crazy bills that were going to really affect immigrant communities,” he said.

Specifically, he pointed to the Arizona Senate Bill 1070 as a turning point in the anti-immigration movement. The bill allowed for law enforcement officials on the city, county or state level to inquire about citizens’ immigration status if they have “reasonable suspicion” to do so, according to the Arizona Legislature.

“With the culmination of SB 1070 happening, we basically tried to allow racial profiling of Latinos based on this idea of trying to curtail quote-unquote illegal immigration,” he said. “By 2010, there were Latino families in Arizona that were being told to go back to their country, to go back to Mexico – these are people that have lived in Arizona for generations.”

Anti-immigrant hate is due, in part, to massive influxes of immigrants in the 20th century and white backlash, according to Janice Iwama, an assistant law professor at American University. Between 1990 and 2015, the immigrant population more than doubled from 19.7 million to nearly 43.2 million living in the United States.

Gallego said there has been a decades-long political conflict over immigration in Congress and he doesn’t see any work toward a resolution in the near future.

“The rhetoric that comes from the White House – it’s not really challenged by the Republican leadership in the House,” he said.

The post <b>Gallego:</b> Latino and immigrant hate are ‘one and the same’
appeared first on Hate in America.

Woods, the Oakland Police Department LGBTQ liaison, said she prepares herself to read the names of people she knows on the list of the year’s victims before each Transgender Day of Remembrance.

“If you run a transgender program anywhere, anywhere in the world, I can honestly say almost anywhere in the world, it’s not a matter of if somebody is going to get killed, it’s when,” Woods said.

Since 2016, at least 66 transgender people have been murdered in the United States, according to the Human Rights Campaign. A News21 analysis found more than half of the victims were people of color and at least 29 of the cases are still under investigation.

Only one case was classified as a hate crime by law enforcement, even when LGBTQ advocates and victims’ communities argued they were targeted for their gender identity.

Transgender victims’ cases are frequently complicated by the circumstances surrounding their deaths, which makes it difficult to classify their homicides as hate crimes. The victims are often killed by a romantic partner, sex work client or stranger.

“It’s important to remember that hate crimes occur in all sorts of different contexts. I think people often, when they think about them, they immediately go to something on a street outside a gay bar with a bunch of young men,” said anti-LGBTQ hate crimes expert Gregory Herek. “It’s a common scenario, but hate crimes are also committed in families, in the home, in schools, in the workplace and by all sorts of people.”

China Gibson, a 31-year-old African-American transgender woman, was shot in the back between eight and 10 times while exiting a shopping center in New Orleans in February 2017. Gibson’s mother, Tammie Lewis, and her sister, Iona Maxie, believe the murderer was a lover who hoped to conceal his sexual relationship with Gibson to avoid questions regarding his sexuality.

“I think China was killed because people want to live a certain lifestyle, but then have a closeted lifestyle that they don’t want to be outed about,” Maxie said. “China was a person, when she met men, she told them exactly who she was, and you have to decide going forward if that’s what you want to be a part of whether people find out or not. I just think the person just didn’t want people to find out. And that’s why China was killed.”

The New Orleans Police Department officers who responded to Gibson’s shooting did not categorize her murder as a hate crime in the incident report. In subsequent statements, law enforcement officials have said the murder is not being considered a hate crime.

Kevin Griffin, Gibson’s cousin, said while the details surrounding her murder are ambiguous, there’s little reason Gibson would have been targeted, making her gender identity a potential motive in her killing.

“This is one of those people who would give you the shirt off their back. People say that, because it’s cliché and cool, but this was the person China was,” Griffin said. “Would not do any harm to anyone. She just wanted to be who she was and she didn’t want any static or any friction so she wouldn’t give it.”

Even if law enforcement found Gibson’s killer and confirmed a gender identity bias motive in her murder, the ability to pursue hate crime charges on a state level is limited in Louisiana. While the state’s hate crime statute defines sexual orientation-based crimes as hate crimes, there is no such provision for gender bias-based crimes, leaving little legal recourse other than federal hate crime charges.

Other states like Louisiana without gender identity provisions have seen the most murders of transgender individuals in recent years. Since 2016, eight transgender people have been killed in Texas, six in Florida, and five in Ohio and Georgia. Seven transgender women were murdered in Louisiana during that time.

In states that can pursue hate crime charges in gender identity cases, justice is not always a guarantee.

California has hate crime and non-discrimination laws that cover individuals targeted for their gender identity or gender expression, but the state’s transgender population is still vulnerable.

Taja Gabrielle DeJesus, a 36-year-old transgender Latina woman from San Francisco, was stabbed to death in her apartment complex in February 2015. Neighbors reported hearing an argument between Taja and a man, and called the police, said Linda DeJesus, Taja’s mother.

When first responders arrived at the scene, they found Taja in the stairwell. She had been stabbed nine times and was pronounced dead. By the time officers found the man, who fled the apartment, he had committed suicide, DeJesus said.

Although DeJesus believes the murder was a hate crime, it wasn’t classified as such by investigators. She told News21 that detectives said the suspect, who was going through a divorce, was trying to reconcile with his ex-wife.

“They considered it an argument that got escalated, got out of control,” DeJesus said. “He killed her, and in my heart I believe that no, he didn’t want anyone to know that he was with a transgender woman.”

