No Place for Hate - Harwich, Massachusetts

MLK Day Remembrance Day of Service In Harwich

2010-01-18T07:08:00.002-05:00

The Town of Harwich

No Place for Hate Committee of Harwich

Celebrates Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Harwich Town Hall
January 18^th, 2010
Our Program
Musical Talent:
Jennifer Stratton, Don Bolvin,
John Dickson, and Diana Di Gioia

Welcome:
John Bangert, Ed Mc Manus
Flag Ceremony:
Harwich Boy Scout Troop 76
Pledge of Allegiance
Reading # 1:     Jane Texeira Henry
Interlude: Jennifer Stratton & Don Bolvin
Reading # 2:     Pamela Lloyd Baker
Public Sharing: Anyone (under 2 minutes)
Closing Song: Diana Di Gioia
Silent or Expressed Prayers

Local Cape Cod Haiti Relief Efforts

The Haiti Project

http://artmatenwa.org

Ø Ben Berry, NRHS

Ø (774) 722-2745

Hearts for Haiti
http://heartsforhaiti.wordpress.com

Ø Julie Bangert, Beth Lagg & Sophia Gianniotis

Ø (508) 360-1160

Saint Rock Haiti Foundation

Ø Kumara Sidhartha, MD / Emerald Physicians Group

Ø 508 778-4777

http://www.saintrock.org

Martin Luther King
Life, let me be aware of the treasure that you are.

Let me learn from you, savor you, bless you,

before you depart.

Let me not pass by in quest of some rare

and perfect tomorrow.

Let me hold you while I may,

for it will not always be so.

One day I shall dig my fingers into the earth,

or bury my face in the pillow,

or stretch myself taut,

or raise my hands to the sky,

and want more than all the world,

your return.

Choose life and only that,

and always at whatever risk....

To let life leak out,

to let it wear away by the mere passage of time,

to withhold giving it and spending it,

is to choose -- nothing.

My real purpose is to discover the creator within me and reveal him to those I meet.

I just want to be there in love and justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world - a new world.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

You faced injustice, hate and strife.
You fought for what should be.
You risked and finally gave your life,
So others could be free.

You could have hated, but you chose
To love and understand,
Rejecting violence to oppose
An evil in our land.

You'd not inflame, but still inspire,
With hope that wouldn't yield.
You called for boycotts, not for fire,
With faith your only shield.

You marched in protest for the poor
Of every shade and hue.
So many hardships you'd endure
For those who needed you.

You stirred a nation's heart and mind;
Your message still is clear:
That color's not how we're defined.
Your memories always near.

Each year your birth's a holiday.
The nation honors you,
And wonders when we'll see the day
Your dream at last comes true.

FREE TO MAKE IT BETTER

Chorus

I am free to make it better

I am free to let it flow

To put all my skill and heart in this community I know

I can wait for them to fix it

I can wait for times to change

If I don’t work to make it better now

I help keep things the same

Things couldn’t feel more broken

We couldn’t be more scared

Tho’ we search for deeper meaning

We’re confounded by despair

We can see the web is breaking

That has woven all in place

Will our earth be another lifeless marble

Spinning through space?

Chorus

They’re using every strategy

To split us from each other

The Queer who is your Sister

The Immigrant my Brother

To keep us all distracted from

The ways we are the same

When power is the motive

Life and death becomes a game

Chorus

What if everything I did made a difference?

What if compromise was just a lie?

If there’s a third way, a fourth way, a better way

That we hadn’t thought to try?

What if each of us holds a fragment

Of the change we want to see?

When we gather up everyone’s piece of the truth

Then together we hold the key

We are free to make it better

We are free to let it flow

To put all our skill and heart in this community we know

We can wait for them to fix it

We can wait for times to change

If we don’t work to make it better now

We help keep things the same

When we all work to make it better, now

Then nothing stays the same

Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values
and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false
and the false with the true.”

Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday. This Haiti 1/12 tragedy is of biblical proportions, compared to 9/11 in NYC. Recently on TV some ‘man of the cloth’ and political usurpers are using the incident to spread their twisted world views, Martin surely would’ve used the occasion to spread wisdom and good will and encourage his fellow man to help out our Haitian brothers and sisters in need. But still what happened in Haiti is deeper than that. Columbus first landed there then called Hispaniola over 400 years ago. Perhaps this nation will be our country transformative wake up call for not only North American this hemisphere, but also be the light out of darkness and despair.
For King, giving cash to Haiti would not be enough. In order to be good citizens of the world, it is not good enough to just to give money, we must make sure to end the economic and social climate that led to the disaster. Here’s an excerpt from MLK’s speech “Beyond Vietnam.”

Beyond Vietnam
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”

Dr. King goes on, addressing America’s foreign policy and how it is destructive to the Third World.

“With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

Rev. King would also condemn countries that spend more money on wars than social program. The USA has pledged $100 million in aid to Haiti, while pledging upwards of $30 billion to add 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”

Press Release: No Place for Hate Martin Luther King Day in Harwich

2010-01-11T16:24:00.001-05:00

For Immediate Release:

HARWICH Celebrates

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

and joins with

AmeriCorps Cape Cod’s

MLK Day of Service

“Hunger for Change”

Monday, January, 18th, 2010

The Town of Harwich will be celebrating Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day with festivities planned by the Harwich No Place for Hate Committee in collaboration with Barnstable County AmeriCorps Cape Cod, who will be sponsoring a food drive at supermarkets throughout Barnstable County. The day will begin with a celebration in the main foyer of Harwich Town Hall at 11am, which will include a flag ceremony with a color guard, music and readings from the works of Dr. King.

Following this hour long ceremony, those who wish are invited to offer some time of service between noon and 4 pm at Shaws Supermarket on Sisson Rd. or at Stop and Shop in East Harwich, assisting the Barnstable County AmeriCorps with the “Hunger For Change” Food Drive campaign. Volunteers will be needed to greet shoppers and to staff a table at each store, assisting customers to select healthier donated foods.

To conclude the day, volunteers and members of the community will join together for a soup dinner at the Dennis Church of the Nazarene. The dinner will be cooked by a handful of volunteers and orchestrated by two volunteer chefs from the Ring Brothers Marketplace in South Dennis. The service portion of the day will last from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., and the community dinner will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Barnstable County AmeriCorps Cape Cod is hosting its 10th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service (MLK Day) by bringing members of the community together to address the pressing issue of hunger on Cape Cod. This year’s project was designed to help re-stock the shelves of pantries struggling to serve clients, while also helping meet their goal of collecting healthier donated goods,” says Rebecca Wolfson, program specialist at AmeriCorps Cape Cod. AmeriCorps Cape Cod has partnered with the Cape Cod Hunger Network, the Barnstable County Department of Human Services, and Harwich No Place for Hate, and a number of other organizations to plan the event.

For more information about this event, please call John Bangert, Harwich No Place for Hate, at (508) 432-0545 or Rebecca Wolfson, AmeriCorps Cape Cod, at (508) 375-6869

Harwich No Place for Hate invites all to join us for our Fifth Annual Martin Luther King Jr. observance, which this year will be in collaboration with
the Barnstable County AmeriCorps Cape Cod Food Drive. Please see the attached press release (in Microsoft Word) and PDF flyer suggested food list for details.
Also, please place this information in your newspaper event listings, community emails, church and school bulletins, town hall news post, and send to others you feel may be interested.

Many thanks,
John Bangert

Harwich No Place for Hate Committee
(508) 432-0545

noplaceforhate@comcast.net

Yarmouth Society of Friends (Quakers) Peace Fair

2009-09-18T10:41:00.005-04:00

Yarmouth Friends’ Peace Fair

A Peace and Arts Festival

Saturday,

Sept. 19, 2009

11 am to 4 pm.

Yarmouth Friends (Quaker) Meetinghouse

58 N. Main St, South Yarmouth

Society of Friends (Quakers) on Cape Cod

Handicrafts
Music
Art
Peace Related Exhibits
Attic Treasures

Free Market

No - Cost Winter Outerwear (Child & Adult)

Sign the World’s Biggest Peace Book
Walk the Peace Labyrinth
Great Food
Children’s Activities
Family Fun

Peace Fair Proceeds to benefit the Cape Cod Council of Churches’ Hands of Hope Outreach Center and Food Pantry in West Harwich. Please bring a non-perishable food item to donate, if you are able.

For Information Call (508) 432-4757

Mashpee Teachable Moment (s)! But Is Racism Un-Learnable?

2009-09-15T14:52:00.001-04:00

Teachable moments in Mashpee Again, and Again and Again.

Pointing fingers, assigning blame won't help in Mashpee

September 13, 2009 2:05 AM

When a Mashpee police officer shot and killed a Wampanoag man in 1988, the U.S. Department of Justice helped mediate negotiations between town and tribe officials.

Today, the Justice Department is back in town, this time offering cultural awareness training following an alleged incident of racial profiling at a local supermarket.

Deborah Saldana of Mashpee, who is black, said James Lundy, manager of Roche Brothers, almost knocked her to the ground while trying to seize her purse after he accused her of stealing meat from the store. The store has since apologized to Saldana, but company officials said that Lundy denied the assault and profiling allegations.

Following the incident, Saldana claimed that the police officer who responded had falsified his report and that the department refused to help her report the case to the state. Mashpee Police Chief Rodney Collins has denied the report was falsified and said no crime had been committed.

Collins said that Justice Department officials contacted him about free cultural awareness training after they had read articles in the newspaper about the Saldana incident. He said that as long as the agency acknowledged that the training had nothing to do with the Saldana incident, he happily accepted.

"I'm always open to the idea of progressive training, especially when its free," said.

Collins should be commended for accepting the training in the spirit it was offered.

Regardless of whether racial profiling occurred or not, it's incumbent upon police and town officials to turn this incident into a teachable moment.

And that's the intent of two researchers who have weighed in on the case in an opinion piece on the previous page.

Jerome Williams, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Anne-Marie Hakstian, an associate professor at Salem State College, are co-authors of a forthcoming book on consumer racial profiling.

Williams and Hakstian qualified their comments about the case by admitting that they could not say conclusively what occurred in Mashpee since they were not there.

"However, we have enough information about the case to say that what happened to Deborah Saldana is typical of what happens to ordinary people of color day in and day out all over the country...," they wrote.

The researchers then asked whether the incident would have occurred if Saldana had been white. "Research suggests it is highly unlikely..." they wrote. "What happens in many retail establishments is that people of color are put under greater surveillance the moment they walk into the store. This typically is based on a persistent misperception that minorities account for most of the shoplifting...in retail establishments. The reality is that nonminority shoppers account for most of the criminal activity."

Furthermore, neither black nor white shoppers are the ones most responsible for shoplifting. "...Employee theft (44.5 percent) accounts for a far greater percentage of the 'shrinkage' at the nation's 200 largest retailers than shoplifting (32.7 percent)," they wrote.

Records also show that more than two-thirds of the shoplifters apprehended in many areas are white females between the ages of 25 and 50.

"In conclusion, we urge Roche Brothers and other retailers, the police chief and other law enforcement personnel, and citizens of the community not to be so quick to dismiss claims of marketplace mistreatment based on race, such as the allegations presented by Saldana."

Point taken.

But the researchers should have further qualified their remarks by adding: "While consumer racial profiling is prevalent in our society, citizens should not be so quick to blame the police as many did in the case of Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates."

In other words, this is a teachable moment not only for police and town officials, but for all of us.

Copyright © Cape Cod Media Group, a division of Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Harwich Port Race Riot of 1848

2009-09-05T11:53:00.009-04:00

"The church is responsible for the persistence of slavery. It has shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity," said Frederick Douglas (1852).

"One more riotous demonstration should have place in these chronicles, but space and time must make it both brief and the last. It occurred in Harwich, Mass, on Sunday, the fourth and last day of a grand anti-slavery convention, held in a beautiful grove, in September of the year 1848.

No building on the Cape could have held half the attendance. Cape Cod at that time was the birth-place and nursery of more sea-captains than any other portion, of equal extent, on the whole Atlantic coast. And many of the most eminent of them were early able and faithful friends and supporters of the anti-slavery enterprise.

But sea-captains were not all abolitionists, else the Harwich Sunday tumult, in defense of the church as "the bulwark of slavery," would not have transpired.

The constitution of the country, the courts, the political parties, the commerce and trade, had all been shown to be conducted in the interest of slavery, and no riotous demonstration appeared. But not so on Sunday, when the churches and clergy were arraigned as the bulwark and forlorn hope of the accursed institution. The mob at Harwich was the result of an exposure of a diabolical deed by the captain of a coaster, sailing between Norfolk and New York, and other northern ports. I am glad to have forgotten his name, and do not care ever to hear it spoken again.

But while in Norfolk, not long before our convention, a slave came on board and asked this captain what he would charge to carry him and another to New York or Boston. A contract was made for one hundred dollars—paid in advance. The captain pocketed the cash, then went on shore, betrayed the poor slave, had him arrested, imprisoned and advertised, and then sailed north, bringing the hundred dollars.

We who knew the slave system, could imagine the fate of the imprisoned victim, though we never heard what it was. The cruel captain never told us that, though undoubtedly he knew, for when he went back to Norfolk he carried the money, found the owner. paid him over the hundred dollars, and received back twenty-five as his reward !

Twenty-five dollars for a deed that no Modoc nor Apache Indian under heaven would ever have done! In cold, unprovoked blood—-never !

Sunday was the fourth and last day of our convention, and not less than three thousand people were on the ground. Some estimated them at four thousand.

I learned all the facts I have just given, from the captain himself, early in the day. In the afternoon, when the crowd was the greatest. I made a full statement of the case, in words as fitting as were then at my command. Of course the effect on the audience was intense, but dependent on the estimate which different persons placed on the transaction between the captain and his helpless victim.

In the tumult, the captain came to the platform, and not having heard my statement, he demanded, in great wrath, who it was that accused him of stealing! He said somebody had just told him he had been accused of stealing. He was answered that his name had not been mentioned there ; and that nothing had been said about stealing. He said he had a right to be heard, and wished to be heard. We cheerfully accorded him the platform. He came forward, and in the frankest, blandest manner, stated his own case ' in his own words. When he concluded, we invited him to a seat on the platform, which he accepted.

Stephen Foster spoke next. He began in quite a conversational tone to say : Mr. Chairman—We have now heard from his own mouth, what our friend had to say of the matter in hand. And he confirms every statement of Mr. Pillsbury, excepting one : he has not told us that he is a member in good and regular standing of the Baptist church, as Mr. Pillsbury assured us he was. Now I wish to ask him if that is also true. He admitted that with the rest. Foster then opened his argument. And those who ever heard him can more easily imagine than I can describe, its power. Every eye kindled, every heart throbbed, with admiration, or with rage and wrath. I had often heard him called "a son of thunder," before. At that moment, he seemed Father of the seven thunders of Patmos, with all their bolts at command. He swayed those hundreds and thousands as prairie cyclones, the vast fields of corn. And yet the captain, really on trial, listened to every word with respect and attention. I knew he heard a voice within, louder, more eloquent than the utterances of Foster, and whose rebuke he could not resist.

The mob spirits now rushed for the platform, and with oaths and curses of stunning power, called on the captain to pitch him down to them. Their number seemed legion ; and their nature and spirit like that other legion, known of old. The captain mildly replied to them that he wished none of their interference nor defense. He left the platform soon after, and moved out of the crowd, and held a long conversation with some Boston abolitionists, who had come down on purpose to attend the convention. And he very frankly told them that he had no fault to find whatever with our treatment of the matter, nor of him. Nor did he ever after complain, that we heard. Mr. Foster kept his feet and held the crowd at bay, showing our religion to be falsehood and hypocrisy, when a member of the orthodox church, who had just come from his meeting, (and it was said from the sacrament), leaped like a lion on to the platform. His eyes flashed fury if not fire ; his teeth and fists were clenched, and he seemed a spirit from the pit, who might have been commissioned to lead its myrmidons in a deadly fray, for such a faith and such a church as his, that a dozen years before had been proved by one of its most eminent members,

"The Bulwark Of American Slavery."

He asked no leave to speak ; paid no respect to president or rules. His first note was a shriek. "It's a lie ; what you say is a lie ; a damned lie ! and I'll defend the church !"

But he was immediately out-voiced by the yelling troop, who leaped like tigers at his heels, as into the arena, and added fearful deeds to his not less fearful words.

What became of my platform companions I did not see. I was immediately seized, and with kicks, blows, and dilapidated clothing, hurled to the ground.

There lay Captain Chase and Captain Smith, of Harwich, both old men, who, with many others, had sprung to our defense. There the two lay, their faces covered with blood ! They were both radical peace men, and only remonstrated with our remorseless assailants. But both of them would willingly have died in our stead, or in our defense. Truer, nobler men, never lived.

Havoc was soon made of our platform and what it contained. It was roofed over, but a temporary structure, for officers and speakers, and aged persons who sought its convenience and comfort. William Wells Brown, one of our eloquent fugitive slave lecturers, was roughly seized up and pitched over back of the platform by the infuriated crowd, down some six or eight feet, and left to his fate. Mr. Foster was rescued and taken away from danger—his Sunday frock coat rent in twain from bottom to top, and his body considerably battered and bruised.

Lucy Stone stood heroically with the rest of us, ready for any fate. But her serene, quiet bearing disarmed the vulgar villainy of our assailants, and she escaped unharmed.

I have seen many mobs and riots in my more than forty years of humble service in the cause of freedom and humanity, but I never encountered one more desperate in determination, nor fiendish in spirit, than was that in Harwich, in the year 1848.

And that mob was wholly, directly and undeniably in defense of the American church. " I'll defend the church," was the wild shout of the baptized ruffian who led the hordes, as he vaulted unbidden to our platform of moral and peaceful agitation and argument in behalf of our enslaved millions. "I'll defend the church," and his infuriated, yelling and blaspheming troop followed him, and commenced their fell work.

Yes, to save the church was that dire scene enacted. The church that Judge Birney had proved out of her own mouth was the " bulwark of American slavery in everyone of her largest, most popular denominations !" Church, clergy, and theological seminary, every thing, indeed, under ecclesiastical control. And Hon. James G. Birney was surely among her choicest leaders and brightest lights.

To my own account of this remarkable scene, perhaps should be subjoined at least an excerpt of the official proceedings of the convention. The following is the close of it :

Parker Pillsbury related a fact illustrative of the truth of the resolution under discussion of a sea-captain, of Cape Cod, a member of the Baptist church.

Immediately the captain's friends reported to him that he had been slandered, upon the platform, and in due time the captain presented himself and demanded why he had slandered him, on that platform ? He was assured that his name had not been spoken by any one on the platform, and that if he would watt for the speaker to conclude his remarks he should have opportunity to say all he wished.

Accordingly, when the speaker sat down, the captain took the platform, and stated the facts precisely as Pillsbury had done, so it was manifest that there was no slander, nor even contradiction between them.

S. S. Foster then proceeded to dissect the transaction, as stated by the captain himself, and to find its moral quality.

It was a process which he well understood, nor did he fail to expose the deformity of the deed, and cause its infamy to stand out in fearful blackness before that great assembly. The captain said he had nothing to reply, and left the platform as quietly as he had come upon it, saying he had not come there to make any disturbance. Foster then held up to the audience, in its true character, the religion, under whose cherishing influence such crimes take root and grow, and asked who would defend such a church? At that moment Captain Stillman Snow, a member of the Congregational church under the pastoral care of Rev. Cyrus Stone, (who we are credibly informed, went about among his people and advised them to stay away from our meeting), this Captain Snow, steaming from his own meeting, rushed through the crowd in front of Foster, screaming at the top of his voice, " I'll defend the church. What you say is a lie, a damned lie ! " His lips trembled, his head shook upon its socket, like a leaf rattled by the winter tempest, while his countenance looked as if the genius of rage had his dwelling there. He made a leap at Foster, which was a signal for his allies. In a twinkling, there was a rush upon the platform. W. W. Brown, a fugitive slave, was seized and thrown over the high back of the platform, where he was trampled on by the throng gathered there. Pillsbury, with torn clothes, was dragged from the platform, receiving as he went, kicks and blows from those behind him. Those in front of him were harmless, awed by his fearless words, and undaunted look.

