Tuesday, April 15, 2014 6:05:48 AM
'This Was A Hate Crime,' Police Say Of Kansas City-Area Killings
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Glenn Miller, is accused of killing three people Sunday in Kansas City. He allegedly attacked them at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement facility.
Johnson County, Kan., Sheriff's Office
by Mark Memmott
April 14, 2014 6:50 AM ET Updated at 1 p.m. ET
The man who shot and killed three people Sunday near Kansas City will face federal hate crime charges for the attacks at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home, authorities said Monday.
"This was a hate crime," Overland Park, Kan., Police Chief John Douglass told reporters at a midday news conference.
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Glenn Miller, is already in jail. The 73-year-old man was taken into custody shortly after the attacks and is accused of premeditated murder.
Cross, as we reported earlier, has been tracked for years by organizations that monitor hate groups. They say he's a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and spent time in prison for weapons convictions and other charges. Jews had long been among those he allegedly railed about.
The three people who died were:
— Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, an Eagle Scout and member of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood [ http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/13/4958621/doctor-grandson-in-heaven-together.html (fifth item below)].
— Reat's grandfather, Dr. William Lewis Corporon [ http://www.koco.com/news/family-former-duncan-okla-doctor-among-those-killed-in-jewish-center-shooting/25460888 ], a physician who had moved to the area about a decade ago to be near his grandson.
— "Fifty-three-year-old Terri LaManno [ http://www.kctv5.com/story/25235053/shooting-reported-at-overland-park-jewish-community-center ], a mother who worked at the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired."
Our original post — Suspect In Killings At Kansas City Jewish Sites Linked To KKK [ http://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/303009944/suspected-kansas-shooter-had-ties-to-kkk ] — has more background.
The man accused in Sunday's shootings [ http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/13/302710854/reports-3-dead-after-shootings-at-jewish-facilities-near-kansas-city ] at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home near Kansas City, which left three people dead, is a 73-year-old former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-cent (next below)], which tracks "hate groups and domestic terrorists [ http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do ]."
Frazier Glenn Cross, who goes by the name Glenn Miller, is accused of premeditated murder in the first degree in the shootings in Overland Park, Kan., according to information posted online by the Johnson County (Kan.) Sheriff's Office.
The poverty law center says Cross has served at least two jail terms, including "three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of [Southern Poverty Law Center] founder Morris Dees."
Kansas City's KCTV adds that [ http://www.kctv5.com/story/25235053/shooting-reported-at-overland-park-jewish-community-center ] Cross "is a perennial candidate for office, including running in 2006 against then-U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. He ran against Blunt in 2010 when Blunt was elected to the Senate. Cross made headlines in the 2010 campaign for his racist and anti-Semitic campaign ads. Federal law required broadcast stations to air the ads even though they did not want to put such vile rantings on their airwaves."
The Kansas City Star writes [ http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/13/4957486/one-reported-dead-in-shooting.html ] that after he was arrested Sunday, Cross "went on a rant inside the patrol car. Though Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass wouldn't say what Cross hollered, a television crew captured him on video while he was handcuffed in the back of the car. 'Heil Hitler,' Miller yelled out, and then he bobbed his head up and down."
"According to police," The Associated Press says [ http://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/302855030/supremacist-idd-as-suspect-in-kansas-attacks ], "the attacks happened within minutes of one another. At around 1 p.m. a gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove a few blocks away to a Jewish retirement community, Village Shalom, and gunned down a woman or girl there."
The wire service adds that:
"Authorities declined to release the victims' names pending notification of their relatives, and the identity of the person shot at the retirement community was still unknown early Monday. However, the family of the first two victims put out a statement identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
"They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among other people, for their support."
Cross is due in court later today.
Update at 5:30 p.m. ET. Cross Reportedly 'Led Neo-Nazi Group'
Frank Morris, a reporter with member station KCUR in Kansas City, spoke to Sam Taylor, who heads the white supremacist threat department at the SITE Intelligence Group [ http://wst.siteintelgroup.com/ ].
Taylor says Cross led a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in North Carolina in the 1980s and has also been "very active online," calling for genocide against Jews and raising money for violent white supremacists.
©2014 NPR
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/14/302871181/suspect-in-killings-at-kansas-city-jewish-sites-linked-to-kkk [with comments]
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Frazier Glenn Miller, Longtime Anti-Semite, Arrested in Kansas Jewish Community Center Murders
By Heidi Beirich on April 13, 2014 - 8:41 pm
Frazier Glenn Miller [ http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Miller ], 73, of Aurora, Mo., was arrested today for the murder of three people at two separate Jewish Community Centers in Overland Park, Kan. Miller, who was arrested using the alias Frazier Glenn Cross [ http://abcnews.go.com/US/73-year-custody-fatal-jewish-center-shooting/story?id=23310932 ], has been in the movement nearly his entire life. Miller is the former “grand dragon” of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which he founded and ran in the 1980s before being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for operating an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against African Americans.
After subsequently forming another Klan group, the White Patriot Party, he was found in criminal contempt and sentenced to six months in prison for violating the court settlement. He went underground while his conviction was under appeal but was caught by the FBI with a weapons cache in Missouri. He served three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees. As part of a plea bargain, Miller testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 sedition trial.
Miller is a raging anti-Semite who has posted more than 12,000 times on Vanguard News Network (VNN), whose slogan is “No Jews, Just Right.” VNN founder Alex Linder has openly advocated “exterminating [ http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=105083 ]” Jews since December 2009. Miller, a close partner to Linder, has called Jews “swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed, parasitic midgets.” Miller is also one of VNN’s largest donors and he printed and distributed thousands of copies of VNN’s newsletter, The Aryan Alternative.
This isn’t the first time a VNN user has been arrested for violence. On January 17, 2011, less than 12 hours after posting on VNN, Kevin William Harpham placed an improvised explosive device concealed in a backpack along a Martin Luther King parade route in Spokane Washington. The lead sinkers in the radio-detonated IED were coated with Warfarin rat poison, evidently intended to increase bleeding. Had the device functioned, dozens of men, women and children would have been killed or injured. Harpham also distributed The Aryan Alternative.
Our research shows that racist killers are hiding among us in plain sight. A forthcoming two-year study by the SPLC will show that nearly 100 people in the last five years have been murdered by active users on another prominent racist website, Stormfront.org.
In a phone conversation with his wife Marge, who has apparently never been active in the white supremacist movement, the SPLC was able to confirm that Miller had gone to a local casino in Missouri yesterday afternoon. He called his wife this morning at about 10:30 AM to tell her his winnings were up and all was well. She has not heard from him since, but law enforcement was at her door at 8:30 PM and she told the SPLC that they told her Miller was arrested for the shootings.
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ [with comments]
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Frazier Glenn Miller, Suspected Kansas Shooter, Posted Thousands of Messages to White Supremacist Board
By Bill Morlin on April 14, 2014 - 9:04 am
A day before he allegedly went on a weekend killing spree [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ (just above)] targeting Jews, Frazier Glenn Miller [ http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Miller ] publicly discussed talking by phone with another white supremacist who wanted to turn a small North Dakota town into a whites-only enclave.
But that is only one of 12,683 anti-Semitic, racist Internet postings Miller has made on one racist site alone – the Vanguard News Network – in the past decade.
In other postings, Miller has discussed the potential impacts if President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were both assassinated. In another post, Miller applauds a recent commentary by Pat Buchanan who said Russian president Vladimir Putin is merely protecting the ethnicity of Russians in his standoff with Ukraine, comparing Russia with Israel protecting Jews worldwide.
It’s his most recent posting – just a day before the shootings – about his conversation with fellow racist Craig Cobb [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/08/22/white-supremacists-making-bid-to-take-over-north-dakota-town/ ] that likely will get the attention of the FBI. Agents likely will pay Cobb a visit in his North Dakota jail cell [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/11/18/white-supremacist-arrested-in-north-dakota-town-where-he-wants-to-establish-racist-enclave/ ], asking if Miller gave any hint about what he may have had planned for Palm Sunday, the day before the start of Passover.
On the VNN Forum, Miller, using the screen name “Rounder,” posted a public message claiming that he had received a phone call on Saturday from Craig Cobb, who is in jail in North Dakota. Outgoing calls from the jail are logged, perhaps even recorded, so that evidence likely will be of interest to investigators.
Cobb has made his own headlines in the past six months. He is in jail on seven charges of terrorizing people last November when he and a fellow racist walked through the tiny town of Leith, N.D., where they were buying up homes in a failed attempt to create a whites-only town [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/winter/Village-of-the-Damned ]. He apparently is among Miller’s shortlist of white nationalist heroes.
On the VNN Forum on Saturday, Miller told his fellow racists of his conversation with Cobb, saying he “sounded confident and healthy” and explained that his presentence investigation is completed as he awaits sentencing in the coming days.
“I made him promise to visit me IF and WHEN he can,” Miller wrote in his VNN posting.
Miller wrote that he asked Cobb if any Vanguard News Network members “had written or sent money in the past few weeks. “He said none, except for ‘Paul’ who writes him and also sends him $100 bills.”
To that, Miller offered thanks to “Paul,” whom he said is a white nationalist “with initiative and the will of his convictions.”
Like he usually does, Miller signed off his VNN posting about Cobb by quoting Voltaire: “To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
His racist rants and Internet postings go back at least a decade and are laced with anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-government messages, largely built around the racist philosophy that the government is ZOG – a Zionist Occupied Government, or as Miller apparently prefers, JOG – Jewish Occupied Government.
In a Feb. 9, 2008, nine months before Barack Obama was elected the first black president of the United States, Miller wondered aloud what the reaction would be if Obama or Hillary Clinton were assassinated.
“I mean considering the nigger reactions to the assassination of Martin Looter Koon in 1968,” Miller wrote. “Remember ?? Niggers rioted, burned, looted and violently attacked whites all over the country, and in more than a thousand towns and cities.”
His post continued: “I “fear” that if Obama suffered a like fate now, the riotings (sic) would be far worse, and considering the large numbers of niggers and assorted shitskins now in the military, reserve, national guard, and law enforcement, many of whom would join in the riotings, while their white peers deserted their posts to defend their own families, it would be impossible for the ZOG to restore order.”
Consequently, Miller predicted, “race wars would engulf the entire country in a matter of days.
“The ZOG couldn’t even control the niggers during Katrina or during the Rodney King riots,” Miller wrote, adding: “Just imagine The Barack Obama Riots.
“Furthermore, to stir the shit even hotter, suppose both Obama and Hillary were assassinated the same year, say a few months apart,” he wrote.
Miller ended by saying, “Oh glory. . . . I say, oh glory, glory days. (A redneck can dream, can’t he ??) .”
This past January, Miller made another VNN posting, seeming to suggest that fellow racist Kevin Strom, who is serving time for possessing child pornography, was framed by someone else who put child porn images on his computer.
Strom, like Miller, has had past affiliations with the now largely defunct National Alliance, once the largest neo-Nazi organization of its kind in the United States under the leadership of the late William Pierce, who appears to be one of Miller’s heroes.
Miller makes references to nationally known racists identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center
“If you, like Strom, were an internationally known, and highly successful anti-semite and on the SPLC’s list of top 40 bad guys, it would be absolutely impossible to prove to any JOG picked jury, that somebody else placed porn on your computer,” Miller wrote.
His posting was a response to another poster who he urged to “advise folks just how they can prove that someone else placed porn on their own computer.
In another Vanguard posting on March 18, Miller seems to suggest that the Russian president is the target of international Jewish interests, referring to a recent column by conservative columnist Pat Buchanan.
Miller said he agreed with Buchanan who described Putin as “a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern:
“In my opinion,” Miller wrote, “this statement by Buchanan provides an extremely deep insight into jewish influence over Russia today. Buchanan does not name the jew, but I don’t believe he lies. Therefore, his above statement reflects what he truly believes. And I’ll add, it brightened my day.”
“We can now more accurately and confidently analyze the situation in Ukraine and Crimea,” Miller wrote. “I also believe that lots of gentiles in high places also read Buchanan’s articles these days. They too will now be a bit more enlightened by knowing that Russia is not yet a JOG, and that Russia is most likely ruled by an anti-JOG.”
“China too is watching,” Miller continued. “Perhaps, they are pulling for, and supporting Putin, since they know they’ll be the next target of Big Jew and his JOGs, if Russia loses.”
