Maegan puts it brilliantly over at her blog, Luis Ramirez and Every Mother's Sons and Daughters : Seeking Justice by All Means Necessary :: VivirLatino:

Speaking Spanish can get you beaten.

And most recently, Luis Ramirez was beaten and killed and those accused got away with murder.

I could go through recent and not so recent history and clearly see a pattern and practice of hate that has been growing. A pattern and practice of racism, nativism, fueled by the media and government, eaten up by the mainstream public.

People in Shenandoah celebrated, went out into the streets and rejoiced after an all-white jury found Brandon J. Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick M. Donchak, 19, guilty of lesser charges and acquitted them of criminal homicide and aggravated assault.

And then people have the nerve to ask why are more Latinos not more active in the fight for immigration change?

This is not just about laws, this about lives.

As she correctly states, the petition will not bring back the dead. Hopefully will bring justice to this one case and make it an example for other juries who think they can use their prejudices to protect "their kind" instead of all citizens equally.

Sign the petition. The fill text of the letter is after the jump.
 more this way»

At a book signing this week, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee once again spoke truth to power and rejected two lies spread by the gay liberal media: 1) that the gay movement is a civil rights movement and 2) that violence against "homosexuals" is a big deal. Huckabee then shed light on the issue that nobody else will touch with a 10-foot pole: the gay violence perpetrated against Christians. It turns out that far from being the victims of hate crimes, the gays are the real haters and the true criminals.

Hucakabee explained, "there is a difference between the civil rights movement of African-Americans who were essentially hosed down in the streets by Bull Connor in Birmingham and beaten with their skulls crashed in on the bridges of Selma for being black, not for their behavior, not for anything other than their race."
 more this way»

Since 9/11, hate crimes have been almost steadily rising in America, as well as elsewhere in the world. There were a couple of years when the rise leveled off, but last year the increase continued apace. In 2006 there were more than 7,700 hate crimes in the US, a rise of more than 7%, according to the FBI.

I consider this to be part and parcel with the dominance of a political party, the Republican Party, that puts hatred and intolerance near the top of their agenda. This political agenda, cynically used to get votes and power and broadcast daily by the Fox Hate Channel, leads to real violence. The vilification of diversity by the Republican Party and their Fox mouthpieces encourages violence in America.

Here are some deatails about this rise in hate crimes, from BBC news:

More than half of the victims were attacked because of their race, while 19% were targeted because of their religion, the annual report said.

However, there were wide discrepancies, with northern states reporting far more hate crimes than the southern states, despite the South's racial history.

This is an interesting discrepancy. Some are claiming that this is misleading, since the reporting of these statistics is voluntary and each state has its own way of defining and reporting hate crime statistics, comparisons between states may be meaningless. Some argue that the reporting is more accurate and realistic in the Northern states, giving a false impression of more hate crimes. Needless to say, this is controversial and deserves further investigation, I would think. If the South really does have fewer hate crimes, it would be well worth knowing why. And if in reality it does not and the Northern states are merely more honest in their reporting of hate crimes, that also would be worth knowing.
 more this way»