Arrest of Skinheads

In response to “Alleged White Supremacists Seized in Assassination Plots,” July 16:

Attending a funeral service recently at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, along with hundreds of other mourners from every ethnic and racial background, none of us knew that this beacon of light in a community so much in need had become a target of hate-mongers.

I was shocked at the mass arrests of “skinheads” suspected of planning to kill church leaders, whose only offense was bringing people together. Shocked but not surprised.

Since 1986, I have introduced four bills aimed at producing definitive statistics regarding hate crimes; not just to gather data but to collect facts needed to find solutions. Lack of funding and unreliable reporting have hindered these efforts.

I won’t give up and my new bill (SB 559) to appropriate $264,000 for an analysis of hate crimes has been backed by Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and Democratic Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy.

SB 559 would identify the areas and groups most at risk and will be heard Aug. 18 by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. I urge your readers to make their views known.

In 1982, my bill allowing injunctions against threats of violence by groups such as the KKK and making it a misdemeanor to terrorize by desecrating religious symbols was adopted into law.

But this new outrage makes it clear we need factual evidence to solve this crisis. If this isn’t a “public safety” issue, what is?

DIANE E. WATSON

State Senate, D-Los Angeles

* Why is there so much outrage and media coverage when a white supremacist terrorist conspiracy is discovered, but little outrage and even less media coverage for the terrorist activity that’s been going on in this country every day for decades? Gangs of every color have been taking over neighborhoods and conducting a reign of terror, murdering innocent people, vandalizing, extorting money, raping for gang initiation, carjacking, burglary, theft, harassment, intimidation, threats of retaliation, ad nauseam. So how come white supremacists conspiracy stories are front page while the epidemic of heinous gang crimes barely gets covered?

Maybe it’s because the white supremacist targets are well-known, while victims of gang crime are usually not famous, just ordinary folks who have the bad luck to live in terrorist-infested neighborhoods.

When terrorist gang members get the same “treatment” as white supremacists terrorists, and are subject to the same outrage, media exposure, quick action by the law enforcement/criminal justice system, and zero-tolerance for their acts of violence, maybe average citizens will no longer have to live in fear every moment of every day of their lives.

ANNIE CAROLINE SCHULER

West Hollywood

* Thank you for David Freed’s evenhanded portrayal of young white skinheads (“Skinheads Claim FBI ‘Suckered Us In,’ ” July 18). As one who is personally acquainted with many of these teen-agers, whom the media now call terrorists and racists, I must come to their defense. The Aryan nationalist skinheads I know do not watch MTV. They prefer to read. They defend white people against the lies told about their history by the media. They stand up for their culture, faith and race as much as any Zionist or black/Latino activist. They are the best and brightest of our white children and I am proud of them.

These teen-agers talk like any other group of young boys full of hormones and youthful bravado, who are angry about what is happening to the society they grew up in. It is easy for the FBI to instigate rowdy talk and then use the cunning of a docu-dramatist to edit the result into some kind of plot. The truth of the criminal charges they now face is irrelevant. Just like David Koresh, Randy Weaver and John Demjanjuk, it is the intent of the government to destroy their lives without the unpleasant necessity of having to prove they actually committed any real crime.

TOM BLAIR

San Pedro

* Fourth Reich Skinheads member Matt (Turtle) Tuttle should crawl back into his shell and take the time to read a non-racist history book, if one exists. Tuttle said, “If this were a perfect world everybody would stay where they belonged. Black people have Africa.” In my opinion, if this were a perfect world, racists ideologies would not exist. Turtle should ask his grandfather what country he out-migrated from when he in-migrated to the United States. The only people that “belong” where I live (L.A.) are American Indians. Ignorance is no excuse for racism; it is the cause.

RAMON PACK III

Los Angeles

* Expressions of racism are not so much a matter of free speech as they are of sedition, for they serve to undermine the very essence of democracy.

RABBI MERVIN B. TOMSKY

Sun Valley