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November 13, 2008 9:43 AM
Steve Levy spent four days considering solutions to the violent hatred that led to the execution of Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue. Here is what he came up with:
1. Create a Hispanic liaison to the Suffolk County Police Department and the community.
2. Promote the county’s anonymous 800-220-TIPS number more prominently.
3. Call for schools to consider utilizing the services of the Anti-Bias Task Force to work with their students in a “Hate’s Not Cool” program.
4. Seek donations for the victim’s family.
5. Levy, along with the clergy from the task force, is calling upon religious denominations over the weekend to take time in their services to help preach the need for greater tolerance among all people and to denounce the Patchogue attack.
Will Levy be the first student in the “Hate’s Not Cool” Program? Will he learn that words can hurt? That words can kill.
Does Levy really think that Latinos are not reporting crimes against themselves because the tip line isn’t posted prominently enough?
Nothing he proposes indicates any awareness of the Suffolk County Executive’s role in pandering to hatred and in cutting many in the immigrant community off from the police. He wants clergy and teachers to undo the work he has done but offers no funding and no new programs.
He offers the family a payoff, but not an apology.
And as for the “Hispanic liaison”, when he had an Hispanic advisory committee that tried to tell him his deputizing of the police as immigration agents would drive the undocumented underground, he fired them. When his Immigration Task Force demonstrated independence, he disbanded it. When his Minority Affairs person spoke up for minorities, he marginalized her and ultimately drove her out. And when the highest elected Latino Democrat cautioned him against attacking immigrants, he tried to push him out of office.
Levy has never listened to the many responsible voices within the Latino community that have sought to advise him. He has mocked them, silenced them, demeaned them, and used McCarthyite tactics that make the remarks that dressed Sarah Palin in opprobrium seem tame.
Calling immigrants spokespeople “anarchists”, “communists”, “extremists”, and a “lunatic fringe” while consorting with an organization that spun out fantasies of Papal plotted invasions of America by Mexican agents disguised as innocent day laborers has been his stock in trade. Listening to Latinos. Talking to immigrants. Respecting the priests, social workers, union leaders, and advocates who know the 200,000 Suffolk residents who were born outside the United States. These are as alien to him as the “illegal” who cleans up after his dinner at the local sandwich shop.
Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, Babylon Politics, immigration, long island, Long Island Politics, Political Websites, social & economic justice, To Study Up On Nonviolence Tagged: | hate, steve levy, suffolk
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