Number One: Shenandoah, Pennsylvania
Because of the repeated miscarriages of justice that we believe took place in 2008 and in 2009 regarding the July 2008 hate crime slaying of a Latino immigrant—Mr. Luís E. Ramírez, 25, originally from of Irámuco, Mexico—at the hands of several white anti-Latino-slur-spewing townies, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania sits atop our list as the most hateful place to live in the United States in 2009. Here’s how they earned it.  Shenandoah—a town whose 2000 population of 5,624 was 97.4% white—took white privilege to new lows in 2009. From its collective actions we see how Shenandoah could produce liquored-up teenagers who hurl anti-Mexican epithets at one of its few (but growing) Latino residents, then beat and kick the man to death.  First, on August 18, 2008, a white judge, Anthony Kilker, threw out the first-degree and second-degree murder charges against two of the four white defendants—Colin J. Walsh, then 17, and Brandon J. Piekarsky, then 16—which meant that the two would not serve possible life-term state prison sentences (they might have received such a sentence if convicted as originally charged). Derrick M. Donchak, then 18, also had his first- and second-degree murder charges dropped. Judge Kilker made his rulings despite the fact that the coroner ruled Mr. Ramírez’s death a homicide (he died of blunt force trauma to the head), and despite the fact that Mr. Ramírez was first accosted by the white men as he walked in a park with Crystal Dillman, his fiancée—and mother of their children.  Brian Scully, 18 at the time of Mr.  Ramírez’s killing, was given an additional gift by the white prosecutor by not being tried in adult court, this despite the fact that it was Scully who continued to yell at Luís Ramírez after an initial assaultive encounter he had with the group had ended.  Scully’s continued taunts led to Mr. Ramírez confronting the group which, in turn, led to his second beating. During that second assaultive encounter, Colin Walsh—who, like the other attackers, had played football at Shenandoah Valley High School—threw the punch that rendered Mr. Ramírez unconscious (Mr. Ramírez died two days later).  By the end of 2008, Shenandoah Mayor Thomas O'Neill—who had tried to take the police off the case in order to insure a full and accurate investigation of the attack on Mr. Ramírez—resigned and moved from Shenandoah after being harassed. He told National Public Radio:  “My tires were slashed, back window was shot out with pellets. On New Year's Eve, my front window, there was an explosive attached to the window and that was blown out.”

Number Two: Suffolk County, New York
The hate continued in Suffolk County in 2009.  Coupled with the rest of Long Island, Suffolk County topped last year’s list; and, to its shame and embarrassment Suffolk County is the first of two locales to make our list twice.  This year—unlike 2008 where the brutal attacks in Suffolk County generally targeted Latinos—gay men and lesbians were often the targets of its residents' hatred. As two examples, two gay men were assaulted in a sexual orientation-based hate crime attack in Central Islip on June 19th, and on June 29th a lesbian was attacked allegedly by three people in Mastic Beach solely because of her sexual orientation. While police did the right thing by calling the latter incident what it was—a hate crime—the trio of alleged perpetrators was not charged with any hate crimes courtesy of the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. And shamefully, the attacks against Latinos continued in Suffolk County: on August 14, 2009, Matthew J. Mont, 16, of Patchogue, Curt J. Hatton, 19, of Islip, and Ramon Rodriguez, 20, of Patchogue, allegedly attacked a Latino man on Division Street near West Avenue while yelling anti-Latino slurs at him. Although the three were each charged with assault as a hate crime by the police, on January 12, 2010, the hate crime charges against them were dropped, again courtesy of the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. In other words, Suffolk County, New York, still resists labelling and prosecuting hate crimes, even after their intolerance became known nationally. For instance, in September, 2009, the Southern Poverty Law Center published a meticulously researched report about the culture of anti-Latino racism in Suffolk County, New York. "A Climate of Fear", which can be read in English or Spanish provides—among other facts—a decades-long laundry list of intolerant activities that led to 2009's state of racist and homophobic affairs in the Long Island county.

Also disturbing is the irony that, of all people, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy—that county’s hate fomenter extraordinaire—paired up with the Suffolk County Interfaith Anti-bias Task Force in 2009 in what was called “an effort to eradicate hatred, bias and intolerance from eastern Long Island” by releasing two videos intended to undo the predictable results of years and years of Levy’s intolerant, hateful words.  We’re guessing the Task Force didn't see that it was being used by Levy—who was a Democrat for most of 2009 before switching to the Republican Party—who, self-servingly, began grooming himself to become a New York gubernatorial candidate (when the tolerant world just wants him to fade away). Anyway, here’s hoping the educational videos have their intended effect, and that the hate stops in Suffolk County soon.