Again and again, some desperate spirits, with clenched uplifted lists, swore vengeance and destruction, but like the old Roman, Pillsbury calmly replied "strike, but hear me." While he was thus beset on every hand, S. S. Foster was assailed in another direction no less violently. At the first onset he hastened Lucy Stone from the platform, but had scarcely time to turn about, when the mob, thirsting for his blood, closed in around him, seizing him with desperate violence, wherever they could lay their hands upon him, and though they did not " part his garments among them," they quite divided his coat. For a few moments the most terrible confusion prevailed—all ran, without knowing whither they went—so great was the excitement that neither friends nor foes recognized each other. One friend would take hold of the arm of Foster for his protection, and another friend would pull him off. supposing him an enemy.

One friend would step forward to stay an uplifted blow, and another friend would push him aside, supposing that he intended himself to strike. The scene baffled all description. At this juncture a shout was raised that they were riding Foster on a rail. This false cry was most opportune for Brown, who, during the whole time, had been dragged and trampled by the mob. Now his tormentors left him to seethe ruin of Foster, and thus he made his escape, rifled by these pious defenders of the nation's religion, of quite a number of his Anti-slavery Harp. Foster, who had been surrounded by the mob, showed no sign of fear or fright. The man who had never quailed in peril's blackest hour, was not the man now to tremble or flee. But the friends, apprehensive for his safety, urgently solicited him to leave the ground ; and when he did not manifest a disposition to go. they took him, with most unpleasant haste, outside the grove, aided by the mob, who were pushing terribly in the rear, and on all sides.

When Pillsbury ascertained that Brown and Foster were safe, and that nothing more could be done, he, too, left, taking the public road towards the house of Captain Small, a well-known friend of the oppressed. The mobocrats, who had returned to the grove howling and yelling in their rage and disappointment, that Foster was out of their clutches, when they found that Pillsbury was leaving, followed in hot pursuit, raising the dust higher than the trees, filling the air with demoniac screams and yells, which were heard at the distance of more than a mile, and frightful enough to make Pandemonium itself pale. They rushed on headlong about thirty rods, and then, though Pillsbury was walking only a short distance in front of them, for reasons best known to themselves, they turned back to the grove, cursing as they went, and proceeded to vent their rage upon the platform, which they soon demolished.

While they were tearing up the planks they were uttering most dreadful oaths, and vowing vengeance on the lecturers, (should they ever make their appearance there again) who, they said, had assailed their laws and their religion, which they were going to defend. The world will judge what kind of laws and what kind of religion need such a defense. It was a proud day for anti-slavery, and one which the friends will long have occasion to remember with gratitude.

The lecturers were not particularly disturbed until all had been said which they wished to say, until every nail was driven in the right place, and then the mob clenched them. They meant their violence for evil,but God meant it for good. The dragon's teeth, which they were then unconsciously sowing, will yet come up, a host of true-hearted anti-slavery men and women, who will redeem Cape Cod from the false religion which now curses and enslaves it. Much praise is due to the friends, who are too numerous to mention, who so nobly stood by those whose lives the hungry mob were seeking. Nor would we fail to make suitable mention of others, who, during the day on Sunday, were active in exciting the mob spirit. Prominent among them was Henry C. Brooks, a merchant of Boston, of the firm of Crowell & Brooks, 38 Commercial street, son of Obed Brooks, Esq., of Harwich.

The good effect of the mob is already manifest in the increased activity and interest of the friends on the Cape, whose liberal contributions to the cause have been nearly doubled, and who see new reasons for girding themselves to more vigorous effort in behalf of human freedom.

Zebina Small, President.

Charles Stearns,

Lucy Stone,

Secretaries.

Only time, space and patience of readers prevent insertion of the whole of the able report of the secretaries of that phenomenal convention. Most of the names of the rioters mentioned in the extract given are suppressed.

No other mob or riot will be described in this work. Such as are given are but representative of many, very many ; some less destructive to property and harmful to person, and some others in those respects a great deal worse.

And now, wondrous to tell, with such records, the church and clergy claim and boast that they abolished slavery ! The real, everlasting truth is, we had almost to abolish the church before we could reach the dreadful institution at all. We divided, if we did not destroy. Not to speak of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church at all, we did divide and even subdivided the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church. The slavery question certainly produced rupture in the American Board of Foreign Missions, the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions and the American Tract Society, as has been, or as will be shown. If it be said that it was their own internal heat that was consuming them, the answer would be it was not light and fire from heaven, the divine illumination of the Holy Ghost, or their differences would not have been so easily reconciled by surrendering the whole ground to the enemy ; the Northern Methodist Conference retaining thousands of slave-holders and tens of thousands of slaves, and six of the very largest of the slave states, besides Delaware and Maryland. The two missionary boards and tract society threatened at one time some separation or purification, but to what purpose will be made to appear

The institution at Oberlin, Ohio, was first to attempt a new standard for freedom in education and religion, irrespective of sex, complexion or race, with a professedly anti-slavery board of teachers and directors. But Oberlin was at once proscribed by the great bodies of ministers and churches, whose fellowship extended to the south. And even Oberlin never so much as contemplated any separation from our unhallowed union with slave-holders. Instead of it, under an assumed idea or pretense that the constitution was anti-slavery and not pro-slavery, an assumption that no president, congress nor supreme court nor state legislature nor court ever believed for an hour, Oberlin continued loyal to the government, swore by itself or elected rulers to support the constitution, and then kept the oath or made a virtue of perjury and violated it by refusing to return the fugitive slave.

And scarcely had the institution reached respectability in the estimation of more declared pro-slavery ecclesiastical associations, north and south, before the Infinite Patience was exhausted, and with the bolts of eternal justice stove down our already blood-besmeared idol, and buried it beneath the untimely graves of half a million men slain in a thousand battles, their massacred commander-in-chief and president of the nation with his own heart's blood, sealing the sacrifice !

CHAPTER XIV.

SOME ACTS OF THE PRO-SLAVERY APOSTLES—PERSONAL ENCOUNTER WITH THE HENNIKER, N. H., CHURCH AND SUFFOLK, MASS., ASSOCIATION OF MINISTERS—REV. DR. BACON AND SON ON SLAVERY AND WHO ABOLISHED IT —THE CHURCH AND CLERGY IN THE MEXICAN WAR.

It is time to draw this work to a close. It was undertaken with extreme reluctance at the earnest solicitation of those whose wishes it is my delight to obey, even at any cost of personal sacrifice of my latest years, only if the cause of truth and the demands of history be also subserved. And strict truth and justice to everybody concerned, has been, and shall be to the end, my one constant study and care.

The next chapter may be called " Acts of the Pro- Slavery Apostles," and will have respect mainly to the connection of the church and clergy of the country with the slave system. Their hostility to the anti- slavery enterprise was not wakened into fierce and general opposition till slavery was not only declared a Sin ; such sin as that no slave-holder could be a christian, nor worthy to be fellowshipped as such, whether south or north. The abolitionists insisted that every church and pulpit dictating terms of sacramental communion should hold the man-steaier as just so much greater criminal than the felon of the sheep-fold, as a man is better than a sheep, remembering who He was that asked, " How much better is a man than a sheep ?

" And our warrant for this judgment came from the very highest evangelical authority the church could furnish. Long before slavery had reached the proportions of 1834, or developed half its prospective cruelties, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church had officially and authoritatively taught, citing as their scripture basis, the first epistle of Timothy, first chapter, ninth and tenth verses : "

The law is made for manstealers. This crime among the Jews exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment. Exodus xxi, 16 ; and the apostle classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he uses, in its original import, comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in retaining them in it.

Stealers of men are all those who bring off slaves or freemen, and keep, sell, or buy them. To steal a freeman, says Grotius, is the highest kind of theft. In other instances we only steal human property, but when we steal or retain men in slavery, we seize those who, in common with ourselves, are constituted, by the original grants, lords of the earth."

Does Roche Brothers "Consumer Racial Profile" any of thier customers?

2009-08-26T10:27:00.020-04:00

"Chris Rock has a funny line about malls: There are two kinds - the one white folks shop at and the one white folks used to shop at.

Tell us what you think or what have been your own experiences!

E-Mail us your stories to noplaceforhate@comcast.net

Does Roche Brothers Racial Profile their minority customers? Does Roche Brothers have a customer profile or does that depend on who your family is or what color or tribe you are from? Doesn't your family deserve better?

Mashpee Police Chief Says- No Profling, hate crime in his town!

2009-08-25T17:09:00.006-04:00

No profiling, hate crime in Mashpee

Published Cape Cod Times Newspaper Editorial Page- My View By RODNEY COLLINS
August 25, 2009

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." In the case of the Roche Brothers grocery store incident that was recently publicized, facts need to be put in perspective.

A woman entered Roche Brothers in Mashpee and placed meat in her shopping cart. The store manager observed the same woman check out without the meat but with a bag. These facts are undisputed. The woman was approached not because of the color of her skin but rather her conduct. It could be reasonably construed as raising suspicion. The manager approached the woman and made a simple inquiry. She was not accused of shoplifting.

The woman demanded the Mashpee Police Department be called and an officer responded. It was determined that the woman had placed the meat back in the cooler prior to leaving the store. The situation was blown out of proportion.

The woman wanted to file a complaint against the manager. The officer inquired as to whether the woman was assaulted. She said no. Subsequently, the woman stated to the press that she was assaulted. She submitted a written statement to the police department indicating that she was "almost knocked to the ground." The woman's version of what happened had conflicting details. As a result, there were no credible grounds to file any criminal complaint.

I was contacted by the press regarding the incident as a result of the woman claiming some form of racial profiling. In my 29 years of law enforcement, the actions of the woman were consistent with a person in pursuit of civil litigation and not facts, and I expressed such opinion.

Then John Bangert, who heads the Harwich Chapter of "No Place for Hate," claimed that the Mashpee Police Department was neglectful by not providing a hate crime form to this woman. Bangert failed to recognize that the form in question is filed by the law enforcement agency of jurisdiction and only after a sustained hate crime has been reported. Bangert further drew premature conclusions without any factual basis from a competent investigation. This suggests bias, the very element he is supposed to detect and prevent.

Moreover, since this incident occurred in Mashpee and not Harwich, I never understood his involvement anyway.

Then another writer defended the "character" of the woman in question while failing to point out none of this would even be necessary if the woman had not made such a public spectacle of this matter. The writer suggests that I took the word of a "white man" over a "black woman." That is factually untrue. I evaluated the inconsistencies in statements of the "black woman" and the credible report of a Native American officer and concluded no "hate" element existed.

The writer also referred to the "humiliating" experience of this woman being confronted in front of so many witnesses. If this is true, then why hasn't one of those witnesses come forward to verify the so-called "accused" account? The writer doesn't hesitate to express her opinion but condemns me for doing the exact same thing. This hypocrisy is typical today but when opinion has absolutely no reasonable basis it becomes irresponsible.

Then the writer suggests that I was insensitive by expressing an opinion because the so-called "accused" has been diagnosed with cancer, as if I had knowledge of it when I made my original statement. Having a mother who died from cancer and a father who is battling it, I don't need any counsel on the impact of cancer.

If a "hate" element existed in this case as has been suggested, I would be the first to advocate appropriate charges. I worked closely with current New Hampshire Attorney General Mike Delaney and then Attorney General Phil McLaughlin to file the first hate crime homicide charge in the state of New Hampshire's history. In fact, I was complimented by Anti-Defamation League for the manner which I handled the case.

However, when no such element exists as in this case, I am not going to manufacture something to appease a distorted perception of reality.

The bottom line is that decisions relative to the Roche Brothers incident had nothing to do with race but rather a woman's conduct, conflicting statements and a store manager's arguable reasonable suspicion. The facts did not support the complainant's claims. There was no bias linked to a protection by law. There was no "accusation" but rather a brief inquiry based upon an observation.

Rodney Collins is chief of the Mashpee Police Department. His email is:rcollins@mashpeepd.com

"Whenever someone in our community is wronged, the whole community is wronged!"

2009-08-18T10:08:00.029-04:00

The Deborah Saladana situation is important to me because CRP or Consumer Racial Profiling is prevalent here on Cape Cod as well as off cape. Just ask anyone of color that you have a relationship with. Listen to your friends, neighbors, loved ones, and -hear their stories as well.

We need to be talking about this matter as part of our continuing education on Civil Rights, not just putting a poster or picture of Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in February, or offer MLK Day discounts of goods stores want to sell in the "Market Economy". MLK Day January 19, is a day on, not just another day off.

We need to embrace our beloved community every day all year long. This is the economics of our community, and is not based of the GNP, but rather on the civility we say we are moving towards. Let us all learn from Deborah's dis-ease of "shopping while black" in her Mashpee super market here in the Cape Cod market place. We can be and act better than this folks!

I believe Consumer Racial Profiling is indicative of the continuation of our greater community’s lack of knowledge and understanding as to what our responsibilities are for those of us who enjoy “white privilege. " How can anyone stand still and be silent?

In Harwich of the days of yore, Captain Jonathan Walker was branded on his hand with the initials of SS for slave stealer.

The town folks in Harwich back then thought that Jonathan should mind his own business and return from the Florida and Caribbean region and tend to the families lumber mill ran, from East Harwich in the 1830’s . When the town certainly allowed wind mills with out any controversy.

Very little local support was granted to Jonathan Walker as he lingered in his prison cell in Florida. The Walkers family not only needed to pay for his imprisonment, but he also lost his boat and lively hood for the acts of courage for taking former slaves to West Indies Islands and Mexico, before Mexico as annexed to become the Lone Star, non free, Republic of Texas.

Later a group of northern abolitionists raised funds for his release and bond. He than traveled around the country lecturing on the abolition of slavery. He even came back to Cape Cod along with Fredrick Douglass whom he had met in New Bedford.

He later wrote about his experience in the book sold at abolitionists meetings around the country.

Jonathan's wonderful quote -

“If you are against slavery, you must be a “come-outer” or if you are not, you must be “stay-putter”!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jonathan_Walker_(abolitionist)&printable=yes

During his youth, Walker was captain of a fishing vessel, but around 1840 he went to Florida and became a railroad contractor. He was interested in the condition of the slaves, and in 1844 aided several of them in an attempt to make their escape in an open boat from the coast of Florida to the British West Indies. After doubling the capes, he was prostrated by illness; the crew, being ignorant of navigation, would all have been drowned if they had not been rescued by a wrecking sloop that took Walker to Key West. From there, he was sent in chains to Pensacola, where he was put in prison, chained to the floor, and deprived of light and proper food.

Upon his trial in a United States court, Walker was convicted, sentenced to be heavily fined, put on the pillory, and branded on his right hand with a hot iron with the letters "S. S." for "slave-stealer". But to some he was "slave savior".

A United States marshal executed the sentence. He was then returned to jail, where he was confined eleven months, and released only after the payment of his fine by northern abolitionists. For five years after his release, he lectured on slavery in the northern and western states. He moved to Michigan about 1850, where he lived near Muskegon until his death. A monument was erected to his memory on August 1, 1878.

Walker was the subject of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "The Man with the Branded Hand". Whittier heard about Walker's actions after reading a book about him called Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker. The poem praised Walker's actions.^[1]Upon his return to New England, abolitionists hailed Walker as a hero and martyr. John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in 1846 titled “The Branded Hand.” The most famous stanza of that poem went:

“Then lift that manly right hand

Bold plowman of the wave

Its branded palm shall prophesy

Salvation for the slave.”

TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT
OF
JONATHAN WALKER,

http://www.archive.org/stream/trialimprisonmen00walk/trialimprisonmen00walk_djvu.txt

What is Deborah Saldane guilty of ?

Being an African-American - Yes!

Being a Native American (Blackfeet Nation) decendent - Yes!

Being a woman - Yes!

Being 60 years old - Yes!

Being disabled from cancerous tumor on her leg - Yes!

Someone who walks with a cane and while shopping puts her cane and purse atop an ADA super market carriage for better support- Yes!

Purchasing a Morning Cape Cod Times -Yes!

Purchasing a cup of tea inside Starbucks which is located in Roche Brothers store - Yes!

Someone who was committed to being a teacher in the Mashpee school system for over 15 years - Yes!

A loving mother - Yes! A loving grandmother - Yes!

Was Deborah waiting for her American Cancer Association volunteer driver to take her to Cape Cod Hospital for Chemotherapy- Yes!

Is Deborah a strong women who stands for all of our rights - Yes!

But stealing food NO!

Should we not wrap the very same symbol of freedom around Ms. Saldana shoulders which was proudly flown last week on Cape Cod when, a another fallen soldier was honored for his sacrifice for civil rights and freedom from oppression for Deborah Saldana's as well as for all of our own civil rights and freedom.

We like Jonathan Walker, must never forget our own privilege which makes us OK when shopping while white?

I quote from Dr. Jerome Williams piece - "The United States has legally addressed the issue of consumer racial profiling, however limited the effort. The U.S. Congress designed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to ensure "that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white" person. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court described the purpose of Section #1981 of the 1866 act as follows: "The aim of the statute is to remove the impediment of discrimination from a minority citizen's ability to participate fully and equally in the marketplace."

"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 further provides that: "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation." This law aims "to eliminate the unfairness, humiliation, and insult of racial discrimination in facilities which purport to serve the general public."

Deborah Saldana, is a 60 year old Afro-American woman and resident of Mashpee, Massachusetts. Deborah’s grandfather was William Ulysses Boone, a member of the Blackfeet people and he was born on reservation in Oklahoma during the “Trail of Tears".

Ms. Saldana is also a local member of Mashpee branch of Jehovah Witnesses and congregational member Mashpee Kingdom Hall.

Remember and understand this! Jehovah Witnesses don't not grandstand about realms, other than the Kingdom of God's realms and domain!

"Whenever someone in our community is wronged, the whole community is wronged!" Edgar Cahn

Deborah is in the midst of chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer. She does not drive, but does use public transportation from her home near the entrance of Camp Edwards /Otis air force base on Cape Cod. On Wednesday July 29, 2009 a friend gave her a ride to Roche Brothers and while waiting for her American Cancer Society volunteer driver to transport her to Cape Cod Hospital for treatment.

Ms. Saldana has a cancerous tumor on her leg and walks with a cane. That's is why she uses a cart to lean on, bought her paper, and then goes for a cup of tea at Starbucks Cafe which is located with inside the Roche Brothers (this is a store in a story situation), before transferring to the her ride.

She also occasional uses the restrooms at the store because she does not get back home until after 4pm. The manager is reported in the press to say he had observed Ms. Saldana put meat in her bag. Why would anyone women put a raw packaged of meat in their bag and keep it with them for 7/8 hours ? Ms. Saldana told me the manager asked her “where are you hiding the pork”?

Certainly Roche Brothers was not spending their “pork” in loss prevention, shoplifting determination and accepted consumer racial profiling protocols.
Read the press accounts on my blog and examine this incident yourselves !

Editor's Note: John Bangert

Consumer racial profiling: Bigotry goes to market

2009-08-17T22:46:00.003-04:00

"Driving while Black" has been a pervasive problem for African Americans, with more than half of Black men and more than a third of African Americans overall reporting that they have been subjected to some form of racial profiling on the roads. Far more pervasive, however, is what might be called "shopping while Black," or consumer racial profiling.

How many times have you been in a store and found yourself receiving poor treatment that you believed was racially motivated? Maybe you were stalked as a potential shoplifter, or ignored as others got assistance, or handled with outright rudeness? Did you confront the clerk or manager? Simply leave in disgust? Or did you do your best to ignore it and make your purchase anyway?

Our research suggests that most African Americans have a story to tell. A mail survey of 1,000 households that we conducted with professor Thelma Suggs of Purdue University in the mid1990s found that 86 percent of African Americans believed they had been treated differently in retail stores because of their race.

It's a worthy topic year-round, but it seems especially relevant during this holiday shopping period, with the troubled economy making retailers more nervous than usual. According to the National Retail Federation, holiday season sales account for at least 25 percent of total annual retail sales of general merchandise, as people buy everything from clothes to cameras to coffee tables. Holiday sales - excluding automobile and restaurant revenues -- produce about $800 billion annually. But regardless of this year's special crisis, the issue of consumer racial profiling is critical and it would serve retailers' self-interest, not to mention those of all their potential customers, to eradicate it.

