‘Hate Crime’ Meeting May Turn Into A Confrontation
By Charles Sercombe
Monday’s panel discussion on a pending Congressional “hate crime law” may get a little heated.
Monday’s discussion will be led by Congressmen John Conyers, who is sponsoring legislation to create a federal “anti-hate” law. The law would make it a “hate crime” to discriminate or attack someone because of their race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
Several states, including Michigan, have similar laws. The law would allow prosecutors to add an additional charge to accuse someone of a “hate crime” besides charges of discrimination or assault.
The meeting, sponsored by the Hamtramck NAACP, will be this Monday, 7 p.m., at St. Peter AME Church, 3056 Yemans at Charest. The meeting was moved from Corinthian Baptist Church, apparently because of the plant fire at Sterling Oil, located down the street from Corinthian.
The proposed law has been the subject of heated debate because it provides what some critics call “gay rights.” Monday’s meeting has the potential to turn raucous, but not because there are critics of the proposed law.
Hamtramck Councilmember Scott Klein, who is openly gay and a proponent of gay rights, said he and other gay activists will “hijack” the meeting to confront NAACP President Kamal Rahman and other Bengali NAACP members who campaigned against Hamtramck’s “Natural Rights” ordinance last year.
The proposed “Natural Rights” law made it illegal to discriminate against gays and those with a non-traditional sexual orientation.
Members of the Bengali Muslim community vocally opposed the law.
Klein said it’s hypocritical of Rahman and others to sponsor and appear to support a law that contains elements they vehemently opposed in Hamtramck.
“I’m going to reveal these people for who they are, which are not good people,” Klein said. “They’re not going to like the turn it (the meeting) will take.”
Prior to The Review interview of Klein, a rumor had circulated through town that some kind of disruption would take place. Hamtramck Police Chief Mark Kalinowski, who was going to be a part of the panel discussion, said he thought he was going to be the target.
That prompted him to bow out from participating. Kalinowski said beside that reason, he had little knowledge of the specifics of the law. He said regardless of the controversy, his duty is to see to it that all laws are enforced.
According to media reports, there is little chance Conyers’ legislation will receive Congressional support, at least at this point.
I didn’t hear any rumor. What parts of town was it circulating through?
maybe your rumormill is broken
It is not against the law to be a racist or sexist idiot, it is against the law to commit a crime. When you allow things like this to come into play you start trying to mind read people and their reasoning. What will happen is every special interest group will try to set an example and try to convince people that the crime was a hate crime simply because someone from their group was wronged.
“straight” person punches “gay” person – oh must be a hate crime because you hate a “gay” person if you punch them.
“black” person punches “white” person – oh must be a hate crime because you obviously dislike “white” people to punch one.
“car” owner punches “bicycle” owner – oh must be a hate crime against people who own bicycles.
Now as much as I disagree with ignorant people who like to be racist or sexist or whatever, it is simply not against the law to be so. This is simply a way to try to make illegal that which is not illegal.
When you boil it all down, ALL crimes are hate crimes – you hated your neighbor enough to wrong him.
Punish the crime and don’t give every special interest group vague openings to advance its agenda at every chance.
I grow weary of these groups and the way they divide people by their very nature, we are one group and that is humans.
So Chief Kalinowski does not show up to the meeting because it’s controversial? If he didn’t know much about it, why didn’t he study up and learn about it? If this were the case from the beginning, he would have declined rather than accepted the invitation, but when it controversial because a councilman was going to raise some hell, be backs out. I am very disappointed that for all the promises of brining the police department into the new century and being progressive, the chief has reverted back to the same old same old that previous chiefs have produced. Truly disappointing.
Wish I could have made this meeting, I am watching some of the video of it now and I immediately have a point to address with opening speaker. To paraphrase he talks about hate crimes and about how you cant attack a Muslim for being Muslim, you cant run a car into a gay person for being gay and you cant attack a black man with a machete simple cause hes black. Well I completely agree – But you cant do any of those things for any other reason either It is already on the books, its LAW already.
The same law that prevents you from attacking a black person cause he is black is the same one that prevents you from attacking a person cause he is eating skittles and you don’t like it, same one that stops you from attacking a person because he is in a green shirt, same law that stops you from attacking for every other reason. Now it would be different if a gay person was attacked now and the law said “well he is gay so thats ok we arent going to press charges on attacker” but thats not what happens.
3 minutes into video and already we have a situation where groups are looking for special treatment when laws are already in place to deal with the crimes.
Putting these type of laws will not help fix any sort of “hate” in fact it will probably get more people angry that certain groups get special treatment.
Often, marginalized minorities do need protection from what Jefferson called “the tyranny of the majority” and the Human Rights Ordinance and Hate Crimes Laws offer such protection. Many of the commentaries rail on against what they call “special rights” for gays. When you can you be refused housing because of sexual orientation or refused service at a restaurant or fired from your job for being gay then protections should be provided. These are not special rights, they are the rights that should be afforded all americans and they are NOT. In fact special laws have been implemented to DENY rights to gays (for example anti marriage laws, sodomy laws and don’t ask don’t tell). There may come a time when america does not need to implement such protections but we are not there yet.