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BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 11 Nov 02 - 07:25 AM I'm no elf, but here it is: BS: Traveller Discrimination Update... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 11 Nov 02 - 06:56 AM There is a new thread on this Srs... can some good mud elf make a hot link? CHeers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Stilly River Sage Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:55 AM There may be a newer thread that covers this, but I found this one when I did a search. Here's an article from today's Seattle PI. Unfortunately, she seems to have found herself in a loop. Every time she is asked to fill out information now, they can hang her with it if she doesn't tell the truth. Online story
Mom in Taped Beating Arrested Again THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- A woman caught on videotape beating her 4-year-old daughter has been arrested on a warrant issued in Michigan for allegedly giving false information on a license application. Authorities say Madelyne Toogood, 26, gave a false address and name when applying for a Michigan driver's license and state identification card in May. A conviction could carry up to five years in jail. In Indiana, she faces a felony child battery charge after a department store surveillance camera in Mishawaka captured her beating her daughter Sept. 13. The tape was broadcast nationwide. The girl is now living with her maternal grandmother. No trial has been scheduled on the battery charges, and Toogood had been free on $7,000 bond before her arrest Friday. Toogood remained in the St. Joseph County jail Saturday night. She is expected to be extradited to Michigan, according to South Bend police supervisor Sgt. Scott Ruszkowski. Toogood belongs to a nomadic group called the Irish Travelers. She has pleaded innocent to charges that she and her sister stole fabric from a department store in August. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Grab Date: 25 Oct 02 - 09:00 AM Ah, I get your point, Larry. Talking at cross purposes a bit there then! :-/ Yeah, I agree not the ideal solution. Still, in child abuse cases where the child's being cared for by someone else, you do need some way of keeping track of where the child is. Not an easy problem to solve. I'll dig out your song when I get a chance (banned from downloading at work, unfortunately). Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: GUEST Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:40 AM More than one person appears intoxicated by this thread - either with the esterous fruit of the vine or by the hubris of their ego. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Nerd Date: 24 Oct 02 - 04:58 PM Larry, In all this, I think you're still blurring the distinction between the CASE and the MEDIA. In the CASE, Martha has been given to her grandmother, NOT removed from the cultural group, which would constitute genocide. In the CASE, Ms. Toogood has received the same treatment anyone would in any ethnic group. In the MEDIA, a few assholes have suggested cultural genocide. But again, a few assholes doesn't mean American culture is a culture of assholes, or a culture of intolerance and racism, any more than the few con artists among the Travellers mean that Traveller culture is a culture of con artists. Is it just me, or do others on this thread see a basic difference between the case and the media coverage thereof? THAT'S essentially what I disagree with Larry about, the significance of the assholes in the media. After all, you can find assholes in the media who will urge you NOT to conserve energy, NOT to vote for black people, "Kill a Commie for Christ," etc. Their opinions are only as important as their impact on the public. Though I understand and appreciate Larry's pointing this stuff out to us, I'm not sure how significant it is in the grand scheme of 1) the government/legal system's treatment of travellers and 2) the US public's treatment of travellers. As to the CASE, I just don't see any discrimination there yet. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 24 Oct 02 - 01:40 PM It is in deed... and larger than this post! We are almost up to 200 on this thread, which would make something like near to 400 over all! When I get back there may be other things to say, but I think it should start a new thread, I feel for those with a slow computer like mine! Cheers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Ron Olesko Date: 24 Oct 02 - 01:32 PM Thanks Larry, I will check out the song! I do appreciate the education that you have been providing to those of us who want to learn more. It is a shame that this forum has resulted in name calling and anger at times, but I think that is reflective of the emotions we all felt about this case - even if we aren't directly connected to the participants. For those of us who grew up in the white suburbs and are considered "mainstream", we truly cannot understand what it is like to be considered "different". It is not easy to put ourselves in the shoes of those who face prejudice on a daily basis. While I may disagree, or rather not yet recognize the impact being a Traveler had on thie particular case, I do appreciate learning about situation and seeing your points on how it COULD have a bearing. When we can separate ourselves from the emotion and make the attempt to see where the other side is coming from, we all learn and hopefully improve. We can't solve these issues until we learn to deal with each other. Thanks again Larry. Perhaps we can continue this discussion in the future. Obviously the story is larger than the Toogood case. Ron |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:50 AM OH! AND RON!!! Check out the new song about Lough Neagh, under the post, Otway's new song.... Cheers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 24 Oct 02 - 11:46 AM Hi Ron... There is in deed constant conection. Though the great periods of migration are between 1847 and 1909 (aprox) There has been constant drift into the community from the 1620 - this year. Pavees (Irish travellers from Ireland) are easialy recognised by Romanichal (Scottish and English Trvellers) and Irish Travellers and interact socialy. Some American Travellers I know have gone to France for the huge religious gathering of Roma in the south of France to celibrate Saint Sarah's day (Sorcha Dorcha!) But, they need not go to Europe to learn to fear exposure as travellers. I sited the New York Times artical from 1992, which shows them at the bottom of a list of 58 groupings in the standing of ethnic groups here. I don't know many Travellers who have not been stopped by police on the highway as a result of the agressive racial profiling, taught by police manuals, for example the South Carolina police manual "Gypsies Travellers and Theives" (emagine a police manual called Hispanics, Negros and Drug dealers for the sake of comparison...). When stopped they are given the choice of being taken in on pretextural charges, or being finger printed and photographed on the road. Most, no all I know, comply, as they have no expectation yet of basic rights.
I DREAM of a funded program to take the field work I have done, and done by Dr. Andersen, and Dr. Anderck, and one or two others, and create a programatic approach to the miriad of rights violations faced by these people every day, however, to date the responce on the part of existing rights groups has been cold apathy. For years, I formally knocked on doors with an organisation I founded called the Lawyers Committee for Roma Rights and Recogniiton. Among other problems which arose from this organisation, instead of realizing the 90,000 a year salery average for graduates of my law school, I went serriously broke looking for a minimum wage grant to do the work. People don't care about Gypsies, they want them out of their town, their country their world. Even we Quakers, our responce to the most numerous community of need in Europe is one single worker in an office in Hungery, the Roma Education Project, now slated to close.
BUT Ron, I respect and thank you for the respectful questions. On Sunday when I get back from the mid west, I may have a much bigger wieght to bear, but thems the riggs of the town. Cheers Larry line breaks added by mudelf ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Ron Olesko Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:46 AM Larry, she will be. The story that I heard yesterday, please correct me if I have it wrong, is that Madyln must take anger management and child rearing courses. Once she completes them she will regain custody. The story I heard on the radio yesterday said that she could have custody anywhere from 6 to 12 months. Again, it sounds like a fair and standard practice. If you look at these people as INDIVIDUALS, the result is one that will keep the child safe and help the mother deal with her issues. Of course it is a situation that should never have happened in the first place, but it did, and now the laws of this country are being followed. Also Larry, your discussion of the paranoia based on centuries of prejudice gives us insight, however how connected is the Traveler community to groups in Europe? Is there a connection that would allow for sharing of information such as the situation in France? Why would a Traveler in the U.S. be fearful of something that is happening in Europe - are you saying that Travelers are moved at gunpoint in this country? I'm not disagreeing with you, just trying to understand how this paranoia exists in this country. Ron |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:38 AM OH! I get the confustion. SETTLEMENT! I don't mean A settlement, I mean settling the family in a fixed abode!!! I am a wee bit thick in the morning. I have to run off to the mid west today, so I am also a bit preoccupied. Graham, check out my new song about Lough Neagh! It is under the Otway's new song, post... Cheers Larry, |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:34 AM Hi Graham... I do not mean that taking the child is forced!!! Settlement is a very sensitive issue for Travellers. As a result of nearly one thousand years of forced migration - upon pain of death for stoping for more than 24 hours through out most of Europe, a form of this law exists today in France, where nomadic travellers are moved on at gun point after 24 hours, though capital punnishment is no longer perscribed... but to the point, Traveller culture has adapted wonderfully to centuries of forced migration. Now, their community and culture and ecconomy is based on nomadism - or more accurately, being semi nomadic. Forced settlement means the loss of cultural eliments that are to a degree definitional in the way Travellers think of themselves. Now, for a society which has accepted that we are all interchangeable, and no American is expected to have one job for ones whole work life, this nexus between who we are and what we do is not easy to understand. I have some understanding from my contact with the Traveller communities. They, and Roma, were the first people I knew to use cell phones, a huge new adaptation to the flow of this community in their patterned migrations. Most calls I get,(many a week, sometimes many a day) one can hear that the call comes from a family on the road. hey are travelling between work - wedings, funerals, reunions constantly. To be forced off the road, is to be bannished from one's community, ones town. Their town is in motion and being forced to settle is to stand by and watch your world pass on to the next stop without you. So yes, Martha's grandmother is making a great sacrifice and compromise, and one that I don't feel is fully within that child's interest. She should be at weddings, she should be