Many of these potential customers are African Americans with significant buying power. Black households are estimated to possess aggregate purchasing power of $572 billion in 2001, an increase of nearly 86 percent since 1991. Still, consumer racial profiling persists. It can take many forms, including some that draw incredulity in the 21 st century. There is avoidance, when a sales representative might simply ignore African American customers; discouragement, when a salesperson might delay waiting on customers; rejection, an outright denial of a chance to purchase a product; and finally there can be actual verbal and/ or physical attacks.

"Hidden camera" investigations by television newsmagazines such as Dateline and 20120 and articles in the popular press have documented all kinds of cases. In addition, professors Carol M. Motley of Howard University and Thomas L. Ainscough of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater note in their own research, based on a field audit study, that African Americans wait longer for customer service in the retail industry than whites of the same gender. Getting a true national picture of this problem and whether it is rising or declining at any particular time is difficult, though. Newsmagazine shows and their cameras aren't everywhere. And there aren't enough social scientists to monitor every store.

Such discriminatory treatment can have serious consequences for retailers. For example, sales at Treasure Cache, a gift shop in Dearborn, Mich., fell more than 50 percent immediately after the death last year of an African American man during a fight with security guards from an adjacent Lord & Taylor store. Businesses also risk costly lawsuits. Dillard's Department Stores, Inc. lost $1.2 million in 1998 after a court ruling found that a store security officer interrupted an African American woman as she redeemed a coupon for free cologne and as a result had violated the woman's rights to enjoy the benefits of her contract with Dillard's.

Some organizations may justify violations against African Americans as collateral damage in their war against shoplifting, though one would expect such concerns would mean that all customers would face scrutiny, not just African American ones. Regardless, the numbers from the annual University of Florida survey on retail losses spotlight a significant point: Employee theft, at 44.5 percent, accounts for a far greater portion of the "shrinkage" at the nation's 200 largest retailers than shoplifting (32.7 percent). Given that fact, retailers might be better off channeling resources to "watch" employees rather than having employees "watch" customers based on race.

For instance, a white employee of The Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. filed discrimination charges against the Secaucus, N.J.-based national chain, alleging that African American shoppers were treated as potential criminals.

She alleged that her white supervisors in a Massachusetts store ordered her to shadow African American customers, to refuse them larger shopping bags and to withhold credit applications. Though the company (which owns 17 stores in Massachusetts and 365 stores nationwide) denies that it systematically monitored Black customers, it settled out of court, agreeing to improve employee training and donate $50,000 to charities. The Children's Place also agreed in December 2000 to spend up to $100,000 to examine its hiring and training practices.

The United States has legally addressed the issue of consumer racial profiling, however limited the effort. The U.S. Congress designed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to ensure "that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white" person. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court described the purpose of Section #1981 of the 1866 act as follows: "The aim of the statute is to remove the impediment of discrimination from a minority citizen's ability to participate fully and equally in the marketplace."

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 further provides that: "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation." This law aims "to eliminate the unfairness, humiliation, and insult of racial discrimination in facilities which purport to serve the general public."

Though the law is specific about outlawing discrimination in what is termed a "place of public accommodation," it is unclear whether a shopping mall or a retail store constitutes such a place. The public places emphasized were restaurants, hotels and motels places where it was believed discrimination was more likely to occur. Retail stores, food markets and the like were excluded from the act because it was believed there was little, if any, discrimination in such places. In other words, there are loopholes. It is conceivable, for example, that the law would address discrimination at a Woolworth's lunch counter but not necessarily confront any indignities African Americans might have experienced while trying to shop in a Woolworth's store without a lunch counter. But African Americans have never been without recourse.

Sociologist Joe R. Feagin of the University of Florida suggests several coping strategies: withdrawal, resigned acceptance, verbal or physical confrontation, and legal action. In academic circles, marketing researchers tend to aggregate all consumer responses under one of three strategies: exit (leave store), voice (complain, file a lawsuit, etc.) or loyalty (acceptance, continue to purchase from retailer).

For African Americans, it seems, chances are strong that the response did not include pursuing legal action. African American lawsuits challenging consumer racial profiling only began emerging in the 1990s. (We are studying 60 such cases filed between 1990 and 2000.) Still, the number of legal cases measured against the anecdotal and documented evidence of profiling suggests that African Americans are reluctant to file suit.

Social scientists are trying to determine why so few cases reach the legal system. In a series of recent experiments, psychology professor Karen Ruggiero of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleagues demonstrated that stigmatized people attribute their failure to discrimination only when they are certain of that discrimination. People may often avoid making such charges because they fear they have no control over the outcomes, which can be negative and include high costs, financial and emotional.

African Americans may also be reluctant to file suits because they know it will be difficult to prove discrimination. Most incidents do not provide an African American victim a chance to compare the service he or she received to the service a white customer may have received under similar conditions. This is problematic from a legal perspective.

In our ongoing study of the 60 lawsuits filed between 1990 and 2000, we have found some interesting details. More African American women than men have filed lawsuits. The cases also reflect more situations in which groups are present rather than an individual. In many of the cases, there are mixed groups, i.e., African Americans and whites together, and there is differential treatment of members in the two groups. The settings include grocery/food stores, clothing stores, department stores and office equipment stores. Some incidents include denying store access, refusing to serve customers, using racial epithets, asking for different forms of identification, limiting purchases, searching "suspicious" customers, requiring higher available credit limits, charging higher prices for service and asking more rigorous questions on applications. Defendants included major retailers such as Office Max, Wal-Mart, Sears, Dillard's, Macy's and Home Depot. In a number of these cases, the court ruled in favor of the company.

A new chapter on consumer racial profiling opened after the tragic events of Sept. 11. Another group, Arab Americans, have found themselves facing the kind of profiling that has dogged African Americans. Since the terrorists attacks on the United States, Arab Americans report being questioned and detained more, sometimes barred from boarding aircraft and even taken off planes by police and pilots. And it's not just Arabs. Retail profiling may impact anyone perceived to be Middle Eastern, including South Asians, Latinos and even Jews. In one incident, Northwest Airlines refused to let three passengers of Middle Eastern descent board a flight to Salt Lake City. In an apology, Northwest security officials acknowledged that they need to focus on passenger behavior, rather than appearance.

Sikhs have been particularly impacted. It's customary for Sikh men to wear turbans, and since Sept. 11th, they've paid dearly for it. Media reports note how they have been targeted for suspicion and attack though they are neither Arab nor Muslim. Rep. John Cooksey (R-La.) even ran political advertisements advocating racial profiling and has said "someone wearing a diaper on his head" meets the profile of a possible terrorist. At least one Sikh is believed to have been killed amid the hysteria.

Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, a senior litigation associate in the Palo Alto, Calif., office of Cooley Godward LLP, is a member of the Sikh Communications Council, a nonprofit organization composed of key Silicon Valley executives and professionals representing the Sikh community nationwide. The group recently hired a public relations consultant and launched an educational campaign to combat the racial profiling of Sikhs and other groups, including African Americans. It is also calling for congressional hearings on racial profiling.

Disturbingly enough, even African Americans have appeared to be supportive of profiling other groups when it comes to airline security. In a September Gallup poll, 71 percent of African American respondents, compared with 57 percent of whites and 63 percent of non-whites, favored requiring Arabs, including Arab Americans, to undergo greater security checks at U.S. airports. It should be noted that there were only 71 African Americans among the 1,032 respondents, only half as many as would have been needed for the sample to be representative of the U.S. population. Still, a follow-up poll by the Zogby International polling organization also found a higher overall percentage of African Americans favoring greater security checks for Arab Americans.

Besides the obvious reason of fear in the wake of nearly 3,300 people being killed on Sept. 11, there remains a question of why people from a group that has experienced such discrimination for so long might have been so supportive of these practices. Psychologist Stephen C. Wright offers one hypothesis based on social identity theory. Under this theory, when a disadvantaged group wins acceptance, members of the group will sometimes try to enhance that status by being harsh toward the new outsider. Is this what is happening with African Americans and Arab Americans? Far more research and analysis is necessary on the question.

Far more analysis and research on consumer retail profiling is necessary in general. There is now a large body of research on discrimination in major consumer purchasing such as housing and cars. However, economist Peter Siegelman at the University of Connecticut points out that we know relatively little about discrimination in other transactions, such as retail settings. In the meantime, African Americans must remain vigilant against all types of discrimination. Fighting back is key, whether it's through the courts or by wielding the hammer of purchasing power. It's the only way to make sure African Americans receive equal treatment for their equal dollars.

Jerome D. Williams and Geraldine RL Henderson are associate professors in the Marketing Department at the Howard University School of Business, and are affiliated with Howard's Center for Marketplace Diversity. Anne-Marie Harris is an assistant professor in the Management Department at the Salem State College School of Business in Massachusetts.

Printed with Author Permission. Editor Williams, Jerome D "Consumer racial profiling: Bigotry goes to market". New Crisis, The. FindArticles.com. 17 Aug, 2009. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_200111/ai_n8957115/

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Nov/Dec 2001

Retail racism studied -University of Pittburg

2009-08-17T22:28:00.008-04:00

There’s a lot more to racial profiling than traffic stops, according to a recent lecturer here.

“Current scholarship has only captured the tip of the racial profiling iceberg,” said Shaun L. Gabbidon, a professor of criminal justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State-Harrisburg.

While popular opinion and the majority of research on racial profiling center on traffic stops, the highway isn’t the only place profiling occurs. Consumer racial profiling — the act of discriminating against customers by retailers based upon their race or ethnicity — is another example.

“Not until after the civil rights movement could blacks even enter certain stores to get service. So we’re talking about fairly recent stuff, so why would we not expect that there would be problems in retail settings just as there are problems in traffic stops?” he said.

Gabbidon visited Pitt Oct. 10 to discuss his research, “Shopping Under Suspicion: Consumer Racial Profiling and Perceived Victimization in the City of Brotherly Love,” which was conducted with George Higgins of the University of Louisville. Gabbidon’s talk was hosted by the School of Social Work’s Center on Race and Social Problems.

Gabbidon said retail racism appears in two forms: lack of service and, more recently, minorities being stereotyped as shoplifters.

Business school research has examined customer service in relation to race, but there’s only a handful of scholarly literature on consumer racial profiling.

Citing a study in which researchers set up cameras in a drugstore to identify the characteristics of people who shoplift, Gabbidon said the research found that while “more people shoplift than we think,” minorities did not shoplift any more than other groups. “That’s a significant thing because we tend to rely on official data sources to determine who commits what offenses,” he said, noting that the official data statistics are “woefully inaccurate.” He said if profiling is occurring, more minorities are likely to be stopped, and consequently more people among those groups will be caught. “If you’re profiling, you’re likely to be stopping people you think are committing the offense. You’re focusing on one group, so your statistics are going to be skewed,” he said.

In choosing to concentrate his academic research on consumer racial profiling, Gabbidon drew upon his experience as a store detective at a suburban Baltimore department store. He said he noticed a trend in calls he’d receive from within the store. “I got a lot of calls about minorities going through the store. ‘Are you watching these individuals?’”

When he’d ask what they were doing, “They were just walking,” Gabbidon was told.“They really didn’t want to articulate what they thought was suspicious about these individuals,” he said.

A promotion took him to pricey Fairfax, Va., where, as the store’s assistant security manager, he was responsible for training new employees. “I’d talk about security, what to look for, the characteristics of people who might shoplift. I never said anything about race or anything like that,” but he’d still receive more calls about minorities. He said clerks are suspicious if a minority person walks into a Polo shop, as if minorities can’t afford Polo clothes.

Gabbidon recounted a time the store security office radioed him about a suspicious person in the store — only to realize by the description that Gabbidon himself was the man the nervous store clerk was reporting.

Gabbidon said the issue of retail racism really is two problems. One is that retailers lose huge amounts of money to theft. “The other problem is that people who walk into the store who are racial or ethnic minorities feel like they’re profiled. So we have those two competing things,” he said.

The underlying theory in his research is that labeling of people is based on stereotypes. “We attach races to particular types of crime,” he said. Stereotypes of the criminal black man persist. He cited an exercise he’s conducted on several college campuses in which he lists the eight most serious criminal offenses and asks students to attach the percentage of arrests they believe can be ascribed to each racial group. “In each case, everybody believes black people commit the most crimes in the United States,” he said. Until that misconception is corrected, profiling will continue, he said. Gabbidon’s research takes a holistic approach to the issue of consumer racial profiling, going beyond merely determining if it exists to discover how people react to the experience.

Gabbidon conducted a phone survey of nearly 500 people in Philadelphia, 47 percent black and 42.5 percent white. Forty-three percent reported they had experienced consumer racial profiling and, of these, 98 percent reported it had happened to them as an adult. Sixty-four percent said they experienced it occasionally, while 26 percent said it happened to them always or almost always.

Gabbidon found that men were twice as likely and blacks were 10 times more likely to report that they experienced consumer retail profiling. Interestingly, while household income did not seem to be a factor, respondents with more education were more likely to perceive themselves as victims of consumer racial profiling.

Department stores, grocery stores and clothing stores were most often noted as the places where the profiling occurred. In 57 percent of the reported incidents, the profiler was a clerk, not store security personnel. Most often, respondents reported being watched or followed throughout the store.

The survey found that profilers came from a variety of races. “It was not just a white person profiling a black person,” Gabbidon said. While 59 percent of the reported profilers were white, 24 percent were black, 11 percent were Asian and 5 percent Hispanic.

The vast majority of those who said they’d been profiled — 82 percent — said they didn’t report the incident. About half still made a purchase and 39 percent of the people said they would go back to the same store again. Seventy-two percent said they told family or friends about what had happened and, in 68 percent of those cases, “Most of them said they’d experienced it, too.”

Why don’t people report these incidents? “‘It’s not a big deal.’ That’s what they said,” Gabbidon reported. “They’ve normalized the treatment as part of the experience. You go into the store; this is what happens. You take care of your business and you leave.”

Gabbidon said he believes there are consequences to that choice, citing the emotional reactions of respondents. Eighty-eight percent said the experience made them angry; 62 percent said it was stressful. Other emotions respondents noted were sadness, shock and embarrassment. Twenty-nine percent said their self worth was impacted by the experience.

“If you internalize these things, it has a negative impact, physically, mentally and otherwise,” he said.

In his study, Gabbidon asked respondents what should be done about retail racial profiling. Almost half said some sort of training on the perils of profiling should be provided; 29 percent felt that diversifying the workforce could help and only 22 percent believed that the profilers should be fired. “People were concerned about the way in which they were treated, but they weren’t all willing to just fire employees. I think that probably a part of that has to do with the whole notion that they normalize it,” Gabbidon said. “In reality, if you’re paying a certain amount of money for a good and somebody else is paying a certain amount of money for the same good, shouldn’t you be getting the same treatment?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be followed around if other people aren’t followed around.”

Gabbidon noted that additional research needs to be done.

“One of the studies we need to do, one of the things we need to find out is where people get their ideas about race and crime. That is one of the problems because people bring their biases to work with them. That’s what it’s really about,” he said. “It’s not just the security person, it’s the clerk who makes the call because somewhere along the line they’ve gotten an idea about who shoplifts or who commits crime. Unless we correct these misguided ideas those calls are going to keep coming.”

Gabbidon said those who feel they’ve been profiled should take action. “You need to confront the retailers,” he said. “If you don’t file a report or complain to somebody, there’s no problem there. If those complaints mount, then somebody’s going to take action,” he said.

“If it’s something that made you uncomfortable, you have to let people know, ‘This is impacting on my shopping experience.’”

Racial profiling in traffic stops came to light because of lawsuits, he said, adding that getting retailers to change may be easier than changing government entities.

“If you hit retailers, it’s a little different than the government. This is a corporation that is in business to make money. And if there is anything that is stopping them from making money, they’re going to look at that. They have to look at it because they can’t exist without making money,” he said. —Kimberly K. Barlow

The Color of Money: Exposing marketplace discrimination, professor pursues equal treatment for all consumers

2009-08-17T20:37:00.003-04:00

http://www.utexas.edu/features/2006/profiling/index.html 10/24/2006 Source Materials

An African American woman, trying to redeem a coupon at the cosmetics counter of a major department store, has her shopping bag seized by security personnel, searched and emptied on the counter. A professional basketball player is kept waiting to be seated for almost an hour at a restaurant while white diners who arrived after were seated first. The venerable Oprah Winfrey fails to be buzzed in to a New York City store, even after seeing white women admitted and making a second attempt.

In the United States a dollar may be a dollar, but for African American and other minority consumers, a trip to the market to spend that dollar may offer a very different experience than that offered to white consumers. Often called “shopping while black,” marketplace discrimination remains a significant problem today.

“While most people think of ‘driving while black’ when the subject of racial profiling comes up, as that is what generally is in the news, the reality is that ‘shopping while black’ is a much more pervasive problem,” says Dr. Jerome Williams. “Minorities as shoppers are much
more likely to be subjected to these indignities on a day-to-day basis.”

Williams, the F.J. Heyne Centennial Professor in Communication in the Department of Advertising at The University of Texas at Austin, focuses his work on consumer racial profiling, offering expert testimony in court cases and working with other scholars across the country to better understand the problem.

Williams is clear that the problem is widespread. A survey he and a colleague conducted in 1997 found that 86 percent of African Americans believe they have been treated differently in retail stores because of their race. Other minority groups, including Latinos and increasingly people of Middle Eastern descent, also report facing discrimination in the marketplace. “If you’re a member of the majority group in this country, the assumption is that people, for the most part, are treated fairly,” Williams says. “But if you’re a member of the subordinate group and you have personal, day-to-day experience, you’ll see that this is not what actually happens.

“There’s still a great deal of discrimination and prejudice in society, and many times it is manifested in the marketplace.” Williams and colleagues, including Dr. Geraldine Henderson, associate professor in the Department of Advertising, have examined more than 80 federal court decisions involving customers’ allegations of racial or ethnic discrimination, in addition to 91 state
cases and 29 civil rights agency cases. The cases involved major retailers and small businesses, department stores, clothing stores, restaurants and airlines. The types of discrimination varied widely as well, from obvious to very subtle.

The most obvious way minorities face discrimination stems from the common misperception that minority consumers engage in more criminal activity than majority customers. As such, they are often placed under increased scrutiny in stores, being shadowed by security personnel or otherwise monitored. One store in Massachusetts refused African American customers larger shopping bags when purchasing items. “When you have a black shopper and a white shopper, each person
should be under surveillance equally,” Williams says. “But what you find is that African Americans and Latinos have been put under greater surveillance than whites.” Williams says his students add that young people can face the same situation, regardless of their race. Department store employees are sometimes told to watch young people more carefully when they come into the store.

There’s no basis for the assumption that minorities are engaging in more shoplifting than others, Williams has found. In fact, a University of Florida study determined employee theft accounts for a far greater portion of “shrinkage” at the nation’s 200 largest retailers than shoplifting. As such, retailers might be better off directing their resources at watching employees than having employees watch customers based on race, Williams says. Still, minority consumers face more subtle forms of discrimination, some of which draw incredulity from non minority people. They may be ignored by salespeople, made to wait longer for service, be asked more rigorous questions on applications or be denied service outright.

In one court case, a white woman took her two African American grandchildren and their mother on a weekend trip to the beach. She checked into a motel for two nights while the rest of the family remained in the car. They Dr. Jerome Williams, who holds joint appointments in the Center for African and African American Studies and the College of Communication, is working to build coalitions to end marketplace discrimination.

then deposited their bags in the room and headed for the outdoor pool. Within a few minutes, the desk clerk appeared and demanded that they leave immediately. He refused to respond to their repeated requests for an explanation.
“When you’re the victim, it can do a lot of damage,” Williams says. “There’s psychological damage and emotional cost, and if you have to file a lawsuit, there’s the financial cost as well. The impact can be very high, not to mention the loss of dignity.”

Further, the cost to businesses can be substantial. Williams has found that consumers who face discrimination respond in one of three ways. In many cases, they simply accept the treatment,
maintaining loyalty to the business and assuming the behavior is inevitable. In other cases, they speak up. They may complain to management or file a lawsuit.