His anti-Semitic tones came through clearly in a Nov. 29, 2012, posting on the same Vanguard site where he was responded to another poster, offering advice.
“You might begin by saying: ‘All you gals who believe that jews are god’s chosen people oughta change your religion to judiasm (sic), or explain to me right now, why not.’
“Another good one is: ‘Since jews don’t believe in christ, doesn’t that mean that all those millions of dead jews, are burning in hell right now? You have a golden opportunity for great fun, in any case.
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/14/frazier-glenn-miller-suspected-kansas-shooter-posted-thousands-of-messages-to-white-supremacist-board/ [with comments]
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Frazier Glenn Miller, Suspected Kansas Shooter, May Have Been Marking Birthday of ‘Hero’ Racist Serial Killer
By Don Terry on April 14, 2014 - 12:12 pm
One of the loudest and most loyal advocates for racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/11/20/joseph-franklin-prolific-racist-serial-killer-is-executed/ ] in the months before he was executed last November was Frazier Glenn Miller, the former Klansman and neo-Nazi arrested for killing three people [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ (second item above)] in separate shootings yesterday afternoon at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home in suburban Kansas City.
Yesterday, would have been Franklin’s 64th birthday.
Whether Franklin’s birthday had anything to do with the timing of Miller’s deadly shooting spree is unknown at this time. What is clear is Miller’s admiration for the racist killing machine.
On the neo-Nazi web forum Vanguard News Network (VNN) Miller, a raging anti-Semite, frequently praised Franklin, who did most of his killing from long distance and from the shadows, for his bravery.
“So far, Joseph Paul Franklin is the bravest, therefore the greatest White Nationalist hero America has ever produced,” Miller wrote, using his VNN handle “Rounder.” “His proven courage, initiative, dedication, and willingness to sacrifice everything he owned, including his life, is unequaled on this continent, in my judgment.”
Franklin, who was also a former Klansmen and neo-Nazi, was convicted of killing eight people and was suspected of killing as many as 20 unarmed men, women and children, during a three-year cross country murder spree.
Most of his victims were black men and boys. But Franklin received his only death sentence for the 1977 sniper murder of a 42-year-old white man coming out of a synagogue after a bar mitzvah in suburban St. Louis.
Miller was ridiculed by some of his VNN fellow travelers for heaping such high praise on Franklin while failing to follow his violent example.
“I gather Glenn must have been stung by VNNers’ criticism (calling them ‘anonymous pussies),” Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, the largest white supremacist web forum in the world, posted hours after Miller was arrested yesterday in Overland Park, Kansas. “They had kept asking him why he didn’t follow his ‘greatest American hero.’”
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/14/frazier-glenn-miller-suspected-kansas-shooter-may-have-marking-birthday-of-hero-racist-serial-killer/ [with comments]
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Vanguard News Network: A Track Record of Violence
By Don Terry on April 14, 2014 - 4:48 pm
The shooting rampage at two Jewish community centers in suburban Kansas City yesterday afternoon that left three people dead, including a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather, also left the radical racist right casting blame and pointing fingers at each other.
Much of that blame is being directed at Alex Linder and the gutturally racist website Vanguard News Network (VNN) [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-linder ] he founded in 2000. The site declares, “No Jews. Just Right.”
The alleged neo-Nazi gunman, Frazier Glenn Miller [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ (third item above)], who was arrested shortly after the shooting and shouted “Heil Hitler” from the back of a police car, has posted over the years more than 12,000 times to VNN, a site one white nationalist critic calls “a swamp.”
But the 73-year-old Miller is not the first VNN user to turn to murder and mayhem.
Brad Griffin, the editor of the white nationalist website Occidental Dissent and who writes under the name “Hunter Wallace,” posted on his site today that VNN is “the same swamp that gave us the Curt Maynard, Yankee Jim, and JT Ready murder suicides, Joe Snuffy the Spokane bomber, Todd Van Biber who blew himself up with a pipe bomb, and Craig Cobb’s plot to take over Leith and his ‘patrol’ of the town.”
Maynard, who used the screen name “Melcur” when posting on VNN, shot his ex-wife to death before killing himself following a police chase in 2010. In July 2008, Maynard posted to VNN, urging Miller to “lead by an example.”
“I’ve heard you and dozens of others condemn blogging as a waste of time, and constantly encourage others to sacrifice themselves,” Maynard wrote to “Rounder,” Miller’s screen name on VNN. “Why don’t you do it, I mean why don’t you strap on some explosive and walk into a room full of kikes and blow yourselves to Kingdom come.
“I say this in the nicest and most respectful manner possible, why don’t you lead by example and relieve us, this world, of a dozen goddamned Jews.”
In 2008, the body of VNN poster James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich, 52, a prolific white supremacist blogger, letter-to-the editor writer and radio host [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/02/20/white-supremacist-wife-in-apparent-murder-suicide/ ], was found hanging in a garage attached to the home he shared with his 55-year-old wife, Deborah. She was found beaten and strangled to death in the couple’s bedroom, the victim of an apparent murder-suicide.
VNN poster “Joe Snuffy” is really Kevin Harpham, who was sentenced to 32 years in prison in 2011 [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/12/20/judge-lectures-mlk-day-bomber-gives-maximum-32-year-sentence/ ] for building and planting a bomb – “a weapon of mass destruction” – along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, Wash.
The bomb was concealed in a backpack. The lead sinkers in the radio-detonated device were coated with Warfarin rate poison, evidently intended to increase bleeding.
Had it gone off, dozens of men, women and children would have been killed or injured.
A bomb did go off in the face of Todd Vanbiber [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/theyre-back?page=0,2#7 ; http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/theyre-back ], a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. In 1997, Vanbiber was planning to detonate 14 pipe bombs on a major route in Orlando, Fla., to divert attention from two bank robberies Vanbiber and his comrades were planning in the city. He was tinkering with one of the bombs in his storage shed when it exploded in his face.
He was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but his prison time was drastically reduced when he testified against his accomplices. After his release from prison in 2002, for several years he offered offered advice on stocks and other topics on VNN.
The last poster Griffin mentions in his post about the VNN swamp is Craig Cobb, the neo-Nazi who tried to buy up the tiny North Dakota town of Leith and turn it into an all-Aryan enclave named “Cobbsville.”
But Cobb was arrested last November and charged with seven felony counts of terrorizing his neighbors as he and a follower “patrolled” the streets with rifles. Cobb has been in jail ever since, but could be released soon under a plea agreement, a deal Leith officials oppose [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/09/leith-city-officials-object-to-craig-cobb-plea-deal/ ].
Research by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that having multiple murderers associated with a racist forum is not surprising. A forthcoming two-year study by the SPLC will show that nearly 100 people have been murdered in the last five years by active users on another prominent racist web forum, Stormfront.org. Maynard and Leshkevich were avid users of Stormfront as well.
Griffin also posted his theory about why Miller allegedly murdered “a random 14-year-old child and his grandfather in cold blood.” A 53-year-old woman was also killed in the afternoon attacks.
“First, Glenn Miller thought the 14-year-old child and his grandfather were Jewish, and his hero Alex Linder has consistently advocated his ‘principled solution’ of exterminating the Jews for 10 years now, so Glenn assumed that by acting to exterminate the Jews he would win the admiration of his peers at VNN Forum.”
Griffin added that Miller “swallowed” Linder’s “psychopathic nonsense” about “Christian morality as a major obstacle to the dehumanization and extermination of the Jews” and “as a result he wasn’t restrained by the Ten Commandments when he opened fire on the 14-year-old child and his grandfather.”
The boy and his grandfather were killed in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. The center was packed with hundreds of teenage singers, auditioning for a singing contest while young performers were trying out for a part in “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
A poster on VNN identifying himself as Tom Sanders said he liked Miller and was “glad he will go to heaven for sure now.
“These Bolshevik brats,” Sanders wrote, “were rehearsing the play ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ which is about a scum lawyer who gets a black rapist of a white women off, and is portrayed as a hero.
“He acted appropriately. That kind of filth is disgusting and they should all be shot more than once.”
It is indeed a dark and scary swamp.
Laurie Wood contributed to this report.
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/14/vanguard-news-network-a-track-record-of-violence/ [with comments]
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Doctor, grandson, slain outside the Jewish Community Center, ‘in heaven together’
William Corporon and his grandson, Reat Underwood
By JUDY L. THOMAS and BRIAN BURNES
The Kansas City Star
April 13, 2014
Reat Griffin Underwood loved life. A freshman at Blue Valley High School, he participated in debate and theater and was working toward the rank of Eagle Scout.
On Sunday afternoon, he was with his grandfather outside the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park when the vehicle they were in was struck by gunfire. Reat’s grandfather, William Lewis Corporon, who had taken the teen there to audition for a contest, died at the scene. Reat, 14, died later at a hospital.
A third victim, Terri LaManno, was killed shortly afterward outside the Village Shalom senior living community, less than a mile south of the community center. LaManno, 53, of Kansas City, went there every Sunday to visit her mother, a resident of the facility, authorities said.
Reat and his grandfather were Methodists. LaManno was a Catholic.
“This is obviously a horrible, horrible thing that you wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through,” said the Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor at United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, where the family attends. “They are really remarkable people. Being with them, what stood out was their strength of faith and confidence that this was not God’s will.”
Mindy Corporon, who is Reat’s mother and William Corporon’s daughter, attended an interfaith prayer service Sunday night at St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Overland Park.
Near the end of the service, she went to the podium.
“I am the mother of the son who was killed,” she said in a calm voice.
After the shooting, she said, “I came upon the scene very, very quickly, before the police, before the ambulances. And I knew immediately that they were in heaven.
“I know they are in heaven together.”
She said her dad took Reat to the community center to audition for the KC SuperStar competition because she was attending her younger son’s lacrosse game.
“We were having life,” she said. “And I want you to know that we are going to have more life.”
A statement issued by the family said Reat “had a beautiful voice … (and) a passion for life, and touched so many people in his young age.”
Last fall, he performed in the musical “Guys and Dolls.” He loved spending time camping and hunting with his grandfather, father and brother.
“Both Reat and Dr. Corporon were very proud supporters of the University of Oklahoma and its sports teams,” the family said.
Corporon was a doctor who practiced medicine in Marlow and Duncan, Okla., from 1976 through 2003. He and his wife then moved to the Kansas City area to be closer to their grandchildren.
“He was a well-loved physician in the Johnson County community, cherished his family and more than anything had a passion for caring for others,” the family’s statement said. “Dr. Corporon leaves behind his wife of 49 years and a loving and devoted family and extended family.”
The family thanked the church and school community “for the outpouring of love and support” and asked for privacy as they mourn their losses.
Blue Valley School Superintendent Tom Trigg said in an email to district patrons Sunday night that he met Reat earlier this year at an annual Blue Valley Educational Foundation breakfast.
“Reat sang the national anthem to begin the breakfast, and his talents were on full display that morning,” Trigg said. “I found Reat to be an engaging and exceptional young man. The school district has truly lost a great young person. Our hearts go out to the families who are dealing with this senseless tragedy.”
Trigg said Reat and some other high school students in the district were attending the non-school-related event at the Jewish Community Center at the time of the shooting.
“As a result, a number of families have been impacted district-wide,” he said. “As a community we will come together to support each other. We encourage you to be especially sensitive and offer support to your child during this time.”
Though school is not in session today, Trigg said support would be available at the district’s high schools for students who want to speak with a counselor.
“We are a strong community and will do everything possible to support each other and our students,” he said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all families who have been impacted by this tragedy.”
Sunday marked the second tragedy in a month involving a Blue Valley High School student. In March, senior Alex Fraser was seriously injured in a swimming accident while on spring break in Mexico. The accident left him with a spinal injury, and he is in a rehabilitation center in Colorado. Students gathered for a sendoff for him earlier this month.
Twitter was lighting up Sunday afternoon and evening with tweets from Reat’s friends and classmates.
“My prayers go out to the Underwood family,” said one. “Reat will be missed by the BV family. Heaven gained a truly talented and wonderful angel.”
“Reat was a gift and I am blessed to have know him,” said another.
A Facebook page called Wear White for Reat called for students to wear white to class on Tuesday to honor him.
Reat “was almost never seen without a smile on his face,” the site said.
Other Blue Valley schools said they would join in, as did students at other school districts.
