EDWARDSVILLE - Southern Illinois' top federal prosecutor brought the federal government's top civil rights lawyer here Thursday to remind people that the struggle for civil rights is not over, and in fact, the caseload is expanding.
Stephen Wigginton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, said his office is serious about civil rights, and he has been working with top U.S. officials to see that the job gets done here.
"In my first year in office, I decided civil rights would be my first priority," Wigginton told a crowd at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Wigginton was appointed about a year ago.
"As Martin Luther King said, 'We need to feel that fierce urgency of now,'" Wigginton said just before introducing Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Wigginton said his office will not tolerate any violation of civil rights, such as hate crimes, human trafficking, violence or threat of violence.
The civil rights movement now involves African-Americans, Muslims, gays, people with disabilities, native Americans, immigrants and minorities being exploited for monetary gain, he said.
White people, too, are included in the people he serves in the civil rights arena, Wigginton said.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," he said, borrowing a phrase from Dr. Martin Luther King, whose memorial is being dedicated Sunday in Washington, D.C.
Wigginton, Perez and a panel of other civil rights experts also spoke Thursday morning in East St. Louis.
During his Edwardsville appearance, Perez said he noted a curious comment on the website of a media outlet that covered the East St. Louis event.
"All this will do is stir people up," the commenter said.
Perez said matters already are stirred up, because racism, hatred and intolerance are alive and well today, as they were during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
"I would respectfully tell the commenter that things are already stirred up, and we are steering into headwinds of intolerance," Perez said.
He said he often is asked why the Justice Department needs a Civil Rights Division. He listed a number of recent cases to underscore his point.
There was a native American who was attacked and had the letters KKK and a swastika burned into her skin. One of the attackers had received a cellphone message from his son, which ended in the words, "White power!"
"The cancer of the soul is being passed on," Perez said.
He told about cases involving African-Americans being run over by a truck, mosques being burned, threats over the Internet, cases of "redlining" in which black people can't get a housing loan in certain neighborhoods and cases in which landlords brag about the fact that they don't rent to black people.
"This is the United States of America in 2011," he said repeatedly.
He said America should be proud of its progress, but there are underlying problems that lead to the more spectacular cases that his department prosecutes. Some school districts still don't offer equal opportunity for advanced courses to black students, Perez said.
"Our docket of civil rights education cases is still growing," he said.
There also is an expanding docket of cases involving school bullying of students who are somehow different from others, as well as an increasing number of cases involving human trafficking, he said.
"I never thought I would have to talk about the issue of modern-day slavery," he said.
People with mental illness often are an ignored group of people with disabilities, Perez noted. They often end up in jail because there is no community support for them.
"The largest mental health facility in America is the Los Angeles City Jail," he said.
He said the cases involving longstanding concerns, such as voting rights and equal employment opportunity, are increasing.
The country needs to attack these problems before they blossom into noteworthy court cases, Perez said.
"We come in and clean up after train wrecks. I don't want to come in and clean up wrecks. We can't prosecute our way out of these challenges," Perez said. "We should not be confused that we should declare victory and go home."
The job of creating dialogue and settling disputes before they explode into criminal and civil cases falls to people such as Becky Monroe, acting director of the Justice Department's Community Relations Service.
Monroe came with Perez and told the audience that she and her staff are anxious to come into local communities to solve problems of civil rights.
"We are the peacemakers," Monroe said. "We sit down at the table and reason."
She said members of her staff come into communities after a successful prosecution and try to make sure the same problem does not arise again.
"We are not going to investigate civil rights issues by sitting in Washington, D.C.," she said.
# Article Aource: The Telegraph By SANFORD J. SCHMIDT August 25, 2011
Read more: http://www.thetelegraph.com/articles/rights-58480-civil-cases.html#ixzz1W8m4M7eX
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