Finally, they may choose to exit and not return. This can have a significant impact on businesses. Consumers of color constitute about one-third of the U.S. population and wield more than a trillion dollars of purchasing power, so the “exit” strategies consumers employ can have a serious impact on a company’s bottom line. This has proven to be the case in the past, when well-publicized charges against chain restaurants and department stores led nearly half of all minority customers to boycott the businesses.

“Consumers need to get equal treatment for equal dollars,” Williams says, “because if they don’t, they can take their dollars and go shop elsewhere. The ramifications for businesses are just tantamount to economic suicide if they don’t get their houses in order.”

For Williams, who lived through the Jim Crow era and can see firsthand how far the country has come, marketplace discrimination serves as a reminder that the work to be done regarding race in the U.S. is not complete.

“I think we’ve come a long way since Brown v. the Board of Education and since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but I also recognize that we haven’t come far enough,” Williams says. “Sometimes we can get a little complacent and pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘Boy, we’ve really accomplished a lot.’ But we see the vestiges of those times in many places, and we need to deal with them.”

To do so, Williams recognizes it’s important to keep a focus on the issue. He is seeking funding and working to create a Center for Studying Marketplace Discrimination. Operating on a national level, the center would conduct research on marketplace discrimination and help policymakers develop legislation that addresses racial profiling.

The laws related to marketplace discrimination have not caught up to where we are as a society, Williams says. They hearken back to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which sought to ensure that “a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white” person and to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. Both provide for unintended loopholes.
“The laws sometimes allow defendants to skirt or escape well deserved penalties,” Williams says. “For example, there may be a situation where the law says you cannot discriminate in a place of public accommodation.’ But if the type of business is not listed as one of the places of public accommodation, the law doesn’t apply.”

Thus, working with policymakers is important. Williams believes
working with businesses is also. He sees himself as a coalition builder and has collaborated with major companies to help them set up training programs for their employees. He recognizes that business cannot control the levels of prejudice that people bring with them to a job, but they can control whether or not they’re tolerated in the workplace.

“I’m not here to make villains out of the marketers,” he says. “I’m a marketer by training. This is what I do. I’m here to help marketers better serve their customers. So if this is a problem, they need to look at the type of work they’re doing to remedy it.”

Ultimately, ending marketplace discrimination is the work of businesses, policymakers and consumers themselves, who need to speak up with both their voices and their money. The work of the Civil Rights movement isn’t complete, Williams says, until people can trust that in the country’s businesses a dollar is a dollar and a consumer is a consumer, regardless of his or her race.

CRP Consumer Racial Profling on Cape Cod Oh Know!

2009-08-10T17:46:00.011-04:00

Consumer Racial Profiling and Perceived Victimization:

An Examination of the Factors that Influence Self-Esteem

Abstract

Consumer racial profiling (also known as “Shopping While Black”) may have important influences on how an individuals’ views and feels about themselves (i.e., selfesteem).

Based on data collected from a random digit dialing (RDD) phone survey, the we examined the factors (i.e., sex, race, age, and income level) that may influence an individuals’ level of self-esteem given the perception of consumer racial profiling.

The research found that African-Americans were more likely than non-African-Americans to believe they had been victims of CRP. As for gender differences, males were nearly two times more likely than females to report that they had been victims of CRP. Income level had the largest effect on self-esteem. The authors conclude by noting the policy implications of the research findings.

George E. Higgins, Ph.D.
Department of Justice Administration
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Phone: (502) 852-0331
Fax: (502) 852-0065
E-mail: gehigg01@gwise.louisville.edu

Shaun L. Gabbidon, Ph.D.**
Penn State Harrisburg
School of Public Affairs
777 W. Harrisburg Pike
Middletown, PA 17057
(717) 948-6054
(717) 948-6320 (fax)
E-mail:slg13@psu.edu

The Does and Don'ts of Store Security Forces

2009-08-10T17:04:00.005-04:00

Source of Information:

http://www.crimedoctor.com/about_us.htm

Chris McGoey is the President of Aegis Books, Inc., and does business as McGoey Security Consulting for the past twenty-four years. He has hosted the Crime Doctor Website online since 1996 as a community service by providing practical advice about security, crime, loss prevention, and avoiding liability. His office is located near Los Angeles, California.

Does Profiling Exist?

The media often asks me if retail store security personnel use “profiling” tactics as a means of determining which customers are most likely to steal. The answer is undeniably, yes.

Profiling is a Tool

The concept of shoplifter profiling is a proven loss prevention tool and is currently being practiced in most major retail stores by trained loss prevention or security staff. Does that seem shocking? It shouldn't, as long as it doesn't include the discriminatory practice of focusing on the race of the customer alone. Profiling is used everyday as a method for quickly focusing in on a person, a product line or a section of a store most likely to contribute to shoplifting. All investigative agencies including the police, FBI, and others have used profiling as a tool to narrow the field of possible suspects. Why shouldn't retail store security be able to do the same? Store and customer profiles are developed during day-to-day operation and by collecting and analyzing inventory data. This data provides both a quantitative and a qualitative basis for determining where, when, how, and by whom shoplifting is likely to occur in the future.

A progressive retailer has numerous inventory controls in effect and at several levels. Every store should know what departments and which product lines have the greatest inventory loss based on audits, product movement analysis reports, shoplifter apprehensions, and by finding signs of theft. Professional retail loss prevention personnel are trained to know what day of the week, what time of day, what product lines, and what department will have the most shoplifting activity. Armed with this data, loss prevention personnel set out to observe shopper “conduct” in the most active areas and during the most active times. Profiling like this makes perfect business sense because it is legal and a good business practice.

There are other types of profiling based on store apprehension histories and industry experience that has taught LP professionals who to "include" and who to "exclude" when scanning the store for potential shoplifters. For example, one profile is that people rarely shoplift while in the presence of their spouse, significant other, or parents. After scanning these persons they might quickly be bypassed as theft candidates. Shoplifting is a crime of opportunity and desire. Trained loss prevention staff will spend most of their time observing those customers whose conduct demonstrates both opportunity and desire. For example, a customer standing alone in a remote aisle, carrying a large empty shopping bag, and looking from side-to-side would be immediately suspicious until their conduct proves otherwise.

A customer wearing tattered shoes might appear suspicious in a self-service shoe department until their conduct disproved a lack of desire to steal. A customer walking across a store carrying a small electronic item partially concealed in the palm of their hand might seem suspicious until several opportunities passed to conceal the product. In contrast, a customer wearing tailored shorts and a t-shirt may have the desire to steal, but will have little opportunity to conceal a large item of merchandise they are carrying. Based on profiling and shopper conduct, the professional plain-clothes security officer will scan thousands of customers a day and determine that 99% of them are legitimate shoppers.

Surveillance is Necessary

Believe me, merchants don’t like monitoring their customers to prevent theft, but they know that it’s a matter of economic survival. Merchants know that closely watching customers is bad public relations if done crudely. However, the retail industry loses over 31.3-Billion dollars every year and shoplifting represents about one-third of it. Customer surveillance is limited to the public areas where there is no expectation of privacy as opposed to inside fitting rooms and restrooms that are considered private areas. Knowing that you are under surveillance is an uneasy feeling. No one likes being watched and being made to feel like you’re not trustworthy. However, if trained professionals do the surveillance properly, most people will never realize they were observed while shopping. A problem can arise when untrained or unqualified security, loss prevention or off-duty police undertake the task of store surveillance. The majority of the complaints of racial profiling that I have seen in retail stores have to do with the perception of being stalked throughout the store in an effort to intimidate them into leaving.

Racial Profiling

Racial profiling is an improper and illegal practice based on the mistaken belief that certain ethnic groups are more likely to shoplift than others. Because of this, misguided store employees will focus their surveillance time on the customer's “color” rather than “conduct”. Racial bias can blind store personnel and cause them to monitor only the ethic minorities and ignore the real source of their inventory losses. Racial profiling eventually leads to a pattern of false theft accusations, wrongful detentions, and harassment when no real probable cause exists. The result is that a particular ethic group will be made to feel like they can't be trusted and are unwelcome in the store. African Americans call it "shopping while black". Unless the wrongful conduct is corrected by management, civil rights violations will occur and false arrest lawsuits will follow and sorely damage the reputation of the retailer.

Customer surveillance based solely on the race of a customer is not only improper but is an ineffective method of controlling losses due to shoplifting. The thought of racial profiling is distasteful. A 1999 Gallup poll confirmed that 81% of Americans disapprove of the practice. Despite this belief, the same poll indicated that 75% of African American men said they had been victims of racial profiling while shopping.

Most major retailers have published policies against discriminatory acts but few that I've seen specifically address racial profiling by it's security personnel. Not surprisingly, incidents are occurring, which feeds the question of how much racial profiling exists in retail stores? For example, in one major department store the security staff used radio codes (code 3) as an alert anytime a black shopper came into the area. In another store, 90% of the shoplifting apprehensions were of ethnic customers where the store demographic reports only showed a 15% minority customer base. And in still another store, sales associates were told by security officers to call them anytime an ethnic minority entered their sales area.

Hiring, Training, Supervision

The only way to eliminate racial profiling is to prohibit it from the top. Retail stores need to have clearly defined and articulated policies against security staffers practicing racial profiling and must have a zero tolerance for abuse. The hiring process is a good time to screen out poor candidates that seem predisposed to prejudice. Comprehensive retail security training is absolutely necessary to assure that employees know how to do the job appropriately and understand the rules of conduct. Off-duty police officers working as security need training too. You can't assume that they understand the law or will act appropriately and fairly towards all customers especially in the retail setting. Off duty police officers must follow store rules when on the clock and not resort to street tactics when dealing with store customers. During the training phase new loss prevention personnel should be taught how to observe customer conduct and not base surveillance decisions solely on the race of the customer. Supervisors should always be on the lookout for signs of racial prejudice in day-to-day conversation and in written reports. Violations should be addressed swiftly. If racial profiling becomes a factor in security staff surveillance and detentions, it’s because store management didn’t care enough to correct the problem or instead chose to ratify the behavior.

For More Information:

Shoplifting Retail Racial Profiling

False Arrest Claims

A retail store makes a choice when it decides to apprehend and arrest those who attempt to steal their merchandise. Making that choice creates a legal responsibility of doing it correctly. This involves the proper hiring, training, and supervising those who make shoplifter apprehensions and arrests. In the retail loss prevention profession, the possibility of falsely accusing and detaining a customer for theft is a business reality that must be addressed.

In the United States, citizens value their civil liberties and constitutional rights and don't appreciate submitting to unlawful seizure and search. Because of this, there has been a legal trend of suing the retail store anytime a customer is wrongfully accused of shoplifting. In recognition of this, the retail security and loss prevention industry have developed six universally accepted steps to minimize the potential for a false arrest claim.

They are:

You must see the shoplifter approach the merchandise
You must see the shoplifter select the merchandise
You must see the shoplifter conceal, convert or carry away the merchandise
You must maintain continuous observation of the shoplifter
You must observe the shoplifter fail to pay for the merchandise
You must apprehend the shoplifter outside the store

If these six steps are followed, false arrest situations and subsequent lawsuits will be almost nonexistent. These six steps were designed to establish a high degree of probable cause for detention and arrest of a person suspected of shoplifting. If one of these steps is skipped, the chance for false arrest increases proportionately. If two or more steps are skipped, the store personnel are acting recklessly towards customers and are exposing the store unnecessarily to liability and false arrest claims. Remember, state law may not require this high degree of care for criminal prosecution.

The word "false arrest" is very distasteful to the retail industry, so it has created several alternate words to describe the event. Less offensive words are used instead like "non-productive detention" or "unproductive stop" or "investigative detention". All of these words have been used in place of false arrest so not to seemingly admit liability. Whatever the terminology, if you stop a customer that is not holding stolen merchandise, you have the potential for a false arrest claim.

Merchant Statute

Many states have enacted legislation to protect the merchant from such false arrest claims by allowing the store to make "investigative detentions" of a customer suspected of shoplifting. In these jurisdictions, the law allows certain latitude or "merchant's privilege" if the merchant has a reasonable belief that a customer has stolen merchandise. In many jurisdictions, law allows the merchant to detain a customer for a reasonable time, and in a reasonable manner, for the purpose recovering the stolen merchandise or for summoning the police.

The problem with these statutes is that they are vague as to what "reasonable" means and what the word "detain" means. Some merchants have overly relied on this statutory language to protect them from lawsuit only to discover later that it would not relieve them of liability.

Unreliable Witnesses

In most jurisdictions, a reasonable belief that someone has shoplifted does not include a stranger’s observation and report. Customers are often unreliable in what they report and it is considered unreasonable to detain and accuse someone of theft based solely on a customer observation. Besides, the customer and shoplifter could be working together to set up the store for a false arrest claim. Untrained sales associates can also be unreliable in their observations. Many store chains do not allow apprehensions on the word of a sales associate alone.

Reasonable Detentions

While detaining someone, you must do so in a reasonable manner. Tackling and injuring a customer in the parking lot over suspected petty theft might be deemed excessive, especially if no other means of detention were attempted first. Detentions must also be for a reasonable time period. Holding someone for three hours while you investigate a check, credit card, coupon, or refund fraud attempt is excessive. Some jurisdictions have a problem with police response times that may take over two hours to respond to your store. This business reality must be factored into the store policy of detaining shoplifters or releasing them after recovering the merchandise.

Hiring & Training

The best way to limit false arrest situations is hiring, training, and supervising competent staff. It is usually considered negligent management to have a policy of apprehension and arrest of shoplifters if the store personnel have no training on how to do so correctly. It is also negligent management if you fail to supervise loss prevention staff and their reports that indicates violations of company policy, violation of the civil rights of customers, or use of excessive force.

Use of Force

It is usually considered negligence if a store employee uses excessive force when apprehending a suspected shoplifter. It requires special training to understand how to routinely apprehend shoplifters while only using minimal force. Tackling, punching, and verbal abuse of shoplifters are never acceptable. Excessive or unreasonable use of handcuffs, leg restraints, chokeholds, or pain compliance holds are also inappropriate when dealing with those suspected of retail theft.

You run the risk of a false arrest claim when you:

Don’t observe the customer approach a display
Don’t observe the merchandise being selected from the display
Don’t see the merchandise being concealed, carried away or converted (i.e. eaten etc)
Don’t maintain continuous observation and the shoplifter dumps the item
Don’t watch the check stand and verify the non-payment of the item
Don’t detain the shoplifter outside the store (or at least past the last register)
Don’t detain only the person directly responsible for the theft

To avoid other related claims:

Approach from the front (so the shoplifter doesn’t think you’re a robber)
Have at least one witness of the same sex present at all times
Have at least one more backup than the number of shoplifters
Clearly identify yourself as the store representative or security officer
State the reason for the detention and ask for the item back
Don’t be afraid to immediately disengage and apologize if you make a mistake
Listen for spontaneous utterances (i.e. "I forgot to pay for it")
Closely escort the shoplifter to a private office
Do not chase the shoplifter through the store
Always be polite and professional even if the shoplifter is not
Do not use excessive force (i.e. double lock handcuffs)
Do not make threats or exchange insults
Accommodate reasonable medical and handicap requests
Process the arrest swiftly according to store policy
Save, tag, and photograph the stolen merchandise as evidence
Cooperate with the police and appear in court, if necessary

For More Information:

Shoplifting False Arrest

Mashpee woman claims racial assault

2009-08-06T08:14:00.005-04:00

Town of Mashpee

No Place for Hate Committee

Contact: Marilyn Farren

(508) 539-1400 Ext. 549

Barnstable County Cape Cod Human Rights Commission

Representative for the Town of Mashpee

Contact: Gail Wilson (508) 539-2442

Mashpee woman claims racial assault

By MATTHEW M. BURKE

mburke@capecodonline.com

Cape Cod Times
July 31, 2009 6:00 AM

MASHPEE — A former Mashpee High School special-needs teacher has accused the manager of a local supermarket with assault and racial profiling following a confrontation at the store Wednesday morning.

Deborah Saldana of Mashpee went to the Mashpee police station yesterday afternoon and wrote a statement she said she hoped would persuade police to press assault charges against the manager of the Roche Bros. on Commercial Street, James Lundy of Mashpee.

Lundy allegedly confronted Saldana outside the store and accused the 60-year-old of shoplifting, almost shoving her to the ground while trying to get her purse away from her, she said.

Saldana patronizes the store several times a week, family members said, as it is her assigned meeting place for rides to radiation treatments at Cape Cod Hospital. Saldana has bone cancer.

Saldana called Mashpee police during the incident and when they arrived, she was cleared of any wrongdoing while former students working at the store looked on. She left the school last year, she said.

Lundy was working yesterday but declined to comment on the allegations. Gary Pfeil, the general manager of Roche Bros., admitted Lundy made a "mistake" but said Lundy confronted the woman for going out through the "in" door, which he deemed suspicious, and that Lundy denied the assault allegation.

Saldana said she suspects she was stopped because of the color of her skin. She is African-American.

"It was the most humiliating experience I've ever had," she said. "I was so disappointed that this sort of thing can go on."

According to the police report, officers responded to the Roche Bros. store at 8:54 a.m. after receiving a call from Saldana. She requested an officer be present while her bag was searched after she was accused of shoplifting.

Saldana then requested that the officer's search be done in a room away from the customer service area, the report states. Saldana said yesterday it was because she was embarrassed being in view of former students.

Her request was denied by management, then by the officer, Patrolman Kevin Frye, and her bag was found to contain no stolen items, according to the report. She said Lundy did not offer an apology or admit he had been wrong.

Saldana claims Lundy had chased her outside the store and said he had personally seen her steal meat. She thought he was joking at first, she said.

After he tried to get her purse from her outside, almost knocking her down, she said, she asked to go back inside so that there would be witnesses to the confrontation. Lundy agreed.

Once inside, Saldana claims, she followed Lundy to the customer service desk where he allegedly once again tried to get her purse. That's when she called the police.

Saldana claims she told the officer she had been assaulted and that she wanted to file a complaint. The officer's report does not mention her claims, only that she wanted to file a complaint. The officer then told her no crime had been committed, according to Saldana and the report.

The 15-year veteran of the Mashpee school system said there are other errors in the report. Saldana said she had been accused by Lundy of stealing meat, and the report states she told the officer she had picked it up, then put it back before being questioned. Saldana claimed she never told the officer she had touched meat in the store. She said she needed a cart to walk but only purchased a newspaper.

Mashpee police Chief Rodney Collins was adamant yesterday that the department stands behind the report. After an investigation, he said, the department has decided not to file charges.

"Our investigation did not conclude that an assault and battery had taken place," Collins said. "There was no indication that the manager of the Roche Bros. knocked her down. There was no evidence to suggest that, and no witnesses to corroborate her claim. Her story is different (yesterday) than it was (Wednesday). It appears as though she is trying to set herself up for litigation."

Collins said Saldana can file a claim privately in court but if she makes a false claim, she could be countersued.

Pfeil admitted yesterday that Lundy did not see her steal anything before questioning her, but he also denied the assault had taken place. He said Roche Bros. was investigating the incident.

"Jim made a mistake," Pfeil said. "He is sorry. We didn't know she had stolen something. It's a judgment error. ... Jim states he did not touch the woman."

Pfeil said he called Saldana and spoke to members of her family, offering a personal apology from Lundy, but they were not interested.

Saldana, who was waiting to hear from the police today, said she just wanted the community to be aware of what had happened to her and to stop it from happening to another senior citizen. She contended the only reason someone would say they had seen her steal when they hadn't is because of the color of her skin.

"I'm not sure if he was trying to intimidate me or if this is how he treats people of color," she said. "I can't think of any other reason. Maybe he doesn't want me to be a customer. ... It's a nightmare."

Mashpee incident draws rights groups

By MATTHEW M. BURKE

mburke@capecodonline.com

August 07, 2009

MASHPEE — The former special-needs teacher who said she was assaulted and falsely accused of shoplifting by a Roche Bros. store manager because she is African-American is working with local anti-discrimination groups after police declined to file assault charges or report the incident as a hate crime.

Deborah Saldana of Mashpee says James Lundy, manager of the Roche Bros. supermarket in South Cape Village shopping center, almost knocked her to the ground while trying to seize her purse after he accused her of stealing meat from the store on July 29.