“I don’t go to BV but I do speak for all of Louisburg High School when I say we hope for a swift recovery for you all,” wrote one student. “From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry for your loss. I think LHS has your backs, and several of us will be wearing white tomorrow at school. I wish you all the best.”
Dreyah Cushman, a junior at Blue Valley North, said she worked with Reat at debate tournaments this year.
“He was a novice debater, and my partner and I would mentor him at the tournaments,” Cushman said. “He was very smart. He would use these large vocabulary words. And he’d make us laugh in between the debate rounds.”
Cushman said when they would offer debate advice to Reat, he immediately accepted it.
“He was very, very serious during debate rounds, and he wanted to win,” she said. “We told him he should be moving to varsity by his sophomore year.”
Hamilton said he had confirmed Reat at Church of the Resurrection last year.
“He was an active volunteer in the church,” he said. “He volunteered in the Kids COR program.”
The family was surrounded Sunday night by relatives and friends, Hamilton said.
“They have a great network who want to be there and care for them,” he said. “They said we have the utter confidence that our son and dad are together with God now; that brings them comfort. Their hope is that something good will come from this. This evil thing this person has done will not have the final word here.”
He said the church will have a memorial service for Reat and his grandfather on Friday.
“Somehow it seems fitting that on Good Friday, when Christ’s own death was taking place and yet out of that horrible evil there was going to be something good that would come from it,” he said. “And that’s really part of what we’re looking at here.”
Copyright 2014 The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/13/4958621/doctor-grandson-in-heaven-together.html [with their extensive further coverage listed and linked; comments disabled]
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Shooting victim was an Eagle Scout, 'tremendous talent'
William Louis Corporon, 69, and Reat Griffin Underwood, 14.
(Photo: Corporon family)
John Bacon, USA TODAY
4:09 p.m. EDT April 14, 2014
By all accounts, Reat Underwood was the all-American boy.
Reat, 14, was one of three people killed in a gunman's rampage at two Jewish sites on Passover eve in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. Authorities said Monday that the accused killer will face murder and hate-crime charges.
Reat had gone to the Jewish Community Center on Sunday with his grandfather, physician William Corporon, 69, to try out for the KC SuperStar singing and scholarship competition. Both were fatally shot. The third victim, shot outside the Village Shalom retirement home, was Terri LaManno, 53.
All the victims were Christians.
Reat was an Eagle Scout who enjoyed "spending time camping and hunting with his grandfather, father and brother," said Mindy Corporon, Reat's mother and the daughter of William Corporon.
She said she arrived at the scene as police were arriving.
"It was very unreal," she said Monday. "It didn't feel like a crime scene to me, it was family. My family members on the ground."
She called the shootings a "horrible act of violence," adding that her loved ones were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Reat was a freshman at Blue Valley High School, where he was involved in debate and theater.
"He loved to debate," she said, adding that he had been involved in eight debate contests and earned a varsity letter.
"He was very proud of that," she said.
"He was with us for a wonderful 14 years and had a real full life for a 14-year-old," she said.
Blue Valley has almost 1,500 students, but Principal Scott Bacon told USA TODAY that Reat made a positive impression right away, at the annual Blue Valley Educational Foundation breakfast that draws almost 1,000 people.
"He sang the national anthem," Bacon said. "I realized very quickly we had a young man with tremendous talent in our school. I was certainly impressed by his presentation in front of such a large audience. I saw him as a young man with great promise."
Bacon said he often saw Reat chatting with other students in the hallways. Bacon said Reat already had become a fixture at singing events in the school, including the annual musical — this year Guys and Dolls.
"This was a traumatic event for our school community," Bacon said.
The high school had planned an in-service day for teachers Monday, so no classes were scheduled. But counselors were being made available for students, schools superintendent Tom Trigg said.
Trigg also was at the breakfast and knew Reat.
"His talents were on full display that morning," he said, adding that he found Reat to be "an engaging and exceptional young man."
Reat was still in his grandfather's truck when police say Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, opened fire at the community center, killing Reat and his grandfather, then fired shots outside the nearby Village Shalom retirement home.
Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, is a former "grand dragon" of the Ku Klux Klan with a long history of running illegal paramilitary organizations and intimidating minorities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"That idiot absolutely knocked a family to its knees for no reason," said Will Corporon, William Corporon's son and Reat's uncle.
Corporon practiced medicine in Oklahoma from 1976 through 2003, when he and his wife moved to the Overland Park area to be closer to their grandchildren. Will said his dad was in college when Will was a baby, and that his mother worked to put his dad through medical school.
Will Corporan said many people come up to him and remark that William Corporon's hands were the first hands ever to touch their children.
He said his dad would have gladly given his life to save Reat's life.
"My father leaves behind a legacy of faith and family and community," he said.
LaManno, whose mother lives in Village Shalom, was the mother of two and an occupational therapist at the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired, Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said.
The family members are long-time parishioners at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Kansas City, where a rosary was said for LaManno after Monday morning Mass, The Kansas City Star reported.
Copyright 2014 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/14/kansas-city-jewish-shootings/7698029/ [with comments]
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White Supremacy, GOP Politics, and the Jewish Community Center Shooting
OVERLAND PARK, KS – APRIL 13: A police car is seen at the entrance of the Jewish Community Center after three were killed when a gunman opened fire on April 13, 2014 in Overland Park, Kansas. Police arrested and were questioning a suspect.
(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Image from ABC2 News [ http://www.abc2news.com/news/shootings-at-jewish-centers-called-heinous-attacks ]
By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson [ http://www.politicususa.com/author/hrafnkell ]
Monday, April, 14th, 2014, 7:30 am
The suspect in the Overland Park, Kansas, Jewish Center murders, Frazier Glenn Miller, who goes by the name of Fraiser Glen Cross, Jr., turns out of course, to be the former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the White Patriot Party – oh, and a supporter of David Duke.
CNN reported this morning that, “Video from CNN affiliate KMBC [ http://www.kmbc.com/news/fatal-shooting-reported-at-ops-jewish-community-center/25457124 ] showed the suspect sitting in the back of a patrol car and shouting, ‘Heil Hitler [CNN report embedded; the CNN YouTube of the report, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzOtLO2iBM (with comments), next below as embedded].’”
Cross has called Jews “swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed, parasitic midgets.”
Yet Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said Sunday night at a press conference that it was “too early to label it” a hate crime. The suspect had a shotgun and possibly other guns as well. Yes, and it’s also too early to label guns deadly.
C’mon folks. The guy has been printing The Aryan Alternative [ http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/vnn-newspapers/aryan-alternative-newpaper/ ] since 2005,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center [ http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Miller ]. To have to say it’s a racist tabloid is redundant. The man is Julius Streicher reborn [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Streicher ].
Look, I’m not trying to connect A to B here, but we just had the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin tell conservatives [ http://splcenter.org/blog/2014/03/07/frc-hot-mic-boykin-jokes-about-jews-says-obama-supports-al-qaeda-sends-them-subliminal-messages/ ] (because who else listens to him?) that “Jews are the problem” and the cause of all the problems in the world,” and Pat Robertson just quipped the other day [ http://gawker.com/pat-robertson-jews-dont-fix-cars-theyre-busy-polish-1555571303 ] that Jews are too busy polishing their diamonds to polish cars.
Does it surprise anyone that Religious Right Islamophobes are also anti-Semites? Does it surprise anyone at all? For 2,000 years extremist Christianity has been making a living destroying every alternative to itself, starting with the Pagans of the Roman Empire, before moving on to Northern and Eastern Europe. Along the way it persecuted Jews and Muslims and ethnic religion wherever it found it, Old World, New World, and beyond.
And yes, they’ve got plans for you, too.
In a state with a religious freedom law, could Cross’ actions be defended on grounds of religion? It is not a big step from Stand Your Ground, after all.
Anti-Semitism is as much a part of conservative Christianity as the belief that Jesus died for your sins and has been around longer. Crusaders used to slaughter Jews in the Rhineland on their way to the Middle East. Even other types of Christians weren’t safe, as the Eastern Romans found to their dismay when the fanatics of the First Crusade tramped through Roman lands.
It should surprise no one that the killer of Overland Park was a white supremacist. It should give us all pause and put us doubly on alert for Republican politicians with close ties to white supremacists, particularly in light of the new “religious freedom” bill craze, allowing extremist Christians to persecute anyone of whom they do not approve.
And yes, Rand Paul, I am looking at you [ http://www.politicususa.com/2013/07/22/senator-rand-paul-hopes-hiring-white-supremacist-wont-damage-gop-brand.html ].
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a press release Sunday [ http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/miscellaneous/adl-statement-shootings-at-kansas-jewish-facilities.html ] said,
The attacks on the Jewish community centers in Overland Park are a cowardly, unspeakable and heinous act of violence,” said Karen Aroesty, ADL St. Louis Regional Director. “While it is too early to label these shootings as a hate crime, the fact that two Jewish institutions were targeted by the same individual just prior to the start of the Passover holiday is deeply troubling and certainly gives us pause. We have reached out to local, state and federal law enforcement and stand willing and able to offer guidance and assistance to the community if this incident turns out to have been motivated by anti-Semitism.
I think it is a safe bet that it was motivated by anti-Semitism. “Heil Hitler!” can hardly mean anything else. Passover was about to start and Hitler’s birthday is on April 20. White supremacists are popping up all over the place.
Just last week, ADL sent out a security bulletin to Jewish community institutions across the country warning of the increased potential for violent attacks against community centers in the coming weeks, which coincide both with the Passover holiday and Hitler’s birthday on April 20, a day around which in the United States has historically been marked by extremist acts of violence and terrorism, including the violence at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
So on the one hand, we’ve got fundamentalist gun and Bible Christian fanatics who seem largely to be Tea Party supporters and we’ve got these people now demanding a military overthrow of President Obama [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-wiles-asks-god-deliver-us-obama-demands-military-arrest-president-prevent-second-civil- ], and we’ve got Hitler’s birthday and a bunch of white men dressed up like Nazis at a Minnesota restaurant on MLK Day [ http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2014/03/gasthofs_nazi_photo_gasthof_zur_gemutlichkeit.php ]…
No, you know what, you’re right Republicans: there’s no racism in America [ http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/12/white-conservative-pundits-stop-racism-exist.html ]. None at all. Just like the federal government never freed the slaves [ http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/12/republicans-revise-history-slavery-party-equal-rights.html ], Jim DeMint. We’ll just pretend President Lincoln never signed the Emancipation Proclamation, shall we? And anyway, what does slavery matter? We all know, because you said so repeatedly, that black people were better off as slaves.
Wake up, America. Guns kill people. Racists and religious bigots with guns kill people. The Religious Right will be blaming liberalism, atheism and secularism and the lack of prayer in public schools by this morning, if they have not started already.
But this tragedy did not come about because of liberal ideals. We can’t know Cross’ motivations until he says anything, if he says anything at all. But it isn’t difficult to see a connection between a white supremacist killing Jews and the nonstop hate parade coming from Tea Party and Religious Right sources (often indistinguishable). The surprise is not that there have been shootings and deaths. The surprise is that there have not been more of them.
©2014, PoliticusUSA.com
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/14/white-supremacy-gop-politics-jewish-community-center-shooting.html [with comments]
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Jim DeMint's racist logic
May 06, 2013
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/06/1207255/-Jim-DeMint-s-racist-logic [with comments]
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Projections show rapidly changing racial makeup of U.S.
[img]Our racial makeup has changed substantially.
(Shutterstock)[/img]
Roy Mehta via Getty Images
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/13/changing-racial-makeup-_n_5142462.html ]
The U.S. population is now made up of immigrants, racial intermarriage and a diverse population.
(Shutterstock)
Immigration and intermarriage account for much of this change in our country’s racial makeup.
(Shutterstock)
By Danielle Restuccia
Apr 13, 2014
By 2042, so-called racial minority groups will make up the majority of the U.S. population.
That’s according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest projection. Building on that, the Pew Research Center recently released an extensive study on the shifting demographics of race in our country, showing that within a century (from 1960 to 2060), white Americans will have gone from making up 85 percent of the population to comprising 43 percent.
On the other hand, the number of Hispanic and Black Americans will have grown substantially over that time period, together making up 45 percent of the 2060 population.
Immigration and intermarriage account for much of this change in our country’s racial makeup, and for many, that’s a good thing, forcing us to embrace diversity and reexamine how we categorize race. However, other research suggests that these shifting demographics may cause fear or a tendency to become more conservative on the part of white Americans.
