"New York (CNN) -- A 31-year-old Bronx woman has been charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in the death of a man shoved in front of a subway train, Queens prosecutors said Saturday.
District Attorney Richard A. Brown identified the woman as Erika Menendez. She was awaiting arraignment.
"(She) said in sum and substance 'I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I've been beating them up,'" the prosecutor said in a statement.
Witnesses said a woman paced the platform and talked to herself Thursday evening shortly before pushing the man as the 11-car train entered the station. The 46-year-old man's body was pinned under the second car after it came to a stop.
The woman made "statements implicating herself in the death of Sunando Sen," Paul Browne, the New York Police Department's chief spokesman, said earlier. Security video showed a person running from the scene."
If this woman really did commit this heinous crime , it would indeed be a sad thing as Hindus had nothing to do with the terrorist attack on New York city.
This woman obviously has some mental issues. But what about the perfectly "normal" folks who believe that Hindus and Muslims are one and the same? These are the same folks who believe that the president is a Muslim and that he was born in Kenya. They just don't go pushing Hindus into subway trains. Not yet.
So Michael Moore pissed off winguts by saying that one of the reasons that folks own guns is because of their fear of the Negro in America. This got me thinking about the role race played in America's love affair with the Second Amendment. Personally, I don't think that Moore was that far off base, but I read an article by Richard Prince which raised some interesting and thought-provoking points about the rise of the Black Panther Party and the NRA.
I will share some of it with you.
"The National Rifle Association was inspired by the Black Panthers?
Yes, according to Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA School of Law and author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."
Winkler said over the weekend on NPR's "On the Media":
"One of the surprising things I discovered in writing 'Gunfight' was that when the Black Panthers started carrying their guns around in Oakland, Calif., in the late 1960s, it inspired a new wave of gun control laws (audio). It was these laws that ironically sparked a backlash among rural white conservatives, who were concerned that the government was coming to get their guns next.
"The NRA mimicked many of the policy positions of the Black Panthers, who viewed guns not just as a matter of protection for the home, but something you should be able to have out on the street, and also protection against a hostile government that was tyrannical and disrespectful of people's rights. . . . "
Winkler wrote about the connection more expansively in "The Secret History of Guns," a September 2011 article in the Atlantic that preceded the book's publication.
"The eighth-grade students gathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California's new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation's Capitol," the article began. "But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.
"The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. 'The American people in general and the black people in particular,' he announced, must
" 'take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless. Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people. The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.'
"Seale then turned to the others. 'All right, brothers, come on. We're going inside.' He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state's most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.
"It was May 2, 1967, and the Black Panthers' invasion of the California statehouse launched the modern gun-rights movement." [More]
I suspect that if there was a Black Panther type organization today openly brandishing guns on public streets, there would be a shift in public sentiment about restricting access to guns. Just a guess.
*Pic from theRoot.com
This woman obviously has some mental issues. But what about the perfectly "normal" folks who believe that Hindus and Muslims are one and the same? These are the same folks who believe that the president is a Muslim and that he was born in Kenya. They just don't go pushing Hindus into subway trains. Not yet.
So Michael Moore pissed off winguts by saying that one of the reasons that folks own guns is because of their fear of the Negro in America. This got me thinking about the role race played in America's love affair with the Second Amendment. Personally, I don't think that Moore was that far off base, but I read an article by Richard Prince which raised some interesting and thought-provoking points about the rise of the Black Panther Party and the NRA.
I will share some of it with you.
"The National Rifle Association was inspired by the Black Panthers?
*Yes, according to Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA School of Law and author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."
Winkler said over the weekend on NPR's "On the Media":
"One of the surprising things I discovered in writing 'Gunfight' was that when the Black Panthers started carrying their guns around in Oakland, Calif., in the late 1960s, it inspired a new wave of gun control laws (audio). It was these laws that ironically sparked a backlash among rural white conservatives, who were concerned that the government was coming to get their guns next.
"The NRA mimicked many of the policy positions of the Black Panthers, who viewed guns not just as a matter of protection for the home, but something you should be able to have out on the street, and also protection against a hostile government that was tyrannical and disrespectful of people's rights. . . . "
Winkler wrote about the connection more expansively in "The Secret History of Guns," a September 2011 article in the Atlantic that preceded the book's publication.
"The eighth-grade students gathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California's new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation's Capitol," the article began. "But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.
"The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. 'The American people in general and the black people in particular,' he announced, must
" 'take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless. Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people. The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.'
"Seale then turned to the others. 'All right, brothers, come on. We're going inside.' He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state's most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.
"It was May 2, 1967, and the Black Panthers' invasion of the California statehouse launched the modern gun-rights movement." [More]
I suspect that if there was a Black Panther type organization today openly brandishing guns on public streets, there would be a shift in public sentiment about restricting access to guns. Just a guess.
*Pic from theRoot.com
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