As a happy footnote, Steve Levy changed political parties too late to automatically qualify himself for the Republican gubinatorial primary, although he announced himself to be a Republican candidate for governor on March 19, 2010. By June 2010, his bid for New York's top spot was effectively killed after Levy failed to gain the necessary support at the New York State Republican Convention to have his name included, by nomination or by petition, as a Republican gubinatorial candidate.

Number Three: Washington, DC
Though slipping to our third spot this year, the nation’s capital makes our list for the second year in a row.  In addition to its shameful plethora of active hate groups of various hate ideologies, we named the District of Columbia as our third most hateful place to live in 2009 in the U.S., because of its continued wrath directed at GLBT individuals.  In 2009, 85% of the 41 reported hate crimes in the District of Columbia were based on sexual orientation (73%) or gender identity/expression (12%). Here’s how DC treated a gay man walking down the street:  Assistant United States Attorney Kevin F. Flynn released a sentencing memorandum for The United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (USAO-DC) in September 2009 outlining the government's quite pathetic reasoning in agreeing that a heterosexual man, Robert Lee Hannah, 19, only committed misdemeanor simple assault in the death of Tony Randolph Hunter, 37, a gay man from Clinton, Maryland.  Mr. Hunter was beaten on the 1300 block of Eighth Street NW by Hannah on September 10, 2008, as Mr. Hunter was walking to a gay bar with a friend. He died on September 17, 2008, at Howard University Hospital as a direct result of that attack.  Although DC police investigated the attack as a possible hate crime, it was ruled out, a decision that angered many members of DC's gay community for several reasons. Several witnesses did not report seeing Mr. Hunter touch Hannah. Those who knew Mr. Hunter said he would never grope a total stranger; and, the only witness to corroborate Hannah's version of events (an acquaintance of Hannah’s) told police that Mr. Hunter appeared to be gay (which would be irrelevant if robbery were the actual motive as was put forth). To us, Mr. Hunter's death was a murder and an obvious sexual orientation-based hate crime one at that.  As Chris Farris, the co-chairperson of Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence, said in the September 25th Metro Weekly article about the 14-page USAO-DC memorandum:  "Simply put, but for Robert Hannah punching Tony Hunter, Tony Hunter would be alive today. To me that is murder, pure and simple."  We’ll add this to Mr. Farris' words: but for the fact that Hannah perceived Mr. Hunter to be gay, Hannah would not have punched Mr. Hunter in the first place (and Hannah did what violent homophobes do when they get busted for crimes like this: he claimed he had a bad case of the "gay panic").  Yet, the USAO-DC audaciously asserted that Mr. Hunter died not because of the assault by Hannah, but because Mr. Hunter could not break his own brain-injury causing fall which the USAO-DC speculated was likely due to his being intoxicated at the time of the attack on him. Yes, the USAO-DC essentially said Mr. Hunter was at fault for his own death. More generally, the USAO-DC is basically saying that you can beat someone to death out of hatred for some sociodemographic characteristic that you think the person possesses, but only face a Simple Assault charge, which is a misdemeanor, if your victim is possibly under the influence of a substance like alcohol or a medication at the time of your attack.  We’re guessing that no one at the USAO-DC ever considered the probability that Hannah’s punches caused Mr. Hunter to become significantly dizzy (the way hard punches to the head do, as is well-known) which caused Mr. Hunter to fall to the ground (even though he briefly righted himself). 

What was Hannah’s response to all of this?  He was later arrested for shoplifting. What was the legal system’s response to the hate-crime slaying of Mr. Hunter that was not called a hate-crime slaying?  The heterosexual judge and the heterosexual district attorney—Superior Court Judge Rafael Diaz and U.S. Attorney Kevin Flynn—agreed with the heterosexual perpetrator by accepting on September 17, 2009, Hannah's sweet plea bargain, that is, his agreement to plead guilty to Simple Assault rather than go to trial for felony manslaughter (that was the original charge against Hannah, and an undercharge at that). Hannah was handed a 180-day jail sentence on October 14, 2009, courtesy of Judge Diaz, and this was not even the maximum sentence Hannah could have received. The maximum penalty he could have recieved was 180 days in jail plus a $1,000 fine. Judge Diaz knocked 60 days off of Hannah's jail sentence for time served in jail while awaiting the outcome of the case.   Note to the DC police, and to Judge Diaz and U.S. Attorney Flynn, two of the men responsible for Washington, DC, making our list this year:  "gay panic" is not a psychiatric disorder, so stop allowing violent, hateful people to use it as a defense or as a mitigating factor in the commission of a hate crime.

We said it last year, and we are saying it again in 2009: the city's saving grace appears to be its City Council: by a vote of 11 to 2, the District Council passed a same-sex marriage bill on December 15th, and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, a Democrat, signed the bill into law, which took effect in March, 2010.