Pew Research Center Numbers
According to the Pew Research Center study [ http://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/ ], our racial makeup has changed substantially in just the last 50 years.
For instance, from 1960 to 2010, the percentages of Americans identifying themselves as Black, Hispanic, Asian, or “other” increased from just 15 percent of the population to 36 percent of the population:
- Black: Increased from 10 to 12 percent
- Hispanic: Increased from 4 to 15 percent
- Asian: increased from 1 to 5 percent
- “Other”: Increased from 0 to 3 percent
In the next fifteen years, those numbers will jump again, with the Hispanic population in particular increasing to 22 percent; by 2060, Hispanics will comprise 31 percent of the U.S. population.
Immigration and Intermarriage
A significant impetus for these shifting demographics is immigration: since 1965, the U.S. has welcomed 40 million immigrants, with half of those identifying as Hispanic.
Of course, the U.S. has always been a country of newcomers. In the early days of our founding and through the middle of the 20th century, our population consisted of huge numbers of European immigrants.
However, our changing racial makeup is due to a shift in immigrants’ countries of origin: while 88 percent of immigrants in 1900 were from Europe, Europeans only comprise 12 percent of the immigrant population today. Conversely, immigration from Hispanic countries is on the rise, with over 50 percent of all immigrants to the U.S. today hailing from Latin America. So while the Hispanic population in the U.S. has been increasing, the influx of white Americans has been decreasing.
Unsurprisingly, because over a quarter of the entire U.S. population is now made up of immigrants, racial intermarriage is also driving a more diverse population. Just half a century ago, less than three percent of new marriages were between people of different races; today, 15.5 percent of newlyweds come from different racial backgrounds.
That means that not only is our racial makeup changing, but it’s getting more complicated to explain, too.
Adjusting Our Racial Categories
Shifting demographics and intermarriage mean we may need to reexamine how we talk about race.
In the past, the U.S. Census Bureau and other organizations have asked people to define themselves according to checkboxes: “Asian,” “Hispanic,” or “Native American,” for example. However, with the changing faces [ http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/funderburg-text?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_c1 ] in the U.S., it’s no longer so easy for many people to simply categorize themselves, nor do they feel they should have to label their race as one thing or another.
Especially for children of racial intermarriage, “identity is a highly nuanced concept, influenced by politics, religion, history, and geography, as well as by how the person believes the answer will be used,” according to National Geographic’s report on increasing racial diversity.
Because there’s no longer a clear divide between black and white in the U.S.—as there was in the 1960s and earlier, for instance—people are beginning to see racial categories as much more fluid and adjustable. Some people have taken to creating new categories altogether: “On playgrounds and college campuses, you’ll find such homespun terms as Blackanese, Filatino, Chicanese, and Korgentinian.”
Possible Racial Divide
So what will those shifting categories mean by 2060, when we have an even more diverse racial makeup in the U.S.?
For some, it’s likely to be a good thing. According to the Pew Research Center’s report, new numbers of racially diverse commercials, celebrities, and terms suggest that “the norms are changing and the stigma [about interracial marriage, in particular] receding.”
On the other hand, researchers from Northwestern University conducted two studies showing that white Americans may feel threatened by the prospect of becoming a racial minority.
According to Slate’s report [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/demographics_conservatism_and_racial_polarization_could_america_become_mississippi.html ] on the studies, psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson gave self-identified politically “independent” white Americans information about the country’s shifting demographics. They then asked a series of questions about national or state-level policies and found that when white Americans were “aware of demographic changes that put them in the minority,” they tended to endorse more conservative political policies.
That has some people worrying that that we’ll see a deepening divide between whites and other racial groups; Slate suggested that the best example of how this demographic fear has (in the past) manifested itself was in slavery and apartheid.
While it’s extreme to think that we would devolve back into policies common to the 19th century, the changing racial makeup will likely test us as a country. But maybe that’s not a bad thing: with more diversity and new challenges, there’s the chance to better ourselves, too.
SEE ALSO:
Hispanics’ views more positive toward illegal immigration impact
http://voxxi.com/2013/10/03/hispanics-views-more-positive-toward-illegal-immigration-impact/
The coming together of African and Hispanic Americans
http://voxxi.com/2013/09/09/together-african-hispanic-americans/
Copyright ©2014, Interactive One
http://voxxi.com/2014/04/13/changing-racial-makeup-of-us/ [with comments] [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/13/changing-racial-makeup-_n_5142462.html (with comments)]
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President Obama Speaks at the 2014 Easter Prayer Breakfast
Published on Apr 14, 2014 by The White House [ http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse ]
Christian leaders from across the country join President Obama at a breakfast to pray and reflect on Holy Week and Easter. President Obama said that his prayers are also with the people of Overland Park, Kansas, where a gunman opened fire on a Jewish community center and retirement home on Sunday. April 13, 2014.
Remarks by the President at Easter Prayer Breakfast
East Room
April 14, 2014
9:27 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. (Applause.) Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Please, please have a seat. Thank you so much. Well, good morning, everybody.
Welcome to the White House and welcome to our annual Easter prayer breakfast. As always, we are blessed to be joined by so many good friends from around the country. We’ve got distinguished guests. We’ve got faith leaders, members of my administration who are here. And I will once again resist the temptation to preach to preachers. (Laughter.) It never works out well. I am reminded of the admonition from the Book of Romans -- “Do not claim to be wiser than you are.” (Laughter.) So this morning, I want to offer some very brief reflections as we start this Easter season.
But as I was preparing my remarks, something intervened yesterday. And so I want to just devote a few words about yesterday’s tragedy in Kansas. This morning our prayers are with the people of Overland Park. And we’re still learning the details, but this much we know. A gunman opened fire at two Jewish facilities -- a community center and a retirement home. Innocent people were killed. Their families were devastated. And this violence has struck the heart of the Jewish community in Kansas City.
Two of the victims -- a grandfather and his teenage [grand] son -- attended the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, which is led by our friend Reverend Adam Hamilton. Some of you may know that during my inauguration, Reverend Hamilton delivered the sermon at the prayer service at the National Cathedral. And I was grateful for his presence and his words. He joined us at our breakfast last year. And at the Easter service for Palm Sunday last night, he had to break this terrible news to his congregation.
That this occurred now -- as Jews were preparing to celebrate Passover, as Christians were observing Palm Sunday --makes this tragedy all the more painful. And today, as Passover begins, we’re seeing a number of synagogues and Jewish community centers take added security precautions. Nobody should have to worry about their security when gathering with their fellow believers. No one should ever have to fear for their safety when they go to pray.
And as a government, we’re going to provide whatever assistance is needed to support the investigation. As Americans, we not only need to open our hearts to the families of the victims, we’ve got to stand united against this kind of terrible violence, which has no place in our society. And we have to keep coming together across faiths to combat the ignorance and intolerance, including anti-Semitism that can lead to hatred and to violence, because we’re all children of God. We’re all made in His image, all worthy of his love and dignity. And we see what happens around the world when this kind of religious-based or tinged violence can rear its ugly head. It’s got no place in our society.
So this Easter Week, of course we recognize that there’s a lot of pain and a lot of sin and a lot of tragedy in this world, but we’re also overwhelmed by the grace of an awesome God. We’re reminded how He loves us, so deeply, that He gave his only begotten Son so that we might live through Him. And in these Holy Days, we recall all that Jesus endured for us -- the scorn of the crowds and the pain of the crucifixion, in our Christian religious tradition we celebrate the glory of the Resurrection -- all so that we might be forgiven of our sins and granted everlasting life.
And more than 2,000 years later, it inspires us still. We are drawn to His timeless teachings, challenged to be worthy of His sacrifice, to emulate as best we can His eternal example to love one another just as He loves us. And of course, we’re always reminded each and every day that we fall short of that example. And none of us are free from sin, but we look to His life and strive, knowing that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
I’ll tell you, I felt this spirit when I had the great honor of meeting His Holiness, Pope Francis, recently. I think it’s fair to say that those of us of the Christian faith, regardless of our denomination, have been touched and moved by Pope Francis. Now, some of it is his words -- his message of justice and inclusion, especially for the poor and the outcast. He implores us to see the inherent dignity in each human being. But it’s also his deeds, simple yet profound -- hugging the homeless man, and washing the feet of somebody who normally ordinary folks would just pass by on the street. He reminds us that all of us, no matter what our station, have an obligation to live righteously, and that we all have an obligation to live humbly. Because that’s, in fact, the example that we profess to follow.
So I had a wonderful conversation with Pope Francis, mostly about the imperatives of addressing poverty and inequality. And I invited him to come to the United States, and I sincerely hope he will. When we exchanged gifts he gave me a copy of his inspiring writings, “The Joy of the Gospel.” And there is a passage that speaks to us today: “Christ’s resurrection,” he writes, “is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world.” And he adds, “Jesus did not rise in vain. May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!”
So this morning, my main message is just to say thank you to all of you, because you don’t remain on the sidelines. I want to thank you for your ministries, for your good works, for the marching you do for justice and dignity and inclusion, for the ministries that all of you attend to and have helped organize throughout your communities each and every day to feed the hungry and house the homeless and educate children who so desperately need an education. You have made a difference in so many different ways, not only here in the United States but overseas as well. And that includes a cause close to my heart, My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative that we recently launched to make sure that more boys and young men of color can overcome the odds and achieve their dreams.
And we’re joined by several faith leaders who are doing outstanding work in this area mentoring and helping young men in tough neighborhoods. We’re also joined by some of these young men who are working hard and trying to be good students and good sons and good citizens. And I want to say to each of those young men here, we’re proud of you, and we expect a lot of you. And we’re going to make sure that we’re there for you so that you then in turn will be there for the next generation of young men.
And I mention all this because of all of our many partners for My Brother’s Keeper, it’s clergy like you and your congregations that can play a special role to be that spiritual and ethical foundation, that rock that so many young men need in their lives.
So I want to thank all of you who are already involved. I invite those who are not to get more information, see if you can join in this effort as brothers and sisters in Christ who “never tire of doing good.”
In closing, I’ll just recall that old prayer that I think more than one preacher has invoked at the pulpit: “Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, and nudge me when I’ve said enough.” (Laughter.) The Almighty is nudging me. I thank you for joining us this morning of prayer. I wish you all a blessed Holy Week and Easter, and I’d like to invite my friend Joel Hunter to deliver the opening prayer. Come on up, Joel. (Applause.)
END
9:39 A.M. EDT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldvi3CJQVg [with comments; also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MYZBLS6S8Y (with comments)]; http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/14/remarks-president-easter-prayer-breakfast ; http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/14/president-obama-hosts-annual-easter-prayer-breakfast-white-house
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Obama welcomes 150 Christian leaders for White House Easter Prayer Breakfast
President Obama welcomed 150 Christian leaders to the White House East Room for the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.
wh.gov
President Obama kicked off Holy Week at the White House Monday with 150 Christian leaders at the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.
By Leslie Larson
Published: Monday, April 14, 2014, 8:04 AM / Updated: Monday, April 14, 2014, 11:50 AM
President Obama kicked off Holy Week at the White House Monday with 150 Christian leaders at the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.
In brief remarks, Obama offered his condolences to the victims of the shooting in Overland Park, Kan., and he praised those gathered for their ministry work.
“You don’t remain on the sidelines,” he told the group.
“I want to thank you for your ministries, for your good works, for the marching you do for justice, and dignity and inclusion.”
To wrap up his homily, the President jokingly quoted the prayer: "Lord fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff and nudge me when I’ve said enough.”
"The Almighty is nudging me," he told the laughing pastors before sitting down.
Rev. Otis Moss, the minister who replaced the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, delivered the sermon and Christian singer/songwriter Carlos Whittaker performed.
Pastor Joel Hunter offered the opening prayer for the gathering and in an unscripted move, Obama asked Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, to deliver the closing prayer.
Rev. Al Sharpton, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, were among the guests.
The tradition was started by the Obama administration in 2010 to specifically celebrate the life and death of Christ.
The President and First Lady will host a Passover seder at the White House on Tuesday, on the second night of the Jewish holiday.
Related Stories
President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-obama-national-prayer-breakfast-article-1.1604182
© Copyright 2014 NYDailyNews.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/al-sharpton-joins-150-christian-leaders-white-house-easter-prayer-breakfast-article-1.1755591 [no comments yet]
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply (the related 'see also' linkings for that one at
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96759860 ) and preceding and (other following, see also (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39423407 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=60232115 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=60783068 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65893563 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65931473 and preceding and following
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Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Glenn Miller, is accused of killing three people Sunday in Kansas City. He allegedly attacked them at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement facility.
