Zuky: From Vincent Chin to Luis Ramirez

Friday, June 19, 2009

From Vincent Chin to Luis Ramirez

On this day in 1982, Chinese American immigrant Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat, at his own bachelor party, by racist white auto workers in Detroit who blamed Japan for layoffs in the US auto industry. The murderers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, were convicted of manslaughter. They served no jail time, were given three years probation, fined $3,000 and ordered to pay $780 in court costs. Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman said, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail."

On July 14, 2008, Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez was beaten to death by racist white teens shouting anti-Mexican epithets, in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The murderers, Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak, were convicted of simple assault. Two days ago, they were respectively sentenced to 6 and 7 months in county jail. Piekarsky's lawyer Frederick Fanelli said, "You would be proud to have any of these kids in your classroom, and any of them as your children."

Posted by Kai at 01:39 PM | Permalink

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Sigh.

Posted by: Changeseeker | Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 03:53 PM

If one of these perps had been a kid of mine, I'd 1) be seriously questioning what we'd done wrong as parents, 2) feeling anything but pride, and 3) strongly considering breaking off all contact. That third reaction (which would amount to parental rejection of the offspring) is more knee-jerk I'll admit, and I'm not sure if it's necessarily even a good one.

Posted by: James | Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 04:55 PM

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Reflection

Through holding together, restraint is certain to come about. The yielding obtains the decisive place, and those above and those below correspond with it. Strong and gentle; the strong is central and its will is done. This is called the Taming Power of the Small.
— The I Ching, hexagram 9: Hsiao Chu / The Taming Power of the Small

Highlights

Immigrant Dreams and Nightmares in the White Supremacist Cauldron (May-2007)
The tired, the poor, the huddled masses of dream-hungry immigrants coming across the Pacific — like those coming across the deserts and rivers along the Southern US border — have never been greeted by a Mother of Exiles.
Ongoing Echoes from the Women of the Long House (Feb-2009)
The word Haudenosaunee (pronounced "ho-de-no-SHO-nee") means "People of the Long House" and refers both to the architectural style of their wood-framed living structures and to the inclusivity of their society. The connection between the Haudenosaunee and early US feminists is not tenuous; it is plainly documented.
The Palin’ Identity (Nov-2008)
The reason why the McCain-Palin campaign has appeared erratic throughout the election season is that their strategic communications have been conceived and crafted according to the language of implicit cultural code rather than explicit thematic cohesion.
The Whiteness Problem (Apr-2009)
The backhanded boycott of the historic UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by mostly-white diplomats from Western nations is farcical on its face and provides a handy illustration that the great problem of the 21st century is the whiteness problem.
Time to Throw the Traders Out the Temple (Oct-2008)
The Wall Street racket is essentially a colossal debt pyramid which must continually convince or coerce people to feed it so that money keeps getting funneled upward while risk gets distributed downward.

August in Connecticut

Midsummer, the woods of Southwestern Connecticut buzz with bright pastoral magic. This gallery attempts to capture a quick arbitrary sliver of that brightness. Most of these pictures were taken in my immediate neighorhood; some were shot at Wampus Pond; some at the Audubon Fairchild Wildflower Garden.

Ink Not Pixels

The Outlaw Bible of American Essays
This diverse, dense, rowdy, erudite collection of classic dissident writing is full of required resistance reading.
Jean Pfaelzer: Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
The most comprehensive, probing history of the brutal and systematic ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans in California and the Pacific Northwest during the Chinese Exclusion era.
Jennifer Gordon: Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights
A broad-ranging, tightly-written rundown on the new economic, political, and legal landscape confronting pro-immigrant activists.
Joyce Carol Oates: On Boxing
A sweeping, passionate exploration of the colorful characters, crazy contradictions, and mythic meanings which animate the sport of boxing.
Louise Derman-Sparks: Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach
Based on a solid pedagogical framework and informed by years of classroom experience, this dense educational guidebook is an invaluable contribution to the anti-racist toolbox.

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