with other Traveller children, She should be who she has a right to be. Thanks for the respectful nature of your interest, Graham. All the best, Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Grab Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:04 AM My apologies then Larry. I didn't realise from context that you were still talking about the article. they have forced settlement on a family member, and the family complied. I don't think that is a wonderful solution, but it is a compromise the family made. Your initial position was that by removing the child from the Traveller community, the social services were harming the Traveller community and the child. Now the social services are "forcing" a settlement whereby the child is returned to her family and the family are "complying" with this? "Forced" and "complied" has no other meaning but that the grandparents did not *want* to care for their daughter's child! Is this language deliberate? I agree with you that "eye-witness" evidence of someone recognising them on the TV is a very tentative case. You're correct that unless they have further evidence, that in itself isn't enough to get a definite yes or no. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 23 Oct 02 - 05:02 PM Larry (re your post of 23 Oct 02 - 11:41 AM): Oops, sorry, the Tribune archives articles after 7 days. If necessary, I'll try to purchase the article I tried to link to, so I can post it here. As to the Lagrange theft charge, do we know that the store clerk had not already picked out Madelyne's picture before September 13th? Do we know if Indiana law demands what you describe? It will be interesting to see if the court does in fact dismiss this case for the reasons you give. I can't see why Lagrange would file a charge if they knew the court would throw it out. The fact that the charge was not filed until October seems to indicate that there's more to this story that we don't know yet. We'll see! SharonA, non-Nazi (in spite of insinuations to the contrary) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 23 Oct 02 - 02:35 PM Áine says, "Larry has made attempt after attempt to reason with the posts that didn't agree with his own, yours included." I disagree, in that I don't find Larry's attempts reasonable, but instead rhetorical. I'm surprised and disappointed to read that you think I've been lashing out emotionally at Larry in the way that he's been lashing out at me and at other people. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Áine Date: 23 Oct 02 - 02:07 PM "It is obvious that you don't wish to have a reasonable discussion on this subject, but rather to lash out at people who disagree with you and who have the temerity to point out the fallacies in your arguments." Sharon, I think your own statement applies as well to yourself. Larry has made attempt after attempt to reason with the posts that didn't agree with his own, yours included. I don't blame him a bit for feeling that this discussion is going nowhere. This is definitely a situation that fits the ol' chestnut, "Discretion is sometimes the better part of a valor". I'm very sorry when these discussions become victims of the all-too-popular j'accuse tactic of faltering debate teams, and instead of points of view being made, arrows of personal attack are launched. This argument has become moot -- let's not beat the dead horse of entrenched and enflamed personal vindictive anymore. All the best to all who participated here, Áine |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 23 Oct 02 - 01:33 PM Oh, please. Now you're taking my pedantry in correcting your spelling as an insult to your dyslexia??? If I'd cut-and-pasted your statements without correcting your spelling, would that be okay or would you see that as pointing out your dyslexia by repeating your misspellings????? I'm not trying to insult you, Larry, so you can stop playing the victim now. And what the heck was that last quip about the world in which I would choose to live having anything to do with the last thousand years of forced migration of any people? These are not reasonable statements. It is obvious that you don't wish to have a reasonable discussion on this subject, but rather to lash out at people who disagree with you and who have the temerity to point out the fallacies in your arguments. "Equality of cultural rights"? You have failed to prove that the Traveller culture's rights have been of any less consideration to Indiana authorities in the Toogood child-custody case than any other culture's rights would have been. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 23 Oct 02 - 12:16 PM Equality means equality of cultural rights as well. I need not go on with this sillyness with you as I can tell how yo look at the world when you make a point of correcting my spelling in spite of my openess about the reasons I do not spell corectly. I can emagine the world in which you would choose to live. This is why my mother's people saw a thousand years of forced migration. Good day |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 23 Oct 02 - 12:10 PM Larry also says: "at the time of the start of this post, the State was saying that they would not place her with a nom[a]dic rel[a]tive." Larry, why should the state have risked the possibility that Martha would have disappeared AGAIN??? Remember, she'd already been taken out of the state by her mother and disguised by her mother (with a haircut), and the in-state relatives were refusing to reveal her whereabouts to authorities. Once the mother turned herself in, she allegedly gave false addresses to authorities. This kind of behavior doesn't exactly foster an atmosphere of trust between the family and the state. After that, why should the state believe any family member who might have promised to cooperate with authorities while taking the child out of state as part of the family's cultural nomadism? As so many people have reminded you on this thread, the state's first concern is with the safety of the child. Like it or not, the state is legally bound not to be as concerned with an ethnic culture's traditions as with ensuring the safety of the child. Whether the Irish Traveller culture in America assimilates itself into American society or not, it is still living in the US and is subject to US law. Larry, your argument seems to be that US law should be more concerned with ethnic tradition than with ensuring the safety of a child at the risk of violating tradition. That kind of a bid for preference of one ethnic culture (over laws that are supposed to apply to every US citizen) simply is not viable in a nation whose overriding principle is that all are created equal. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 23 Oct 02 - 11:41 AM Hi Sharon, the article you "posted" was available by subscription only. In the case of the most prolonged contact with a suspect, the law demands that you show an arary of photographs and have the suspect picked from the array. In this case, any court I have ever had contact with, would dismiss this identification as being tainted by the public exposure, and by the presumptions made by the press in showing the photographs. One month is a long time to be that sure, if in fact it is a month. I recieved a call about this over the weekend, and it was news to the family. The reliablity of eye witness evidence is greatly suspect in every case, as we remember in a variety of contexts. Here there is a person who believes she has been defrauded. Now, she is faced with a slew of press which puts forward the notion that Madlynne is a member of a society of scam artists. This is more an example of the harm to rights the coverage has created than proof of the criminality of the Madlynne and her sister. Cheers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 23 Oct 02 - 10:46 AM Larry (in response to your quip about calendars): You had originally said of the felony theft charge in Lagrange, Indiana, "here we have an identification months! after". The article I reprinted said "At the time [of the theft on August 21], store employees and management did not know who the women were, but when St. Joseph County authorities released the surveillance tape [of Madelyne Toogood, recorded September 13 and released within the following week], she was recognized, [store manager Larry] Yoder said." So the identification was made within a month of the theft. The charges were not officially filed until October 17. Please don't confuse the two, and please don't try to confuse anyone else about the two! As to your statement that "eye witness accounts are the least accurate evidence of a crime", this isn't a case of an eye witness watching a crime in progress from the sidelines. The article states, "The two women went to the Shipshewana store on Aug. 21, took fabric to a cashier and said they bought the fabric the Saturday before but forgot to take their package because their children were distracting them, said Larry Yoder, a manager at the store." The cashier was face-to-face with Toogood and her sister, according to this account, and the two sisters talked to the cashier directly. The cashier would have had ample opportunity to get a good, close look at both women, in a situation where he or she could concentrate on their features (rather than being in a panicked state with a gun in his or her face, or some such). I don't doubt that the cashier could accurately identify them from that encounter. So the "least accurate evidence" argument doesn't hold water in this instance. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 23 Oct 02 - 10:09 AM Hi Ron and Spaw... Spaw you are right, however, at the time of the start of this post, the State was saying that they would not place her with a nomdic relitive. Now, they have forced settlement on a family member, and the family complied. I don't think that is a wonderful solution, but it is a compromise the family made. And, Ron, cultural isolates are a unique situation. Most American ethnic groups assimilate to a degree, the Amish, the Orthodox Jewish Community, Travellers are a small minority that maintain separate languages and isolation in the community for generations. So, if we say, took an Amish child and put her in an Jewish home, until the family got a teliphone in case they had to call a doctor for the child, we would see this case in a different light. Nomadism is as much a part of Traveller culture as simplisity is part of Amish culture. Cheers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Ron Olesko Date: 23 Oct 02 - 10:01 AM Well put Spaw. Not to detract from the thread, but the whole concept of placing a child with the same ethnic/background really is an enormous task when you think of it. Any group whose bloodlines have been in the same country for several generations begins to meld into a "mainstream" culture. Both my mother and father's families have been in this country since the late 1800's. My heritage can be traced back to Poland and Hungary. Both had a Catholic background that flourished in rural Pennsylvania. My wife's family emigrated from Austria and Russia in the early 1900's and came from a Jewish culture that settled in Brooklyn. My point is this - and this is a tough example to use, but if my children were ever put into a situation where they needed temporary placement, what would the consideration be? Without knowing my family, how could a determination be made on what sort of family to place the child with? America has been built upon immigrant cultures. Many families have lost their sense of identifiying with a group and consider themselves simply Americans. By what we are learning, the Travelers, through choice, have kept their traditions alive. It may be easy for us to sit on the sidelines and criticize the process of placement, but if