An African pastor in Concord, N.H., said a hate-filled message was written on his home in black marker. Two other homes in the neighborhood, also occupied by African immigrants, were targeted. Each message referred to the families as “subhuman” and said the victims were getting a free ride. Concord is a major hub for the International Resettlement Program, which places refugees seeking political asylum in American communities.

Residents of a Sand Springs, Okla., neighborhood say they were shocked when they woke up Sunday morning to fliers in their yards from the United White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The literature said the group does not burn crosses or lynch people and urged flier recipients to “Support your local Klan.”

The Harris County, Texas, District Attorney plans to prosecute the case of a self-proclaimed white supremacist accused of beating a black man at a downtown Houston bus stop last month as a hate crime. According to a local activist, this is the first time charges have been upgraded to a hate crime in Harris County.
Brooklyn, N.Y., police are investigating an alleged hate crime after discovering two swastikas in the lobby of a Williamsburg neighborhood apartment building earlier this week.

Two psychologists testified this week that a Santa Maria, Calif., parolee charged with trying to murder a local waiter a year ago is mentally incompetent to stand trial. Curtis Martin allegedly asked a waiter at a Denny’s Restaurant if he was gay and when the victim answered that he was, Martin stabbed him twice.

Anthony Weston, one of three men charged with hate crimes in the beating of two Mexican citizens, has pleaded guilty and is expected to receive probation in exchange for his testimony against the other two defendants. Prosecutors say the three men attacked their victims outside a bar in San Francisco last November while yelling “white power.”

Ricky L. Hawkins was indicted on aggravated assault and civil rights intimidation charges for allegedly hitting a black man with a baseball bat in Lake City, Tenn., in 2010. Authorities said Hawkins, who is white, was shouting racial epithets at his victim when he was arrested and later told them that he was angry because the victim had dated a woman Hawkins was going out with. Hawkins reportedly had tattoos associated with the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations group.

Police say that security video footage was used to track down a man who was arrested for slashing another man in the face and arm at a convenience store near Lafayette, Ind., during a suspected hate crime. The victim said he was talking on the phone at 2 a.m. when the suspect cut him while yelling racial slurs.

A judge will decide today whether four people accused of a cross burning in Arroyo Grande, Calif., knew they were targeting a black teen. The teen was watching television in March when she saw a burning cross in her neighbor’s yard. The decision will determine whether hate crime enhancements will be added to other charges.

An Albanian man was arraigned in federal court Friday on charges that he provided material support to terrorists and had been planning to join a radical Islamic group in Pakistan. Agron Hasbajrami, who had been living legally in Brooklyn since 2008, allegedly sent more than $1,000 to a contact in Pakistan over the past year for the purpose of financing terrorist activities abroad.

A former Rutgers University student charged with intimidating his roommate because he was gay was in court today as attorneys tried to work out some key issues in the case. Dharun Ravi, 19, allegedly used a webcam to spy on Tyler Clementi’s encounter with another man in September 2010. The judge ruled that prosecutors must give defense lawyers the name of the man having the intimate encounter with Clementi and refused to dismiss the hate crime and invasion of privacy charges.

Cameron Nelson, 32, became the third gay Utahan in less than two weeks to report being attacked allegedly because of his sexuality. Nelson was taking out the trash at work when two or three people beat him up and yelled anti-gay slurs at him. Police in Salt Lake City are still investigating attacks on two other gay men.

Kenneth Paul Stiffey Jr., 21, of Indiana County, Pa., was sentenced to 18 months in prison and three years of federal supervision for his role in a 2009 cross burning. Prosecutors said Stiffey helped transport the cross in a truck and kept it in his garage until another conspirator took it into a neighboring family’s yard and lit it. The family hosted a black foster child.

Bomb component receipts, deleted pictures and a DNA match led FBI agents to identify long-time racist Kevin William Harpham as the man who built and planted a potentially deadly homemade explosive device on a Martin Luther King Jr. parade route in Spokane, Wash., earlier this year.

