When we get piled
upon one another in large cities, as in Europe,
we shall become as corrupt as Europe .
Thomas Jefferson


The democracy will cease to exist
when you take away from those
who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson


It is incumbent on every
generation to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would save
one-half the wars of the world.
Thomas Jefferson


I predict future happiness for
Americans if they can prevent the government
from wasting the labors of the people under the
pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson


My reading of history convinces me
that most bad government results from too much
government.
Thomas Jefferson


No free man shall ever be debarred
the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson


The strongest reason for the
people to retain the right to keep and bear arms
is, as a last resort, to protect themselves
against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson


The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson


To compel a man to subsidize with
his taxes the propagation of ideas which he
disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson


Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
'I believe that
banking institutions are more dangerous to
our liberties than standing armies.
If the American people ever allow
private banks to control the issue of their
currency, first by inflation, then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will
grow up around the banks will deprive the people
of all property - until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers
conquered.'

Attacks on Mexicans Leave Neighborhood in Turmoil

Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Blanca Galindo, center right, whose father, Alejandro Galindo, below right, had been attacked, spoke at an interfaith vigil on Staten Island this week.
Police officers patrolling by foot, car and helicopter have turned Port Richmond Avenue, a busy commercial strip on Staten Island, into something like an armed encampment. Reporters have descended en masse. Community leaders dash from crisis meeting to crisis meeting.


Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Rogelio Vasquez feared being attacked again for cooperating with the authorities.
A spate of attacks in the past four months on Mexican immigrants has upended Port Richmond, a working-class neighborhood on the borough’s north shore that is more accustomed to being ignored.

But amid the show of force by the Police Department, which deployed teams of officers to the area this week in what it described as a temporary move to protect residents and defuse tensions, local leaders are taking a longer view.

“The question is, what happens when everybody pulls up the tents and leaves?” said the Rev. Terry Troia, an activist and Staten Island native who has been at the center of the hour-by-hour civic response to the unrest.

This is not the first time Latinos in Port Richmond have been victimized in bias attacks. Ms. Troia, executive director of Project Hospitality, an interfaith organization that serves the poor of Staten Island, said the violence dates back to 2003. In one attack, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a cook at an IHOP restaurant was killed by three assailants in 2006, according to local activists and the Mexican Consulate in New York.

Some of those earlier episodes attracted news coverage, but then the neighborhood fell back into its usual fraught rhythms. Now its Mexican population, Ms. Troia said, is particularly concerned about what might happen next. “They’re worried that as soon as the police leave, they’re going to be set upon,” she said.

The Rev. Dr. Tony Baker, pastor of St. Philip’s Baptist Church in the neighborhood’s heart, said the attacks pointed to deep-seated problems. “I think we’ve gone to sleep on the conditions we find ourselves in,” he said. “And we woke up in the midst of a racial war.”

The police said Friday that nine men — all of them Mexican immigrants — had been attacked since early April, all by young black men. Six suspects have been arrested in connection with three of the beatings, but a grand jury turned down prosecutors’ requests to indict them on hate-crime charges. Two men have pleaded guilty to robbery in two of the cases; the third case is pending.

The most recent attack was on July 23. Fidel González, a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant walking home after playing soccer in a park, was set upon by several men yelling anti-Mexican epithets, the police said. The men punched Mr. González and hit him with a scooter, breaking his jaw and cutting open his head, then stole his backpack, which contained an iPod and two cellphones, the police said.

On Tuesday night, after appeals by the consulate and local leaders, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced he was sending an emergency contingent to Port Richmond, including about 130 additional officers, a 15-member hate crimes investigative team, horse patrols, helicopter flyovers and mobile observation towers at key intersections.

Mexico’s consul general, Rúben Beltrán, sent a representative on Monday to set up a neighborhood office and directly assist the Mexican population. The representative drives around in a car emblazoned with the phone number for a 24-hour, toll-free hot line and a message in Spanish that begins, “Mexican, know your rights.”

Since the representative arrived, several more Mexicans have told consulate officials that they, too, were victims of attacks but had been too fearful of deportation or retribution to come forward sooner, consulate officials said.

“There are all kinds of beatings that aren’t recorded,” Ms. Troia said. “People talk casually about this: ‘Oh, I got a dislocated shoulder’; ‘I lost my eye.’ ”

Civic leaders and police officials say they are exploring many possible reasons for the violence: anti-immigrant fervor, racism, gangs, the boredom of idle youth during the summer, joblessness, overcrowding and even the notion that attacking Latinos acquired a cachet in the neighborhood this year, prompting copycat assaults. But in the past few days, all conversations about motive have eventually turned to a dynamic familiar to many neighborhoods in New York: demographic change.

