Hate crimes forum brings divided Hamtramck community together for conversation

Hamtramck NAACP President Asm "Kamal" Rahman speaks to a crowd during a hate crime forum featuring U.S. Congressman John Conyers Jr., seated on the right. (Photo by Todd A. Heywood/Michigan Messenger)

HAMTRAMCK — Despite a spate of recent troubles and controversies over equal rights in this increasingly diverse and divided Wayne County city, the tone at a meeting attended by U.S. Rep. John Conyers to discuss hate crimes legislation he has introduced in Congress was mostly conciliatory and cooperative.

Conyers introduced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, often called the Matthew Shepard Act, in the U.S. House where it passed in April. President Obama has said he supports the legislation, which would allow the federal government to assist local governments in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes perpetrated against people because of their race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression or creed. The bill, as well as a companion bill in the U.S. Senate, is supported by hundreds of law enforcement agencies, civil rights organizations and civic and religious groups.

The forum was sponsored by the NAACP of Hamtramck and featured Conyers, as well as Heaster Wheeler, president of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP; Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and Dawud Walid, executive director of Council for American-Islamic Relations of Detroit. All four panelists supported the hate crimes legislation.

Hamtramck, a municipal enclave nearly surrounded by Detroit, has been at the center of a battle over civil rights for several years now. Muslim members of the community were victimized when the city legalized the broadcasting of a call to prayer — with the local mosque being vandalized and an Imam having shoes thrown at him. And in November after a contentious battle, voters rejected an ordinance which would have banned discrimination on the basis of, among many categories, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression.

That campaign led to a series of anti-gay incidents in the city, according to Gregory Manore, who serves on the Hamtramck Human Relations Commission.

That difficult ballot battle left an underlying tension on the meeting Monday night, as openly gay council member Scott Klein told the local newspaper, the Hamtramck Review, that LGBT activists would “hijack” the meeting. But the protests never materialized and the tone of the discussion was calm and measured.

In spite of the broad support for the legislation, questions remain about the proposed law, said organizers of the forum.

“This event itself is an educational event about hate crimes,” said Asm “Kamal” Rahman, president of the NAACP of Hamtramck. “We want to find out what this is about. We have people who have questions.”

After admonishing the attendees that the event was not to discuss the validity or “merits” of hate, Michael Nelson, vice president of the NAACP of Hamtramck said the evening was about discussing the legislation itself, “which means we cannot perform crimes against any individual simply because we might hate that individual or race or gender or religion or sexual orientation or whatever it might be.”

Nelson continued: “So that you can’t go attacking a Muslim sister because she is Muslim. You can’t run your car into a gay brother because he is gay. You can’t pull out a machete on a black brother simply because he is black. That’s what we’re here to discuss this evening.”

“Hamtramck doesn’t tolerate intolerance,” Walid said.

One resident, Richard Wake, asked Conyers if the legislation would impede the ability of religious leaders to preach their faith beliefs about homosexuality.

“This legislation only deals with conduct, not speech,” said Conyers. “Speech by itself is not prosecutable as a hate crime.”

Conyers went on to explain that speech could be used to prove bias motivated a specific hate crime.

The judicial use of prior speech, membership in hate groups or website visits are things that raise concerns about the legislation, Kaplan said.

In the end, the only fireworks came from a prediction of possible protests, which never took place. Conyers took reporter Charles Sercombe to task for his Hamtramck Review story predicting that the forum might be disrupted by protesters.

Some leaders privately admitted afterward the article probably prevented some people from attending the forum.