Before transgender individuals are victims of fatal violence, they can face a number of factors that put them at higher risk for hate, murder and discrimination.

A 2011 report published by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, two national LGBTQ advocacy groups, found more than 1,100 of the over 6,000 transgender respondents reported being homeless at some point. More than 950 said they had to find alternative sources of income, like drug trafficking or sex work, to survive.

Before she was killed, Taja was struggling to get by, and had turned to sex work to survive, her friend and sobriety sponsor Danielle Castro told News21. She said she ran into Taja while going home from work about two weeks before she died.

“I took her home to Bayview where she lived. She wanted me to see her place and the area felt unsafe, but we went inside and she had bare minimum,” Castro said. “I could tell she was really struggling.”

Among the challenges the transgender community faces, there’s also a lack of trust in law enforcement. The National Center for Transgender Equality survey reported that almost 3,000 respondents said they were uncomfortable reaching out to the police for help.

Woods, who trains Oakland Police Department officers to work with the LGBTQ population, said most law enforcement officers have a “very limited” perspective on the transgender community. Most, Woods said, only engage with transgender folks in an emergency response capacity or when a transgender individual is committing a crime.

Castro, who is also a transgender woman, told News21 she had a bad experience with police officers days after Taja DeJesus’ funeral.

Castro said she was sitting in front of a bar in the Castro District, a gay neighborhood in San Francisco, while a march against transphobia took place. The bar manager came out and told Castro to leave. When she refused, he shoved her.

“He was saying transphobic things, and I couldn’t believe that he put his hands on me and was so forceful when I was obviously disabled,” said Castro, who was dealing with hip problems at the time.

The manager called the police, and Castro said the officers refused to take her statement.

“The police came and they were awful. Just awful,” Castro said. “I wanted to file charges, but they said they couldn’t do a police report there because it was out of their district.”

Castro said she later found out the officers had lied to her, and could have done a police report there.

Of the 39 closed transgender murder cases recorded by the Human Rights Campaign since 2016, only one had hate crime charges filed by the local district attorney’s office. The police involved did not say if they investigated the case as a hate crime homicide.

The post Transgender murders frequently left unresolved
appeared first on Hate in America.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – Oklahomans are finding satisfaction with the current presidential administration, despite acknowledging the divisions in America today.

“My grandpa told me a long time ago, ‘Find something you love and you’ll never work a day of your life.’ I ain’t worked yet. I just get paid to play,” Jay Lewis said.

From his cowboy hat down to his boots, life as a cattleman is in Lewis’s roots. Lewis raises cattle in New Castle, Oklahoma, and works off the ranch in Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma National Stockyards, the world’s largest stocker and feeder cattle market.

“About 10,000 head of cattle pass through here a week,” Lewis said.

Larry Bryant has been hauling cattle to and from the stockyards for 45 years. He shares the same level of gratification toward his profession.

“It’s been good to me,” Bryant said.

Lewis and Bryant recognized the divisiveness that exists within America, but their concerns for the country revolve around the agriculture industry. Both men acknowledged that Americans do not understand where their food comes from.

Bryant said his granddaughters are always asking when they can go get fast food.

“People go to the store and bring it home. They don’t realize what all went into getting that cow to where it’s at,” Bryant said. “What we eat comes off the farm, no matter how you look at it.”

Lewis added: “A lot goes into it and I think sometimes people take that for granted.”

As a cattleman, Lewis is proud to contribute. It’s a privilege to be able to walk into the grocery store and buy food off the shelf, he said.

He described it as simply one of many liberties he believes accompanies life as an American, but it goes deeper than that.

“I was never in the service, but 1 percent of the world protects our freedom. Ninety-nine percent wakes up and enjoys it. I’m in that 99 percent. I don’t take that for granted by no means,” Lewis said.

When asked to describe the country in three words, Lewis responded: “God Bless America.”

In Elk City, Oklahoma, 100 miles from the stockyards, the political convictions are more pronounced.

For pawn shop owner Steve Scout, his political beliefs are identifiable near the store entry of his shop where he displays a “Make America Great Again” sticker, but the political décor does not stop at the front door. Signs supporting Second Amendment liberties, the NRA and anti-democratic commentary decorate the front wall of the store alongside rows of bows, guns and ammo.

“We have never been more satisfied with our current president,” Stout said.

For Stout, the only president that deserves as much praise as President Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan. Despite his satisfaction with the presidency, he isn’t afraid to speak out against what he believes are the country’s inadequacies.

“We’ve become an entitled country,” Stout said.

One customer at the pawn shop agreed with Stout.

“People don’t need welfare, they need a job,” Rev. Larry Parvin said. He explained that the local prison was searching for additional employees, but no one wanted the positions.

“We’ll help people, but I’m not going to give half of my check to somebody that just wants to sit around on the couch and watch TV,” Parvin said. “Get a job.”

Stout said we’ve got more jobs that we have ever had in 50 years.

“And it’s getting better everyday under my president, President Trump,” Parvin quickly added.

The town of 11,000 attracts a high number of tourists each year due to its location along Route 66.

News21 met local radio host Nathan Brewer and his colleague, Gabe Edeny, at Beyond the Pallet Coffee Shop in Elk City.