you sit in their shoes you might see how difficult a decision it may be. Ultimately, there are no "winning" solutions. Ron |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: catspaw49 Date: 23 Oct 02 - 09:29 AM Two points: It is generally accepted in the social service community that longer term temporary placement with someone of the same ethnic origin/background is preferable and in the best interests of the child. This was done in this case. Second, note a slight terminology difference. Martha was initially placed in emergency foster care and after apprpropriate investigation of the possibilities, was placed with the grandparents for temporary foster/alternative care. A child in permanent custody will NOT be returned to the parent. Based on Social Services findings and court hearings (separate from any trial of the parents), Judges issue orders for Temporary or Permanent Custody....Temporary Custody agreements are usually for 6 months and can be extended in either 3 or 6 month blocks. A child can be returned to the parent at any time prior to the end of the agreement if Social Services makes that recommendation and the Judge approves the request. Returning the child also comes with a Case Plan that must be adhered to until Social Services terminates the case, again with the approval of the Judge. Permanent Custody agreements are again issued by a Judge upon recommendation and proof by Social Services. Once this has occurred, the parent relinquishes all rights to the child and they are available for adoption. I just wanted to be clear that in this case, and at this point, Martha was placed in Temporary Custody of the court, an emergency home was found, a suitable Relative-Foster Temporary placement was then achieved. Martha is NOT in any form of Permanent Custody....nor should she be. Rights of the parent have not been withdrawn and if the mother adheres to the case plan during Temporary Custody, it is highly unlikely that Permanent Custody will ever become an issue before the court. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 23 Oct 02 - 09:20 AM Graham my dear fellow, read the whole thread... I was responding to an artical which said that Travellers should be kept from their children for foisting on them an athority shuning culture. Though it is not true that shuning athority is part of Traveller culture, as the artical was written by an ignoant semi literate nut, the idea of removal of a people's children is a violation of the above UN convention which you site, and thanks. Now, I am not saying that every bigot who has posted anti Traveller articles is in fact semi literate, for example, Dennis Hammil exhibits his unconcious bigotry in his piece about Travellers, which is indeed a shame, Dennis is generally a good writer, but like many has a logic block when it comes to this Romani decended culture. Cheers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Grab Date: 23 Oct 02 - 08:58 AM Jaysus! Removal is ON THE BASIS OF CHILD ABUSE! Anyone's children, of ANY racial group (white/black/Traveller/Indian), are removed from them and from their family in cases of child abuse to ensure that the child cannot be further abused, and are placed temporarily with a "trusted" foster family authorised by the State. When the court's found a safe place for them to be with their family, they go there. The reason for this is that child abuse may be "kept within the family" - for example, the grandparents may be the main abusers (this has happened before), and the physical safety of the child has absolute #1 priority over everything else. Quoting the relevant UN resolution (from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm):- In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. If you are saying that the relevant people in the social services removed the child *explicitly* with the intent to destroy the Roma/Pavee/Traveller ethnic group, you'd better have proof of that accusation, given that the severity of this crime is on a par with mass murder. Given the evidence against, and the fact that the same procedures would be followed for a person of any ethnic origin, you're pissing in the wind. While we're on UN issues, check out http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/27.htm which is very relevant to this discussion. "Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with special reference to Foster Placement and Adoption Nationally and Internationally". This contains the line:- When care by the child's own parents is unavailable or inappropriate, care by relatives of the child's parents, by another substitute--foster or adoptive-- family or, if necessary, by an appropriate institution should be considered. The girl was placed with a foster family temporarily. As a permanent solution, she is now placed with her grandparents. Sounds like the UN would be perfectly happy with the situation. Find me a UN convention that says it's OK to leave a child with their abuser if the abuser is of some non-WASP ethnic origin, and I'll grant you the point; until then, I'll quote you another except from the same declaration:- In all matters relating to the placement of a child outside the care of the child's own parents, the best interests of the child, particularly his or her need for affection and right to security and continuing care, should be the paramount consideration. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 22 Oct 02 - 06:42 PM and by the way, any legal scholar will tell you that eye witness accounts are the least accurate evidence of a crime bar none. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 22 Oct 02 - 06:39 PM Nicole... yes genocide, cultural genocide the removal of a people's children on the basis of ethnicity is defined by UN conventions as form of genocide. As to a mark on the child's back... the only reference to that is the statement of a four year old, no other evidence of that mark has yet been presented. By my count, August to Ocotber is more than a month... I will go and fetch my calandar. