Arizona immigration law blamed for death of Hispanic man

[Catshrink]

I hope this is just one loon and not the beginning of the "shoot to kill" mentality taking over. Believe me, there re many here who think it should be open season on anyone guilty of being brown.

The article has a photo I tried to link but it has "illegal code."

Arizona immigration law blamed for death of Hispanic man

Tension surrounding the passage of Arizona's tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration contributed to the slaying of an Hispanic man, allegedly shot by a white neighbor, a representative of the dead man's family said Friday.

Police and the family said the arrested man, 50-year-old Gary Thomas Kelley, allegedly directed racial slurs at 44-year-old Juan Daniel Varela before the May 6 shooting near their homes.

"When you have talk that becomes aggressive, it escalates the violence," said Carlos Galindo, a Phoenix radio commentator acting as a spokesman for Varela's relatives at a state Capitol news conference.

<snip>


A police statement said the two men had gotten into altercations several times in recent years. The family wants Kelley charged with premeditated first-degree murder, not second-degree murder, with a hate crime allegation, Galindo said.

"This family wants justice. They're asking that violence stop and that Gov. Brewer and other elected officials take responsibility for this hostile atmosphere they have created" by the immigration law and other legislation, Galindo said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/05/14/20100514phoenix-immigration-shooting-family-blames-law.html

[WolverineDG]

1. But but but the AZ apologists on DU want us to believe

there are no racial tensions in AZ & that the new law doesn't target Hispanics!!!

I hope they throw the book at this racist asshole.

dg

[IndianaJoe]

4. I'm no fan of the AZ immigration law, but

when you read this article about what happened, I don't see how the AZ law had anything to do with the shooting. A bigot shouts ethnic slurs at an Hispanic; the Hispanic retaliates by kicking the offender; the offender pulls out a gun and blows the Hispanic away. Now the latter claims it was "self-defense". Maybe one could claim the law has created a bigoted climate in Arizona, but to ascribe this poor guy's death to that seems pretty attenuated to me.

The death here is more a problem with bigotry, stupidity, and gun laws than the new AZ immigration law.

[damntexdem]

11. Sounds like a hate crime to me.

But I don't support capital punishment, so life in prison without possibility of parole should do it.

[jillan]

13. I'm from Arizona and chat regularly with other DUers from Az & haven't run into one apologist for

this law. :shrug: Many of us are working to get these racist assholes out of our state govt.

[Catshrink]

14. Russell Pearce - #1 racist

or at least a close second to Sheriff Joe.

[WolverineDG]

15. I've run into a few

Keep looking, they're out there.

dg

[Mudoria]

2. I don't see where the new law had anything to do with this..

the two had confrontations over the years and obviously bad blood existed long before the new law was passed.

[Catshrink]

3. Agreed.

There's no direct tie. Who knows what was going through the mind of the shooter? The climate here is a bit tense though and may have added to it in some way. We'll probably never know.

I really think that some of these "shoot to kill" folks dream of doing so but have no concept of what it means in reality. It's like the 'baggers slinging their rifles over their backs and strutting around. They talk big but I just don't think they connect their preening with life and death. If they do, they've sacrificed their humanity.

[Maestro]

6. I'm sure the new law

just gave the alleged killer more reason to hate.

[datasuspect]

12. the new law emboldens the white racists

they figure they have a governmental imprimatur for their crusades against brown-skinned "verbrecher" und "untermenschen."

it's open season on Latinos in this country. at some point this all boils down to white fear of the loss of ANY prestige (perceived, real, or otherwise) to any dark skinned "Other" and the fundamental white fear of miscegenation and intermarriage. Lots of whites still fear the sullying of the purity of the white feminine flower of virtue.

in other words, regardless of the all the rationalizations and spin, some white men are still fearful that brown skinned latinos might fuck their white daughters and knock them up.

and this is a fundamental fear. that's why they hate obama so much. a white woman had sex with a black man.

[Maestro]

5. And no one on the right saw this coming?

Do they even care? Why am I not surprised?

[Cleita]

10. Hi there. I guess we never thought it would get this bad

yet both of us saw the possibility of this happening back when we were being told we were asses for suggesting that there was something wrong in targeting a minority population with the blame for what our leaders in government and in the corporations have brought us.

[Cleita]

7. For one thing stop calling the victims Hispanic, a generic term that

means nothing. The man was either an immigrant from somewhere beyond our southern border, or he was a brown skinned American with a Spanish name. Calling him a Hispanic is no different than calling him a Mick or a Wop. All those words give the cheerleaders of this type of murder an excuse. Although I have used the same term in the past to describe myself, I have stopped doing so and refuse to check it on any forms I'm given to fill out. I refuse to be relegated to an underclass.

[Toucano]

16. So the headline should read: "Arizona immigration law blamed for death of brown skinned American

with Spanish name"?

You think that an improvement?

Context.
Context.
Context.

[icymist]

8. Arizona....

[Cleita]

9. Not necessarily in New Mexico, whose population of Spanish descent people and

Native Americans outnumbers the white population.

[marmar]

17. This was bound to happen.....

The climate has been created.