“These people are real,” said Edeny about people out West.

Oil dominates the local economy and is part of the Route 66 spectacle that attracts tourists.

“Tourists love to take pictures in front of our oil rig,” Brewer said. He was previously the host of a one-hour radio program exploring energy and how it influences life for the Elk City community.

“When the oil fields are good and times are good, politics are secondary,” he said. Brewer recounted the influence that Trump had on the local economy even before he was elected president.

Half of the oil industry is the economy and the other half is the attitude of people,” Brewer said. “Donald Trump, theoretically, was going to be far more favorable to an energy industry than a Hillary Clinton administration, so people started getting really excited.”

Not too long after, western Oklahoma oil companies began hiring again.

“Trump is who he is. For the people around here, it’s not so much Trump love as relief that Hillary was not elected,” Brewer said.

Brewer said engagement from local citizens can define the lives of those in the community.

“I think too many people are looking for salvation in politicians, which politicians won’t deliver,” Brewer said. “If people will go out and try to make a difference in their community, that will make a much bigger impact on their life and other people’s lives by doing that, then by political activism.”

Edeny said the media tend to portray the president in a negative light.

“A long time ago as a kid, you couldn’t talk about the president the way people do. Whether you like him or not, they [the media] take him to the bottom. I’ve never seen anybody talk about even Nixon to this level. I think it just causes more division,” Edeny said.

Brewer added: “Step away from the anger and danger of politics and pay attention to what’s going on locally.”

When asked if he was optimistic about the direction of the country, Brewer chuckled and said: “Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, yes. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, no. And I take the weekend off. That’s the short answer.”

The really long answer, Brewer said, is politics divide the country.

“People need to divest themselves of politics and get more interested in their own family and where they live,” Brewer said.

He offered a recommendation for ending some of the divisiveness in the country today.

“What I would like to see is people who disagree vehemently on political matters be friends and like each other,” Brewer said.

News21 fellows Storme Jones, Brittany Brown and Rosanna Cooney contributed to this report.

The post <b>The State of Hate:</b> Oklahomans satisfied with current times
appeared first on Hate in America.

In nearby Hattiesburg there are two churches – one is welcoming and the other is not, Hrostowski said.

“So when the welcoming church said we’re going to allow gay marriages in our church, you know the haters went across town to the other church,” she said.

Hrostowski, who serves as the church’s vicar, doesn’t understand how people use the Bible to decry the LGBTQ community – the verses people use to support the argument are typically taken out of context.

It’s just one of several ways Hrostowski is fighting for equality in the town of about 2,500 residents.

“If you’re going to say, you know, thou shalt not lie with a man as a man lies with a woman, then you have to look at the part that says if your neighbor labors on the Sabbath he should be killed,” she said. “That’s part of it, looking at scripture and understanding that you can’t just read a line of scripture, pull it out of context and lay it on 2018.”

Hate crime laws are designed to protect victims from being attacked for something they have no control over, so a common argument against LGBTQ protections is that being gay is a choice. But Hrostowski said she doesn’t understand how anyone thinks it could be a choice given how poorly the LGBTQ comunity is treated.

“Why would people choose this?” she asked.

Hrostowski herself has been the victim of anti-LGBTQ bias many times, and it motivated her to try and effect change.

When her son, Hudson, was born, Susan Hrostowski was not listed on his birth certificate.

Hrostowski and her wife, Kathy Garner, had their son through artificial insemination in the state of Mississippi 18 years ago, where LGBTQ couples were banned from adopting a child. Because Hrostowski didn’t carry the child, she could not be her son’s legal guardian.

“When he was young that was a very scary thing because if Kathy, God forbid, had been run over by a Mack truck or something, the judge could say no, Susan, you don’t get custody of this kid,” she said.

Garner and Hrostowski filed a lawsuit that ultimately went to federal court and overturned Mississippi’s ban on LGBTQ adoptions. She was finally able to adopt her son when he was 16 years old.

Hrostowski said Mississippi state legislators are more focused on blocking protections from the LGBTQ community than fixing prominent issues in the state.

“Our infrastructure, our streets, our bridges are falling apart, but we saved you from the gays,” she said. “To me, it’s a big smokescreen – look at the fact that we’re such upstanding moral people, that we saved you from the gays.”

Hrostowski is currently working on passing an ordinance in the city of Hattiesburg to protect the LGBTQ community from hate crimes, but she said the city’s current administration won’t budge on their stance against it.

Hate is passed down and taught from generation to generation, she said, and that is part of the reason things aren’t changing in Mississippi. She said she sees it as more than a legislative issue.

“You can’t legislate morality, you know, whether you’re progressive or conservative,” she said. “We’ve lost empathy. That’s one of our biggest problems.”

Hrostowski uses her platform as a small-town pastor to help open the eyes of her congregation and her community, working to help them understand and accept the LGBTQ community. She uses her legislative advocacy to attempt to make legal change in her community. But she encourages everyone to stand up for what they think is important and make whatever change they can in the lives of those around them.

“If we can open one or two or three people’s minds about another way of looking at things, about an effort to love your neighbor as yourself instead of building up all that hate, then I’m extremely grateful for it.”