Johnson County, Kan., Sheriff's Office
by Mark Memmott
April 14, 2014 6:50 AM ET Updated at 1 p.m. ET
The man who shot and killed three people Sunday near Kansas City will face federal hate crime charges for the attacks at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home, authorities said Monday.
"This was a hate crime," Overland Park, Kan., Police Chief John Douglass told reporters at a midday news conference.
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Glenn Miller, is already in jail. The 73-year-old man was taken into custody shortly after the attacks and is accused of premeditated murder.
Cross, as we reported earlier, has been tracked for years by organizations that monitor hate groups. They say he's a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and spent time in prison for weapons convictions and other charges. Jews had long been among those he allegedly railed about.
The three people who died were:
— Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, an Eagle Scout and member of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood [ http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/13/4958621/doctor-grandson-in-heaven-together.html (fifth item below)].
— Reat's grandfather, Dr. William Lewis Corporon [ http://www.koco.com/news/family-former-duncan-okla-doctor-among-those-killed-in-jewish-center-shooting/25460888 ], a physician who had moved to the area about a decade ago to be near his grandson.
— "Fifty-three-year-old Terri LaManno [ http://www.kctv5.com/story/25235053/shooting-reported-at-overland-park-jewish-community-center ], a mother who worked at the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired."
Our original post — Suspect In Killings At Kansas City Jewish Sites Linked To KKK [ http://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/303009944/suspected-kansas-shooter-had-ties-to-kkk ] — has more background.
The man accused in Sunday's shootings [ http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/13/302710854/reports-3-dead-after-shootings-at-jewish-facilities-near-kansas-city ] at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home near Kansas City, which left three people dead, is a 73-year-old former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-cent (next below)], which tracks "hate groups and domestic terrorists [ http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do ]."
Frazier Glenn Cross, who goes by the name Glenn Miller, is accused of premeditated murder in the first degree in the shootings in Overland Park, Kan., according to information posted online by the Johnson County (Kan.) Sheriff's Office.
The poverty law center says Cross has served at least two jail terms, including "three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of [Southern Poverty Law Center] founder Morris Dees."
Kansas City's KCTV adds that [ http://www.kctv5.com/story/25235053/shooting-reported-at-overland-park-jewish-community-center ] Cross "is a perennial candidate for office, including running in 2006 against then-U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. He ran against Blunt in 2010 when Blunt was elected to the Senate. Cross made headlines in the 2010 campaign for his racist and anti-Semitic campaign ads. Federal law required broadcast stations to air the ads even though they did not want to put such vile rantings on their airwaves."
The Kansas City Star writes [ http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/13/4957486/one-reported-dead-in-shooting.html ] that after he was arrested Sunday, Cross "went on a rant inside the patrol car. Though Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass wouldn't say what Cross hollered, a television crew captured him on video while he was handcuffed in the back of the car. 'Heil Hitler,' Miller yelled out, and then he bobbed his head up and down."
"According to police," The Associated Press says [ http://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/302855030/supremacist-idd-as-suspect-in-kansas-attacks ], "the attacks happened within minutes of one another. At around 1 p.m. a gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove a few blocks away to a Jewish retirement community, Village Shalom, and gunned down a woman or girl there."
The wire service adds that:
"Authorities declined to release the victims' names pending notification of their relatives, and the identity of the person shot at the retirement community was still unknown early Monday. However, the family of the first two victims put out a statement identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
"They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among other people, for their support."
Cross is due in court later today.
Update at 5:30 p.m. ET. Cross Reportedly 'Led Neo-Nazi Group'
Frank Morris, a reporter with member station KCUR in Kansas City, spoke to Sam Taylor, who heads the white supremacist threat department at the SITE Intelligence Group [ http://wst.siteintelgroup.com/ ].
Taylor says Cross led a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in North Carolina in the 1980s and has also been "very active online," calling for genocide against Jews and raising money for violent white supremacists.
©2014 NPR
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/14/302871181/suspect-in-killings-at-kansas-city-jewish-sites-linked-to-kkk [with comments]
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Frazier Glenn Miller, Longtime Anti-Semite, Arrested in Kansas Jewish Community Center Murders
By Heidi Beirich on April 13, 2014 - 8:41 pm
Frazier Glenn Miller [ http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Miller ], 73, of Aurora, Mo., was arrested today for the murder of three people at two separate Jewish Community Centers in Overland Park, Kan. Miller, who was arrested using the alias Frazier Glenn Cross [ http://abcnews.go.com/US/73-year-custody-fatal-jewish-center-shooting/story?id=23310932 ], has been in the movement nearly his entire life. Miller is the former “grand dragon” of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which he founded and ran in the 1980s before being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for operating an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against African Americans.
After subsequently forming another Klan group, the White Patriot Party, he was found in criminal contempt and sentenced to six months in prison for violating the court settlement. He went underground while his conviction was under appeal but was caught by the FBI with a weapons cache in Missouri. He served three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees. As part of a plea bargain, Miller testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 sedition trial.
Miller is a raging anti-Semite who has posted more than 12,000 times on Vanguard News Network (VNN), whose slogan is “No Jews, Just Right.” VNN founder Alex Linder has openly advocated “exterminating [ http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=105083 ]” Jews since December 2009. Miller, a close partner to Linder, has called Jews “swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed, parasitic midgets.” Miller is also one of VNN’s largest donors and he printed and distributed thousands of copies of VNN’s newsletter, The Aryan Alternative.
This isn’t the first time a VNN user has been arrested for violence. On January 17, 2011, less than 12 hours after posting on VNN, Kevin William Harpham placed an improvised explosive device concealed in a backpack along a Martin Luther King parade route in Spokane Washington. The lead sinkers in the radio-detonated IED were coated with Warfarin rat poison, evidently intended to increase bleeding. Had the device functioned, dozens of men, women and children would have been killed or injured. Harpham also distributed The Aryan Alternative.
Our research shows that racist killers are hiding among us in plain sight. A forthcoming two-year study by the SPLC will show that nearly 100 people in the last five years have been murdered by active users on another prominent racist website, Stormfront.org.
In a phone conversation with his wife Marge, who has apparently never been active in the white supremacist movement, the SPLC was able to confirm that Miller had gone to a local casino in Missouri yesterday afternoon. He called his wife this morning at about 10:30 AM to tell her his winnings were up and all was well. She has not heard from him since, but law enforcement was at her door at 8:30 PM and she told the SPLC that they told her Miller was arrested for the shootings.
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ [with comments]
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Frazier Glenn Miller, Suspected Kansas Shooter, Posted Thousands of Messages to White Supremacist Board
By Bill Morlin on April 14, 2014 - 9:04 am
A day before he allegedly went on a weekend killing spree [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ (just above)] targeting Jews, Frazier Glenn Miller [ http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Miller ] publicly discussed talking by phone with another white supremacist who wanted to turn a small North Dakota town into a whites-only enclave.
But that is only one of 12,683 anti-Semitic, racist Internet postings Miller has made on one racist site alone – the Vanguard News Network – in the past decade.
In other postings, Miller has discussed the potential impacts if President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were both assassinated. In another post, Miller applauds a recent commentary by Pat Buchanan who said Russian president Vladimir Putin is merely protecting the ethnicity of Russians in his standoff with Ukraine, comparing Russia with Israel protecting Jews worldwide.
It’s his most recent posting – just a day before the shootings – about his conversation with fellow racist Craig Cobb [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/08/22/white-supremacists-making-bid-to-take-over-north-dakota-town/ ] that likely will get the attention of the FBI. Agents likely will pay Cobb a visit in his North Dakota jail cell [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/11/18/white-supremacist-arrested-in-north-dakota-town-where-he-wants-to-establish-racist-enclave/ ], asking if Miller gave any hint about what he may have had planned for Palm Sunday, the day before the start of Passover.
On the VNN Forum, Miller, using the screen name “Rounder,” posted a public message claiming that he had received a phone call on Saturday from Craig Cobb, who is in jail in North Dakota. Outgoing calls from the jail are logged, perhaps even recorded, so that evidence likely will be of interest to investigators.
Cobb has made his own headlines in the past six months. He is in jail on seven charges of terrorizing people last November when he and a fellow racist walked through the tiny town of Leith, N.D., where they were buying up homes in a failed attempt to create a whites-only town [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/winter/Village-of-the-Damned ]. He apparently is among Miller’s shortlist of white nationalist heroes.
On the VNN Forum on Saturday, Miller told his fellow racists of his conversation with Cobb, saying he “sounded confident and healthy” and explained that his presentence investigation is completed as he awaits sentencing in the coming days.
“I made him promise to visit me IF and WHEN he can,” Miller wrote in his VNN posting.
Miller wrote that he asked Cobb if any Vanguard News Network members “had written or sent money in the past few weeks. “He said none, except for ‘Paul’ who writes him and also sends him $100 bills.”
To that, Miller offered thanks to “Paul,” whom he said is a white nationalist “with initiative and the will of his convictions.”
Like he usually does, Miller signed off his VNN posting about Cobb by quoting Voltaire: “To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
His racist rants and Internet postings go back at least a decade and are laced with anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-government messages, largely built around the racist philosophy that the government is ZOG – a Zionist Occupied Government, or as Miller apparently prefers, JOG – Jewish Occupied Government.
In a Feb. 9, 2008, nine months before Barack Obama was elected the first black president of the United States, Miller wondered aloud what the reaction would be if Obama or Hillary Clinton were assassinated.
“I mean considering the nigger reactions to the assassination of Martin Looter Koon in 1968,” Miller wrote. “Remember ?? Niggers rioted, burned, looted and violently attacked whites all over the country, and in more than a thousand towns and cities.”
His post continued: “I “fear” that if Obama suffered a like fate now, the riotings (sic) would be far worse, and considering the large numbers of niggers and assorted shitskins now in the military, reserve, national guard, and law enforcement, many of whom would join in the riotings, while their white peers deserted their posts to defend their own families, it would be impossible for the ZOG to restore order.”
Consequently, Miller predicted, “race wars would engulf the entire country in a matter of days.
“The ZOG couldn’t even control the niggers during Katrina or during the Rodney King riots,” Miller wrote, adding: “Just imagine The Barack Obama Riots.
“Furthermore, to stir the shit even hotter, suppose both Obama and Hillary were assassinated the same year, say a few months apart,” he wrote.
Miller ended by saying, “Oh glory. . . . I say, oh glory, glory days. (A redneck can dream, can’t he ??) .”
This past January, Miller made another VNN posting, seeming to suggest that fellow racist Kevin Strom, who is serving time for possessing child pornography, was framed by someone else who put child porn images on his computer.
Strom, like Miller, has had past affiliations with the now largely defunct National Alliance, once the largest neo-Nazi organization of its kind in the United States under the leadership of the late William Pierce, who appears to be one of Miller’s heroes.
Miller makes references to nationally known racists identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center
“If you, like Strom, were an internationally known, and highly successful anti-semite and on the SPLC’s list of top 40 bad guys, it would be absolutely impossible to prove to any JOG picked jury, that somebody else placed porn on your computer,” Miller wrote.
His posting was a response to another poster who he urged to “advise folks just how they can prove that someone else placed porn on their own computer.
In another Vanguard posting on March 18, Miller seems to suggest that the Russian president is the target of international Jewish interests, referring to a recent column by conservative columnist Pat Buchanan.
Miller said he agreed with Buchanan who described Putin as “a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern:
“In my opinion,” Miller wrote, “this statement by Buchanan provides an extremely deep insight into jewish influence over Russia today. Buchanan does not name the jew, but I don’t believe he lies. Therefore, his above statement reflects what he truly believes. And I’ll add, it brightened my day.”
“We can now more accurately and confidently analyze the situation in Ukraine and Crimea,” Miller wrote. “I also believe that lots of gentiles in high places also read Buchanan’s articles these days. They too will now be a bit more enlightened by knowing that Russia is not yet a JOG, and that Russia is most likely ruled by an anti-JOG.”
“China too is watching,” Miller continued. “Perhaps, they are pulling for, and supporting Putin, since they know they’ll be the next target of Big Jew and his JOGs, if Russia loses.”