In the mid-20th century, Port Richmond was heavily populated with Eastern European Jews and Irish immigrants, who owned many of the businesses along Port Richmond Avenue. But after the Staten Island Mall opened in 1973, stores closed, property values fell and many longtime residents moved away.

Blacks became the dominant population in the 1980s and ’90s, but the number of Latinos also grew. After 9/11 and the imposition of tougher immigration and travel rules that impeded the flow of migrant laborers around the country and across borders, the Mexican population planted deeper roots in Port Richmond and grew quickly.

In 1990, according to census statistics, 950 people of Mexican descent lived in the 120th Police Precinct, which includes Port Richmond. By 2008, that number had grown to 8,400. Before 9/11, there were only three Mexican-owned businesses in Port Richmond, Ms. Troia said; now there are more than 50.

The student body of Public School 20, once mostly black, is now nearly all Latino and predominantly Mexican.

That growth among Mexicans has unsettled members of some other minority groups, including Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and especially blacks, many residents say. Black religious leaders and community activists say they often hear constituents complain that Mexicans and other Latinos have taken jobs that should have been theirs. “That’s a conversation that’s been going on,” Dr. Baker said. But, he added, some who have complained “are not going out to get jobs.”

Rogelio Vasquez, 48, the victim in one case that has been resolved, said he feared that he might be attacked again for cooperating with the authorities. Still, he said he harbored no ill will toward his assailants; the attacks, he said, were “the errors of young people.”

Port Richmond’s leaders are searching for solutions. Some want to address the lack of community resources, including jobs, housing and recreation. Others are looking for ways to bridge racial, cultural and even generational divides through initiatives like a gathering of mothers from different ethnic groups, or a midnight basketball league.

“What it calls for is work,” Dr. Baker said. “The Latino community, the African-American community, the Caucasian community, coming together and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”


Al Baker contributed reporting.

15-year-old Liberian immigrant boy arrested in attack on Mexican immigrant on Staten Island

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

Monday, August 2nd 2010, 12:58 PM


NYPD adds Latino cops in Staten Island
A 15-year-old boy has been busted in the robbing and beating of a Mexican immigrant on Staten Island, the latest in a string of hate crimes in the borough, authorities said Monday.

The 18-year-old victim was beaten and robbed of $10 early Saturday in Port Richmond near the suspect's home, cops said.

The victim, who suffered cuts and bruises on his face, volunteers with Eye Openers Youth Against Violence.

The suspect a Liberian immigrant who is now a U.S. citizen, was picked up by police about 7:20 p.m. Sunday because he matched a description of the attacker.

He was charged with assault, robbery and harassment as a hate crime and was due to appear in Family Court later Monday.

Police are looking for one other suspect in the incident, the 11th bias attack targeting Mexican immigrants in the area since April.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/08/02/2010-08-02_15yearold_boy_arrested_in_attack_on_mexican_immigrant_on_staten_island.html#ixzz0vT0QhYRl

Staten Island has always been a borough of hate crimes. Rosebank being one area where if you were an african american you better find an escape and get the hell out immediately. Staten island sucks!!!!!!

cibby will not be pleased to hear you talk about his hood that way BN

Youth Indicted in Staten Island Hate-Crime Assault
By KIRK SEMPLE
A Staten Island grand jury has handed up a four-count indictment, including hate-crime charges, against a man accused of assaulting and robbing a Mexican teenager last week, the authorities said on Friday. The assault was the latest in a series of attacks on Mexican immigrants in the Port Richmond neighborhood.

According to prosecutors and the police, Derrian Williams, 17, is accused of assaulting Christian Vazquez, 18, early Saturday and yelling anti-Mexican slurs as Mr. Vazquez was returning from working a late shift as a busboy at a Manhattan restaurant. Mr. Vazquez suffered a swollen eye and bruised ribs and legs in the attack, he said in an interview, and was robbed of $10.

Mr. Vazquez, who attends high school in Port Richmond, is also a member of an anti-violence youth group on Staten Island.

The police believe that at least two and as many as four other assailants participated in the attack, though the police have made no further arrests.

The authorities have treated the nine earlier cases as hate crimes, though in the three other cases in which arrests have been made, grand jurors declined prosecutors’ requests to indict the suspects on hate-crime charges.

The grand jury indicted Mr. Williams, who immigrated from Liberia and is now an American citizen, on Thursday. He was arraigned on Friday, a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel M. Donovan Jr. said.

The indictment includes three counts of robbery as a hate crime and one count of assault as a hate crime. The top count – robbery in the second degree as a hate crime – carries up to 25 years in prison.

Racial strife escalates in Staten Island
In a working-class area, 10 Mexicans have been attacked by blacks since April in suspected hate crimes. Some community leaders say tensions have grown along with anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.


