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Combatting hate

by Jessica Carreras

The annual Michigan Response to Hate Conference, hosted by the Michigan Alliance Against Hate Crimes, was held Sept. 25 at Michigan State University's Kellogg Center. The day of speakers and workshops focused on educating the attendees about the status of hate crimes statistics and programs that work to prevent them, as well as trying to create Community Response Systems for targeted communities around the state, including Dearborn, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Mount Pleasant, Ann Arbor and Canton.

"Your input has the potential to create a landmark, groundbreaking event, and we will be crafting a plan that will be building Community Response Systems at each local level throughout the state of Michigan," Victims of Crime Act Training Specialist Linda McLin explained to the group. "These response systems will be lending support to those who have been victimized because of what they are and not who they are, having done nothing to deserve being recipients of this ill fate."
Kelvin Scott, director of Michigan Department of Civil Rights, also addressed the attendees, reminding them that Michigan remains the third highest state in the country in terms of bias-motivated crimes committed.
A reported 627 hate crimes were committed in Michigan in 2007, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics.
Scott spoke about the importance of hate crimes training and the CRS groups to combat these atrocities. "In order to effectively counter hate, we must become as energized and as organized as those who advocate hate," he said. "This conference today and the trainings over the past couple of years represent our attempt to do even more."
Scott added that the need for safe, hate-free communities was essential to helping Michigan cities to thrive. "The community you live in is about so much more than just where you sleep," he explained. "The community you live in is often determined by the quality of education your children receive, the type of social opportunities available to you and the job opportunities you have. Because of these things, everyone wants to live in a community where they feel safe, and none of the things associated with a safe community are able to flourish where fear and hatred exist."

The LGBT factor

Hate crimes against LGBT people, though not counted by Michigan law as such, were discussed at the conference. In the CRS workshop for Lansing, Mount Pleasant and Howell, several instances of bias-motivated crimes against LGBT people and communities were discussed, including several acts of vandalism and the case of the Lansing man who claimed he was the victim of a hate crime, but later revealed that he had inflicted the injuries upon himself.
Melissa Pope, who previously headed up the Triangle Foundation's Victim Services Program, spoke of the latter occasion as unfortunate, but not harmful to the overall cause of trying to pass the amendment to Michigan hate crimes legislation to add sexual orientation and gender expression and identity as protected traits.
"The numbers (of orientation-motivated hate crimes) aren't going down, and so the fact that there was one very public recantation is such a small percentage, it does not in any way reflect that there's not a need for legislation," Pope said. "LGBTs are targets of bias crimes all over the country all of the time. We've seen an increase in murders this year, so the severity is still significant."
Pope also added that it was the job of advocates to educate the community – which is often under or misinformed – on the status of LGBT-focused hate crimes legislation and statistics. "The hard part about it is you have law enforcement officials who are committed to ending this type of violence … . You have prosecutors who want to see it prosecuted as a hate crime, and then they can't," she explained. "It leaves, for us, a really big job of trying to educate society that these hate crime laws don't exist. Quite frankly, most people think that the Matthew Shepard Act passed 10 years ago."
Pope used the case of Steven Harmon of Portage, Mich. as an example. Harmon was attacked because he is gay, and his mother was horrified to find out that hate crimes laws could not bring justice for her son. "One of the worst parts about not having a hate crimes law that protects LGBTs is that it re-victimizes them as well as any of their loved ones and it's absolutely devastating to them," she said. "A lot of the organizations out there to assist victims of hate crimes cannot help the LGBT community because it's not a hate crime and their funding sources only allow them to help people who are victims of hate crimes."
The proposed Community Response Systems are supposed to help bridge that gap, helping victims of bias-motivated crimes in their communities, regardless of the legal status of the crime. The Michigan Alliance Against Hate Crimes, Pope said, has "a strong commitment to being LGBT inclusive."

New York in comparison

The keynote speaker for the conference, Deputy Commissioner for Regional Affairs for the New York Division on Human Rights Jyll Townes, echoed Pope's fears for the LGBT community in her speech about the status of hate crimes and legislation in her home state, which stands just under Michigan in terms of reported hate crimes per year.
Under Townes, New York City expanded anti-discrimination protections to transgender people – a move that caused a backlash from some city agencies and citizens. One agency even warned that a trans person caught using the "wrong " bathroom on the Stanton Island ferry would be thrown overboard. "We had to worry about not only what the law said," Townes explained, "but also what challenges were going to be presented with other people in the workplace, in the case of domestic violence and what challenges there would be in the public."
Statistically, Townes shared that there were almost 600 reported hate crimes in New York in 2008. One-third of those were against LGBT people – specifically gay men.
Townes commented that to achieve agreement on the need for hate crimes and other protections for LGBT people, advocates for them would have to change minds first. "I think that people justify (their) resistance based on the perception that these laws have gone too far, that we don't really need a separate hate crimes category and that these laws are creating an undue burden on agencies that have to deal with them," she said. "I think the reason for resistance is that we haven't had a social or philosophical shift that we have to have in order for some of the civil rights laws to evolve in terms of hate crimes."

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