How Archbishop Tutu saved a small New York town from a blowup over hate crimes

PATCHOGUE, N.Y. (RNS) — In November 2008, the murder of Marcelo Lucero, an undocumented Ecuadorian, by the hands of seven highschool boys on this Lengthy Island city all of the sudden garnered nationwide media consideration, as their act was labeled a hate crime.

Immigration was looming as a nationwide problem, however the spectacle of 2014’s little one migrant disaster on the U.S.-Mexico border or Trump-era caravans of Central People headed north had but to burst onto the scene. In our peaceable island village, the seven teenagers appeared unaware that anybody even right here would care about their weekly sport of “Mexican beaner hopping.” 

Lucero’s funeral was held on the Congregational Church of Patchogue, the place I used to be then and am nonetheless the pastor. Per week later, we convened on the church once more, providing what we referred to as a “Protected Sanctuary” — a possibility for the alleged victims of hate crimes to confidentially report their assaults. Many Latino folks had for years felt unsafe to report back to the police or different authorities companies for concern of being deported or prosecuted for being undocumented. 

Many who participated, together with a nationwide Hispanic group and a few members of Lucero’s household, demanded that we disinvite the police division and different native authorities officers, who had been strongly suspected of being overtly or covertly complicit in Lucero’s homicide.

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I believed that it could be harmful to exclude those that would almost definitely finally have jurisdiction over the homicide case, however these against the official current had been grieving and offended. We discovered ourselves at a percolating standstill that might have resulted in a violent explosion.

There was one individual whose recommendation appeared most pertinent at that second: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose management of the Fact and Reconciliation Fee in South Africa had received him a Nobel Prize for Peace. We had mutual acquaintances, and as a few of these gathered threatened to bar the church door in opposition to the police and different legislation enforcement officers, I used to be capable of ship an enchantment for assist.

He was asleep in a London resort on the time of my pressing message to him, however inside a few hours he had written and electronically delivered a letter that resolved the deadlock over who’s invited to sit on the desk of justice.

Right here is Tutu’s letter:

Pricey Dwight,

I’ve heard of your choice to welcome the victims of crimes which have occurred solely due to the ethnicity of the individual, to come back into the Congregational Church of Patchogue to inform their story in a secure and supportive atmosphere.  I imagine this course of will end in a type of therapeutic and justice that won’t come solely from a court docket of legislation.

I commend the actions of your church and neighborhood to hunt restorative justice that may give attention to truth-telling, therapeutic damaged relationships, the restoration of belief, and the re-integration of all sides inside your neighborhood. I strongly invite all events, together with the police, to the desk to listen to the tales of the victims.  That is troublesome work, however work that should be executed.  I’m praying for you all, the victims and the perpetrators, and their households and mates.

God bless you all,

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The tales of alleged unreported or underreported hate crimes in opposition to Latinos had been recorded (confidentially) and at my request by Charles Lane, a reporter from WSHU, a neighborhood NPR affiliate. The testimony concerned a number of incidences of violence, housing discrimination, substandard housing circumstances, labor violations (underpayment for employment, poor working circumstances), threats and plenty of different tales that had been very troublesome to listen to — however not too troublesome to document and report.

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The audiotapes of the tales had been shortly thereafter subpoenaed by a grand jury and prompted a two-year investigation by the U.S. Division of Justice. The county government, district lawyer and police commissioner had been all ultimately dramatically affected by what subsequently transpired. 

The Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter. Courtesy photograph

As we await the funeral and interment of Archbishop Tutu, I’m aware, as soon as once more, that even peace has enemies; that advocates of peace, together with Tutu, me and the church I serve, turned targets of hate for advocating love; however that, finally, justice and love win. 

(The Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter is pastor of the Congregational Church of Patchogue, New York. The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially replicate these of Faith Information Service.)