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Thursday March 07, 2013

Act Today: Tell Your Member of Congress to Track Hate Crimes

Posted by Omar Tewfik at 1:14 pm

TAKE ACTION!

You may be surprised to learn that federal law enforcement does not track hate crimes aimed at the Arab American community.

In the past ten years, there have been more than 800 incidents involving “violence, threats, vandalism, and arson against persons perceived to be Muslim or to be of Arab, Middle Eastern, or South Asian origin,” according to Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez. Federal charges have been brought in only a handful of cases, with only 45 convictions as of a year ago.

US Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY) is working to change that, and he’s asking his colleagues in the House of Representatives to help. You should too.

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) circulated a similar letter to their colleagues in the Senate last month. That letter garnered 26 signatures. Find out if your Senator signed. Rep. Crowley’s letter currently has 85 signatories and asks the Advisory Policy Board at the Department of Justice to revise the FBI Hate Crime Incident Report Form (1-699) to allow for the collection and tracking of hate crimes committed against Sikhs, Hindus, and Arab Americans. This is the first time Arab Americans have been included in such a letter in the House of Representatives.

TAKE ACTION NOW and ask your representative to sign on to the Crowley letter. The has been extended, so please take a few seconds and join the hundreds of people who have already sent their member of Congress a letter.

We will not know the magnitude of bias-motivated crimes against our community if the data is not tracked and documented by the FBI. Contacting your representative today to support this important effort can help protect our community.  

Tagged as Issues, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, FBI, Islamophobia, PATRIOT Act, Profiling

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