Senseless Murders

Young men are getting shot down in the streets of Santa Maria. This is a tragedy. We hadn't made it two weeks into the month of January when we already had seen two murders. These two most recent victims didn't make it past their early twenties. Another couple of “drive-bys” occurred a few days later.
The murdered young men were walking north on Oakley shortly after 6:30 p.m. when they were shot. Shell casings were strewn across about 20 yards, leading police to suspect the victims were chased prior to the shootings. Detectives are still trying to determine how many shooters were involved.
Last year there were 13 homicides, the last two, just after the Christmas weekend. This is both shameful and tragic. Memorials like the one pictured above are appearing too frequently.
Something needs to be done about these senseless murders. The city needs to get involved. Determining why and then getting into some type of intervention would be a productive way for the city to spend their money, instead of idiotic filing of charges against businesses regarding their landscape.
About half of last year's victims were involved with gangs. Apparently the two most recent murders were gang related.
The answer is not more meetings to discuss the problem, the answer is for these involved people who say they know the “whys” of gang life to get out there into these communities and identify the families, mothers, fathers, grandparents and whoever else is aware of the road the gang member or would-be gang member is taking.

It would be wonderful to see the mayor involved beyond the usually empty platitudes that she seems to enjoy uttering.  Cutting ribbons and hammering her little gavel at meetings isn't enough in the face of so much violence. The leadership of Santa Maria, beginning with her, looks clueless. 

This is a form of domestic terrorism and it must be met head-on, nothing else will make a difference. It's clear that having meetings to “discuss the gang problem” is not working.
The time for talk is over.

Central Coast Cross Burning

People in these here parts are shocked, shocked to think that hate, racism and bigotry has reached the Central Coast. Apparently some of them are under the illusion that those thoughts and feelings don't exist in their little community. Well yeah, it must be nice living inside their heads with Peter Pan, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

For example, Reverend Stephanie Raphael, president of the San Luis Obispo Ministerial Association who said, "I was horrified. We live in a paradise, and I think the first thought was, this can't really be real."

Stephanie needs to get her head out of the sand and focus on what entitled whites do to people of color every day of the year.

Reverend Steph also offered, "Any kind of hate crime is not a joke, it's not a prank. It's designed to intimidate and frighten. We live in a beautiful area, but it's only beautiful if every single person feels safe conducting their lives and living here."
She needs to get herself out into the community and talk to a greater variety of people. She might want to take a translator along to get a clearer picture of how things really are up and down the coast. Reading a few letters to the editors of the area newspapers might give insight as well.

Police assigned extra patrols to the neighborhood in Arroyo Grande — a city that hasn't seen a hate crime in nearly a decade — and rewards were offered for information leading to an arrest.

FBI agents and investigators from the county and the state Department of Justice were involved in the arson and hate-crime probe. Police said $3,500 in rewards were offered.

Officials are saying that there was no evidence that an organized racist group was involved.

So I guess these investigators believe that all racist assholes shave their heads and carry Nazi flags? How obtuse is that?

According to police Cmdr. John Hough, the 11 foot cross was stolen from a garden at Saint John's Lutheran Church weeks ago and set ablaze Friday in a lot behind the house where the family lives.
One of the residents, a 19 year old, saw the flaming cross from her bedroom window. She called the cops who used a garden hose to put out the fire.

Police declined to release the names of the family because the incident was considered a hate crime — the first since 2002 in the city of 17,000 in mostly rural San Luis Obispo County, a region of vast farms, picturesque towns and a state university campus.

More than 30 clergy members signed a letter to the editor of the San Luis Obispo Tribune urging that the crime be taken seriously.

Well that's nice, but shouldn't their letter have gone to the cops or the FBI?

The 100 pound cross was usually bolted to a base in the garden, but each year it was taken inside the sanctuary during the Lenten season before being moved to a beach two miles away to be decorated with flowers for an Easter sunrise service.

Pastor Randy Ouimette said that the theft at the church was discovered March 5 but that the robbery may have occurred weeks earlier, indicating that they're not really all that good at keeping an eye on things.

More than 100 members of the congregation signed a giant card of compassion they planned to deliver to the family with two handmade prayer quilts — even though they didn't know the family. The pastor said, "We wanted to bathe this family in prayer and love. Obviously they're feeling rejection and ... hate."