The post Mississippi lesbian pastor fights for equality
appeared first on Hate in America.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Chants of “Nazi scum go away – Immigrants are here to stay” competed with chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” during dueling protests in downtown Portland on June 30.

About 300 left-wing protesters, labor union picketers and members of far-left militant groups, known as antifa, demonstrated against right-wing U.S. Senate candidate Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer and roughly 150 supporters from his group, the Proud Boys and other right-wing organizations.

Although it was an approved and permitted rally in Terry Schrunk Plaza, it would soon turn into a riot.

Many of the far left-wing members of antifa wore black with bandanas covering their faces. The right-wing protesters wore American flag bandanas and patriotic clothing.

At the rally, they dehumanized each other by shouting derogatory names such as “Communist,” “pedophile,” “Nazis,” and “Snowflake,” much like military propaganda wings do.

Protesters lobbed water bottles, eggs, firecrackers and rocks at each other. Fights broke out. Punches were thrown. Ambulances were called. After about 30 minutes, the Portland Police Bureau declared a riot and riot control police dispersed the crowds. Four people were arrested, and news reports said several people were injured.

According to several Portland residents, this is nothing new – just a skirmish in one of the many battles in Portland. One resident described it as a “modern Civil War.”

The belligerent groups on both sides of this rally pledge their allegiance to far different political ideologies.

Some of their battles are behind the scenes. Competing intelligence units routinely dox – publish personal information – about members of the other side. Both sides view their fights as honorable and just, and wage propaganda wars to recruit new members through social media.

Before the afternoon rally, far-right activists gathered outside a home in nearby Vancouver, Washington, and were briefed on their “enemy’s tactics.” With the “Braveheart” theme playing in the background, the activists discussed the plan in between chugs of Bud Light and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and shots of tequila from a plastic water bottle.

Many of them brandished large cans of pepper spray, stun weapons and hard-knuckle gloves – all of which would be later confiscated by Homeland Security in Portland or left on their bus, which took them as a group to the downtown Portland protest.

Before boarding the bus into “battle,” the Proud Boys – a group of self-described “Western chauvinists” and a designated right-wing extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center – gathered around for a brief prayer.

“Lord, we are standing on your will,” the prayer leader said. “Every form of evil that is set against us shall not prosper.”

The “evil” he refers to is antifa, he said. Daniel Garris, a member of the Proud Boys, said standing up to antifa and preserving free speech is his calling.

“We started getting calls from people who were being assaulted…elderly people, disabled vets, young people…being spit on and assaulted just because they had dissenting views,” Garris said. “We were the only people that stepped up and put ourselves between those people. And we’ll do it until the day I take my last breath. Period.”

Members of Rose City Antifa, the main anti-fascist group in the Portland area, said free speech protections don’t apply.

“The First Amendment and related free speech laws protect citizens from state interference, not from criticism by the public,” according to antifa’s website. “We target individuals and groups that are organizing along fascist lines. Their public events don’t exist to benignly express ideas, but to build the power they need to enforce their vicious world view.”

At the counter-protests, one of the News21 reporters spoke to a member of antifa, who said she wanted to remain anonymous and her group didn’t want to appear on camera.

“People here don’t want you to film them,” the activist said. “That’s why we’re all masked up and stuff. Identity and various things. (Our activities are) out there, the media chooses not to portray it in the actual light that it is.”

Rose City Antifa members dox people they believe to be fascist sympathizers. In June, they doxxed 17 members of the Pacific Northwest Proud Boys, revealing their addresses, social media accounts, vehicles and license plate numbers.

Members of the Rose City Antifa train for combat. Although the group is secretive, the day after the riot, antifa posted a photo of several members armed with what appear to be semi-automatic rifles.

“A few of our bravest brothers, sisters and others, unmasked to show you Beta Conservatards that we mean business,” the post said.

But if combat at the Portland rally turned violent, both sides were prepared. Justin Bentley, a medic for the Proud Boys, carried a large backpack with medical supplies. Several others carried tourniquets, gauze and personal medical kits. They were needed.

Mack Lewis, who attended the rally, said he objects to the Proud Boys being called a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Once you know the facts, (it’s) in no way, in any form, a hate group,” he said.

Right now, America is in what Lewis calls a “soft civil war.” It isn’t fought by standing armies. It’s fought by ideologues. Their battlefields are in the streets and on the internet. Getting their message out there is important, he said.

“People have just been manipulated,” Lewis said. “You’ve got the sides that have been lied to. They’ve been manipulated by fake news.”

After the Patriot Prayer rally ended abruptly, members of the Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys began a march down Southwest Third Avenue in Portland. Within seconds, antifa members, who had been staged in Chapman Square, across the street from the federal plaza, began blowing air horns, throwing water bottles and lighting off firecrackers and smoke grenades.

Police in riot gear broke up several fights – some of which involved weapons like clubs and flagpoles. Antifa members took wood planks and boards from a construction site to use as shields. On Main Street, between Third and Fourth avenues, there were at least two large explosions, which turned out to be stun grenades, also known as flashbangs. What seemed to be tear gas and pepper spray were deployed, but antifa, the Proud Boys and the Portland Police all deny using it.

After the flashbangs went off, the Portland Police Bureau, using a loudspeaker attached to a police SUV, declared the event a riot, revoked the march permits and ordered the crowds to disperse. The Patriot Prayer marchers regrouped to the plaza to hold a short prayer service, while the antifa protesters returned to Chapman Square. Riot police stood between the two parks.