Saldana, who walks with a cane, was in the store buying a newspaper as she waited for a ride to Cape Cod Hospital for radiation treatments for bone cancer, she said.

Gary Pfeil, the store's general manager, said that Lundy became suspicious of Saldana after seeing her exit the store through the entrance door.

Saldana called Mashpee police when Lundy accused her of shoplifting. The Mashpee officer who responded checked her bag and found nothing had been stolen.

Saldana said she was "humiliated" after being accused and searched in plain sight of former students who were inside the store at the time.

Roche Bros. has since acknowledged Lundy was wrong in accusing Saldana of shoplifting.

Lundy, however, denied he touched the 60-year-old when he confronted her.

The case has caught the attention of concerned citizens across the Cape, and Saldana has been consulting with local anti-discrimination groups to figure out what she should do next, she said this week.

Mashpee Police Chief Rodney Collins said the department does not believe a hate crime was committed.

Saldana's family said she simply wants to file a hate crime report instead of pursuing litigation.

"I'm going to pursue this further so that it doesn't get swept under the rug," Saldana said. "I'm just waiting to find out what the next step is."

After news of the incident broke, anti-discrimination groups such as No Place for Hate Harwich and the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission reached out to Saldana to see how they could help.

Jacqueline Fields, chairwoman of the county's human rights commission, said that they are investigating. John Bangert, who heads the Harwich chapter of No Place For Hate, is counseling Saldana and called on Mashpee police to view the supermarket's security tapes of the incident.

"From my point of view, this woman was racially profiled and accosted," Bangert said. "What actually happened? Did she feel assaulted because of her race? The answer is yes. I take that at face value."

Saldana said that she feels betrayed by the local police for painting her as untruthful and someone just trying to get money from a settlement.

Collins adamantly defended Patrolman Kevin Frye's report of the incident, despite Saldana's claim that there were several inaccuracies.

Saldana also said the report fails to mention her report that she had been assaulted.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley

2009-08-06T07:54:00.004-04:00

Civil Rights Division

If you believe that your civil rights have been violated, you may file a Civil Rights Complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the Office of Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The Civil Rights Division is located at 100 Cambridge Street, 11th Floor, in Boston, MA, 02108. The Office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. In order for the Office to evaluate claims properly, all complaints must be submitted in writing to the mailing address listed below. If, due to a disability, you seek an accommodation in filing a complaint, please contact the Office at (617) 727-2200 or (617) 727-4765 (TTY).

Before filing a civil rights complaint, please review the other Civil Rights sections of this website for information that may help you decide whether to file a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office or to access other resources.

Recognizing a Civil Rights Violation

There are various state and federal laws that protect your rights to access education, employment, housing, financial services, healthcare, transportation, voting, and marriage, as well as your free speech and privacy rights, among others.

For example, if you have been the victim of threats, intimidation or coercion based upon your race, color, national origin, religion, age, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation or disability, or because you engaged in a protected activity (for example, the right to vote, or the right to obtain an education, or the right to freely associate), your civil rights under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act may have been violated.

If you are a tenant or an applicant for housing who has been discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, children, lead paint, or receipt of public assistance, your housing rights under the Massachusetts Antidiscrimination Law, M.G.L. c. 151B, may have been violated.

If you are an employee or job applicant who has been discriminated against in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, veteran status, age (40 and older), disability, sexual orientation, genetics, or based on your reporting of discrimination, your employment rights under the Massachusetts Antidiscrimination Law, M.G.L. c. 151B, may have been violated.

If you have been discriminated against in places of public accommodation, such as by a hotel, restaurant, bar, theater, concert hall, sports stadium, store, shopping center, or other retail establishment or service establishment, based on religion, creed, class, race, color, denomination, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, or because of deafness or blindness, or any physical or mental disability, your rights under the Massachusetts Public Accommodation Law, M.G.L c. 272, s. 92A , 98 and 98A may have been violated.

Filing a Civil Rights Complaint

To file a complaint by mail, complete the Civil Rights Complaint form, available for download below:

Complaint forms may also be submitted via fax to (617) 727-5762, or by mail to:

Civil Rights Division
Office of Attorney General Martha Coakley
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108

Because the Civil Rights Division receives many complaints, the time it takes to review complaints can vary. We will contact you within one week of the receipt of your complaint. If you have filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Division and wish to learn about its status, you may contact the Civil Rights Division by calling (617) 727-2200

Racial Profiling Definition - ACLU

2009-08-06T07:15:00.002-04:00

Racial Profiling: Definition

"Racial Profiling" refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime. Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations (commonly referred to as "driving while black or brown"), or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband.

Another example of racial profiling is the targeting, ongoing since the September 11th attacks, of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for detention on minor immigrant violations in the absence of any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

Law enforcement agent includes a person acting in a policing capacity for public or private purposes. This includes security guards at department stores, airport security agents, police officers, or, more recently, airline pilots who have ordered passengers to disembark from flights, because the passengers' ethnicity aroused the pilots' suspicions. Members of each of these occupations have been accused of racial profiling.

Racial profiling does not refer to the act of a law enforcement agent pursuing a suspect in which the specific description of the suspect includes race or ethnicity in combination with other identifying factors.

Defining racial profiling as relying “solely” on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion can be problematic. This definition found in some state racial profiling laws is unacceptable, because it fails to include when police act on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion in combination with an alleged violation of all law. Under the “solely” definition, an officer who targeted Latino drivers who were speeding would not be racial profiling because the drivers were not stopped “solely” because of their race but also because they were speeding. This would eliminate the vast majority of racial profiling now occurring.

Any definition of racial profiling must include, in addition to racially or ethnically discriminatory acts, discriminatory omissions on the part of law enforcement as well. For example, during the eras of lynching in the South in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's, southern sheriffs sat idly by while racists like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African Americans. At times, the sheriffs would even release black suspects to the lynch mobs. A recent example would be the complaint by an African American man in Maryland, who after moving into a white community, was attacked and subjected to property damage. Local police failed to respond to his repeated complaints until they arrested him for shooting his gun into the air, trying to disperse a hostile mob outside his home.

Racial Profiling May Be Hazardous To Your Health

Many racial profiling victims walk away with traffic tickets, but too often for others the outcome of racial profiling is death.

Pennsylvania (Brentwood) - On October 12, 1995, Jonny Gammage, a 31 year-old African American male, was killed after being pulled over while driving the Jaguar of his cousin, Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ray Seals, in a predominately white community. Although police claimed that Gammage initiated the struggle, a tow truck driver said he saw one officer start the fight and the others join in kicking, hitting and clubbing Gammage while he lay on the pavement. Three officers were tried for involuntary manslaughter: John Vojtas was acquitted; Lt. Milton Mulholland and Michael Albert had their charges dismissed after two mistrials. Gammage's family settled a wrongful death civil rights lawsuit against the five officers involved and their police departments for $1.5 million.

New York (Bronx-New York City) - On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22 year-old immigrant from New Guinea, West Africa, was shot and killed in the narrow vestibule of the apartment building where he lived. Four white officers, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy fired 41 bullets, hitting Diallo 19 times. All four were members of the New York City Police Department's Street Crimes Unit, which, under the slogan, "We Own the Night," used aggressive "stop and frisk" tactics against African Americans at a rate double that group's population percentage. A report on the unit by the state attorney general found that blacks were stopped at a rate 10 times that of whites, and that 35 percent of those stops lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or had reports insufficiently filled out to make a determination. Thousands attended Diallo's funeral. Demonstrations were held almost daily, along with the arrests of over 1,200 people in planned civil disobedience. In a trial that was moved out of the community where Diallo lived and to Albany in upstate New York, the four officers who killed Diallo were acquitted of all charges.

Ohio (Cincinnati) - On April 7, 2001, in the early morning hours, Timothy Thomas, a 19 year-old African-American, was shot to death by police officer John Roach. Thomas had 14 outstanding misdemeanor warrants, mostly traffic violations, including failure to wear a seat belt. According to a city councilman, he was running away, holding up his baggy pants, and scaled a fence, landing in a driveway where Roach was approaching and shot Thomas. He became the fifth black male in the city to die at the hands of police in a five-month period and the fifteenth since 1995. Two nights of protests left broken windows at City Hall and fires around the city. Witnesses reported that following Thomas' funeral, six city SWAT team officers shot pellet-filled bags into a peaceful crowd. Two people hit by the pellets filed lawsuits. Under community and city council pressure, both the public safety director and city manager resigned. Officer Roach was indicted on charges of negligent homicide, and obstructing official business, resulting from differences in his version of events.

Roach was acquitted in a bench trial characterized by the judge's (a former prosecutor) open admiration for Roach, and blaming Timothy Thomas for “making” Roach kill him.

A community coalition, the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU of Ohio filed suit against the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, citing a pattern and practice of discrimination by police, including issuing the type of traffic citations Thomas received to African Americans at twice their population percentage. In April 2002 the case was settled, under terms including the establishment of a civilian complaint review board and the activation of the reporting of collected traffic stop data that had been enacted by city ordinance in 2001. The Department of Justice also intervened and settled with the city, including revision and review of use of force policy.

It is significant to note that research confirms the existence of bias in decisions to shoot. A series of University of California/University of Chicago studies recreated the experience of a police officer confronted with a potentially dangerous suspect, and found that:

participants fired on an armed target more quickly when the target was African American than when White, and decided not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly when the target was White than when African American;

participants failed to shoot an armed target more often when that target was White than when the target was African American. If the target was unarmed, participants mistakenly shot the target more often when African American than when White;

shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans. shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans1.

The stories above and hundreds of others present a compelling argument that not only does racial profiling exists, but it is widespread, and has had a destructive effect on the lives of communities of color, and attitudes toward police.

Asian Racial Profiling

Asians, who, according to the U.S. census, number 10 million, or 4 percent of the population, have been victims of racial profiling as well. Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American was targeted and suspected of espionage on the basis of his race. Memos by high-ranking FBI and Department of Energy officials acknowledged that Lee was singled out because he was Chinese, and eight similarly situated non-Chinese were not prosecuted.2

In Seattle, Washington in July 2001 a group of 14 Asian American youth were stopped by police for jaywalking, claiming that they were kept against the wall for about an hour. The Seattle Times reported that one officer told them he had visited their country while in the army, and asked them repeatedly whether they spoke English. The paper also reported that U.S. Representative David Wu (D-Oregon) was detained entering the headquarters of the Department of Energy, and repeatedly.

In 2001, the Asian Freedom Project of Wisconsin issued a report that found the racial profiling of Hmong communities there, and included the testimony of adults, as well as boys and girls.

The Garden Grove (CA) Police Department settled a “gang” database racial profiling lawsuit by a group of young Asian Americans who said their civil rights were violated when officers photographed them as suspected gang members based merely on their ethnicity and clothing.

Indian Racial Profiling

Indigenous people ( Native Americans) call it “DWI,” with a new twist: “Driving While Indian.” According to the National American Indian Housing Council, there are 2.4 million Indians (including Eskimos and Aleuts) in the U.S. Indians complain about stops and searches by local police and sheriffs on roads leading to and from reservations.

In South Dakota, widespread reports of racial profiling led to hearings before the state legislature, where Indians testified about their being stopped and searched not only based on race but also on religious articles hanging from rearview mirrors, and regional license plates that identified them as living on reservations.

In June 2002 scores of Indians in the state's Bennett County complained to Department of Justice attorneys, alleging racial profiling at the hands of sheriffs there, including vehicular stops in the absence of reasonable suspicion, the administration of breathalyzer tests without reasonable suspicion, warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, and demanding to see drivers licenses and vehicle registrations while inside bars.

Walking While Black and Brown

Although "Driving While Black/Brown" traffic stops and searches are the form of racial profiling that has received the most media attention, profiling takes place off the roadways as well. Black and Latino pedestrians are regularly stopped and frisked without reasonable cause.

In New York City, the December 1999 report of the New York City Police Departments pedestrian "stop and frisk" practices by the state attorney general provided glaring evidence of racial profiling in the nation's largest city. Blacks comprise 25.6 percent of the City's population, yet 50.6 percent of all persons "stopped" during the period were black. Hispanics comprise 23.7 percent of the City's population yet, 33.0 percent of all "stops" were of Hispanics. By contrast, whites are 43.4 percent of the City's population, but accounted for only 12.9 percent of all stops. Blacks comprise 62.7 percent of all persons "stopped" by the NYPD's Street Crime Unit ("SCU").

In precincts in which blacks and Hispanics each represented less than 10 percent of the total population, individuals identified as belonging to these racial groups nevertheless accounted for more than half of the total "stops" during the covered period. Blacks accounted for 30 percent of all persons "stopped" in these precincts; Hispanics accounted for 23.4 percent of all persons "stopped."

Finally, precincts where minorities constitute the majority of the overall population tended to see more "stop & frisk" activity than precincts where whites constitute a majority of the population: Of the ten precincts showing the highest rate of "stop and frisk" activity (measured by "stops" per 1,000 residents), in only one (the 10 th Precinct) was the majority of the population white. In seven other precincts, blacks and Hispanics constituted the majority of the population. The remaining two precincts were business districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn in which the daytime racial breakdown of persons within the precinct is unknown.

In roughly half of the police precincts in New York City, the majority of the population living in the precinct is white. However, of these 36 majority-white precincts, only 13 were in the top half of precincts showing most "stops" during the period.

"Gang" Database Racial Profiling

In Orange County California, a database containing the names and photographs of reputed gang members appeared to racially profile.3 Latinos, Asians and African Americans were more than 90 percent of the 20,221 men and women in the Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking system, but made up less than half of Orange County's population. The disparity attracted the notice of the California Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as well as the ACLU. We asked the county district attorney's office to establish a civilian oversight board to monitor what we saw as problems with the list.

"Bicycling While Black and Brown"

Youth of color have been victims of racially-motivated bicycling stops, " In April, 2001, the ACLU joined a suit against Eastpointe, Michigan , representing 21 young African-American men who were stopped by the police while riding their bikes there. The ACLU argued that the bicyclists were stopped in this predominantly white suburb of Detroit because of their race and not because they were doing anything wrong. In a 1996 memorandum to the Eastpointe City Manager, the former police chief stated that he instructed his officers to investigate any black youths riding through Eastpointe subdivisions. Police searched many of young men and, in some cases, seized and later sold their bicycles. Police logs and reports in Eastpointe have identified over 100 incidents between 1995 and 1998 in which African-American youth were detained.

"Bitten While Black and Brown"

A throwback to the grainy ‘60's black and white television news footage of vicious police dogs attacking peaceful black civil rights protesters is the continued discriminatory use of canine units by police. These dogs, lethal weapons capable of biting at 2000 pounds pressure per square inch, and their handlers have been implicated in a vicious form of racial profiling that has led to legal action:

California (Los Angeles)- The ACLU of Southern California compiled reports on the hundreds of mostly blacks and Latinos who were bitten by Los Angeles Police Department dogs from 1990-1992, charging that the dogs trained to "attack and maul," were routinely sent out in non-violent situations. In 1997, California state highway patrol canine units stopped almost 34,000 vehicles. Only 2 percent were carrying drugs.

Maryland (Prince Georges County) - The Washington Post reported that in May 2001 federal prosecutors charged a county police officer with releasing her police dog on an unarmed Mexican immigrant as part of a pattern of using and threatening the use of the dog on people of color. Despite being the subject of four lawsuits, twice being guilty of making false statements to a supervisor, and five prior instances of releasing the dog on suspects who weren't resisting, and being flagged by a departmental "early warning" system, the officer remained undisciplined in any substantive way. In 1999 the Post reported that thirteen police dog excessive force suits had been filed in Prince Georges circuit and federal courts, in addition to five others that ended in judgement for plaintiffs or settlement. Of the total, ten alleged repeated bites of suspects once under police control, or while cuffed or on the ground.

South Dakota (Wagner)- While not involving the use of physical canine force, the issue reached a new low when school officials and police led a large German shepherd drug dog through classrooms in suspicionless drug searches of Yankton Sioux K-12 students, some as young as six years old. In July 2002, the ACLU filed suit in federal court.

Washington (Seattle) -In 1992 the ACLU alleged that police dog handlers used excessive force on suspects. Dogs were trained to attack and bite suspects regardless of their actions, even against alleged shoplifters, gasoline siphoners and jaywalkers. They also reported that in that year, 40 percent of police dog attacks were against African Americans, and that 91 people had received police dog bite injuries requiring hospitalization.

The following states appear to require independent reasonable suspicion for dog searches: Alaska,4 Illinois,5 Minnesota,6 New Hampshire, New York,8 Pennsylvania,9 and Washington.10

"Shopping While Black and Brown"

The targeting of shoppers/business patrons of color for suspicion of shoplifting by private security and other employees has disproportionately affected both working and prominent African-American women. TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey said she was refused buzz-in entry to a store even after seeing white women admitted and making a second attempt. After calling from a pay phone and being assured the store was in fact open, a third try failed as well (New York City) . U.S, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said she was followed around a store and required to show her key at a hotel, unlike whites who entered before her ( New York City) . Professional basketball player and Olympic medalist Sheryl Swoopes was kept waiting to be seated for almost an hour at a restaurant, while whites who arrived after her were seated before her (Houston, Texas).

Pauline Hampton and her niece, both African-Americans, were shopping at the Dillard Department Store in Overland Park, Kansas , a suburb of Kansas City, with their children. After making several purchases, they went to the cosmetics counter to redeem a coupon. A white security guard accused Hampton of shoplifting, took her shopping bag, and, without consent, searched it, emptying the bag onto the counter. After finding the receipt for the items, he shoved the goods and the empty bag back to her. When she complained about his actions, the guard ordered them to leave, and threatened to call the police and have them forcibly removed. Hampton eventually called her husband to the scene and the situation escalated. They sued, and were awarded a $1.2 million judgement; the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dillard's appeal.

The store chain, based in Arkansas has also faced dozens of racial profiling lawsuits, claiming harassment and false arrest, in other states including Arkansas, Iowa, and Texas. Evidence produced in one case showed that although 16 percent of its shoppers were African American, 87 percent of the false arrest claims were made by them. In Texas, Dillard settled and paid money to the family of an African American customer who died at a store after being beaten and hog-tied while being detained, and has also settled discrimination suits by employees in Kansas and Missouri.

Other companies sued for racial profiling include Eddie Bauer, Avis Rent A Car, Denny's Restaurant, The Children's Place, and Holiday Spa.

Worksite Racial Profiling

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has had a history of disproportionately targeting ethnic groups of color for undocumented labor violations. Like all law enforcement, INS agents must have sufficient evidence of wrong doing to establish probable cause or reasonable suspicion to arrest or detain. They may not carry out their duties in a racially or ethnically discriminatory manner. While ethnicity or nationality are obviously critical elements in immigration violations by themselves, without additional facts there is insufficient basis for law enforcement action.

The New York Times reviewed files of INS raids released as part of the settlement of a garment workers union selective enforcement suit against the agency in New York City. The settlement included a summary that Latinos were 96 percent of the 2,907 people arrested in the 187 worksite raids carried out by the INS in the district, fat greater than their representation in the city's legal or illegal population. This occurred even where the INS acknowledged that half the workers were not Latino but Asian, including undocumented immigrants.

And while some raids were based on informant information, 80 percent were initiated by agents who cited as primary evidence subjects' appearance or language without evidence of wrongdoing. Included were skin color, speaking Spanish or English with a Spanish accent, appearing to be of South or Central American descent and wearing clothing “not typical of North Americans.” Such characterizations in major American cities are common to born and naturalized citizens alike.

Undocumented workers were discovered and arrested in all but a few of the reviewed raids, but nearly everyone arrested was Latino.

Suits have also been filed in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, and Ohio claiming racial profiling by the INS. A federal court in Ohio found violations of the rights of Latinos by that states highway patrol's practice of stopping Latino drivers to question them about their immigration status, including officers even confiscated the green cards of legal migrant workers claiming they were counterfeit. In California, federal courts have found Fourth Amendment violations of Latinos in the stopping of Latinos on the basis of appearance and foreign sounding names.

The Supreme Court has held that INS agents working near the Mexican border may use Spanish ethnicity as a basis for detaining a person, but that it may not be the only basis.

