Heart You

GWEN IFILL: Mark Potok, I know you keep track of hate crimes around the country, and I wonder as you — in your records, how much more does this happen — or does it happen more with LGBT people than other people? How much of a target is that community?

MARK POTOK: Very much so.

We looked actually at 14 years of FBI data, hate crime data, and made comparisons to the size of the populations of various minority groups in this country. And to make a very long story short, what we found was that, on a per capita basis, at least in recent years, LGBT people are targeted for violent hate crimes at a rate of two times that of gay — I’m sorry — of Muslims or black people, four times that of Jews, and 14 times that of Latinos.

So, the bottom line is that LGBT people really are targeted in a way that no other minority group or at a rate higher than any other minority group in this country, at least in recent times.

not to take away from the horror of potential and real violence that the lgbt community face daily, those statistics also reminded me of another group subject to violent hate crime but unmentioned in above newshour segment.  joe biden just last week pointedly talked about it.

newsweek: As a senator, Biden introduced VAWA to Congress in June 1990. The act became a landmark piece of legislation that changed the way the country has responded to domestic violence and sexual assault. [….]
You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted—year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye.
The statistics on college sexual assault haven’t gone down in the past two decades. It’s obscene, and it’s a failure that lies at all our feet.

and globally according to world health org:
Recent global prevalence figures indicate that about 1 in 3 (35%) of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

kgc, thanks for posting that.  there was a ray of hope at the end… am reposting to help it become true:

In the last few days, something has given me a little bit of hope. It came from a place I didn’t expect. In the aftermath of the massacre of gays in Orlando, I’ve been channel surfing. As I do sometimes, I’ve been watching conservative Fox News. Their coverage has been both sympathetic and respectful to gays. If this bastion of conservative bigotry can treat gays not as evil or subhuman, then maybe our society is actually making a little progress. Maybe we as a people are learning what is truly good versus what is truly evil.

more from above wapo link:

Some of the hackers had access to the DNC network for about a year, but all were expelled over the past weekend in a major computer cleanup campaign, the committee officials and experts said.

The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

The intrusions are an example of Russia’s interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president — much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders.

The depth of the penetration reflects the skill and determination of the United States’ top cyber adversary as Russia goes after strategic targets, from the White House and State Department to political campaign organizations.

“It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries,” said Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm called in to handle the DNC breach and a former head of the FBI’s cyber division. He noted that it is extremely difficult for a civilian organization to protect itself from a skilled and determined state such as Russia.

“We’re perceived as an adversary of Russia,” he said. “Their job when they wake up every day is to gather intelligence against the policies, practices and strategies of the U.S. government. There are a variety of ways. [Hacking] is one of the more valuable because it gives you a treasure trove of information.”

pogo, the prez did a pretty good job… kinda brought his law prof persona along.

can’t wait for an enterprising reporter to ask drumpf about radical hinduism, radical judaism and radical so-called christians about their various acts of violence in the name of their religions.  he should be just as outraged at all the other religious extremists and call for them to also be banned.

beware those rosy polls. complacency lurks behind them.