Hate Speech, Incitement and Hate Crimes in the U.S.: January 2009 – January 2010

• January 28, 2009 – The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a petition for inquiry at the FCC, asking it to examine hate speech in media, and a letter at the NTIA, asking it to update its 1993 report, The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.
 

• April 7, 2009 – DHS released an extremism assessment; the assessment reported that extremists “have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool” and that “anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups” and “has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence.” Rush Limbaugh decried the report, saying, "There is not one instance they can cite as evidence where any of these right-wing groups have done anything."
 

• May 31, 2009 – Dr. George Tiller was gunned down in Wichita, KS, while serving as an usher at church; Tiller had been repeatedly referred to as “Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer” on mainstream media outlets.
 

• June 11, 2009 – White supremacist James von Brunn shot and killed an African American security guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC; hateful messages against Jews and African Americans were found in von Brunn’s vehicle.
 

• June 12, 2009 – Minutemen leader Shawna Forde murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in Arivaca, AZ; Forde broke into their home dressed as a law enforcement officer, looking for money and drugs to finance her vigilante border watch group.
 

• July 2, 2009 – Forty civil rights and public interest organizations requested that the FCC act on NHMC’s petition for inquiry.
 

• July 28, 2009 – Neo-Nazi radio host Hal Turner was arrested for his Internet postings encouraging violence against three 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judges; the postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of the judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location; Turner wrote, “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed.”
 

• August 11, 2009 – Forty organizations submitted a joint letter to the NTIA, requesting that it update its 1993 report on The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.
 

• Late August/Early September 2009 – Glenn Beck’s advertisers fled from his cable news program after learning that their money was supporting Beck’s racist tirades.
 

• September 23, 2009 – Mario Vera was viciously beaten by men yelling racial slurs in Brooklyn, NY. This was the second anti-Latino attack in a year to occur in the Bushwick neighborhood.
 

• November 11, 2009 – Lou Dobbs resigned from CNN after Latino groups organized to pressure CNN to either make Dobbs return to credible journalism or to fire him.
 

• December 2009 – Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced a bill for comprehensive immigration reform.
 

• February 2010 – More than a year has passed since NHMC requested that the FCC and NTIA examine the relationship between hate speech and hate crimes. During the agencies’ year-long delay countless Latinos have been killed and maimed. As Congress takes up immigration reform this year, Latinos across the country are left to live in fear that the dramatic increase in violence spurred by the angry rhetoric surrounding the 2006 immigration debate will reoccur.