A related issue is the targeting by police, first reported by the ACLU in Florida, of Latinos waiting on public sidewalks for labor employers to appear and select them for work, under the offense of being "visual clutter."

"Voting While Black and Brown"

In Florida, the 2000 presidential election was rampant with claims of racial profiling. The presumption that African-Americans tended to vote Democratic provided the Republican-controlled election apparatus with an easily identified target. The state changed the election's outcome by targeting people of color in a manner reminiscent of the racist poll taxes and literacy requirements of earlier Southern history, or by carrying out facially race-neutral policies that would have a foreseeable disparate impact.

In the months before the election, Florida's secretary of state compiled an “ex-felon scrub list” of names for removal from the voter rolls. It contained thousands of inexact matches as well as names of state residents with convictions in other states that turned out not to be felonies. These actions were destined to have a disparate impact on people of color because of their higher rate of incarceration. And, in an action with similar impact, Florida residents with felony convictions in other states were removed from the rolls, even though courts had previously ordered the reinstating of voting rights to all who would have been eligible to vote in the state of their conviction.

On election day, poll workers in communities of color, following elected officials' instructions to strictly challenge voter eligibility, required photo identification of African Americans while asking for none of whites, and required two forms of identification from Latinos where the law called for only one. Untold numbers, estimated to be in the thousands, were not given affidavit ballots that would preserve their votes pending resolution of any qualification issues. Even the state NAACP president was denied one until she stated her willingness to be jailed over the issue.

Most serious were the hundreds of reports, in African-American communities, of state police harassment of voters at polling places and traffic checkpoints, where they lined up cars, checking driving papers and inspecting vehicles. Racial profiling at its worst, this tactic appeared to be designed to delay and intimidate voters of color.

As to the ballot controversy, African-Americans were 11 percent of the eligible voters, but 54 percent of the rejected ballots; four times more likely to have ballots rejected as white voters; more likely to be voting by punch card, which had three times higher error rates than optical-scan systems; and received almost none of the laptop computers sent to precincts for county voter registration record access.

"Flying While Black and Brown"

Airline passengers of color have long complained of racial profiling. Customs officials at international airports were found to have systematically targeted members of certain racial and ethnic groups, particularly black women, for intrusive and degrading personal searches, based on the false assumption that they were more likely to be transporting drugs.

In March 2000 the General Accounting Office issued a report of customs searches of 102,000 airline passengers in fiscal years 1997 and 1998. It found that black women were 9 times more likely than white women to be x-rayed after a frisk or pat-down search, but less than half as likely to be found carrying contraband. During those years, The Washington Post reported, 90 black women sued Customs after being searched at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, and one Hispanic woman, Amanda Buritica sued after being stopped, handcuffed, placed in a hospital and forced to ingest powerful laxatives. When she was released 25 hours later, no drugs had been found.

A new commissioner, Ray Kelly was brought in and pledged to end the practice. Although he eliminated the vague and often contradictory criteria that the agency used to decide who to stop, and although he reduced the total searches from 44,000 (‘98) to 23,000 (‘99) to 9,000 ('00) data from his own agency indicated that, despite his claims to the contrary, the search rate for African-Americans increased dramatically, from 14 percent ('98) to 19 percent ('99) to 27 percent ('00).

1 Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park,and Charles M. Judd Bernd Wittenbrink, The Police Officer's Dilemma: Target Ethnicity and the Decision to Shoot, University of Colorado at Boulder/University of Chicago, http://psych.colorado.edu/~jcorrell/SPSP2002.pdf
2 Amicus Br. in Support of Def.'s Mot. For Disc., ACLU Found. et al, United States v. Wen Ho Lee, CR 99-1417 JP, at 10,15, www.aclunc.org/discrimination/wen-ho-brief.html
3 AP, July 16, 1997
4 Pooley v. State, 705 P.2d 1293 (1985)
5 People v. Caballes, 2003 WL 22725527
6 State v. Wiegand, 645 N.W. 2d 125 (2002)
7 State v. Pellicci, 580 A. 2d 710 (1990)
8 People v. Dunn, 564 N.E. 2d 1054 (1990)
9Pennsylvania v. Johnston, 530 A. 2d 74 (1987)
10 State v. Dearman, 92 Wash.App. 630, 962 P.2d 850 (1998) (Held that a dog sniff of a garage is a search requiring a warrant).

ACLU - About the Campaign Against Racial Profiling

2009-08-06T06:55:00.003-04:00

The Racial Justice Program's Campaign Against Racial Profiling fights law enforcement and private security practices that disproportionately target people of color and Muslims for investigation and enforcement. We represent individuals who have been victims of racial profiling by airlines, police, and government agencies, and our present work also encompasses major initiatives in public education, including the creation of a film, bustcard, “Know Your Rights”brochure, and a fact sheet on Highlights in the Fight Against Racial Profiling. Our advocacy also includes lobbying for the passage of data collection and anti-profiling legislation and litigation of egregious airline and highway profiling cases.

What Is Racial Profiling?

Racial Profiling is any police or private security practice in which a person is treated as a suspect because of his or her race, ethnicity, nationality or religion. This occurs when police investigate, stop, frisk, search or use force against a person based on such characteristics instead of evidence of a person's criminal behavior. It often involves the stopping and searching of people of color for traffic violations, known as "DWB" or "driving while black or brown." Although normally associated with African Americans and Latinos, racial profiling and "DWB" have also become shorthand phrases for police stops of Asians, Native Americans, and, increasingly after 9/11, Arabs, Muslims and South Asians.

Racial profiling can also involve pedestrian stops, "gang" databases, bicycle stops, use of police attack dogs, suspicion at stores and malls, immigration worksite raids, and in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, harassment on the way to polls, "voting while black or brown". Customs and other airport officials also engage in racial profiling of passengers. Read more about different kinds of racial profiling.

Is Racial Profiling Real?

Most Americans think so. A July 2001 Gallup poll reported that 55 percent of whites and 83 percent of blacks believe racial profiling is widespread. And the reports of thousands of racial and ethnic group members across the country add credibility to the perception that racial profiling is real. These are stories from all walks of life, not just hardworking everyday people, but celebrities, professional athletes, and members of the military. Also, reports of racial profiling come from respected members of communities of color such as police commanders, prosecutors, judges, state legislators, lawyers, dentists and even representatives in Congress, who have been victims.

Racial profiling is a new term for an old practice known by other names – institutional racism and discrimination – and owes its existence to prejudice that has existed in this country since slavery.

Tens of thousands of innocent drivers, pedestrians, and shoppers across the country are victims of racial profiling. And these discriminatory police stops and searches have reached epidemic proportions in recent years, fueled by the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" that have given police a pretext to target people they think fit a "drug courier," "gang member," or "terrorist" profile. In fact, racial profiling is the first step in a long road that leads to the heavily disproportionate incarceration of people of color, especially young men, for drug-related crimes, and of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for suspicion of terrorism. Racial profiling continues to occur even though people of color are no more likely than whites to use or sell drugs, and Arabs Muslims and South Asians are no more likely than whites to be terrorists.

What is Discrimination?

2009-08-06T06:35:00.001-04:00

Discrimination

What is Discrimination?
Discrimination is unfair treatment because of an individual's membership in a particular group.

What groups are covered under Massachusetts civil rights laws?
Massachusetts civil rights law protects individuals from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, mortgage lending, credit, and education. Each of these areas offers protections to particular groups. For more information, see Are You In Need of Our Services?

I think I've been discriminated against, but I'm not sure how. Can you tell me what is considered discrimination?
In the employment context, discrimination begins with an "adverse employment action": something an employer does that hurts an employee, such as terminating the employee, not selecting the employee for a promotion, giving the employee a poor evaluation, harassing the employee with derogatory remarks or behaviors, or denying the employee's request for an accommodation of a disability. If you believe the adverse employment action happened to you because of your race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, genetics, or past involvement in a discrimination complaint, it could be discrimination. If the adverse action happened to various people from all different backgrounds, it may not be discrimination, and other agencies may be able to assist you.

In the housing, public accommodation, mortgage lending, or credit context, discrimination begins when a landlord, realtor, store employee, service provider, or lender treats one individual differently than others because of his or her membership in a particular group, such as race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, children, past involvement in a discrimination complaint, veteran status, or status as a recipient of public assistance. If you believe you have been treated differently than others because of your membership in one of these groups, it could be discrimination. If you feel you were treated unfairly, but it was not because of your membership in a group, it may not be discrimination, and other agencies may be able to assist you. For more information about housing discrimination, see our Unlawful Discrimination in Housing Quick Reference Guide

Filing a Complaint

How do I know if my employer is covered by state discrimination laws?
If you are a part- or full-time employee at a workplace that employs at least six part- or full-time employees, then your employer is covered. If you have questions about this, you can raise them when you come to file a complaint.

How do I know if I should file a complaint?
If you believe you have experienced discrimination within the last 300 days, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination is available to assist you. If you visit one of our offices and meet with an intake worker, he or she will explain to you what kind of evidence you will need to prove that discrimination occurred.

How do I file a complaint?
You can file a complaint in person in either the Boston or Springfield office. No appointment is necessary. For information about each office's hours and directions to each office, please see the Hours and Directions page. Please review the Questionnaires and complete any that are relevant to your complaint.Â Please bring completed Questionnaires and the Interview/Intake Form with you when you come in to file your complaint.

Can I file a complaint over the phone?
The MCAD will generally not file a complaint by phone. Unless you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have an attorney representing you, you must visit our Boston or Springfield office to file a complaint with a member of our intake staff.

Do you accept complaints by mail?
The MCAD will generally not accept complaints by mail. We have found that an in-person meeting with an intake worker produces the most thorough information gathering. However, if you are represented by an attorney, he or she can mail in a complaint accompanied by a self-stamped envelope.

Can I file a complaint if I am not a U.S. citizen?
Your rights are not affected by your immigration status. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination will not question your citizenship or request a copy of your documentation.

How much time do I have to file a complaint?
If you are filing a complaint about employment discrimination, you have 300 days from the date of the most recent incident of discrimination you believe you experienced. For example, Alicia is being harassed on the job because she is an immigrant from Cuba. On February 1, her locker was spray painted with a slur about Cubans. On March 1, her supervisor made insulting remarks about Cubans. The last incident happened on April 1, when Alicia's coworker told an offensive joke that mocked individuals with accents. Alicia has 300 days from April 1 to file a complaint. Alicia must come to the MCAD to file her complaint by February 1 of the following year. If you are filing a complaint about housing discrimination, you have one year from the date of the most recent incident of discrimination you believe you experienced.

How much will it cost to file a complaint?
There is no fee to file a complaint. You may decide to seek an attorney to represent you in the process. If so, the attorney will discuss with you what his or her fee will be. However, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination never collects a fee from someone who files a complaint.

What happens after I file my complaint?
Once your complaint is filed, your case will be assigned to an investigator. The investigator will contact you for more information about the case. The investigator may contact you to set up an "Investigative Conference" with the parties to learn more about the case, identify the issues in dispute, discuss possible available evidence, and explore the possibility of a negotiated settlement.

After I file my complaint, when will I hear from the Commission?
When you file a complaint at the Commission, your intake worker will give you a date for an investigative conference. You will be expected to attend the conference to explain your allegations.

I attended my investigative conference. When will I hear from the Commission about whether probable cause is found on my case?
The Commission expects to complete each case investigation within 18 months of filing. If probable cause is found ("probable cause" means it is more likely than not that discrimination occurred), you will proceed to the next stages of the complaint process, including opportunities for settlement and perhaps a public hearing.

Can I get in trouble or get fired for filing a complaint?
You have the right to file a complaint based on information you believe to be true, and it is unlawful to retaliate against you even if your belief was mistaken. The Commission notifies the organization named in your complaint of this provision of the law when it serves your charge. If you experience any form of retaliation after filing a complaint, we encourage you to contact your investigator immediately. If you experience retaliation after serving as a witness to someone else's complaint or speaking up about issues of discrimination in your workplace, you may file a complaint about the retaliation at the Commission just as you would file any other complaint of discrimination.

How much money am I entitled to if I win?
If your case results in a finding of discrimination, you may be awarded attorney's fees, back pay, front pay, emotional distress damages, and/or interest. The amount to be paid to the person who experienced discrimination varies depending on the nature of the case and how severe the discrimination was. Payments can range from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, discrimination is very difficult to prove, and most cases do not result in a discrimination finding or any payment to the complainant.

Do I need a lawyer to file a complaint?
No. It is optional to have a lawyer during the initial stages of the process. If you wish to retain an attorney, the Commission will work with your lawyer as we process the case. If "probable cause" is found at the investigation stage ("probable cause" means it is more likely than not that discrimination occurred), you may choose to have one of the Commission's staff attorneys represent you during later stages of the process.

Can you recommend a good lawyer for me?
The MCAD cannot make referrals to attorneys. However, other organizations do
provide referrals, such as the Massachusetts Bar Association. Also see the
Filing A Complaint brochure.

The MCAD

Where is the MCAD located?
We have three offices. One located in Boston, one in Springfield and one in Worcester.

In Boston, we are in The John McCormack Building, One Ashburton Place, Room 601, Boston, MA 02108.

Please see Hours and Directions for maps and detailed information about how to drive or take public transportation to the Commission's offices.

Where is One Ashburton?
One Ashburton Place runs parallel to BeaconStreet, between Bowdoin and Somerset Streets. As you face the State House, Bowdoin Street is on your right.

How do I get there?
By public transportation, take the T to ParkStreet Station. Or, take either Bus Number 43 or Bus Number 55. Both stop in front of the State House on Beacon. By car:From the West or the South South---find your way to Beacon Street, take the first left afterthe State House onto Bowdoin Street. From the East or North North---find your way to Cambridge Street (Massachusetts General Hospital or Boston City Hall) and ---turn onto Bowdoin Street.

What are your hours?
The MCAD office is open from 8:45 a.m. -5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Complaints are taken Monday -Friday, 8:45 a.m. -4:00 p.m.

What should I bring with me?
You should bring with you any relevant names, addresses, or telephone numbers, witnesses' names, and any other paperwork that will help investigate and establish your allegation of unlawful discrimination. You should also be able to give the date the alleged discrimination occurred.

For an employment case: You should have your employer's name, address, the approximate number of employees and the name of the parent company, if applicable.

For a housing case: Supply the landlord's or property manager's name, the real estate company's name, or the real estate agent's name, if appropriate.

For public accommodations: Bring the name of the owner or manager of the establishment.

Are there Federal agencies that protect my rights in employment and housing?
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which can be reached at 617-565-3200 and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) at 617-565-5320. 5320.

Where can I get a copy of MCAD's rules and regulations?
The MCAD's regulations are available online, or for purchase at: State Bookstore, Room 116, State House, Boston, MA 02133, (617) 727-2834 or Western Office of the Massachusetts Secretary of State, 436 Dwight Street, Springfield, MA 01103, (413) 784-1376

Maternity Leave and Pregnancy

What is my employer's responsibility regarding maternity leave?
For more information about employer's responsibilities regarding maternity leave, please read the section of this site about the MCAD's Maternity Leave Guidelines. The guidelines explain how much time off you may be entitled to, your rights to pay and benefits during your leave, and your responsibilities regarding leave.

Can an employer refuse to hire or promote me, change my working conditions, or fire me because I am pregnant?
Employment decisions based solely on pregnancy are unlawful.

Training

How do I Train Employees?
A guide describing training relative to topics, fees and contacts has been prepared and may be found at MCAD Training Services

Are Massachusetts employers required to provide discrimination prevention training to their employees?
While the MCAD strongly encourages employers to provide discrimination prevention training, there is no Massachusetts law requiring such training. Ensuring that all employees receive an overview of their rights and responsibilities within one year of hire or within one year of assuming a new supervisory position may help mitigate liability should discrimination occur. The MCAD can provide a list of discrimination prevention trainers to interested employers (call the Training Unit assistant at 617-994-6072).

Are Massachusetts employers required to provide sexual harassment prevention training to their employees?
Massachusetts General Law 151B section 3a strongly encourages employers to provide sexual harassment training for all new employees within one year of hire or within one year of assuming a new supervisory position. Providing such training may help mitigate liability should harassment occur. Harassment prevention training should address not only sexual harassment, but all forms of discriminatory harassment covered under state law. The MCAD can provide a list of harassment prevention trainers to interested employers (call the Training Unit assistant at 617-994-6072).

2nd Annual Immigrant Celebration

2009-06-03T14:06:00.010-04:00

CELEBRATING OUR IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES:

THE MANY FACES OF CAPE COD

We Welcome You All Newcomers, International J-1 Students Guest Workers from CVS Pharmacy's , Stop & Shop Supermarket, Star Super Markets, Shaw's Supermarket, and other Cape Cod Businesses.

2nd Annual Immigrant Celebration

July 8-14, 2009

Where: Harwich Center – Location- Brooks Park

Rt. 39 & Oak Street

When: Sun., July 12th, 2- 8 PM

Event Theme: “Hand in Hand, Across All Boarders”

Cook out, BBQ, Community Picnic, Softball, Arts & Crafts Show, Live Music Steel Drum Band ,Other Musical Groups?

Sponsored by the Harwich No Place for Hate Committee, and The Barnstable County Human Rights Commission

VOTE FOR LOCAL ARTIST for GOOGLE !

2008-05-15T11:43:00.003-04:00

Hand in Hand
What if … the world stops racism, and all people , black and white, and all religions, can join together. Most people think racism has been over for a number of years, but everywhere in the world people are still battling because they are different.
Name: Brendan Lynch
School: Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School
State: Massachusetts

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where we invite K-12 students to reinvent Google's homepage logo. This year we Doodle 4 Google is a competition asked U.S. kids to doodle around the theme "What if...?"

Well, the entries are in, and we couldn't be more impressed. We received thousands of wonderful doodles, and choosing 40 finalists for the public vote had to be one of the most difficult but enjoyable jobs at Google in the past few weeks.

So the kids have done their part, and we've done ours. Now it's your turn to help out by picking your favorite doodles. Your votes will help us select a national winner to replace our usual logo on the Google homepage on May 22, 2008.

Harwich Residents Celebrate Diversity, In Dr. King’s Name

2008-01-25T11:32:00.000-05:00

Cape Cod Chronical - By Allan Pollock

HARWICH — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a civil rights leader, a preacher and an orator, but most of all, a teacher. And, as evidenced by a gathering in his name Monday, Dr. King’s lessons still reverberate in Harwich.

The Harwich “No Place For Hate” group held a commemoration of Dr. King’s life at town hall on the holiday that bears his name. “It’s not a shopping day. It’s a thinking day, I believe,” organizer John Bangert said. The day is a time to remember Dr. King’s contributions to our nation, and to take time to meet and embrace unfamiliar neighbors, particularly those who don’t look like ourselves, Bangert said.

Speaking before a full meeting room, State Rep. Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown, said Americans tend to find each others’ differences, creating a nation of special interest groups. Even on Cape Cod, people see themselves as residents of a particular town, or as year-round residents, or as other subsets of a community, she said. Instead of finding distinctions, Dr. King taught people to find commonalities. When we follow that lesson, “this place we call home becomes bigger and bigger every day,” Peake said.

The keynote speaker at the event was Harwich attorney William Crowell, who has been a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for the last 18 years. Two years ago, Crowell decided to visit the SPLC headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., which sits in what was the epicenter of the civil rights movement, less than a half mile from landmarks like the state capital, the Greyhound bus terminal, the Dexter Avenue Church, and the place where Rosa Parks was arrested for not yielding her bus seat to a white person. For a person looking to learn more about the civil rights movement, there is no better place than Montgomery, Crowell said.

The SPLC has two major approaches to fighting discrimination and hate: filing civil lawsuits against groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and distributing a “teaching tolerance” program for use in school systems around the country. The SPLC headquarters was burned down once, and the attorneys—who are paid by donations, not legal fees—regularly face death threats. To Crowell, who runs a practice of real estate law, it’s hard to imagine.
“These lawyers are very courageous,” he said.

