[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 4] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 5041-5042] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]EXPOSING RACISM ______ HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON of mississippi in the house of representatives Thursday, March 18, 1999 Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, in my continuing efforts to document and expose racism in America, I submit the following articles into the Congressional Record. Officers Accused of Using Racial Slurs, Breaking Boy's Arm Las Vegas (AP).--Two Las Vegas off-duty police officers are accused of taunting schoolchildren with racial slurs and breaking the arm of a 12-year-old boy while arresting him. The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating, and the mother of Parrish ``Pookie'' Young Jr., whose arm was broken, has contacted an attorney. Police Department spokesman Lt. Rick Alba said Thursday the department began an internal investigation after the Wednesday morning incident though Tammy Lyons, Pookie's mother, has yet to file a complaint with the department's Internal Affairs Bureau. Lyons' aunt, Caroline Lyons, said Pookie was cited for resisting arrest and impeding traffic, both misdemeanors. She said her great-nephew's arm was broken between the elbow and the shoulder. Twelve-year-old Alex Solomon said the incident began when he, Dwayne Childs, 13, and Pookie met to go to school about 7 a.m. Wednesday. After making their morning trek to a doughnut shop, they walked to their school bus stop at Mojave Road and Charleston Boulevard. Alex said their friend, Zaya Thompson, 12, had a can of potato chips, which she tossed to them. The can went into the street, Alex said, and he and Pookie chased after it. Then, he said, they started ``play fighting''over it. An unidentified woman stopped her car at that time and told them to stay out of the road because they could get hurt. Just behind her was a Las Vegas police squad car and a white vehicle. An officer in uniform got out of the squad car, and another man, who identified himself as an officer, got out of the white vehicle. The officers scolded the children for running into the street at the school bus stop, but Alex and another student, Candance Reynard, 11, said the officers then started using racial slurs. All the children involved in the incident are black. One of the girls at the bus stop yelled an expletive to the officers. Another girl repeated the derogatory rebuff, and Pookie started laughing. ``I said, `A-hahaha,' '' the 12-year-old said. ``One of the men said, `This ain't no joke. Bring your little ass over here.' '' Pookie said he dropped his school books and walked toward the two. When he was within arm's reach, they grabbed him and slammed him against the police car, he said. ``Pookie walked over to the cop, to the car, and as he was walking over, as soon as he got near them, they took him,'' said Gary Hamilton, 26, who was driving the school bus the children were waiting to board. ``And one cop has his head down, and the other tried to get, I guess, what looked like an arm bar,'' he said, referring to a method of immobilizing someone's arms. Pookie's left arm then ``just gave away,'' Hamilton said. The officers then took Pookie to University Medical Center. ____ Free Speech at Heart of Case Involving Student Denied Law License (By Tara Burghart) East Peoria, IL. (AP).--In three years of law school Matt Hale made decent grades, participated in student groups, played violin in two orchestras--and worked to revive a white supremacist group that advocates ``racial holy war.'' A state panel that reviews the ``character and fitness'' of prospective lawyers says that's reason enough to refuse Hale a law license. That ruling in turn has prompted debate about the balance between free speech and an attorney's obligation to uphold the nation's bedrock belief of equal justice under the law. ``The idea that I can't be lawyer because of my views is ludicrous. Plain and simple,'' Hale says, sitting in a home office where an Israeli flag serves as a doormat, swastika stickers decorate the walls and the flag of Hale's group, the World Church of the Creator, hangs from a window. Hale's effort to gain a law license has attracted some unlikely supporters, including the Anti-Defamation League and renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz, who says he may help Hale appeal the inquiry panel's ruling. ``Character committees should not become thought police,'' Dershowitz said. ``It's not the content of the thoughts I'm defending, it's the freedom of everybody to express their views and to become lawyers.'' Hale, 27, grew up in East Peoria, a blue-collar town on the Illinois River. By his own account he was immersing himself by age 12 in books about Nazis and formed a ``Little Reich'' group at school. In high school and at Bradley University he attended ``white power'' rallies and sent letters filled with racial slurs to newspapers. He also had a few brushes with the law, including a citation for littering after trying to distribute racist newspapers to homes in Pekin. While attending Southern Illinois University law school Hale was elected head of the World Church of the Creator. The Anti-Defamation League says the group was one of the most violent of its kind in the early 1990s; one member was convicted of killing a black Gulf War veteran in 1991 in a Florida parking lot. After the veteran's family won $1 million from the church in a lawsuit and its founder died, the church foundered, only to experience a resurgence under Hale, according to the league. Hale's claim of up to 30,000 supporters cannot be verified. Hale graduated from SIU in May 1998, passed the bar exam and was hired by a Champaign law firm that now says it knew nothing about his views. To receive a law license, Hale and other prospective lawyers are required to appeal before a judge or attorney working on behalf of the Illinois Supreme Court's committee on character and fitness who look for problems including dishonesty, criminal activity, academic misconduct or financial irresponsibility. All but 25 of more than 3,000 applicants last year were approved at that initial stage. Hale was not, and then a three-member inquiry panel voted 2-1 in December not to give him a license. ``The balance of values that we strike leaves Matthew Hale free, as the First Amendment allows, to incite as much racial hatred as he desires and to attempt to carry out his life's mission of depriving those he dislikes of their legal rights,'' panel members wrote. ``But in our view he cannot do this as an officer of the court.'' Illinois officials say