Protesters on both sides of the issue said they believe they’ll be judged positively by history.

“I think that we’re on the right side of things,” Lewis said. “Whatever happens, I’m not really too worried about it.”

News21 reporters Rosanna Cooney and Tessa Diestel contributed to this report.

The post Armies of the new ‘Civil War’ clash in Portland
appeared first on Hate in America.

The streets and cemeteries of Richmond, Virginia, are still lined with massive memorials to the Confederacy and flags with the “Southern cross.” Residents of the historic city said to this day it is hard for them to move past that history.

“Being the former capital of the Confederacy we are steeped in the history, but it’s all one-sided. It’s all a lost cause history and until it’s balanced it’s not going to be made right,” said Anita Lee, a resident of Richmond. “It needs to be a more balanced history.”

Local and national programs have developed in recent years to combat hate against African-Americans, racism in general and an American history of intolerance. In Richmond, two women started a pledge and program at their Unitarian Universalist church to educate people on racism.

Unitarian Universalist churches are known for filling their congregations with predominantly white members and leaders. Last year, the church saw national furor over racial policies and practices, sparking a resignation of its national president, after the appointment of what critics saw as too many white leaders.

Lee, 70, said she has been fighting against hate and racism since her father put her on a picket line when she was only 8 years old, protesting to integrate schools. When she joined the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond about 20 years ago, Lee said people would often confuse her with the black secretary for the church, even though she came to service every week and “looked nothing like her.”

That experience was one of many that launched the Richmond Pledge Against Racism, a program led by two women in the local church with two days of workshops and training discussing hate.

Since the idea came to fruition four years ago, about 250 people have completed the training in Richmond and the program has now launched in 17 locations across America.

“It was important to me if I was going to remain a member of the church that we become really active in eradicating racism, and signing the pledge was only the beginning,” Lee said. “We had to learn to live the pledge. And so we developed a series of workshops in order to enable people to learn how to first recognize racism when they see it and then what to do about it.”

Lee started the program with Annette Marquis, who grew up in a town that was “intentionally white.” Marquis grew up in Roger, Arkansas – which was classified as a sundown town, meaning that signs were posted across the town saying that blacks were not allowed after dark.

There were thousands of sundown towns across America before the Civil Rights era, according to Jim Loewen, author of the book “Sundown Towns.” Loewen uses a formula to identify towns as sundown, including if there was legislature preventing blacks from the town, documented signage and a white population of more than 99.9 percent.

“The sense of being threatened by just being in a place, by just having made a turn through a town, that people weren’t welcome – that has really stayed with me all my life,” Marquis said.

The two women started the program in 2014 after the first Black Lives Matter rally in Richmond. Marquis said a number of the church members went to the march and then started to think about what they could do to combat racism and hate in America, asking themselves the question “how do we really find ourselves in this story?”

Marquis said she doesn’t see the national conversation changing until more communities confront what’s going on in their neighborhoods.

“When you really look at the history of this country, there has been no justice for people of color,” she said. “From Jamestown to Plymouth Rock to everywhere in between and today, when I hear that, when I hear the rhetoric around making America great again and I try to think about when was that time that we’re trying to make great again. There was never a time when it was great for people of color.”

After the alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year in the city neighboring Richmond that left one dead and several injured, Lee said she has no choice but to continue to fight against hate.

“I have five grandchildren and I’ve been working at this for let’s just say well over 50 years. I see us sliding backwards and I want their lives to be better,” Lee said. “I don’t want them to have to be fighting when they get old enough for equal rights, it doesn’t make any sense. This is 2018 for heaven’s sakes. I never imagined that we’d still be fighting racism.”

The post Richmond churchwomen battle hate with conversations
appeared first on Hate in America.

Before a New York judge sentenced Rasheen Everett to 29 years in prison for strangling Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar in 2010, his lawyer pleaded for a lighter punishment. According to him, Gonzalez-Andujar wasn’t on the “higher end of the community.”   

In January, Los Angeles police charged Kevyn Ramirez in the stabbing death of Viccky Gutierrez, who was stabbed to death before Ramirez allegedly burned her home, leaving her remains severely burned. Police couldn’t immediately identify her.

All of them were transgender cases in the news. All of them were sex workers. And none of their murders were initially charged as hate crimes.

LGBTQ advocates say society shuns transgender people from corporate jobs because of their gender identity, forcing them into survival sex work and other means of underground economy. But that places them in a dangerous trade.

According to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, 62 percent of the 2,609 transgender people killed worldwide from January 2008 through September 2017 were sex workers.

In the United States, a 2015 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality said one in five transgender adults surveyed said they participated in sex work, with higher rates among minority women. Of the 53 transgender people killed between 2013 and 2015, 34 percent participated in sex work at the time of their deaths, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Of the 14 transgender murders tracked by the Human Rights Campaign this year, at least two victims participated in sex work.

“It’s a nationwide problem that is happening all across the country and it is a direct result of transphobia and hate crimes, as well as the reasons that lead trans people to be in vulnerable situations,” said Victoria Rodríguez-Roldán, the trans and gender non-conforming justice project director for the National LGBTQ Task Force.