Traveling alone to the Deep South was “a little bit intimidating,” Crowell said. In a Starbucks coffee shop at the Atlanta airport, he noticed a distinguished Black man who looked familiar. On a hunch, he later spoke to the woman with whom the man was speaking, and confirmed that it was civil rights leader and NAACP President Julian Bond. The man, she told Crowell, is her husband, and he was conferring with her about a speech he was about to give at the SPLC headquarters.

Later, Bond invited Crowell to share a ride to his hotel. Seated together in the back seat of the car, Crowell admitted he felt like Bond had nothing in common with him. “Here’s a white, New England conservative lawyer,” Crowell said with a chuckle. But the two did strike up a conversation, discussing whose alma mater had the more beautiful campus. The important lesson was that Bond made an effort to reach out to Crowell “to make me feel comfortable.”
Crowell also attended a service at the Dexter Avenue Church, where Dr. King was pastor. Seated on either side of Crowell were people of color. There, during the prayer portions of the service, as is the custom, the worshipers all held hands.

“That really had a powerful effect on me,” he said.
Seeing the SPLC headquarters, hearing Bond speak, and seeing the various civil rights landmarks in Montgomery all were powerful experiences, Crowell said. But in retrospect, the most meaningful parts of the trip were his encounters with strangers with whom he assumed he had little in common. In the end, building relationships with these strangers was the most meaningful part of the trip, and the part most germane to Dr. King’s message.

“That was a glimpse, for me, of what Martin Luther King was talking about: the promised land,” Crowell said.

After Crowell’s speech, the Harwich assembly held a moment of silence, and then heard a reading from the Quran from Harwich High School junior Amira Downes. Then, members of the community stood to offer their thoughts about Dr. King and the holiday. One of those to speak was Carolyn Crowell, attorney Crowell’s mother.

(Hey- Who in Harwich Remembers This event in 1964?)

Mrs. Crowell said that one of her sons, Timothy, (William’s older brother) was a member of the Harwich High School Class of 1964, the last group to make the traditional class trip to Washington, D.C. After seeing the sights, the students stopped to have lunch at a restaurant, and the manager pulled one of the chaperones aside. The restaurant, he explained, would be unable to serve some of the Harwich students because of their skin color.
“And the entire class rose up and walked out,” Mrs. Crowell said.

Harwich Remembers Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2008-01-25T11:25:00.000-05:00

Harwich - About 60 people, many of them students from Harwich High School, turned out at town hall Monday for the annual commemoration of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Organized by Harwich No Place for Hate, the program featured singing, talks and a moment of silence. John Bangert, a local leader of the No Place for Hate initiative, served as master of ceremonies while William Crowell, a Harwich Port real estate lawyer, gave the keynote speech. Crowell is a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Ala., and related to the audience his experience at the dedication two years ago of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery.

State Rep. Sarah Peake (4th Barnstable District) also addressed the group, and spoke about King’s legacy. Selectmen Robin Wilkins and Ed McManus attended.

Harwich High School junior Amira Downes offered a community prayer and affirmation in a reading from the Koran. Others stood or took the podium to express their feelings about King and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

Local girl and boy scouts led the group in the Pledge of Allegience, and several scouts served as honor guard. The hour-long program took place in the Griffin Room.

A Day ON, not a day off !

2008-01-20T17:29:00.000-05:00

Monday, January 21, 2008
11:00 AM Harwich Town Hall –
3rd Annual MLK DAY
(A day on and not a day off!)

Commemorates the Life and Legacy of
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Email: noplaceforhate@comcast.net
Phone: (508) 432-0545

Singing of our National Anthem ~ The Star Spangled Banner -1814

Words by Francis Scott Key ~ Music by John Stafford Smith

O say, can you see,

by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed

at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars,

through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched,

were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare,

the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night

that our flag was still there.

O say does that star spangled

banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free,

and the home of the brave.

Honor Guard Harwich Cub Scouts
Pack 76

Welcome and introductory remarks: NPFH organizing Committee members John Bangert, Selectman Ed Mc Manus, Harwich Youth Counselor - Sheila House, Jane Henry and Chuck Micciche

State Representative Sarah K. Peake

Massachusetts State Representative, Sarah K. Peake gets cooking with cranberries during the Harwich Cranberry Harvest Festival.

Harwich Celebrates Our Diversity!

“Welcome to the Harwich’s—a place for all to live, work and play

Get to know your Harwich neighbors

Mr. & Mrs. Mike Massad -Lebanese Americans Operators, of Harwich Center Getty Station
Mr. & Mrs. Marcos Miranda - Brazilian Americans, Miranda Landscaping, Harwich, MA

Keynote Speaker: William Crowell, Esq. *

Topic: Southern Poverty Law Center and Harwich

(*) Bill Crowell, a lifelong resident of Harwich. lives in Harwich with his wife Dru and their children. Bill is a graduate of Harwich High School, Cornell University, and Suffolk University Law School. He is in his 30th year of practicing law in Harwich Port and for the last fifteen years has been a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, a block away from the Dexter Avenue Church in which Dr. Martin Luther King served as Pastor. Two years ago, Bill was invited to attend the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial constructed across the street from the Law Center in Montgomery and would like to relate his experiences from that trip.

Community Prayers and Affirmations - Lead by Harwich High School junior Ms. Amira Downes, in the Islamic tradition.

We also have a dream!

And now a word from our Community!

(Share Your Dream in a phrase or in a word!)

Closing Hymn: We Shall Overcome

1.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
·
· CHORUS:

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

· 2.
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand some day
· CHORUS

3.
We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day
· CHORUS

4.
We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid some day
· CHORUS

5.
We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone some day
· CHORUS

6.
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day
· CHORUS

7.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
· CHORUS

Reception: Albro House

Town of Harwich No Place for Hate Committee

US Muslims Find a Way Across Cultural Divides

2007-03-11T09:44:00.000-04:00

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Under the glistening dome of a mosque on Long Island, hundreds of men sat cross-legged on the floor. Many were doctors and engineers born in Pakistan and India. Dressed in khakis, polo shirts and the odd silk tunic, they fidgeted and whispered.

One thing stood between them and dinner: A visitor from Harlem was coming to ask for money.

A towering black man with a gray-flecked beard finally swept into the room, his bodyguard trailing him. Wearing a long, embroidered robe and matching hat, he took the microphone and began talking about a different group of Muslims, the thousands of African-Americans who have found Islam in prison.

“We are all brothers and sisters,” said the visitor, known as Imam Talib.

The men stared. To some of them, it seemed, he was from another planet. As the imam returned their gaze, he had a similar sensation. “They live in another world,” he later said.

Only 28 miles separate Imam Talib’s mosque in Harlem from the Islamic Center of Long Island. The congregations they each serve — African-Americans at the city mosque and immigrants of South Asian and Arab descent in the suburbs — represent the largest Muslim populations in the United States. Yet a vast gulf divides them, one marked by race and class, culture and history.

For many African-American converts, Islam is an experience both spiritual and political, an expression of empowerment in a country they feel is dominated by a white elite. For many immigrant Muslims, Islam is an inherited identity, and America a place of assimilation and prosperity.

For decades, these two Muslim worlds remained largely separate. But last fall, Imam Talib hoped to cross that distance in a venture that has become increasingly common since Sept. 11. Black Muslims have begun advising immigrants on how to mount a civil rights campaign. Foreign-born Muslims are giving African-Americans roles of leadership in some of their largest organizations. The two groups have joined forces politically, forming coalitions and backing the same candidates.

It is a tentative and uneasy union, seen more typically among leaders at the pulpit than along the prayer line. But it is critical, a growing number of Muslims believe, to surviving a hostile new era.

“Muslims will not be successful in America until there is a marriage between the indigenous and immigrant communities,” said Siraj Wahhaj, an African-American imam in New York with a rare national following among immigrant Muslims. “There has to be a marriage.”

The divide between black and immigrant Muslims reflects a unique struggle facing Islam in America. Perhaps nowhere else in the world are Muslims from so many racial, cultural and theological backgrounds trying their hands at coexistence. Only in Mecca, during the obligatory hajj, or pilgrimage, does such diversity in the faith come to life, between black and white, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite.

“This is a new experiment in the history of Islam,” said Ali S. Asani, a professor of Islamic studies at Harvard University.

That evening in October, Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid drove to Westbury, on Long Island, with a task he would have found unthinkable years ago.

He would ask for donations from the immigrant community he refers to, somewhat bitterly, as the “Muslim elite.”

But he needed funds, and the doors of immigrant mosques seemed to be opening. Imam Talib and other African-American leaders had formed a national “indigenous Muslim” organization, and he knew that during the holy month of Ramadan, the Islamic Center of Long Island could raise thousands of dollars in an evening.

It is a place where BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes fill the parking lot, and Coach purses are perched along prayer lines.

In Harlem, many of Imam Talib’s congregants get to the mosque by bus or subway, and warm themselves with space heaters in a drafty, brick building.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Imam Talib had only a distant connection to the Islamic Center of Long Island. In passing, he had met Faroque Khan, an Indian-born doctor who helped found the mosque, but the two had little in common.

Imam Talib, 56, is a thundering prison chaplain whose mosque traces its roots to Malcolm X. He is a first-generation Muslim.

Dr. Khan, 64, is a mild-mannered pulmonologist who collects Chinese antiques and learned to ski on the slopes of Vermont. He is a first-generation American.

But in the turmoil that followed Sept. 11, the imam and the doctor found themselves unexpectedly allied.

“The more separate we stay, the more targeted we become,” Dr. Khan said.

Each man recognizes what the other has to offer. African-Americans possess a cultural and historical fluency that immigrants lack, said Dr. Khan; they hold an unassailable place in America from which to defend their faith.

For Imam Talib, immigrants provide a crucial link to the Muslim world and its tradition of scholarship, as well as the wisdom that comes with an “unshattered Islamic heritage.”

Both groups have their practical virtues, too. African-Americans know better how to mobilize in America, both men say, and immigrants tend to have deeper pockets.

Still, it is one thing to talk about unity, Imam Talib said, and another to give it life. Before his visit to Long Island last fall, he had never asked Dr. Khan and his mosque to match their rhetoric with money.

“You have to have a litmus test,” he said.

One Faith, Many Histories

Imam Talib and Dr. Khan did not warm to each other when they met in May 2000, at a gathering in Chicago of Muslim leaders.

The imam found the silver-haired doctor faintly smug and paternalistic. It was an attitude he had often whiffed from well-to-do immigrant Muslims. Dr. Khan found Imam Talib straightforward to the point of bluntness.

The uneasy introduction was, for both men, emblematic of the strained relationship between their communities.

Imam Talib and other black Muslims trace their American roots to the arrival of Muslims from West Africa as slaves in the South. That historical link gave rise to Islam-inspired movements in the 20th century, the most significant of which was the Nation of Islam.

The man who founded the Nation in 1930, W. D. Fard, spread the message that American blacks belonged to a lost Muslim tribe and were superior to the “white, blue-eyed devils” in their midst. Under Mr. Fard’s successor, Elijah Muhammad, the Nation flourished in the 1960s amid the civil rights struggle and the emergence of a black-separatist movement.

Overseas, Islamic scholars found the group’s teachings on race antithetical to the faith. The schism narrowed after 1975, when Mr. Muhammad’s son Warith Deen Mohammed took over the Nation, bringing it in line with orthodox Sunni Islam. Louis Farrakhan parted ways with Mr. Mohammed — taking the Nation’s name and traditional teachings with him — but the majority of African-American adherents came to embrace the same Sunni practice that dominates the Muslim world.

Still, divisions between African-American and immigrant Muslims remained pronounced long after the first large waves of South Asians and Arabs arrived in the United States in the 1960s.

Today, of the estimated six million Muslims who live in the United States, about 25 percent are African-American, 34 percent are South Asian and 26 percent are Arab, said John Zogby, a pollster who has studied the American Muslim population.

“Given the extreme from which we came, I would say that the immigrant Muslims have been brotherly toward us,” Warith Deen Mohammed, who has the largest following of African-American Muslims, said in an interview. “But I think they’re more skeptical than they admit they are. I think they feel more comfortable with their own than they feel with us.”

For many African-Americans, conversion to Islam has meant parting with mainstream culture, while Muslim immigrants have tended toward assimilation. Black converts often take Arabic names, only to find foreign-born Muslims introducing themselves as “Moe” instead of “Mohammed.”

The tensions are also economic. Like Dr. Khan, many Muslim immigrants came to the United States with advanced degrees and quickly prospered, settling in the suburbs. For decades, African-Americans watched with frustration as immigrants sent donations to causes overseas, largely ignoring the problems of poor Muslims in the United States.

Imam Talib found it impossible to generate interest at immigrant mosques in the 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo, who was Muslim. “What we’ve found is when domestic issues jump up, like police brutality, all the sudden we’re by ourselves,” he said.

Some foreign-born Muslims say they are put off by the racial politics of many black converts. They struggle to understand why African-American Muslims have been reluctant to meet with law enforcement officials in the wake of Sept. 11. For their part, black Muslim leaders complain that immigrants have failed to learn their history, which includes a pattern of F.B.I. surveillance dating back to the roots of the Nation of Islam.

The ironies are, at times, stinging.

“From the immigrant community, I hear that African-Americans have to learn how to work in the system,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, adding that this was not his personal opinion.

At the heart of the conflict is a question of leadership. Much to the ire of African-Americans, many immigrants see themselves as the rightful leaders of the faith in America by virtue of their Islamic schooling and fluency in Arabic, the original language of the Koran.

“What does knowing Arabic have to do with the quality of your prayer, your fast, your relationship with God?” asked Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. “But African-Americans have to ask themselves why have they not learned more in these years.”

Every year in Chicago, the two largest Muslim conventions in the country — one sponsored by an immigrant organization and the other by Mr. Mohammed’s — take place on the same weekend, in separate parts of the city.

The long-simmering tension boiled over into a public rift with the 2000 presidential elections. That year, a powerful coalition of immigrant Muslims endorsed George W. Bush (because of a promise to stop the profiling of Arabs).

The nation’s most prominent African-American Muslims complained that they were never consulted. The following summer, when Imam Talib vented his frustration at a meeting with immigrant leaders in Washington, a South Asian man turned to him, he recalled, and said, “I don’t understand why all of you African-American Muslims are always so angry about everything.”

Imam Talib searched for an answer he thought the man could understand.

“African-Americans are like the Palestinians of this land,” he finally said. “We’re not just some angry black people. We’re legitimately outraged and angry.”

The room fell silent.

Soon after, black leaders announced the creation of the Muslim Alliance in North America, their first national “indigenous” organization.

But the fallout over the elections was soon eclipsed by Sept. 11, when Muslim immigrants found themselves under intense public scrutiny. They began complaining about “profiling” and “flying while brown,” appropriating language that had been largely the domain of African-Americans.

It was around this time that Dr. Khan became, as he put it, enlightened. A few weeks before the terrorist attacks, he read the book “Black Rage,” by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs. The book, published in 1968, explores the psychological woes of African-Americans, and how the impact of racism is carried through generations.

“It helped me understand that even before you’re born, things that happened a hundred years ago can affect you,” Dr. Khan said. “That was a big change in my thinking.”

He sent an e-mail message to fellow Muslims, including Imam Talib, sharing what he had learned.

The Harlem imam was pleased, if not yet convinced.

“I just encouraged the brother to keep going,” Imam Talib said.

An Oasis in Harlem

One windswept night in Harlem, cars rolled past the corner of West 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. A police siren blared as men huddled by a neon-lit Laundromat.

Across the street stood a brown brick building, lifeless from the outside. But upstairs, in a cozy carpeted room, rows of men and women chanted.

“Ya Hakim. Ya Allah.” O wise one. O God.

Imam Talib led the chant, swathed in a black satin robe. It was Ramadan’s holiest evening, the Night of Power. As the voices died down, he spotted his bodyguard swaying.

“Take it easy there, Captain,” Imam Talib said. “As long as you don’t jump and shout it’s all right.”

Laughter trickled through the mosque, where a translucent curtain separated men in skullcaps from women in African-print gowns.

“We’re just trying to be ourselves, you know?” Imam Talib said. “Within the tradition.”

“That’s right,” said one woman.

The imam continued: “And we can’t let other people, from other cultures, come and try to make us clones of them. We came here as Muslims.”

He was feeling drained. He had just returned from the Manhattan Detention Complex, where he works as a chaplain. Some of the mosque’s men were back in jail.

“We need power,” he said quietly. “Without that, we’ll destroy ourselves.”

Since its birth in 1964, the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood has been a fortress of stubborn faith, persevering through the crack wars, welfare, AIDS, gangs, unemployment, diabetes, broken families and gentrification.

The mosque was founded in a Brooklyn apartment by Shaykh-‘Allama Al-Hajj K. Ahmad Tawfiq, a follower of Malcolm X. The Sunni congregation boomed in the 1970s, starting a newspaper and opening a school and a health food store.

With city loans, it bought its current building. Fourteen families moved in, creating a bold Muslim oasis in a landscape of storefront churches and liquor stores. The mosque claimed its corner by drenching the sidewalk in dark green paint, the color associated with Islam.

The paint has since faded. The school is closed. Many of the mosque’s members can no longer afford to live in a neighborhood where brownstones sell for millions of dollars.

But an aura of dignity prevails. The women normally pray one floor below the men, in a scrubbed, tidy room scented with incense. Their bathroom is a shrine of gold curtains and lavender soaps. A basket of nylon roses hides a hole in the wall.

Most of the mosque’s 160 members belong to the working class, and up to a third of the men are former convicts.

Some congregants are entrepreneurs, professors, writers and musicians. Mos Def and Q-Tip have visited with Imam Talib, who carries the nickname “hip-hop imam.”

Mosque celebrations are a blend of Islam and Harlem. In October, at the end of Ramadan, families feasted on curried chicken and collard greens, grilled fish and candied yams.

Just before the afternoon prayer, a lean man in a black turtleneck rose to give the call. He was Yusef Salaam, whose conviction in the Central Park jogger case was later overturned.

Many of the mosque’s members embraced Islam in search of black empowerment, not black separatism. They describe racial equality as a central tenet of their faith. Yet for some, the promise of Islam has been at odds with the reality of Muslims.

One member, Aqilah Mu’Min, lives in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, a heavily Bangladeshi neighborhood. Whenever she passes women in head scarves, she offers the requisite Muslim greeting. Rarely is it returned. “We have a theory that says Islam is perfect, human beings are not,” said Ms. Mu’Min, a city fraud investigator.

It was the simplicity of Islam that drew Imam Talib.

Raised a Christian, he spent the first part of his youth in segregated North Carolina. As a teenager, he read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” twice. He began educating himself about the faith at age 19, when as an aspiring actor he was cast in a play about a man who had left the Nation of Islam.

But his conversion was more spiritual than political, he said.

“I’d like to think that even if I was a white man, I’d still be a Muslim because that’s the orientation of my soul,” the imam said.

He has learned some Arabic, and traveled once to the Middle East, for hajj. Yet he feels more comfortable with the Senegalese and Guinean Muslims who have settled in Harlem than with many Arabs and South Asians.

He is trying to reach out, but is often disappointed.

In November, he accepted a last-minute invitation to meet with hundreds of immigrants at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, an opulent mosque on East 96th Street.

The group, the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays, was trying to persuade the city to recognize two Muslim holidays on the school calendar. The effort, Imam Talib learned, had been nearly a year in the making, and no African-American leaders had been consulted.

He was stunned. After all, he had led a similar campaign in the 1980s, resulting in the suspension of alternate-side parking for the same holidays.

“They are unaware of the foundations upon which they are standing,” he said.

Backlash in the Suburbs

Brush Hollow Road winds through a quiet stretch of Long Island, past churches and diners and leafy cul-de-sacs. In this tranquil tableau, the Islamic Center of Long Island announces itself proudly, a Moorish structure of white concrete topped by a graceful dome.

Sleek sedans and S.U.V.’s circle the property as girls with Barbie backpacks hop out and scurry to the Islamic classes they call “Sunday school.”

It is a testament to America’s influence on the mosque that its liveliest time of the week is not Friday, Islam’s holy day, but Sunday.

Boys in hooded sweatshirts smack basketballs along the pavement by a sign that reads “No pray, no play.” Young mothers in Burberry coats exchange kisses and chatter.

