Juan Crow Grows More Violent: Latino Activists Face Death Threats in Georgia

[struggle4progress]

Atlanta Latino
News Report
Judith Martínez-Sadri
Posted: May 25, 2008

... Less than a week after Rich Pellegrino called a group of human rights organizations together to protest the sale of a racist T-shirt, he received a shocking death threat at the door of his home ...

Threats against immigrant advocacy groups are nothing new in Georgia.

E-mails with messages such as, "You belong on a rope,” letters and telephone calls from anti-immigrants, and even protests during events organized by the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), have been directed at GALEO's executive director, Jerry Gonzalez, in the last two years ...

“We’ve been experiencing threats since 2006 when they trashed the mobile unit for Latina Woman's Day," says Gines. "For that reason, we moved from the little house in Norcross to Santa Fe Mall, where there was better security." Gines adds that her organization received four threats during 2006 and 2007. All were reported to the police, but they were unable to turn up any leads ...

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=92bed713a3c7a72317837af1cdbe555a
http://ofamerica.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/juan-crow-grows-more-violent-latino-activists-face-death-threats-in-georgia/

[The Traveler]

1. It's a mess

I lived in Norcross for a long time. Just recently moved ... and the crash of the schools in my area was the principle motivating factor for that. Latino gangs have transformed the Norcross area, and most people don't like the change. (Including many Latinos of my acquaintance.) Independent contractors have been forced out of business (like when my nephew's work van was relieved of its burden of tools and destroyed). The sheer volume of undocumented immigrants around these parts has created a number of stresses on various social services and infrastructure.

And, of course, there are elements of the white and black population around here who can think of no response other than thuggery. Yack. I understand the sources of the resentment, but harassment of responsible community leaders is hardly a solution to the above mentioned problems, and probably simply flings gas on the fire. Xenophobia limits the influence of reason at times like these, and I fear it will get worse before it gets better as economic stresses continue to elevate.

I have no good answers for the illegal immigration issue ... I am pretty convinced there are no good answers and we should seek to implement the least vile solutions we can discover. Do we as a nation need to control the influx of immigrants across our borders? Certainly. If we can achieve no control over growth of population, we have little chance of crafting an effective environmental and resource management policy, and those issues will become increasingly vital over the next decade.

But perfection of that control will be paid for in the coin of injustice and loss of liberty, as well as affronts to simple human decency. The nation must carefully approach this problem, and we must not allow would be vigilantes to guide that course.