A Kentucky jury Nov. 14 ordered three members of the Imperial Klans of America [2] (IKA), including "Imperial Wizard" Ron Edwards, to pay $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages for a racially motivated attack against Jordan Gruver, a 16-year-old boy of Panamanian descent, during an apparent Klan recruitment event at a county fair in Meade, Ky. Gruver, who was severely beaten by Edwards' followers, is a US citizen, but the Klansmen mistakenly believed he was an undocumented immigrant, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center [3], which represented the youth in the case.
Hate groups such as the KKK have recently experienced a resurgence in the US, which some observers attribute to the growing public attention to immigration. At the same time, federal and state authorities have been successful in a number of criminal prosecutions against alleged KKK members who committed hate crimes in the 1960s, although in October the US Fifth Circuit vacated the conviction [4] of accused Klansman James Ford Seale for his involvement in the 1964 deaths of two Black teens. (CNN [5], Jurist [6], Nov. 15)
Just as the Gruber case comes to a close, Long Island's Suffolk County is embroiled in controversy surrounding the Nov. 8 stabbing death in Patchogue village of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadoran immigrant. Seven teenagers have been arrested and charged in the attack, which police call a hate crime. County Executive Steve Levy, a hardline proponent of a crackdown on "illegal" immigrants, has come under harsh criticism from advocacy groups for inflaming an atmosphere of hate in the prelude to the attack. (Newsday [7], Nov. 18)
See our last posts on the radical right [8] and the politics of immigration [9].