Those details came Wednesday at a 45-minute hearing in U.S. District Court in Spokane, where the 37-year-old Harpham — a man with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Vanguard News Network — pleaded guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and placing that bomb to carry out a hate crime. ( continue to full post… )

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joined Mississippi attorney Winston J. Thompson III in filing a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of the family of a black man who was beaten in a motel parking lot and then run over and killed. The New York Times also detailed the case, in which SPLC accuses seven white teenagers of responsibility for the June 26 murder in Jackson, in a story late Tuesday.

A member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood gang who wanted to “prove himself” in order to join chapter in Texas has pleaded guilty to four federal hate crime charges associated with a series of racially motivated arsons.

One of the crimes Steven Scott Cantrell confessed to was attempting to burn down the historic Faith in Christ Church in Crane, Texas, last December in an effort to murder a disabled black man he thought lived there.

Cantrell, 25, became a sergeant in “Ace Deuce,” a branch of the Aryan Brotherhood while serving a prison sentence in New Mexico, federal court documents say. The group is has been notorious as an extremely violent prison gang for decades, but in recent years it has also had a growing presence in the free world. Although it does embraces racist ideology, most experts see the group as primarily a criminal enterprise. ( continue to full post… )

Five people were arrested in West Allis, Wisc., but no one was injured Saturday at a neo-Nazi rally where participants were vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters. According to news reports, about 30 white supremacists, 100 police officers, and 2,000 counterprotestors were on hand for the event. Two people were arrested on weapons violation charges and three for disorderly conduct.

Zachary Beck, one of three men charged with a racially motivated attack on a black man in a sports bar in Vancouver, Wash., last year was sentenced Friday. Beck, who was formerly a member of the white supremacist Aryan Nations, was ordered to serve 51 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release after being convicted of committing civil rights crimes.

The Dubuque County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Department was notified of a potential arson/burglary with the element of a hate crime last Saturday morning. A black family living in Centralia woke up when its smoke detectors went off and discovered someone had entered the home and set fire to its kitchen rugs. Further investigation revealed a racial slur painted on the garage door.

New Castle County police are investigating a hate crime in Newark, Del., where residents found a white cross with a racial slur in the front yard of the home where they have lived for 22 years.

A neo-Nazi skinhead who once hung a black Ken doll with a noose around its neck on his porch has pleaded guilty to federal civil rights and firearms charges associated with the late-night firebombing of an interracial couple’s home in Arkansas.

Jason Walter Barnwell, described as the leader of a “combat division” of the skinhead gang Blood & Honour, faces 15 years to life in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 20.

The 37-year-old skinhead from Evening Shade, Ark., said he didn’t make a very good “domestic terrorist” when he pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. District Court in Little Rock to one count of federal civil rights conspiracy and companion charges of use of fire during a felony and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Barnwell and four other suspects were arrested by the FBI and indicted by a grand jury for Jan. 14 firebombing of the home of an interracial couple in Hardy, Ark.  The incident occurred during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. ( continue to full post… )

The white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is reacting with obvious delight to the latest racist rant from former Fox News host Glenn Beck. On Sunday, sandwiched between snippets of “shocking statistics” about black crime, ads for books by Holocaust deniers, and “news stories” like “Philadelphia School Cheating: Blacks in Charge,” the CCC posted a video of Beck’s remarkable Aug. 11 commentary on the 2012 election.

On that day, while discussing the prospects of various Republican presidential candidates, Beck said that if Barack Obama loses to a Republican next year the Obama Administration will try to destroy America on its way out the door.

“The next president needs to be willing to sacrifice his life, because the choices the next president is going to have to face is [sic] going to be awful, and I firmly believe race riots are on the way,” said Beck, who was in a studio speaking with a sign behind him advertising his new television show, “GBTV: The Truth Lives Here.” “They are being encouraged. This administration… What do you think these people are going to do? … They will take this country down. If it looks like they are losing, the uber-left, they will take it down. ‘If I can’t have it, no one will.’ … This is their chance of fundamental transformation. This is it. They’ve waited a hundred years and the uber-left will take it down on the way out.” ( continue to full post… )