Well guess what pastor? The chances are excellent that this was done by Bible-totin' fire-breathing assholes who attend church and call themselves Christian.

Extremists and Terrorists

By reenee, Santa Maria

Reading about the riots over caricatures of Mohammed I got to thinking about what exactly defines an extremist, or a terrorist. Extremism is of course going to great or exaggerated lengths, exceeding the ordinary, usual, or expected to make a point, while terrorism is the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion. Which of these defines the individuals rioting in the Middle East? People have been rioting, fire bombing and burning buildings in those countries for weeks now over what they percieve as blasphemy, and instead of lessening over time, they seem to be gaining momentum. It was almost laughable to hear Condo Rice say that the rioters "might spin out of control." These people are already angry, so to hear her also suggest that "they ought to organize peacefully" was not helpful. These are people that gather by the millions for the annual hajj. They all believe that each one of them, at least once in their lives, must take part in the pilgrimage. At the stoning of the devil ritual, the massive crowd is so out of control that hundreds end up dying in a stampede, yet they all attend the following year. Anyone saying that they should gather peacefully to protest is seriously out of touch. These people take their religion and their prophet very seriously. Does anyone wonder why the rioters are now targeting the west? We don't have to agree with this behavior to try to understand it enough to quit making bizarre suggestions.

As I continued reading the news, the nine church bombings in Alabama and Mississippi since February 2nd, reminded me that we have our own terrorists and extremists in this country. Who could be bombing those churches? Perhaps extremists, terrorists, idiots? Some of these churches have black members, some have white members. I guess that the person or persons responsible for this dabble in equal opportunity hatred and intolerance. Whoever is doing this surely feels justified in some way. Apparently, believing that you have a one-way ticket to the hereafter where you'll be fed peeled grapes by seven virgins is not a requirement to be a terrorist. When and if we ever find out the reasons for destroying these churches, will it make a difference in stopping this kind of behavior? Probably not. We cannot control thoughts, despite the last general election results. We can have gun control laws, but people will still rampage through post offices, other places of business and schools. We can prosecute vigorously any and all hate crimes, but people will still seek out some ethnic group to bully, attack or kill. People will simply continue to think and do things that they feel justified in thinking or doing to others that do not fit their idea of "what is right" in their minds. So, while we might discover that organized terrorists or extremists are bombing churches, we might also discover that these "terrorists" are idiots with too much time on their hands.

Another excellent yet disturbing example of home grown extremism/terrorism is the Westboro Baptist Church. These people do not toss bombs at churches, nor do they shoot at people, that we know of. They are however extremists and terrorists. They like to stand outside of churches with signs that advertise hatred, intolerance and ignorance. Yep, this shining example is Fred Phelps. The Reverend Phelps is the leader of the virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, in Topeka, Kansas. His church has about 100 members, and of those, at least 90 of them are related to him through blood or marriage. This scary guy has a website that claims to have staged "20,000" protests across the nation and around the world in the last decade. At the funeral of murder victim Matthew Shepard, they held up signs reading "No Fags in Heaven" and "God Hates Fags." He not only told the mourners that Matthew went to Hell, but that they would be there to join him when they died. It's obvious that hatred and intolerance motivates this guy. His church website is: Godhatesfags.com. He also has a website named: Godhatesamerica.com, where he contends that the United States is "doomed" because it supports gays. According to Fred Phelps, "God invented the Internet for us to preach on." They also demonstrated at the funerals of the miners killed at the Sago Mine. They held signs that said these men were killed because our government tolerates homosexuals. These people call themselves Christians. Hey Fred, what would Jesus do? Lest you think I'm making this stuff up, go here.

How about someone like Eric Robert Rudolph? Rudolph is described as an American Christian terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States, murdering three people and injuring at least 150 others. Yep, he was the Olympic Bomber. Rudolph declared his bombings as part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion, "the homosexual agenda" and perceived support for them from the United States government. Rudolph purports to have committed his crimes for religious reasons.

Then there's Timothy McVeigh. Would he qualify? Well maybe, the FBI describes him as an "American domestic terrorist." He did blow up a building that 167 people died in, children, men and women. How does anyone get to that point? People from all walks of life say that there is no room in a civilized nation for terrorism, yet here we are. We have our own versions of extremists and terrorists here, yet when people think of terrorists or extremists, they look to September 11th, or the USS Cole or the rioters in the Middle East.