His anti-Semitic tones came through clearly in a Nov. 29, 2012, posting on the same Vanguard site where he was responded to another poster, offering advice.
“You might begin by saying: ‘All you gals who believe that jews are god’s chosen people oughta change your religion to judiasm (sic), or explain to me right now, why not.’
“Another good one is: ‘Since jews don’t believe in christ, doesn’t that mean that all those millions of dead jews, are burning in hell right now? You have a golden opportunity for great fun, in any case.
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/14/frazier-glenn-miller-suspected-kansas-shooter-posted-thousands-of-messages-to-white-supremacist-board/ [with comments]
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Frazier Glenn Miller, Suspected Kansas Shooter, May Have Been Marking Birthday of ‘Hero’ Racist Serial Killer
By Don Terry on April 14, 2014 - 12:12 pm
One of the loudest and most loyal advocates for racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/11/20/joseph-franklin-prolific-racist-serial-killer-is-executed/ ] in the months before he was executed last November was Frazier Glenn Miller, the former Klansman and neo-Nazi arrested for killing three people [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ (second item above)] in separate shootings yesterday afternoon at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home in suburban Kansas City.
Yesterday, would have been Franklin’s 64th birthday.
Whether Franklin’s birthday had anything to do with the timing of Miller’s deadly shooting spree is unknown at this time. What is clear is Miller’s admiration for the racist killing machine.
On the neo-Nazi web forum Vanguard News Network (VNN) Miller, a raging anti-Semite, frequently praised Franklin, who did most of his killing from long distance and from the shadows, for his bravery.
“So far, Joseph Paul Franklin is the bravest, therefore the greatest White Nationalist hero America has ever produced,” Miller wrote, using his VNN handle “Rounder.” “His proven courage, initiative, dedication, and willingness to sacrifice everything he owned, including his life, is unequaled on this continent, in my judgment.”
Franklin, who was also a former Klansmen and neo-Nazi, was convicted of killing eight people and was suspected of killing as many as 20 unarmed men, women and children, during a three-year cross country murder spree.
Most of his victims were black men and boys. But Franklin received his only death sentence for the 1977 sniper murder of a 42-year-old white man coming out of a synagogue after a bar mitzvah in suburban St. Louis.
Miller was ridiculed by some of his VNN fellow travelers for heaping such high praise on Franklin while failing to follow his violent example.
“I gather Glenn must have been stung by VNNers’ criticism (calling them ‘anonymous pussies),” Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, the largest white supremacist web forum in the world, posted hours after Miller was arrested yesterday in Overland Park, Kansas. “They had kept asking him why he didn’t follow his ‘greatest American hero.’”
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/14/frazier-glenn-miller-suspected-kansas-shooter-may-have-marking-birthday-of-hero-racist-serial-killer/ [with comments]
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Vanguard News Network: A Track Record of Violence
By Don Terry on April 14, 2014 - 4:48 pm
The shooting rampage at two Jewish community centers in suburban Kansas City yesterday afternoon that left three people dead, including a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather, also left the radical racist right casting blame and pointing fingers at each other.
Much of that blame is being directed at Alex Linder and the gutturally racist website Vanguard News Network (VNN) [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-linder ] he founded in 2000. The site declares, “No Jews. Just Right.”
The alleged neo-Nazi gunman, Frazier Glenn Miller [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/13/frazier-glenn-miller-longtime-anti-semite-arrested-in-kansas-jewish-community-center-murders/ (third item above)], who was arrested shortly after the shooting and shouted “Heil Hitler” from the back of a police car, has posted over the years more than 12,000 times to VNN, a site one white nationalist critic calls “a swamp.”
But the 73-year-old Miller is not the first VNN user to turn to murder and mayhem.
Brad Griffin, the editor of the white nationalist website Occidental Dissent and who writes under the name “Hunter Wallace,” posted on his site today that VNN is “the same swamp that gave us the Curt Maynard, Yankee Jim, and JT Ready murder suicides, Joe Snuffy the Spokane bomber, Todd Van Biber who blew himself up with a pipe bomb, and Craig Cobb’s plot to take over Leith and his ‘patrol’ of the town.”
Maynard, who used the screen name “Melcur” when posting on VNN, shot his ex-wife to death before killing himself following a police chase in 2010. In July 2008, Maynard posted to VNN, urging Miller to “lead by an example.”
“I’ve heard you and dozens of others condemn blogging as a waste of time, and constantly encourage others to sacrifice themselves,” Maynard wrote to “Rounder,” Miller’s screen name on VNN. “Why don’t you do it, I mean why don’t you strap on some explosive and walk into a room full of kikes and blow yourselves to Kingdom come.
“I say this in the nicest and most respectful manner possible, why don’t you lead by example and relieve us, this world, of a dozen goddamned Jews.”
In 2008, the body of VNN poster James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich, 52, a prolific white supremacist blogger, letter-to-the editor writer and radio host [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/02/20/white-supremacist-wife-in-apparent-murder-suicide/ ], was found hanging in a garage attached to the home he shared with his 55-year-old wife, Deborah. She was found beaten and strangled to death in the couple’s bedroom, the victim of an apparent murder-suicide.
VNN poster “Joe Snuffy” is really Kevin Harpham, who was sentenced to 32 years in prison in 2011 [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/12/20/judge-lectures-mlk-day-bomber-gives-maximum-32-year-sentence/ ] for building and planting a bomb – “a weapon of mass destruction” – along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in Spokane, Wash.
The bomb was concealed in a backpack. The lead sinkers in the radio-detonated device were coated with Warfarin rate poison, evidently intended to increase bleeding.
Had it gone off, dozens of men, women and children would have been killed or injured.
A bomb did go off in the face of Todd Vanbiber [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/theyre-back?page=0,2#7 ; http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/theyre-back ], a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. In 1997, Vanbiber was planning to detonate 14 pipe bombs on a major route in Orlando, Fla., to divert attention from two bank robberies Vanbiber and his comrades were planning in the city. He was tinkering with one of the bombs in his storage shed when it exploded in his face.
He was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but his prison time was drastically reduced when he testified against his accomplices. After his release from prison in 2002, for several years he offered offered advice on stocks and other topics on VNN.
The last poster Griffin mentions in his post about the VNN swamp is Craig Cobb, the neo-Nazi who tried to buy up the tiny North Dakota town of Leith and turn it into an all-Aryan enclave named “Cobbsville.”
But Cobb was arrested last November and charged with seven felony counts of terrorizing his neighbors as he and a follower “patrolled” the streets with rifles. Cobb has been in jail ever since, but could be released soon under a plea agreement, a deal Leith officials oppose [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/09/leith-city-officials-object-to-craig-cobb-plea-deal/ ].
Research by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that having multiple murderers associated with a racist forum is not surprising. A forthcoming two-year study by the SPLC will show that nearly 100 people have been murdered in the last five years by active users on another prominent racist web forum, Stormfront.org. Maynard and Leshkevich were avid users of Stormfront as well.
Griffin also posted his theory about why Miller allegedly murdered “a random 14-year-old child and his grandfather in cold blood.” A 53-year-old woman was also killed in the afternoon attacks.
“First, Glenn Miller thought the 14-year-old child and his grandfather were Jewish, and his hero Alex Linder has consistently advocated his ‘principled solution’ of exterminating the Jews for 10 years now, so Glenn assumed that by acting to exterminate the Jews he would win the admiration of his peers at VNN Forum.”
Griffin added that Miller “swallowed” Linder’s “psychopathic nonsense” about “Christian morality as a major obstacle to the dehumanization and extermination of the Jews” and “as a result he wasn’t restrained by the Ten Commandments when he opened fire on the 14-year-old child and his grandfather.”
The boy and his grandfather were killed in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. The center was packed with hundreds of teenage singers, auditioning for a singing contest while young performers were trying out for a part in “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
A poster on VNN identifying himself as Tom Sanders said he liked Miller and was “glad he will go to heaven for sure now.
“These Bolshevik brats,” Sanders wrote, “were rehearsing the play ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ which is about a scum lawyer who gets a black rapist of a white women off, and is portrayed as a hero.
“He acted appropriately. That kind of filth is disgusting and they should all be shot more than once.”
It is indeed a dark and scary swamp.
Laurie Wood contributed to this report.
© 2014 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/14/vanguard-news-network-a-track-record-of-violence/ [with comments]
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Doctor, grandson, slain outside the Jewish Community Center, ‘in heaven together’
William Corporon and his grandson, Reat Underwood
By JUDY L. THOMAS and BRIAN BURNES
The Kansas City Star
April 13, 2014
Reat Griffin Underwood loved life. A freshman at Blue Valley High School, he participated in debate and theater and was working toward the rank of Eagle Scout.
On Sunday afternoon, he was with his grandfather outside the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park when the vehicle they were in was struck by gunfire. Reat’s grandfather, William Lewis Corporon, who had taken the teen there to audition for a contest, died at the scene. Reat, 14, died later at a hospital.
A third victim, Terri LaManno, was killed shortly afterward outside the Village Shalom senior living community, less than a mile south of the community center. LaManno, 53, of Kansas City, went there every Sunday to visit her mother, a resident of the facility, authorities said.
Reat and his grandfather were Methodists. LaManno was a Catholic.
“This is obviously a horrible, horrible thing that you wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through,” said the Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor at United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, where the family attends. “They are really remarkable people. Being with them, what stood out was their strength of faith and confidence that this was not God’s will.”
Mindy Corporon, who is Reat’s mother and William Corporon’s daughter, attended an interfaith prayer service Sunday night at St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Overland Park.
Near the end of the service, she went to the podium.
“I am the mother of the son who was killed,” she said in a calm voice.
After the shooting, she said, “I came upon the scene very, very quickly, before the police, before the ambulances. And I knew immediately that they were in heaven.
“I know they are in heaven together.”
She said her dad took Reat to the community center to audition for the KC SuperStar competition because she was attending her younger son’s lacrosse game.
“We were having life,” she said. “And I want you to know that we are going to have more life.”
A statement issued by the family said Reat “had a beautiful voice … (and) a passion for life, and touched so many people in his young age.”
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N1_qcUwTeQ (as embedded)]
Last fall, he performed in the musical “Guys and Dolls.” He loved spending time camping and hunting with his grandfather, father and brother.
“Both Reat and Dr. Corporon were very proud supporters of the University of Oklahoma and its sports teams,” the family said.
Corporon was a doctor who practiced medicine in Marlow and Duncan, Okla., from 1976 through 2003. He and his wife then moved to the Kansas City area to be closer to their grandchildren.
“He was a well-loved physician in the Johnson County community, cherished his family and more than anything had a passion for caring for others,” the family’s statement said. “Dr. Corporon leaves behind his wife of 49 years and a loving and devoted family and extended family.”
The family thanked the church and school community “for the outpouring of love and support” and asked for privacy as they mourn their losses.
Blue Valley School Superintendent Tom Trigg said in an email to district patrons Sunday night that he met Reat earlier this year at an annual Blue Valley Educational Foundation breakfast.
“Reat sang the national anthem to begin the breakfast, and his talents were on full display that morning,” Trigg said. “I found Reat to be an engaging and exceptional young man. The school district has truly lost a great young person. Our hearts go out to the families who are dealing with this senseless tragedy.”
Trigg said Reat and some other high school students in the district were attending the non-school-related event at the Jewish Community Center at the time of the shooting.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_13u7XGU0 (as embedded)]
“As a result, a number of families have been impacted district-wide,” he said. “As a community we will come together to support each other. We encourage you to be especially sensitive and offer support to your child during this time.”
Though school is not in session today, Trigg said support would be available at the district’s high schools for students who want to speak with a counselor.
“We are a strong community and will do everything possible to support each other and our students,” he said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all families who have been impacted by this tragedy.”
Sunday marked the second tragedy in a month involving a Blue Valley High School student. In March, senior Alex Fraser was seriously injured in a swimming accident while on spring break in Mexico. The accident left him with a spinal injury, and he is in a rehabilitation center in Colorado. Students gathered for a sendoff for him earlier this month.
Twitter was lighting up Sunday afternoon and evening with tweets from Reat’s friends and classmates.
“My prayers go out to the Underwood family,” said one. “Reat will be missed by the BV family. Heaven gained a truly talented and wonderful angel.”
“Reat was a gift and I am blessed to have know him,” said another.
A Facebook page called Wear White for Reat called for students to wear white to class on Tuesday to honor him.
Reat “was almost never seen without a smile on his face,” the site said.