When transgender people feel they have no other avenue for income, they often sell their bodies, Rodríguez-Roldán said. Sex work can be defined as prostitution, pornography, services arranged online and other forms. Experts say prejudices in the workplace and housing lead transgender people to this point.

Currently, 28 states lack explicit laws prohibiting employment and housing discrimination regarding sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2015, the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found nearly 50 percent of transgender sex worker respondents experienced homelessness. Nearly 70 percent of respondents reported losing a job or being denied a promotion because of their identity.  

When they can’t secure a house or employment, transgender people feel they have no other choice but to partake in a dangerous craft such as sex work, said Kory Mansen, racial and economic justice policy advocate for the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“When you combine those factors, you get an amplified violence that these people experience at the intersection of that area of work and the trans identity,” he said.

Danielle Castro knows those factors too well because she’s lived it. Now, the 43-year-old Latina transgender woman enjoys a stable lifestyle. She lives in a house in Oakland, California with her two dogs. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at John F. Kennedy University, which is in the Bay Area.  She’s also project director at the Center for Excellence for Transgender Health.

But she participated in sex work for years before and after her transition into a female. When she hears horror stories of transgender sex workers’ murders, it resonates because “it could have been me,”she said.

“The reasons so many of us are engaging in sex work is because we don’t have other options to survive,” she said. “When you have a power to survive, that’s what you’re going to do. And when you get positive reinforcement from people that want to have sex with you and pay you, I’m not going to lie, it feels good.

“The sad part about it, though, is that people think we’re disposable because of it.”

Experts and data suggest transgender sex workers generally distrust law enforcement. Eighty-six percent of transgender sex worker respondents reported being harassed, attacked, sexually assaulted or mistreated in some way by police, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. Add the fact that the more lucrative sex work acts, such as prostitution, are illegal, and it deters transgender sex workers from approaching police to report violence.  

“What often happens is sex workers are disproportionately subject to crimes, but they’re less likely to report them because they’re afraid of retaliation on the part of police officers,” said Sheryl Evans Davis, executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. “And we’ve heard anecdotally that, ‘I was robbed and I went to report it to a police officer and the police officer asked me, oh, were you doing sex work?’ So there was this victimizing the victim dynamic that was happening.”

When reported crimes happen, though, it’s harder to convict perpetrators of a hate crime, experts say. A hate crime charge automatically increases a typical punishment for states with applicable laws.

In Gonzalez-Andujar’s and Williams’ brutal murders, hate crime charges weren’t brought. Law enforcement couldn’t definitively prove motivation, according to news reports.

Gutierrez’s death, though still under investigation, was not immediately charged as a hate crime.  

For transgender sex workers, other issues complicate proving a hate crime, and each case is unique. It is hard to prove victims were explicitly targeted for their gender, or if other circumstances, such as domestic violence, led to their deaths or mistreatment, Mansen said

“It is so difficult to get things tried as a hate crime because there are a lot of factors into proving the intent, so more often than not law enforcement doesn’t feel equipped to make the determination of whether something is or is not a hate crime,” Mansen said.

Of the four transgender sex worker deaths tracked by the Human Rights Campaign in 2015, none were charged as hate crimes.

Often, after a hate crime charge isn’t levied, the transgender community sees it as a failure.

As the leader of an advocacy group who works closely with the LGBTQ community and police, Davis said she sees both sides.

“It’s a really tough and emotional debate,” Davis said. “With most crimes, you have to prove the intent. But with hate crimes, you have to prove the intent, the act and then the motivation to do it.”

“There have been these moments when people are calling it out there in the streets and they’re saying that, ‘this is a hate crime’ and there’s a struggle with proving it.”

Victoria Rodríguez-Roldán agreed, saying the intricacies of each situation make it difficult to label each case hate-related. But to her, the biggest goal should be fixing the systemic issue that leads to these events.

“I think it’s a mix of many things that makes this so complex, often because they’re trans, often because they’re vulnerable in engaging in criminalized form of making a living,” she said. “But I’m not sure it matters. What matters is transgender people are being murdered.”

In recent years, LGBTQ advocacy groups publicly called for decriminalization of sex work, though federal legislation to crackdown on online services passed this year. Advocates say while national policy battles continue, local communities can take action. And two cities are leading the charge.

Sophie Cadle, a 23-year-old youth liaison at the New York Transgender Advocacy Group, said her organization now works more with police to build relationships and help officers understand the societal factors involved with sex work. As a black transgender woman who participated in sex work, she said it’s important to be proactive.

“The violence toward the community is visible,” she said. “It’s there and it’s a continuous issue that’s affecting us.”

In San Francisco, sex workers who report experiencing or seeing violence won’t face prostitution charges because of a policy adopted in January by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and the San Francisco Police Department.  The ‘Prioritizing Safety for Sex Workers’ is the first of its kind in the nation, and is a collaborative effort to encourage reporting of violent crime.

Corinne Greene, policy coordinator for the Transgender Law Center, said this should build trust. Proving intent regarding hate crimes will always be tough. But if sex workers can courageously approach police, she said, it will help reduce deaths and mistreatment.

