How about I build a catapult large enough to launch all of them halfway into the Atlantic?
Posted on 07/16/2005 2:26:29 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
It started with the spray-painted, misspelled "Rapest" on the house of a Hispanic man accused of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old white girl. Then the house went up in flames in a suspected arson. Confrontations, name-calling and threats against Hispanics followed. Men roamed the streets wearing pillowcases with eye holes, and Ku Klux Klansmen in hoods and robes showed up to pass out pamphlets. There were rumors of assaults and beatings.
Now this small Ohio river city's booming Hispanic population is cowed, the streets in their neighborhoods nearly deserted.
Outside the office of the Living Water Ministry, which two months ago drew hundreds of people to its first Cinco de Mayo festival, there is still a smell of charred wood from the June 21 fire that gutted the house next door and caused damage to the outside of the ministry's office.
"Before, the street would be covered with people, people out all over the place," said Sasha Amen, community outreach coordinator for Living Water. "There's a lot of fear now. People are shutting themselves in their homes."
Hamilton has been a hotbed for Hispanic growth in a state that has lagged behind much of the nation in Hispanic population. The number of Hispanics here jumped fivefold in the 1990s, to 1,566, and is now estimated at 4,000 or more in a city of some 61,000.
For the most part, the immigrants had settled in without much controversy in Hamilton, whose mayor in the 1990s was of Cuban descent. But life here was transformed on June 19, when a 9-year-old Caucasian girl was raped, allegedly by a Hispanic man who has apparently fled the city.
"Yes, there is fear," said Ramona Ramirez, who owns a corner deli-supermarket where she says business is off and her bread delivery man is now afraid to come. "They are attacking all the Hispanics, and it is only one person. We don't know what will happen."
Lupe Galvan, a Mexican-born woman who has been here five years, said some neighbors are talking about moving away.
City and community leaders are trying to heal the wounds, beefing up patrols and trying to calm the community, Mayor Don Ryan said Friday. Ryan said authorities are stressing that the rape was "strictly a random act of violence" and not racially motivated.
"We're continuing to be a melting pot in this country," he said. "Assimilating into our culture is tough; I firmly believe that it will take time."
While the anti-Hispanic backlash has stunned many of the immigrants, some say they've felt racial prejudice here before. The Rev. Eustaquio Recalde, a native of Paraguay, says he was often harassed and ridiculed while working a factory job as the lone Hispanic employee.
"I think it's been around," Recalde said. "This was an opportunity for a few people to express it."
Ezra Escudero, executive director of the Ohio Commission on Hispanic/Latino Affairs in Columbus, says Hamilton is not alone in feeling tension in a state where the Hispanic population has doubled to nearly 280,000 since 1990.
"The challenge for the community is whether the tragedy will bring out the best or the worst in people," he said.
Shelly Jarrett Bromberg, an assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Miami University in Oxford, has helped organize two community forums since the fire. She called the Hamilton unrest an important moment for local Hispanics, churches, police and public officials.
"I think everyone realizes that we need to have a dialogue ... to make the community feel safe and feel that they have a voice," Bromberg said. "I think there are a lot of people who want to make this work out."
My post wasn't an attack on you or anyone else. My point stands.. that if this occurred anywhere else, the reaction would be the same.
In many places far, far worse. So as long as I'm ranting, I will add that Americans are probably some of the most accepting people in the world. Yet we face constant little reminders of incidents like this, if you believed the press, you would think we are all ready to go out and start lynching.
So do you blame me one bit for being upset about that part of it?
I know a great many East Indians who have come here and ift right in. Japanese and Koreans as well. Seattle is downright overflowing with Filipinos. I could go on and on.
What, then, is making this particular issue seem so imflamatory?
[How many times on this very forum do stories about Mexicans end up with posts like "Raping the children Americans won't rape themselves" as if only immigrants commit these kinds of crimes?]
I've never seen anything like that ever posted here.
I've seen it too--though Hispanics are still in the minority in my town. If Liberals opened their eyes, they'd see the minorities they love (in the abstract) are actually their own worst nightmares.
Sound like the folks in that Ohio community have been trying to do exactly what you demand. Why do you seem to have such a problem with them?
I know you're post wasn't a personal attack, but when I read that I should be MORE vocal than my neighbor on this, I feel like that photo that some FReeper always posts on FR with the caption "Aww, geez, not this sh*t again!" Mainly because I've got a plate-ful of issues to address that hit my business' bottom line directly, and until recently when some "blanket" statements started to be made, I hardly even CARED about this issue anymore than my German-descent neighbor.
What's making it inflammatory is that Americans (ALL good Americans) are fed up with the illegal situation, but there are those with hatred in their hearts (on the extreme White Supremecist side AND on the Aztlan side) who are squeezing the rest of America into a very uncomfortable crossfire.