Other Blue Valley schools said they would join in, as did students at other school districts.
“I don’t go to BV but I do speak for all of Louisburg High School when I say we hope for a swift recovery for you all,” wrote one student. “From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry for your loss. I think LHS has your backs, and several of us will be wearing white tomorrow at school. I wish you all the best.”
Dreyah Cushman, a junior at Blue Valley North, said she worked with Reat at debate tournaments this year.
“He was a novice debater, and my partner and I would mentor him at the tournaments,” Cushman said. “He was very smart. He would use these large vocabulary words. And he’d make us laugh in between the debate rounds.”
Cushman said when they would offer debate advice to Reat, he immediately accepted it.
“He was very, very serious during debate rounds, and he wanted to win,” she said. “We told him he should be moving to varsity by his sophomore year.”
Hamilton said he had confirmed Reat at Church of the Resurrection last year.
“He was an active volunteer in the church,” he said. “He volunteered in the Kids COR program.”
The family was surrounded Sunday night by relatives and friends, Hamilton said.
“They have a great network who want to be there and care for them,” he said. “They said we have the utter confidence that our son and dad are together with God now; that brings them comfort. Their hope is that something good will come from this. This evil thing this person has done will not have the final word here.”
He said the church will have a memorial service for Reat and his grandfather on Friday.
“Somehow it seems fitting that on Good Friday, when Christ’s own death was taking place and yet out of that horrible evil there was going to be something good that would come from it,” he said. “And that’s really part of what we’re looking at here.”
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBzj7pbiFes (as embedded)]
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaM1V9NO6_g (as embedded)]
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiABBZpSc-I (as embedded)]
Copyright 2014 The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/13/4958621/doctor-grandson-in-heaven-together.html [with their extensive further coverage listed and linked; comments disabled]
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Shooting victim was an Eagle Scout, 'tremendous talent'
William Louis Corporon, 69, and Reat Griffin Underwood, 14.
(Photo: Corporon family)
John Bacon, USA TODAY
4:09 p.m. EDT April 14, 2014
By all accounts, Reat Underwood was the all-American boy.
Reat, 14, was one of three people killed in a gunman's rampage at two Jewish sites on Passover eve in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. Authorities said Monday that the accused killer will face murder and hate-crime charges.
Reat had gone to the Jewish Community Center on Sunday with his grandfather, physician William Corporon, 69, to try out for the KC SuperStar singing and scholarship competition. Both were fatally shot. The third victim, shot outside the Village Shalom retirement home, was Terri LaManno, 53.
All the victims were Christians.
Reat was an Eagle Scout who enjoyed "spending time camping and hunting with his grandfather, father and brother," said Mindy Corporon, Reat's mother and the daughter of William Corporon.
She said she arrived at the scene as police were arriving.
"It was very unreal," she said Monday. "It didn't feel like a crime scene to me, it was family. My family members on the ground."
She called the shootings a "horrible act of violence," adding that her loved ones were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Reat was a freshman at Blue Valley High School, where he was involved in debate and theater.
"He loved to debate," she said, adding that he had been involved in eight debate contests and earned a varsity letter.
"He was very proud of that," she said.
"He was with us for a wonderful 14 years and had a real full life for a 14-year-old," she said.
Blue Valley has almost 1,500 students, but Principal Scott Bacon told USA TODAY that Reat made a positive impression right away, at the annual Blue Valley Educational Foundation breakfast that draws almost 1,000 people.
"He sang the national anthem," Bacon said. "I realized very quickly we had a young man with tremendous talent in our school. I was certainly impressed by his presentation in front of such a large audience. I saw him as a young man with great promise."
Bacon said he often saw Reat chatting with other students in the hallways. Bacon said Reat already had become a fixture at singing events in the school, including the annual musical — this year Guys and Dolls.
"This was a traumatic event for our school community," Bacon said.
The high school had planned an in-service day for teachers Monday, so no classes were scheduled. But counselors were being made available for students, schools superintendent Tom Trigg said.
Trigg also was at the breakfast and knew Reat.
"His talents were on full display that morning," he said, adding that he found Reat to be "an engaging and exceptional young man."
Reat was still in his grandfather's truck when police say Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, opened fire at the community center, killing Reat and his grandfather, then fired shots outside the nearby Village Shalom retirement home.
Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, is a former "grand dragon" of the Ku Klux Klan with a long history of running illegal paramilitary organizations and intimidating minorities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"That idiot absolutely knocked a family to its knees for no reason," said Will Corporon, William Corporon's son and Reat's uncle.
Corporon practiced medicine in Oklahoma from 1976 through 2003, when he and his wife moved to the Overland Park area to be closer to their grandchildren. Will said his dad was in college when Will was a baby, and that his mother worked to put his dad through medical school.
Will Corporan said many people come up to him and remark that William Corporon's hands were the first hands ever to touch their children.
He said his dad would have gladly given his life to save Reat's life.
"My father leaves behind a legacy of faith and family and community," he said.
LaManno, whose mother lives in Village Shalom, was the mother of two and an occupational therapist at the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired, Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said.
The family members are long-time parishioners at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Kansas City, where a rosary was said for LaManno after Monday morning Mass, The Kansas City Star reported.
Copyright 2014 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/14/kansas-city-jewish-shootings/7698029/ [with comments]
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White Supremacy, GOP Politics, and the Jewish Community Center Shooting
OVERLAND PARK, KS – APRIL 13: A police car is seen at the entrance of the Jewish Community Center after three were killed when a gunman opened fire on April 13, 2014 in Overland Park, Kansas. Police arrested and were questioning a suspect.
(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Image from ABC2 News [ http://www.abc2news.com/news/shootings-at-jewish-centers-called-heinous-attacks ]
By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson [ http://www.politicususa.com/author/hrafnkell ]
Monday, April, 14th, 2014, 7:30 am
The suspect in the Overland Park, Kansas, Jewish Center murders, Frazier Glenn Miller, who goes by the name of Fraiser Glen Cross, Jr., turns out of course, to be the former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the White Patriot Party – oh, and a supporter of David Duke.
CNN reported this morning that, “Video from CNN affiliate KMBC [ http://www.kmbc.com/news/fatal-shooting-reported-at-ops-jewish-community-center/25457124 ] showed the suspect sitting in the back of a patrol car and shouting, ‘Heil Hitler [CNN report embedded; the CNN YouTube of the report, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzOtLO2iBM (with comments), next below as embedded].’”
Cross has called Jews “swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed, parasitic midgets.”
Yet Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said Sunday night at a press conference that it was “too early to label it” a hate crime. The suspect had a shotgun and possibly other guns as well. Yes, and it’s also too early to label guns deadly.
C’mon folks. The guy has been printing The Aryan Alternative [ http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/vnn-newspapers/aryan-alternative-newpaper/ ] since 2005,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center [ http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Glenn%20Miller ]. To have to say it’s a racist tabloid is redundant. The man is Julius Streicher reborn [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Streicher ].
Look, I’m not trying to connect A to B here, but we just had the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin tell conservatives [ http://splcenter.org/blog/2014/03/07/frc-hot-mic-boykin-jokes-about-jews-says-obama-supports-al-qaeda-sends-them-subliminal-messages/ ] (because who else listens to him?) that “Jews are the problem” and the cause of all the problems in the world,” and Pat Robertson just quipped the other day [ http://gawker.com/pat-robertson-jews-dont-fix-cars-theyre-busy-polish-1555571303 ] that Jews are too busy polishing their diamonds to polish cars.
Does it surprise anyone that Religious Right Islamophobes are also anti-Semites? Does it surprise anyone at all? For 2,000 years extremist Christianity has been making a living destroying every alternative to itself, starting with the Pagans of the Roman Empire, before moving on to Northern and Eastern Europe. Along the way it persecuted Jews and Muslims and ethnic religion wherever it found it, Old World, New World, and beyond.
And yes, they’ve got plans for you, too.
In a state with a religious freedom law, could Cross’ actions be defended on grounds of religion? It is not a big step from Stand Your Ground, after all.
Anti-Semitism is as much a part of conservative Christianity as the belief that Jesus died for your sins and has been around longer. Crusaders used to slaughter Jews in the Rhineland on their way to the Middle East. Even other types of Christians weren’t safe, as the Eastern Romans found to their dismay when the fanatics of the First Crusade tramped through Roman lands.
It should surprise no one that the killer of Overland Park was a white supremacist. It should give us all pause and put us doubly on alert for Republican politicians with close ties to white supremacists, particularly in light of the new “religious freedom” bill craze, allowing extremist Christians to persecute anyone of whom they do not approve.
And yes, Rand Paul, I am looking at you [ http://www.politicususa.com/2013/07/22/senator-rand-paul-hopes-hiring-white-supremacist-wont-damage-gop-brand.html ].
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a press release Sunday [ http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/miscellaneous/adl-statement-shootings-at-kansas-jewish-facilities.html ] said,
The attacks on the Jewish community centers in Overland Park are a cowardly, unspeakable and heinous act of violence,” said Karen Aroesty, ADL St. Louis Regional Director. “While it is too early to label these shootings as a hate crime, the fact that two Jewish institutions were targeted by the same individual just prior to the start of the Passover holiday is deeply troubling and certainly gives us pause. We have reached out to local, state and federal law enforcement and stand willing and able to offer guidance and assistance to the community if this incident turns out to have been motivated by anti-Semitism.
I think it is a safe bet that it was motivated by anti-Semitism. “Heil Hitler!” can hardly mean anything else. Passover was about to start and Hitler’s birthday is on April 20. White supremacists are popping up all over the place.
Just last week, ADL sent out a security bulletin to Jewish community institutions across the country warning of the increased potential for violent attacks against community centers in the coming weeks, which coincide both with the Passover holiday and Hitler’s birthday on April 20, a day around which in the United States has historically been marked by extremist acts of violence and terrorism, including the violence at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
So on the one hand, we’ve got fundamentalist gun and Bible Christian fanatics who seem largely to be Tea Party supporters and we’ve got these people now demanding a military overthrow of President Obama [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-wiles-asks-god-deliver-us-obama-demands-military-arrest-president-prevent-second-civil- ], and we’ve got Hitler’s birthday and a bunch of white men dressed up like Nazis at a Minnesota restaurant on MLK Day [ http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2014/03/gasthofs_nazi_photo_gasthof_zur_gemutlichkeit.php ]…
No, you know what, you’re right Republicans: there’s no racism in America [ http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/12/white-conservative-pundits-stop-racism-exist.html ]. None at all. Just like the federal government never freed the slaves [ http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/12/republicans-revise-history-slavery-party-equal-rights.html ], Jim DeMint. We’ll just pretend President Lincoln never signed the Emancipation Proclamation, shall we? And anyway, what does slavery matter? We all know, because you said so repeatedly, that black people were better off as slaves.
Wake up, America. Guns kill people. Racists and religious bigots with guns kill people. The Religious Right will be blaming liberalism, atheism and secularism and the lack of prayer in public schools by this morning, if they have not started already.
But this tragedy did not come about because of liberal ideals. We can’t know Cross’ motivations until he says anything, if he says anything at all. But it isn’t difficult to see a connection between a white supremacist killing Jews and the nonstop hate parade coming from Tea Party and Religious Right sources (often indistinguishable). The surprise is not that there have been shootings and deaths. The surprise is that there have not been more of them.
©2014, PoliticusUSA.com
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/14/white-supremacy-gop-politics-jewish-community-center-shooting.html [with comments]
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Jim DeMint's racist logic
May 06, 2013
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/06/1207255/-Jim-DeMint-s-racist-logic [with comments]
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Projections show rapidly changing racial makeup of U.S.
[img]Our racial makeup has changed substantially.
(Shutterstock)[/img]
Roy Mehta via Getty Images
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/13/changing-racial-makeup-_n_5142462.html ]
The U.S. population is now made up of immigrants, racial intermarriage and a diverse population.
(Shutterstock)
Immigration and intermarriage account for much of this change in our country’s racial makeup.
(Shutterstock)
By Danielle Restuccia
Apr 13, 2014
By 2042, so-called racial minority groups will make up the majority of the U.S. population.
That’s according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest projection. Building on that, the Pew Research Center recently released an extensive study on the shifting demographics of race in our country, showing that within a century (from 1960 to 2060), white Americans will have gone from making up 85 percent of the population to comprising 43 percent.
