Attacks against Mexicans inflame tensions in NYC
AP ^ | 8/16/10 | CRISTIAN SALAZAR
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When Rodolfo Olmedo was dragged down by a group of men shouting anti-Mexican epithets and bashed over the head with a wooden stick on the street outside his home, he instinctively covered his face to keep from getting disfigured. Blood filled his mouth.
"I wanted to scream, but I couldn't because of the beating they were giving me," said the 25-year-old baker. Nearly five months later, he is still taking pain medications for his head injuries.
Recorded by a store's surveillance camera, the assault was the first of 11 suspected anti-Hispanic bias attacks in a Staten Island neighborhood, re-igniting years-old tensions between blacks and Hispanics in New York City's most remote borough.
Residents of Port Richmond — where an influx of newcomers from Latin America over the past decade has transformed the community — alternately blame the attacks on the economy, unemployment and the debate over Arizona's immigration law.
And although most of the suspects were described as young black men and investigated for bias crimes, a grand jury has indicted only one of seven people arrested on a hate-crime charge.
But Isaias Lozano, a day laborer, said he knows why he was attacked and robbed in December by "morenos" — the Spanish word he uses to describe his black neighbors.
"They hate us because we're Mexicans," he said while sitting at El Centro del Inmigrante, a center for immigrant day workers. "They aren't robbing just anybody."
Across the United States, the immigration debate plays out in suspicion of outsiders and sometimes escalates into violence. Port Richmond, tucked in a corner of New York City that most visitors never see, is wrestling with the perennial question of how people from different backgrounds can live together and get along.
(Excerpt) Read more at comcast.net ...
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Shouldnt Spike Lee, Rev. Al, Jesse, be protesting or something?
And I'm surprised that Bloomie hasnt blamed Palin for this yet.