the last case similar to Hale's was in the early 1950s, when a law student refused to take an anti-Communist loyalty oath. The U.S. Supreme Court last considered a similar case in 1971, when two applicants for law licenses in other states would not reveal their political beliefs. The court ruled in their favor. The Anti-Defamation League believes Hale shouldn't be denied a law license because of the ``slippery slope'' it creates, said Andrew Shoenthal, assistant director in the group's Chicago office. [[Page 5042]] For instance, Shoenthal asked, could a prospective lawyer who opposes abortion or supports school prayer be denied a license if a majority in his community held an opposite view? The Illinois State Bar Association has yet to take a position on Hale's case, but spokesman Dave Anderson said the case ``is a hot topic (among lawyers) right now, with spirited debate on both sides.'' Hale, meanwhile, was fired in November by the law firm because he couldn't obtain a license. He lives with his parents in East Peoria, operating out of an office in their home. When he's not talking about his white supremacist beliefs, Hale seems intelligent, polite, and articulate. ``I can't name a Hollywood movie that made white supremacists look good,'' he said. ``We're always portrayed as hate mongers, villains, uneducated, missing all our teeth, having a shotgun in the backseat and chewing tobacco.'' Hale is optimistic he'll get his license and plans to open a solo practice because no law firm is likely to hire him. His plans include challenging affirmative action laws and the littering law for which he was cited. ``For me, the true test of character is whether a person says what they think, which is what I have always done,'' Hale said. ``I believe I show more character than most attorneys in that I actually practice what I preach.'' ____ Student Pleads Guilty To Sending Threatening E-Mails Los Angeles (AP).--A college student has pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges that he e-mailed hate messages to dozens of Hispanics around the country. Kingman Quon, 22, of Corona pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to seven misdemeanor counts of interfering with federally protected activities. Specifically, he was accused of threatening to use force against his victims with the intent to intimidate or interfere with them because of their national origin or ethnic background. It was only the second federal civil rights prosecution involving e-mail threats. Quon could face up to seven years in prison and nearly $700,000 in fines when he is sentenced on April 26, although he is expected to receive a 2-year sentence under a plea bargain. Quon, who was charged in January, remains free on bail pending sentencing. Quon, a Chinese-American, said outside court that he ``snapped'' and sent the messages in March because he couldn't stand the pressures of being ``a high-achieving college student.'' He is a marketing major at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Quon sent the same racially derogatory e-mail to 42 professors at California State University, Los Angeles and 25 students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ``The only reason you people are in state colleges is because of affirmative action,'' the message read. One copy went to Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, D-Alhambra, a former Cal State psychology professor. Quon also sent the message to employees of Indiana University, Xerox Corp., the Texas Hispanic Journal, the Internal Revenue Service and NASA's Ames Research Center. Outside of court Monday, Quon apologized for the messages and asked the victims to forgive him. The only other federal hate e-mail prosecution involved Richard Machado, 21, a naturalized citizen from El Salvador who flunked out of the University of California, Irvine. He was convicted last year of sending messages to 59 Asian students on campus, allegedly out of anger because he felt their good grades were raising the standard for others. He was sentenced to a year in jail and was ordered to undergo racial tolerance counseling. ____ Speedy Ruling Sought for Ayers Issue Affecting USM-Gulf Coast Jackson, Miss. (AP).--The State College Board will meet Thursday with its lawyers to discuss questions raised in a complaint over whether university expansion on the Gulf Coast will impact the historically black colleges. Last week, plaintiffs in a long-running college desegregation lawsuit filed papers asking U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. of Oxford to hold up the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast expansion. Alvin Chambliss Jr., a law professor at Texas Southern University and lead attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit, questioned the admissions policies at USM/Gulf Coast operations. Chambliss also said he feared the USM upgrades could interfere with state funding needed for court-approved remedies. The desegregation case began in January 1975 when the late Jake Ayers Sr. of Glen Allan sued, accusing Mississippi of neglecting the state's three historically black universities--Jackson State, Alcorn and Mississippi Valley State. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that Mississippi operated a segregated college system. USM wants $2 million for Gulf Coast expansions. That includes funds for USM-Long Beach and creation of a multi- university higher education center. The Legislature has not yet acted on the money. ``We all hope it doesn't hold up things,'' said College Board member Nan Baker of Winona. ``A speedy ruling (from the judge) would be best for everybody concerned.'' The College Board endorsed the USM/Gulf Coast expansion by a 7-5 vote last month. Critics say Mississippi can't afford what may become a ninth university. Reports from the College Board did not spell out the racial makeup of USM/Gulf Coast programs, Chambliss said. The USM plan would add 150 freshmen next fall to the Gulf Park campus at Long Beach and 750 freshmen and sophomores over a five-year period. The board plan also proposes a USM- led higher education center on the Gulf Coast. It would allow five universities including Jackson State and Alcorn State, and a community college, to teach classes. ``Persons from every sector of the Gulf Coast support what we are doing,'' said USM President Horace Fleming Jr. ``We have support from leaders in the black community. We think it would help everybody.'' Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, is urging the Legislature to more than triple the $4.7 million the College Board is seeking for Ayers funding for the three historically black universities. ____________________