No home for hate

Guess what? Cincinnati has been in the news lately. Unfortunately, the attention was for all of the wrong reasons. Media outlets from North Carolina to California picked up the disturbing story of the John Johnson beating, the man who was brutally attacked because he is homeless. Johnson was attacked by a group of skinheads, three of whom are active military personnel, at a homeless encampment last month. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s blog, Hatewatch, even wrote about the attack. Our city has seen four reports of these crimes in the last year and each offense is more violent than the last. We may not like this type of attention, but it does give us an opportunity to learn more about hate crimes against the homeless and what we can to prevent these crimes from becoming even more frequent.

This latest attack is part of a disturbing trend in our nation. The National Coalition for the Homeless states that from 1999 through 2008, in over 200 cities and in 46 states, there were 880 acts of violence against the homeless. These attacks resulted in 244 deaths of homeless people and 636 victims of non-lethal violence. Further, a 2008 report from the Coalition and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty ranked Ohio among the top five states in reported crimes against the homeless. The report is available at nationalhomeless.org.

Before we let the weight of the statistics force us into emotional paralysis, there is a lot that we can do to encourage lawmakers to do more to protect Ohio’s homeless population. Representative Mike Foley is planning to sponsor the Homeless Hate Crimes Bill. If passed, one convicted of a committing a crime against a homeless person would receive a harsher sentence. Now is the time to encourage other lawmakers to do their part to deter these senseless crimes. In Soul of a Citizen, Paul Loeb writes “Community involvement, in other words, is the mirror that best reflects our individual choices, our strengths, and weakness, our accomplishments and failures. It allows our lives to count for something.” This is our time to let our concern count for something. Stand with BRIDGES in support of the Homeless Hate Crimes Bill.

Let’s not let hate find a home in Cincinnati.