Why, bust my buttons and feed me cornpone! Everybody knows that ALL Klansman are from the SOUTH.....This can't be right?!.....^^SARCASM^^
Shameless? What exactly does that mean? Mexican restaurants? Mexican drycleaners? Mexican whatevers? So how does their overwhelming majority (according to you ) adversely impact on your life?
How about I build a catapult large enough to launch all of them halfway into the Atlantic?
Your are 100% correct. They fracture our culture with "multiculturism" to keep as many groups as possible hostile to this country and then they try to get them registered to vote for the Demcorats. Just another of the myriad of despicable ways the left is trying to subvert and take over this country.
Ironically, blacks and hispanics are by nature conservative and are great assets to this country when not politically agitated and they are here legally.
The Hispanic community has got to realize that if they promote the "Mexification" of the United States, they are simply destroying what they came here for and creating what they were fleeing.
The problem with that logic is that most of the Hispanic population in Hamilton is innocent of this crime. I might add that there are many of us that grew up near Hamilton and we're not Hispanic. To many folks, I could easily pass as a very tall Mexican.
Never seen it? I could point you to a thread on which I'm probably fruitlessly trying to have an intellectual discussion right now with someone who thinks that 3rd generation Americans born of foreign born immigrant grandparents still don't have the loyalty to be trusted. Or the thread where the guy used the word "beaner" or the one where there's a FReeper who thinks only those with the ethnic backgrounds of our "founding fathers" should be in the U.S. And, that's just this week.
Certainly, these aren't reflective of the sheer majority of FReepers, but when I first joined FR, a bunch of FReepers would have been all over those posting such tripe like ugly on Helen Thomas faster than you could count to 2, and that FReeper would've been banned. Now, sentiments like that seem to go unchallenged except by literally a handful of FReepers, and the offending parties still get to hang around. I've been around FR for a long time, thru thick and thin, helped break some stories picked up by AP an hour later, and I won't lose it to such misguided lunacy. In case you're wondering, by the way, I also berated a hispanic FReeper recently for his defense of the word "Chicano". I won't lose FR to people like him either.
any bloodletting yet?
evenin'
The only ones promoting it are the Aztlan type organizations, such as MeCHA and "La Raza" (of which Alberto Gonzalez is affiliated, by the way).
That's why you won't find me within 2 miles of any of them. Which is also why those organizations will never be reflective of people with my views, and 100% of hispanics I know personally feel like I do.
My daughters are half Brasilian and have always been legal but that sure doesn't blind me from the problems of illegal immigration and all that comes with it.
Folks are tired of it.
This is my hometown and I now live about 20 miles away. I can assure you that Hispanics do not dominate the crime stats. The city is a smaller version of other troubled cities with a decaying infrastructure. The city has lost both blue collar and white collar jobs because of Ohio's high taxes and the city fathers' laziness. While other parts of SW Ohio are booming in spite of RINO Gov. Taft, Hamilton is stagnant.
Hispanics, poor whites, and blacks all mix in a decaying East Side of town, and all share in the crime. My 72 year old mother works in a mission that serves 200 people a day. Few are Hispanic, but those that are must have proper documentation proving they are legal immigrants. The perp in this case was a transient from Northern Ohio, where he is now in hiding.
I can tell you that the whites in this town are living in the past and many are openly racist. I'm not talking about their feelings about Hispanics, by the way, which I'm sure are pretty bad as well. There is lots of wife beating, crystal meth and oxy contin addiction, alcoholism, and crime, including rapes, among the white population.
The blacks have always been pretty much confined to a single ward of town and have similar problems. When I was young it was common for whites to refer to this area as "n-----r town". Factories and other businesses would not hire blacks, and few were able to move to the better side of town because of red-lining. This kind of country club racism and Republicanism has always bothered me as a conservative and Republican. I think the attitude of Northern Republicans in the 70's and 80's really hurt the party.
Hispanics came to the area to find work and I'll tell you that it is my opinion that they are more eager to work than many long time residents, white and black. Criminal scum like the rapist come in all sizes. The multicultural nature of crime in Hamilton was recently hilighted by a prostitution sting. Several crack and crystal meth addicted white prostitutes were arrested, along with a handful of johns, mostly Hispanic. At least unemployment wasn't a problem for any of those arrested.
Are there skinheads where you are Bob?
The only ones I've ever seen were on TV...very small group or in Europe.
All the burrheaded white boys here in Nashville are hardly skinheads. They are black thugs in every manner but skin color and particular appendage dimension..lol
...meanwhile Rome burns.
I see Bogeymen.
According to me? Who else would it be according to?
I could list an agonizingly long incident report for you, from the Hispanic gangs at the City Park to the crooked school district to the "Hispanic Chamber of Commerce" to the grown-up neighbors who harass my children (most of whom, oddly, share the name "Martinez"). But it would be wasted upon most who are not in the primary invasion zone.
You're safe in Michigan for a while (five years). Don't believe me. Just drink the freaking Kool-Aide.
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