“A big factor in how law enforcement can improve is learning about trans people, gaining cultural competence on trans people, learning about sex workers, investigating and trying to eliminate inherent bias most people have against trans people and sex workers not engaging in profiling,” she said. “Really focusing on improving community relations would be huge in terms of helping sex workers feel more comfortable accessing police.”

Danielle Castro has advice for people who are in the sex business.

“I hope people are safe and learn to protect themselves before they come into this trade that can be potentially deadly,” she said. “And if you’re doing it for survival, then God bless you.”

The post Transgender sex workers experience hate at high rates
appeared first on Hate in America.

It’s not surprising — LGBTQ acceptance here is common knowldege. Life Magazine labeled San Francisco the “Gay Capital of the World” in 1964, and since then, it has earned the moniker. Most notably, San Francisco issued the nation’s first same-sex marriage license in 2004, helping catalyze the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision 11 years later. One would think the LGBTQ community constantly feels safe here.

But advocates and newly released data suggest otherwise.

Hate crimes in California increased 17 percent in 2017, with hate crime events motivated by sexual orientation increasing by 19 percent, according to a California Attorney General report. A total of 246 hate crimes involving sexual orientation happened in California last year, encompassing 22 percent of all hate crimes statewide.

San Francisco County saw a 31 percent spike in total hate crimes, the same report said. Data from the Anti-Defamation League cites 14 hate crimes targeted for sexual orientation occurred in San Francisco in 2016. That’s nearly 40 percent of all of the hate crimes in the city and was the highest number the organization reported since 2012.

Seth Brysk, regional director for the ADL’s Central Pacific Region, called this trend “disturbing.”

“While it is true that there are greater freedoms and a greater measure of acceptance more broadly, there’s still exists the same kinds of societal ills that you find in other communities and other locations,” Brysk said. “We find in the work that we’re doing that in terms of hate crimes, in terms of hatred that’s visited against the LGBTQ community and other communities, that it exists here in as much as it does in any other place.”

Brysk said the coarse rhetoric during the 2016 presidential election gave people a “license to speak their bigoted beliefs” and then act on them without fear for repercussions. But in San Francisco, anti-LGBT sentiments were present before then, according to a survey the year before.

In 2015, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission surveyed 400 LGBTQ individuals, finding that 68 percent of respondents experienced physical violence. More than 47 percent of respondents reported experiencing sexual violence and 81 percent reported experiencing harassment.

Sneh Rao, director of policy for the commission’s Policy and Social Justice Division, said those numbers show the LGBTQ community is still vulnerable despite San Francisco’s progressive culture.

“San Francisco’s done a lot of good work, but there is no doubt, as this report showed, that there is a lot of good work that still needs to be done,” he said.

San Francisco’s LGBTQ community also distrusts of the police. The survey found a third of LGBTQ people in San Francisco are leery of law enforcement.

This worries Brysk. Agencies such as the ADL rely heavily on accurate data, and law enforcement can be invaluable partners. Data that police gather help advocacy and government groups see the presence of hate crimes in a given location. That then leads to efforts and drafted policies to address certain areas or comfort specific groups.

When LGBTQ people don’t report criminal events to law enforcement, it skews the data, making it unreflective of the actual problem, Brysk said. That’s why the ADL’s numbers are so low. When large cities report so few hate crimes, it raises concerns.

“We need good information, Brysk said. “It’s important for law enforcement to do everything possible in their power to make it as comfortable and as easy as possible for people to feel comfortable and willing to go and report these crimes.

“We have to try to break down those barriers. We have to try to improve the training so the law enforcement can provide us with that kind of information and that will help inform education and policy making decisions and the drafting of other statutes that might be able to help protect people.”

More than 36 percent of respondents to the Human Rights Commission survey said they don’t believe police would help them in an emergency. One anonymous respondent even wrote, “There’s a joke in my building – you can get pizza delivered to you faster than the police respond.”

And because of that, hate crime data is not true depiction, Rao said. Forty-four percent of respondents said they did not report physical violence events to the police, while 62 percent didn’t report harassment.

Clair Farley, senior advisor for transgender initiatives for the mayor of San Francisco, said perceived biases and anecdotal accounts of police harassing or discrediting LGBTQ individuals leads to a sense of fear. Though she said the San Francisco Police Department started new initiatives to combat this, such as bias trainings and community discussions, she said the process will take time.

“There’s been a lot of work with the new recruits around LGBT trainings and trans work, which is great for the new recruits, but for oldtimers and people who have been on the force for a long time, it’s harder to change.”

Some in the LGBTQ community confide in advocacy groups rather than police. But even those numbers are still small. Only 16 percent of respondents said they sought help from a group that assisted with legal services and advocacy. Those who utilized those services, though, were pleased. Seventy-one percent of those who used those services said they were helpful. The objective now is to reach more people in order to better serve them.

“The mission now is to decide how do we have this dialogue outside of just saying ‘we’re going to empower you, but we’re going to actually go with you and help represent you?” said Sheryl Evans Davis, executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. “We need allies in those rooms — hopefully we’re doing work to develop allies so that it’s not only you know certain people saying we all deserve to be treated fairly but that we can speak up on behalf of those who are feeling afflicted”

Both the ADL and HRC said success in this area is seeing an increase of reported hate crimes. They want to ensure there isn’t a boost in criminal activity, but seeing a truer dataset will present a clearer picture of the areas they need to improve on.