On the other hand, the number of Hispanic and Black Americans will have grown substantially over that time period, together making up 45 percent of the 2060 population.
Immigration and intermarriage account for much of this change in our country’s racial makeup, and for many, that’s a good thing, forcing us to embrace diversity and reexamine how we categorize race. However, other research suggests that these shifting demographics may cause fear or a tendency to become more conservative on the part of white Americans.
Pew Research Center Numbers
According to the Pew Research Center study [ http://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/ ], our racial makeup has changed substantially in just the last 50 years.
For instance, from 1960 to 2010, the percentages of Americans identifying themselves as Black, Hispanic, Asian, or “other” increased from just 15 percent of the population to 36 percent of the population:
- Black: Increased from 10 to 12 percent
- Hispanic: Increased from 4 to 15 percent
- Asian: increased from 1 to 5 percent
- “Other”: Increased from 0 to 3 percent
In the next fifteen years, those numbers will jump again, with the Hispanic population in particular increasing to 22 percent; by 2060, Hispanics will comprise 31 percent of the U.S. population.
Immigration and Intermarriage
A significant impetus for these shifting demographics is immigration: since 1965, the U.S. has welcomed 40 million immigrants, with half of those identifying as Hispanic.
Of course, the U.S. has always been a country of newcomers. In the early days of our founding and through the middle of the 20th century, our population consisted of huge numbers of European immigrants.
However, our changing racial makeup is due to a shift in immigrants’ countries of origin: while 88 percent of immigrants in 1900 were from Europe, Europeans only comprise 12 percent of the immigrant population today. Conversely, immigration from Hispanic countries is on the rise, with over 50 percent of all immigrants to the U.S. today hailing from Latin America. So while the Hispanic population in the U.S. has been increasing, the influx of white Americans has been decreasing.
Unsurprisingly, because over a quarter of the entire U.S. population is now made up of immigrants, racial intermarriage is also driving a more diverse population. Just half a century ago, less than three percent of new marriages were between people of different races; today, 15.5 percent of newlyweds come from different racial backgrounds.
That means that not only is our racial makeup changing, but it’s getting more complicated to explain, too.
Adjusting Our Racial Categories
Shifting demographics and intermarriage mean we may need to reexamine how we talk about race.
In the past, the U.S. Census Bureau and other organizations have asked people to define themselves according to checkboxes: “Asian,” “Hispanic,” or “Native American,” for example. However, with the changing faces [ http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/funderburg-text?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_c1 ] in the U.S., it’s no longer so easy for many people to simply categorize themselves, nor do they feel they should have to label their race as one thing or another.
Especially for children of racial intermarriage, “identity is a highly nuanced concept, influenced by politics, religion, history, and geography, as well as by how the person believes the answer will be used,” according to National Geographic’s report on increasing racial diversity.
Because there’s no longer a clear divide between black and white in the U.S.—as there was in the 1960s and earlier, for instance—people are beginning to see racial categories as much more fluid and adjustable. Some people have taken to creating new categories altogether: “On playgrounds and college campuses, you’ll find such homespun terms as Blackanese, Filatino, Chicanese, and Korgentinian.”
Possible Racial Divide
So what will those shifting categories mean by 2060, when we have an even more diverse racial makeup in the U.S.?
For some, it’s likely to be a good thing. According to the Pew Research Center’s report, new numbers of racially diverse commercials, celebrities, and terms suggest that “the norms are changing and the stigma [about interracial marriage, in particular] receding.”
On the other hand, researchers from Northwestern University conducted two studies showing that white Americans may feel threatened by the prospect of becoming a racial minority.
According to Slate’s report [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/demographics_conservatism_and_racial_polarization_could_america_become_mississippi.html ] on the studies, psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson gave self-identified politically “independent” white Americans information about the country’s shifting demographics. They then asked a series of questions about national or state-level policies and found that when white Americans were “aware of demographic changes that put them in the minority,” they tended to endorse more conservative political policies.
That has some people worrying that that we’ll see a deepening divide between whites and other racial groups; Slate suggested that the best example of how this demographic fear has (in the past) manifested itself was in slavery and apartheid.
While it’s extreme to think that we would devolve back into policies common to the 19th century, the changing racial makeup will likely test us as a country. But maybe that’s not a bad thing: with more diversity and new challenges, there’s the chance to better ourselves, too.
SEE ALSO:
Hispanics’ views more positive toward illegal immigration impact
http://voxxi.com/2013/10/03/hispanics-views-more-positive-toward-illegal-immigration-impact/
The coming together of African and Hispanic Americans
http://voxxi.com/2013/09/09/together-african-hispanic-americans/
Copyright ©2014, Interactive One
http://voxxi.com/2014/04/13/changing-racial-makeup-of-us/ [with comments] [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/13/changing-racial-makeup-_n_5142462.html (with comments)]
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President Obama Speaks at the 2014 Easter Prayer Breakfast
Published on Apr 14, 2014 by The White House [ http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse ]
Christian leaders from across the country join President Obama at a breakfast to pray and reflect on Holy Week and Easter. President Obama said that his prayers are also with the people of Overland Park, Kansas, where a gunman opened fire on a Jewish community center and retirement home on Sunday. April 13, 2014.
Remarks by the President at Easter Prayer Breakfast
East Room
April 14, 2014
9:27 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. (Applause.) Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Please, please have a seat. Thank you so much. Well, good morning, everybody.
Welcome to the White House and welcome to our annual Easter prayer breakfast. As always, we are blessed to be joined by so many good friends from around the country. We’ve got distinguished guests. We’ve got faith leaders, members of my administration who are here. And I will once again resist the temptation to preach to preachers. (Laughter.) It never works out well. I am reminded of the admonition from the Book of Romans -- “Do not claim to be wiser than you are.” (Laughter.) So this morning, I want to offer some very brief reflections as we start this Easter season.
But as I was preparing my remarks, something intervened yesterday. And so I want to just devote a few words about yesterday’s tragedy in Kansas. This morning our prayers are with the people of Overland Park. And we’re still learning the details, but this much we know. A gunman opened fire at two Jewish facilities -- a community center and a retirement home. Innocent people were killed. Their families were devastated. And this violence has struck the heart of the Jewish community in Kansas City.
Two of the victims -- a grandfather and his teenage [grand] son -- attended the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, which is led by our friend Reverend Adam Hamilton. Some of you may know that during my inauguration, Reverend Hamilton delivered the sermon at the prayer service at the National Cathedral. And I was grateful for his presence and his words. He joined us at our breakfast last year. And at the Easter service for Palm Sunday last night, he had to break this terrible news to his congregation.
That this occurred now -- as Jews were preparing to celebrate Passover, as Christians were observing Palm Sunday --makes this tragedy all the more painful. And today, as Passover begins, we’re seeing a number of synagogues and Jewish community centers take added security precautions. Nobody should have to worry about their security when gathering with their fellow believers. No one should ever have to fear for their safety when they go to pray.
And as a government, we’re going to provide whatever assistance is needed to support the investigation. As Americans, we not only need to open our hearts to the families of the victims, we’ve got to stand united against this kind of terrible violence, which has no place in our society. And we have to keep coming together across faiths to combat the ignorance and intolerance, including anti-Semitism that can lead to hatred and to violence, because we’re all children of God. We’re all made in His image, all worthy of his love and dignity. And we see what happens around the world when this kind of religious-based or tinged violence can rear its ugly head. It’s got no place in our society.
So this Easter Week, of course we recognize that there’s a lot of pain and a lot of sin and a lot of tragedy in this world, but we’re also overwhelmed by the grace of an awesome God. We’re reminded how He loves us, so deeply, that He gave his only begotten Son so that we might live through Him. And in these Holy Days, we recall all that Jesus endured for us -- the scorn of the crowds and the pain of the crucifixion, in our Christian religious tradition we celebrate the glory of the Resurrection -- all so that we might be forgiven of our sins and granted everlasting life.
And more than 2,000 years later, it inspires us still. We are drawn to His timeless teachings, challenged to be worthy of His sacrifice, to emulate as best we can His eternal example to love one another just as He loves us. And of course, we’re always reminded each and every day that we fall short of that example. And none of us are free from sin, but we look to His life and strive, knowing that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
I’ll tell you, I felt this spirit when I had the great honor of meeting His Holiness, Pope Francis, recently. I think it’s fair to say that those of us of the Christian faith, regardless of our denomination, have been touched and moved by Pope Francis. Now, some of it is his words -- his message of justice and inclusion, especially for the poor and the outcast. He implores us to see the inherent dignity in each human being. But it’s also his deeds, simple yet profound -- hugging the homeless man, and washing the feet of somebody who normally ordinary folks would just pass by on the street. He reminds us that all of us, no matter what our station, have an obligation to live righteously, and that we all have an obligation to live humbly. Because that’s, in fact, the example that we profess to follow.
So I had a wonderful conversation with Pope Francis, mostly about the imperatives of addressing poverty and inequality. And I invited him to come to the United States, and I sincerely hope he will. When we exchanged gifts he gave me a copy of his inspiring writings, “The Joy of the Gospel.” And there is a passage that speaks to us today: “Christ’s resurrection,” he writes, “is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world.” And he adds, “Jesus did not rise in vain. May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!”
So this morning, my main message is just to say thank you to all of you, because you don’t remain on the sidelines. I want to thank you for your ministries, for your good works, for the marching you do for justice and dignity and inclusion, for the ministries that all of you attend to and have helped organize throughout your communities each and every day to feed the hungry and house the homeless and educate children who so desperately need an education. You have made a difference in so many different ways, not only here in the United States but overseas as well. And that includes a cause close to my heart, My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative that we recently launched to make sure that more boys and young men of color can overcome the odds and achieve their dreams.
And we’re joined by several faith leaders who are doing outstanding work in this area mentoring and helping young men in tough neighborhoods. We’re also joined by some of these young men who are working hard and trying to be good students and good sons and good citizens. And I want to say to each of those young men here, we’re proud of you, and we expect a lot of you. And we’re going to make sure that we’re there for you so that you then in turn will be there for the next generation of young men.
And I mention all this because of all of our many partners for My Brother’s Keeper, it’s clergy like you and your congregations that can play a special role to be that spiritual and ethical foundation, that rock that so many young men need in their lives.
So I want to thank all of you who are already involved. I invite those who are not to get more information, see if you can join in this effort as brothers and sisters in Christ who “never tire of doing good.”
In closing, I’ll just recall that old prayer that I think more than one preacher has invoked at the pulpit: “Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, and nudge me when I’ve said enough.” (Laughter.) The Almighty is nudging me. I thank you for joining us this morning of prayer. I wish you all a blessed Holy Week and Easter, and I’d like to invite my friend Joel Hunter to deliver the opening prayer. Come on up, Joel. (Applause.)
END
9:39 A.M. EDT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldvi3CJQVg [with comments; also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MYZBLS6S8Y (with comments)]; http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/14/remarks-president-easter-prayer-breakfast ; http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/14/president-obama-hosts-annual-easter-prayer-breakfast-white-house
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Obama welcomes 150 Christian leaders for White House Easter Prayer Breakfast
President Obama welcomed 150 Christian leaders to the White House East Room for the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.
wh.gov
President Obama kicked off Holy Week at the White House Monday with 150 Christian leaders at the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.
By Leslie Larson
Published: Monday, April 14, 2014, 8:04 AM / Updated: Monday, April 14, 2014, 11:50 AM
President Obama kicked off Holy Week at the White House Monday with 150 Christian leaders at the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.
In brief remarks, Obama offered his condolences to the victims of the shooting in Overland Park, Kan., and he praised those gathered for their ministry work.
“You don’t remain on the sidelines,” he told the group.
“I want to thank you for your ministries, for your good works, for the marching you do for justice, and dignity and inclusion.”
To wrap up his homily, the President jokingly quoted the prayer: "Lord fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff and nudge me when I’ve said enough.”
"The Almighty is nudging me," he told the laughing pastors before sitting down.
Rev. Otis Moss, the minister who replaced the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, delivered the sermon and Christian singer/songwriter Carlos Whittaker performed.
Pastor Joel Hunter offered the opening prayer for the gathering and in an unscripted move, Obama asked Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, to deliver the closing prayer.
Rev. Al Sharpton, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, were among the guests.
The tradition was started by the Obama administration in 2010 to specifically celebrate the life and death of Christ.
The President and First Lady will host a Passover seder at the White House on Tuesday, on the second night of the Jewish holiday.
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