For members of the mosque — many of whom work in Manhattan and cannot make the Friday prayer — Sunday is the day to reflect and connect.

The treasurer, Rizwan Qureshi, frantically greeted drivers one Sunday morning with a flier advertising a fund-raiser.

“We’re trying to get Barack Obama,” Mr. Qureshi, a banker born in Karachi, told a woman in a gold-hued BMW.

“We need some real money,” he called out to another driver.

The mosque began with a group of doctors, engineers and other professionals from Pakistan and India who settled in Nassau County in the early 1970s.

“Our kids would come home from school and say, ‘Where is my Christmas tree, my Hanukkah lights?’ ” recalled Dr. Khan, who lives in nearby Jericho. “We didn’t want them to grow up unsure of who they are.”

Since opening in 1993, the mosque has thrived, with assets now valued at more than $3 million. Hundreds of people pray there weekly, and thousands come on Muslim holidays.

The mosque has an unusually modern, democratic air. Men and women worship with no partition between them. A different scholar delivers the Friday sermon every week, in English.

Perhaps most striking, a majority of female worshipers do not cover their heads outside the mosque.

“I think it’s important to find the fine line between the religion and the age in which we live,” said Nasreen Wasti, 43, a contract analyst for Lufthansa. “I’m sure I will have to answer to God for not covering myself. But I’m also satisfied by many of the good deeds I am doing.”

She and other members use words like “progressive” to describe their congregation. But after Sept. 11, a different image took hold.

In October 2001, a Newsday article quoted a member of the mosque as asking “who really benefits from such a horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims and Arabs?” A co-president of the mosque was also quoted saying that Israel “would benefit from this tragedy.”

Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 have long circulated among Muslims, and Dr. Khan had heard discussion among congregants. Such talk, he said, was the product of two forces: a deep mistrust of America’s motives in the Middle East and a refusal, among many Muslims, to engage in self-criticism.

“You blame the other guy for your own shortcomings,” said Dr. Khan.

He visited synagogues and churches after the article ran, reassuring audiences that the comments did not reflect the official position of the mosque, which condemned the attacks.

But to Congressman Peter T. King, whose district is near the mosque, that condemnation fell short. He began publicly criticizing Dr. Khan, asserting that he had failed to fully denounce the statements made by the men.

“He’s definitely a radical,” Mr. King said of Dr. Khan in an interview. “You cannot, in the context of Sept. 11, allow those statements to be made and not be a radical.”

When asked about Mr. King’s comments, Dr. Khan replied proudly, “I thought we had freedom of speech.”

It hardly seems possible that Mr. King and Dr. Khan were once friends.

Mr. King used to dine at Dr. Khan’s home. He attended the wedding of Dr. Khan’s son, Arif, in 1995. At the mosque’s opening, it was Mr. King who cut the ribbon.

After Sept. 11, the mosque experienced the sort of social backlash felt by Muslims around the country. Anonymous callers left threatening messages, and rocks were hurled at children from passing cars.

The attention waned over time. But Mr. King cast a new light on the mosque in 2004 with the release of his novel “Vale of Tears.”

In the novel, terrorists affiliated with a Long Island mosque demolish several buildings, killing hundreds of people. One of the central characters is a Pakistani heart surgeon whose friendship with a congressman has grown tense.

“By inference, it’s me,” Dr. Khan said of the Pakistani character. (Mr. King said it was a “composite character” based on several Muslims he knows.)

For Dr. Khan, his difficulties after Sept. 11 come as proof that Muslims cannot stay fragmented. “It’s a challenge for the whole Muslim community — not just for me,” he said. “United we stand, divided we fall.”

The Litmus Test

Imam Talib and his bodyguard set off to Westbury before dusk on Oct. 14. They passed a fork on the Long Island Expressway, and the imam peered out the window. None of the signs were familiar.

He checked his watch and saw that he was late, adding to his unease. He had visited the mosque a few times before, but never felt entirely at home.

“I’m conscious of being a guest,” he said. “They treat me kindly and nicely. But I know where I am.”

At the Islamic Center of Long Island, Dr. Khan was also getting nervous. Hundreds of congregants had gathered after fasting all day for Ramadan. The scent of curry drifted mercilessly through the mosque.

Dr. Khan sprang to his feet and took the microphone. He improvised.

“All of us need to learn from and understand the contributions of the Muslim indigenous community,” he said. “Starting with Malcolm X.”

It had been six years since Imam Talib and Dr. Khan first encountered each other in Chicago. Back then, Imam Talib rarely visited immigrant mosques, and Dr. Khan had only a peripheral connection to African-American Muslims.

In the 1980s, the doctor had become aware of the high number of Muslim inmates while working as the chief of medicine for a hospital in Nassau County that oversaw health care at the county prison. His mosque began donating prayer rugs, Korans and skullcaps to prisoners around the country. But his interaction with black Muslim leaders was limited until Sept. 11.

After Dr. Khan read the book “Black Rage,” he and Imam Talib began serving together on the board of a new political task force. Finally, in 2005, Dr. Khan invited the imam to his mosque to give the Friday sermon.

That February, Imam Talib rose before the Long Island congregation. Blending verses in the Koran with passages from recent American history, he urged the audience to learn from the civil rights movement.

Dr. Khan listened raptly. Afterward, over sandwiches, he asked Imam Talib for advice. He wanted to thaw the relationship between his mosque and African-American mosques on Long Island. The conversation continued for hours.

“The real searching for an answer, searching for a solution, was coming from Dr. Khan,” said Imam Talib. “I could just feel it.”

Dr. Khan began inviting more African-American leaders to speak at his mosque, and welcomed Imam Talib there last October to give a fund-raising pitch for his organization, the Muslim Alliance in North America. The group had recently announced a “domestic agenda,” with programs to help ex-convicts find housing and jobs and to standardize premarital counseling for Muslims in America.

After the imam arrived that evening and spoke, he sat on the floor next to a blazer-clad Dr. Khan. As they feasted on kebabs, the doctor made a pitch of his own: The teenagers of his mosque could spend a day at Imam Talib’s mosque, as the start of a youth exchange program. The imam nodded slowly.

Minutes later, the mosque’s president, Habeeb Ahmed, hurried over. The congregants had so far pledged $10,000.

“Alhamdulillah,” the imam said. Praise be to God.

It was the most Imam Talib had raised for his group in one evening.

As the dinner drew to a close, the imam looked for his bodyguard. They had a long drive home and he did not want to lose his way again.

Dr. Khan asked Imam Talib how he had gotten lost.

“Inner city versus the suburbs,” the imam replied a bit testily.

Then he smiled.

“The only thing it proves,” he said, “is that I need to come by here more often.”

US judge halts the removal of more detainees from Cape Cod

2007-03-11T08:45:00.000-04:00

DSS, immigration agency ordered to sort out problem of left-behind children

By Brian R. Ballou, Globe Staff | March 10, 2007

A federal judge ordered immigration officials yesterday not to move out of state any of the remaining detainees from Tuesday's raid of a New Bedford sweatshop and to allow them access to lawyers.

Judge Richard G. Stearns also instructed the state Department of Social Services and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to work together to solve the problem of detainees who are mothers or primary caregivers and have been separated from their children. He ordered those agencies to give him a progress report by Tuesday.

"We haven't won, but we have made progress," said lawyer Harvey Kaplan after the hearing at the Moakley Federal Courthouse in South Boston. Kaplan is representing a group of immigration advocates who filed an injunction against the agency Thursday afternoon.

Governor Deval Patrick said yesterday he was receiving more cooperation from immigration officials after several days of tensions over state officials' access to the detainees.

"We now have full names, addresses, and dates of birth," Patrick said at a press conference at a healthcare center in South Boston. He said state officials would compare the information with lists compiled by the advocates during extensive interviews with families affected by the raid.

Today, the Department of Social Services plans to send two teams of 18 people to Texas -- one to El Paso, and the other to Harlingen -- said spokeswoman Denise Monteiro . Commissioner Harry Spence will travel to Harlingen.

Patrick also said that officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement had agreed to release a mother who was flown to Texas. State officials learned the woman was a mother when her 7-year-old child called a hot line created to reunite families following the raid.

"I understand that the federal government has a job to do in enforcing immigration laws and there was a practical reason for them doing it the way they did it," Patrick said. "The problem is when they executed it, it turned into a race to the airport."

Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said during the press conference at the courthouse: "ICE really had no idea about the impact of their actions. They're trying to clean up a mess."

The raid Tuesday morning at Michael Bianco Inc. sent shockwaves through New Bedford's immigrant community, as 361 workers, mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador, were detained because they could not prove they were in this country legally. The owner of the company, Francesco Insolia, and three of his managers were arrested for conspiring to hire illegal aliens. The four posted bond, and the company was open for business the next day.

"I want to extend my most heartfelt sympathy to the families of our loyal workers whose lives have been terribly disrupted by the events of the last few days," Insolia said in a statement. "When the dust has settled on this unfortunate episode, I guarantee that everyone that can be hired and wants to return to work will have a job at Michael Bianco Inc."

"I urge you to withhold judgment until all of the facts come out and these accusations can be confronted in a less chaotic environment and in the proper forum," the statement said.

According to immigration officials, about 70 of the 361 workers detained Tuesday morning have been released . Ninety people are being held in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, at the Bristol County House of Correction , the Barnstable County House of Correction , and the Wyatt Federal Detention Center in Central Falls, R.I. There are 207 detainees in Texas, with 91 at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Harlingen and 116 at the El Paso Service Processing Center.

Eight minors were picked up during the raid. Three of them have been released, but the remaining five were taken to a facility in Miami. The immigration agency was in the process of getting them back to New Bedford, said spokesman Marc Raimondi.

"As we have been doing since before the enforcement operation began, we continue to coordinate closely with our federal, state, and local counterparts, including DSS," Raimondi said. "The fact that DSS has not notified us of a single child in a risky or inappropriate setting. . . . says that the cooperation between us has yielded the results intended."

Virginia Becomes First State to Apologize for its Role in Slavery

2007-02-26T07:25:00.000-05:00

(AXcess News) Washington - Virginia lawmakers voted unanimously on Saturday to issue an apology for the State's role in slavery, which all began in Jamestown over 400 years ago. And surprisingly, Virginia is the first State to ever issue an official apology for its role in the slave trade.

Virginia is celebrating the 400th anniversary of Jamestown and as part of those festivities, the Virginia General Assembly voted on a Resolution that expressed "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.

The year was 1619 when the first Africans arrived as indentured servants at the Jamestown settlement. Later, Richmond, Virginia also became a point of arrival for African slaves and eventually developed into a slave-trade hub, as depicted here in this artist's rendering from 1845 of a slave auction.

Now, Virginia has become the first State to pass a Resolution apologizing for its role in slavery. Virginia lawmakers also expressed regret for "the exploitation of Native Americans" in the measure which was passed on the eve of the Jamestown 400th anniversary celebration.

A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat delegate who sponsored the Resolution, was quoted as saying, "This session of the House will be remembered by the fact that we came together and passed this Resolution."

The "slavery apology" Resolution passed the House 96-0 and cleared the 40-member Senate on a unanimous voice vote. Virginia governor Tim Kaine's is not required to sign it.

Governor Kaine highlighted the bipartisan success of his 2007 legislative agenda Saturday in a press release, but made no mention of the "slavery apology" Resolution passed by Virginia lawmakers, most likely due to his not having to sign the measure.

The passing of the "slavery apology" Resolution coincides with Black History Month, which Virginia celebrated with special tours of historic sites, music, drama, film and soul food.

The resolution says government-sanctioned slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation's history, and the abolition of slavery was followed by systematic discrimination, enforced segregation, and other insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias, and racial misunderstanding." News Link Site

Mashpee Wampanoag tribe receives final recognition as a sovereign nation

2007-02-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

PRESS RELEASE
MASHPEE - The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe on Thursday became a federally recognized sovereign nation, a decision that marks the end of a 32-year effort to gain such status and the beginning of a new era for tribal members.

The tribe received word at 5 pm Thursday from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs reaffirming its March 2006 ruling that the tribe had met all seven criteria necessary to become a federally recognized tribe.

With this ruling, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe becomes the 564th tribe recognized by the federal government and the first to be recognized during the Bush Administration.

The Mashpee-based tribe is the second tribe recognized in Massachusetts. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Martha's Vineyard was recognized 20 years ago. Today's positive finding for Mashpee officially takes effect in 90 days. "Without recognition and with economic pressures on the Cape, our tribe would have dissolved into the landscape," said Tribal Council Chairman Glenn Marshall. "Recognition as a sovereign nation has saved the tribe that met the Mayflower."

Indian tribes recognized as sovereign nations by the federal government have access to federal funds for benefits and services, such as housing, health care, children and elder services, education and environmental protection. The tribe also plans to identify land for the federal government to take into trust.

"I have been proud to be Chief of this tribe many times in our history, and today that pride is greater than ever," said Tribal Chief Vernon "Silent Drum" Lopez. "Our story has been told for generations, and today we add a new chapter. The history of our tribe could not be complete without our sovereignty, and today we can celebrate and move forward."

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the acclaimed book "Mayflower," offered his congratulations to the tribe and said, "This is a truly historic occasion. As a resident of the Cape and Islands who has spent many years examining the events of the past, all I can say is, 'It's about time!' Congratulations to the Mashpee Wampanoag people."

Today signals the end of the comment and approval process sparked by the March 2006 federal preliminary approval. The Mashpee tribe first sought federal recognition in 1975, but the petition did not reach "active status" until October 2005, under a court ruling stipulating a final decision must be announced by March 31, 2007.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Indians' history dates back more than 5,000 years, according to archaeologists, who acknowledge an unbroken continuum of habitation from that time to the present day. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe met the Mayflower and aided the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 after the terrible winter of 1620-1621. Once known as the South Sea Indians and later as the Praying Indians, the Mashpee nourished the Pilgrims, came to their aid and supplied them with much of the food for the first feast. In addition to a long history of contributions to the nation, members of the Mashpee Tribe have fought in every American conflict since the Revolutionary War and continue to serve our nation heroically to the present day.

(Published: February 15, 2007)

Wampanoag Masspee Nation Is Now Federally Viewed

2007-02-16T08:12:00.000-05:00

By SEAN GONSALVES
STAFF WRITER
MASHPEE - They've been called everything from the tribe that met the Mayflower to the ''Praying Indians.''

Some have even questioned whether the 1,461 members of the tribe were ''real'' Indians, as if the Wampanoag had been reduced to mere myth.

The U.S. government yesterday declared the Mashpee Wampanoag survivors worthy of recognition as a sovereign Indian nation after four centuries of confronting colonization, criticism and assimilation, and then being slowly squeezed off a rapidly developing corner of Cape Cod.

The long-anticipated, though somewhat anti-climactic decision granting the Mashpee tribe a government-to-government relationship with the United States came from Interior Department Associate Deputy Secretary Jim Cason at 5:09 p.m.

''We give glory to God,'' tribe member Ramona Grant said moments after Cason's call. ''Some of us are still

praying Indians.''

Federal recognition is not only a matter of pride for the tribe but also the key to accessing millions of dollars in federal aid for housing, health care and education funds.

On March 31 last year, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, ruled in a 187-page preliminary report that the Mashpee tribe had met all seven of the government's criteria for federal acknowledgment. No challenges to the BIA's findings were submitted since.

Tense moment

Cason's voice, which delivered the verdict a month earlier than initially expected, could be heard on speaker phone as tribal council officers, tribe members and a crush of news cameras and photographers focused intently and silently on Tribal Council Chairman Glenn Marshall seated next to Chief Vernon ''Silent Drum'' Lopez.

''Based on the evidence available, I have determined the Mashpee exist as an Indian tribe,'' Cason said, as the room erupted in shouts of joy.

Though the atmosphere inside the tribal council office was calm and upbeat before Cason called - in contrast to the nervous excitement of last year's preliminary decision - still tears of joy and sighs of relief came with the official word.

With tears streaming down his face, Marshall told Cason of his appreciation for the BIA staff who reviewed the tribe's petition. And though he said, ''We haven't always seen eye-to-eye,'' Marshall invited BIA staff to the tribe's July powwow.

As Marshall took congratulatory phone calls from Gov. Deval Patrick, followed by Sen. Edward Kennedy and then U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, ecstatic tribe members chanted softly and hugged each as tribal drumming could be heard coming from the heated outdoor tent set up on the grounds outside the tribal council offices.

''Once we got the preliminary recognition, we were pretty sure. We knew we had a good petition,'' Chief Lopez said in between hugs and handshakes.

Former BIA researcher Christine Grabowski, who was hired by the tribe to help strengthen its petition, said yesterday's decision was long overdue.

''The history is good; you don't need thousands of pages to know the obvious. They have the documentation, of course, but it should not have taken this long or cost this much,'' Grabowski said.

Starting the next chapter

The tribe's sovereign-nation status will become permanent 90 days after the decision is published in the Federal Register. Once that happens the Mashpee Wampanoag will be the 564th federally recognized tribe in the country, the second tribe to be granted sovereign-nation status in the state, and the first to be recognized under the Bush administration.

BIA officials said last year the Mashpee petition was one of the strongest the agency had ever seen - a petition that could not be undermined even by financial disputes among contemporary tribe members.

While yesterday's decision may have been anti-climactic for some, that's not to say there weren't worried tribe members, wounded by broken promises of the past.

''I didn't sleep last night,'' Marshall said, between exchanging greetings with other members and sharing stories with the assembled media in the moments before Cason's call.

Twenty minutes later, tribal council officers made their way to the stage set up in the tent outside, packed to capacity with hundreds of cheering tribe members and supporters.

''Mashpee will shine tonight. Today is a day for every tribe member,'' Marshall said with a strained voice, explaining there were too many people to thank for him to remember every name.

''Although we are newly recognized, we've always been a tribe,'' he said, before asking for a moment of silence for those who didn't live to see the historic day.

''We are here to start the next chapter - the chapter that says we will be financially set, and if it takes a casino, we're there,'' Marshall said.

Next, Chief Lopez stepped to the microphone.

''I'm proud to be here today to see our efforts come to fruition. We persevered and here we are today,'' he said.

Looking for land

The tribe's next move will be to apply for tribal lands to be taken into trust by the federal government.

The tribe owns about 170 acres in Mashpee and has been eyeing property off-Cape for a tribal office to meet the needs of tribe members who live elsewhere in the state, and possibly to build a resort casino.

Though the tribe's central service area is the south Mashpee region - home to about half the tribe - the Wampanoag's ancestral lands encompass a 50-mile radius that includes the entire Cape, extending as far north as Quincy and as far west as Rhode Island.

The first land priority, tribal leaders have said, is to build housing for tribe members who have not been able to afford to stay in their ancestral homeland.

Before land can be taken into trust, however, tribal officials have to submit an application to the Interior Department that includes specific plans on how the tribe proposes to use the land. That process allows for state and local officials to comment.

If the tribe's land trust application is approved, the federal government holds the approved properties in trust on behalf of the tribe, removing those parcels from the tax rolls.

Also, tribal council spokesman Scott Ferson said, tribal leaders, with the financial backing of Detroit casino developer Herb Strather, will pursue plans to build a resort casino in Southeastern Massachusetts similar to the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos in Connecticut.

Tribal leaders are being invited to meet with New Bedford city councilors to talk about gaming prospects. Marshall met with Gov. Deval Patrick's staff on Monday to discuss the issue as the governor and lawmakers wrestle with whether to legalize casino development in the commonwealth.

If state lawmakers roll the dice on high-stakes gambling, under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act the Mashpee Wampanoag, as well as its sister tribe on Martha's Vineyard, would have the right to build a casino.

But even if casino legislation passes, the state would have to negotiate a ''gaming compact'' with the Mashpee tribe and/or the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), which has sought unsuccessfully to open a casino.

As for the tribe itself, Ferson said, there won't be any noticeable changes in tribal governance.

Mashpee Selectman John Cahalane, who serves on the town's subcommittee on tribal affairs and was on hand for yesterday's announcement, said he looks forward to a mutually beneficial relationship between the town and tribe.

''I think in the long run this will benefit the tribe and the town,'' Cahalane said.

Sean Gonsalves can be reached at sgonsalves@capecodonline.com.

(Published: February 16, 2007)