But No. 1 on Brysk’s list is to get the word out that hate is still a problem in San Francisco — even if there are rainbow flags everywhere.

“A big thing we have to do is shine a light on the problem, making sure that people understand that hatred exists,” he said. “It’s a very real problem — it’s a pressing issue and it’s a growing problem, and therefore it should be a growing concern for everyone. Hatred never confined itself to one group or one area.”

The post Despite rainbow flags, <b>LBGTQ</b> hate crimes rise in San Francisco
appeared first on Hate in America.

LONDON, Ky. – Jason Kovach,  owner of the Tonic Room Barber Shop & Shave Parlor, on Main Street in London, Kentucky, was eager to share his thoughts as he gave a haircut.

“The United States is badass,” he said. “The beautiful thing about the United States is you can do anything you want. Nobody is stopping you from anything. You don’t like the country, so get out.”

Kovach served five years in the U.S. Marines and offers a discount to veterans. American flags and Marine Corps memorabilia decorate the shop. Kovach has an American flag pin on the pocket of his barber’s jacket, with the words: “Honoring our Veterans.”

When asked about the biggest problem facing America today, he responded in one word: “Facebook!” Raquel Morgan, the one female haircutter in the  shop, agreed.

“You can’t enjoy your life because you’re too busy comparing and arguing for no reason,” Morgan said.

Terry Napier, a customer, joined in: “People are too sensitive anymore. You say something and they say, ‘I’m offended.’ That’s one of our civil liberties, freedom of speech. Men have fought and died for that. Nobody respects that anymore.”

Drugs and a struggling economy are also a concern in the local community of 8,000, where the median household income is $33,000.

“I moved here from Ohio. I mean, they got drugs, too; but, this area here is just infested with drugs,” James Barnett, another customer, said. He said too many children are homeless in the area.

“Small businesses can’t stay in business if prices don’t go up. I feel sorry for a lot of women that work around here and are divorced. They barely get by,” Barnett added.

Kovach, the owner, complained about kids today, and a few other patrons grumbled their agreement.

“They’re lazy. You’ve got to work, work, work, work, work. It’s hard work. Nothing comes easy,” Kovach said.

Barnett said if he could change the country overnight, his wish would be: “Get people off drugs, get them a job, and let them take care of their kids.”

Can politics change things?

“We had an election here in May,” Barnett said. “Only 20 percent of the people got out and voted. If you want something changed, yes, get out and vote. The same thing goes for the president. If you don’t vote, you shouldn’t be fussing about nothing.”

News21 fellows Storme Jones, Rosanna Cooney and Brittany Brown contributed to this report.

Follow the News21 blog for updates as the team reports on the road.

The post <b>The State of Hate:</b> Kentuckians talk freedom, free speech
appeared first on Hate in America.

Protected by police in a roped-off area, they chanted homophobic slurs to the people walking by.

Most people ignored Rusfeldt and his group from the Key of David Christian Center in Philadelphia, but a few cursed at them, or called them wrong, or tossed their water bottles at them.

After the march, Rusfeldt, 41, talked to News21.

Rusfeldt said that his goal at the gay pride march and other events is to spread his interpretation of the word of God and help Christians “get bolder in their faith.”

At least 10 times a month, Rusfeldt estimates that he and a handful of other members of the Philadelphia church hold protests against the LGBTQ community and Islamism at college campuses and events around the Northeast.

The Anti-Defamation League has been tracking Rusfeldt’s activities in the Philadelphia area since late 2016. Jeremy Bannett, associate regional director of ADL in Philadelphia, describes Rusfeldt’s message as “an extreme interpretation of Christianity characterized by homophobia, Islamaphobia, misogyny and other forms of hate.”

James Ross, 28, a Philadelphia businessman who was part of Rusfeldt’s group at the New York City march, explained his own belief.

“In this day and age, I think everybody has heard the good gospel of what God will do, but they miss all of it,” Ross said. “I have heard many people running up and saying God loves everyone, and that’s not the truth.”

Activist and art creator Ezequiel Consoti, who was watching the march, said Rusfeldt’s protest is “just sad.”

“New York City values itself in love, acceptance and inclusivity,” Consoti said. “It’s just these four other people against thousands of people who just want to express love for one another. They are just being hateful.”

Chelsea DeMarte, co-president of Gaylesta, the psychotherapist association for gender and sexual diversity located in San Francisco, described protests by so-called religious groups against the LGBT community as incredibly disturbing to people.

Religious (hate) speech can be very harmful for individuals struggling to navigate through their sexual identity and faith, DeMarte said.

“When somebody from a religious organization is openly saying negative things about LGBT people or that they are going to hell, they are coming from the assumption that it is OK to impose your beliefs onto somebody else because you believe they are abnormal or deviant and that is not OK,” she said.

Rusfeldt hasn’t always been a street preacher.

Before getting his degree at the Abundant Life Christian School in Houston, he was in the investment business. In 2008, he was fined more than $3.2 million by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for fraudulent activity in Texas, according to a press release from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Rusfeldt said he has repented in recent years. He was “headed to hell,” but God is loving, he said.

The post Pastor a fixture on sidelines, protesting <b>LGBTQ</b> events
appeared first on Hate in America.