Store owner David Torres talks with Officers Alejandra Vargas, left, and Manny Cantor-Alonso in Port Richmond. Police say the neighborhood has seen 10 attacks on Mexicans by blacks since April.


Reporting from New York — There's no doubt in Christian Vazquez's mind why he was beaten up as he headed home from work late one night, and it wasn't for the $10 the attackers stole from him.

"They were after me because I was a Mexican," the 18-year-old said, his left eye still swollen shut from the assault July 31 while he was walking through Staten Island's Port Richmond neighborhood. As his attackers punched him, they yelled, "Go home!" and anti-Mexican slurs, according to the police report, which had a familiar ring.

That's because Vazquez was the 10th Mexican victim of a suspected hate crime in the neighborhood since April. "Why this is happening? If you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different answers," said Ed Josey, president of the Staten Island branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, during a march Aug. 6 led by religious and civic leaders to condemn the violence.

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"The impression that Staten Island is a place of hate and violence — that's just not true," said state Sen. Diane Savino as marchers stood in a small Port Richmond park.

Borough President James Molinaro has attributed the violence to criminals looking for easy prey, not ethnic violence. "It could have been anybody," he said of the victims.

But police say that of 11 assaults on Mexicans in Port Richmond since April, 10 are considered bias-related, and those 10 involved blacks attacking Mexicans.

Citywide so far this year there have been 222 suspected hate crimes, compared with 125 by this time last year, according to the New York Police Department. The Borough of Staten Island has accounted for 26; there had been 11 by this time last year.

Ana Maria Archila said the officials' comments point up the challenge of tackling an ugly issue that some in the so-called forgotten borough, where leaders have been struggling to increase tourism, would rather see played down.

Archila is a co-director of Make the Road New York, one of several groups involved in efforts to resolve the problem. "It's extremely insular and it's extremely isolated," she said of Staten Island, a mostly suburban island of 491,000. Best known for the orange ferry that carries commuters and tourists the five miles between Lower Manhattan and the borough, its population is overwhelmingly white — 75% — but it has a growing Latino population now estimated at about 15%.

Archila and Jacob Massaquoi, a leader in Staten Island's African immigrant community, said tensions had grown along with anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, something they blame on Arizona's crackdown on undocumented residents and conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. "Their rhetoric is very personal, very inflammatory," Massaquoi said.

It probably doesn't help that some of the people leading reconciliation efforts have sparred publicly. In a Wall Street Journal interview last month, Josey said Mexican-owned businesses in Port Richmond were failing to hire blacks, sparking a retort from Molinaro, who accused the black leader of being biased himself. When the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., led a march for black-Latino reconciliation through Port Richmond earlier this month, Assemblyman Matthew Titone and Savino accused him of using Staten Island for personal publicity.

And after the Aug. 6 rally, Josey questioned why the Mexican consul general felt it necessary to weigh in on the situation. "Historically speaking, black-on-black crime has been something that happens and doesn't raise much attention. Now it's blacks attacking others, and a government representative from another country shows up," he said.

So far, Archila said, the official response has been focused on "very short-term solutions." These include putting 130 additional police in Port Richmond, a working-class district in the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge linking Staten Island to New Jersey, with a population that includes roughly equal numbers of blacks and Latinos. Watchtowers have gone up, police vans and cars sit on most streets, and police on horseback clop down the main drag, Port Richmond Avenue.

But the attack on Vazquez occurred despite these measures.

And on Wednesday, in a Staten Island neighborhood a few miles from Port Richmond, a Mexican teen-ager was robbed by a young black man armed with a knife who used racial slurs, police said. A 17-year-old was arrested.

Despite some leaders' attempts to paint Port Richmond as having no more problems than other economically distressed neighborhoods, local residents say it's not that simple.

Port Richmond has long been a gathering spot for Mexican day laborers, who would spend part of the year here before returning to Mexico. The tightening of borders after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks prompted many to settle permanently in Port Richmond, changing the neighborhood's face, said the Rev. Terry Troia of Project Hospitality, a nonprofit community service group.

"That was a German bakery last year," she said, pointing at the Cafe Con Pan bakery on Port Richmond Avenue, one of several businesses with signs in Spanish. The elementary school's Latino population has boomed to nearly 70%. Meanwhile, the recession has closed recreational outlets for young people and slashed opportunities for summer jobs, increasing chances that teens will take to the streets to blow off steam, said the area's City Council representative, Debi Rose. The nine people arrested so far in the suspected bias cases are all 18 or younger.

Troia said with rising numbers of other immigrants — the area just got a Halal pizza joint catering to Muslims — thugs could find new scapegoats if the current tensions are not tamped down. "If people can get angry at Mexicans coming here, people can get angry at the next group coming here," Troia said, "and then, nobody is safe."