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: NicoleC Date: 22 Oct 02 - 06:18 PM "Genocide"? Well, that pretty much wraps up any shred of plausibility left to the argument. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 22 Oct 02 - 06:09 PM As for the new charges of felony theft being "garbage" in Larry's opinion: the theft occurred on August 21 and the videotape, on which the store clerks recognized Toogood, was released to the press during the week following September 13 – less than a month apart. Once again, Larry has bent the truth until it has broken. I have no doubt that descriptions of Toogood and her sister were given to the police immediately after the August 21st theft. Perhaps the store clerks had already identified Toogood through her mug shot in the meantime. We'll know for sure when this particular case comes to trial! Till then, I for one can't and won't assume that the word of the witnesses of a theft is "garbage". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 22 Oct 02 - 05:54 PM But are these "racist articles" articles, or editorials like the New York Post piece? Far from being villified, Madelyne's sister had the blessing of the court to leave Indiana while her case is pending. "As to separating children from their families on the basis of ethnicity", again I'll say that the New York Post editorial seemed to me to suggest separating children from their families on the basis of families' mistreatment of those children, not on the basis of ethnicity. And, again, that is something that is done by Child Protective Services for the children of families determined to be abusive REGARDLESS of ethnicity. In the case of the Toogoods, they already admitted to the court that their child Martha is "a child in need of services" at the hearing on October 9, and admitted to the charges in the state's petition that, among other things, Martha had a mark on her back from the September 13 incident. It would seem that the child spoke the truth after all when she said that she had the mark on her back, despite Larry's insistence ON the 10th that "I doubt that the four year old set up two mirrors in some room while on the road to New Jersey to check out her back" (even though Martha had several days at home, between September 13 and the time Madelyne took her to Maryland and New Jersey, to find two mirrors or to ask one of her brothers to look at her back!). The information about the Toogoods' admission to the state's charges comes from this South Bend Tribune article: http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2002/10/10/local.20021010-sbt-MARS-D1-Child_to_live_with.sto |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 22 Oct 02 - 05:08 PM The case is still pending, so comment on evidence is not yet appropriate. As to separating children from theirfamilies on the basis of ethnicity, anyone who does not see that as a form of genocide should, well be off somewhere getting a life. As to the "beating" not being contested, it has and is being contested. Video can not show the difference between a beating and a slapping, and as to the new charges they are garbage. Anyone who has done defense work knows the standards applied for identification of a suspect, immidiatly after an event, here we have an identification months! after and after Madalynne and her sister have been villified through out the world. Cheers Larry PS this was only one of many many racist articles, for example Dennis Hammil's piece. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Nerd Date: 22 Oct 02 - 04:47 PM Hi Folks. Been away from my computer for a few days; sorry I didn't respond, Larry. All I can say is "oh, I didn't know that!" (about her being Roma as well as Irish Traveller). I still don't think the CASE as such exhibits any racism, and all you've been able to show is that some reporters are assholes. Just like "some travellers are con artists" and "some Jews are misers," this is a fact from which it is dangerous to generalize any further. Any news on the exculpatory evidence? Nerd |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 22 Oct 02 - 11:36 AM Good points, Graham and Sceptic. Let me add, with regard to "the nature of newspapers", that Larry based his Nazi-comparison on an editorial in the New York Post, not an article. The Post doesn't exactly exemplify politically-correct journalism to begin with, and editorials allow journalists more freedom of personal expression than is proper to be inserted into a news article. There's nothing new or unusual about finding inflammatory remarks in an editorial, and the New York Post's Andrea Peyser has a first-amendment right to make them. For Larry to characterize such an editorial as "media coverage" is misrepresentative of the nature and purpose of Peyser's remarks. But let's take a closer look at what she said that upset Larry so: "Toogood and her kind should be kept miles from children. Unless they agree to settle down in a place where they can be watched." Does Peyser mean, by "her kind", Travellers who "[foist] a bizarre, authority-shunning way of life on kids" or mothers who " furiously whacking [their] small daughter[s] about the head"? Either way, her concern seems to be for the welfare of children, not for the persecution of an ethnic group. Also, I feel compelled to point out that Peyser NEVER said that Travellers should be "rounded up", as Larry misstated to the South Bend Tribune. What she said was that Toogood, and people who abuse children in ways she thinks Toogood is abusing her daughter (physically and, through lifestyle, psychologically), should be kept away from children unless they AGREE to settle down in a place where they can be watched. News flash to Larry: the Toogoods have agreed to stay in Indiana while Madelyne's custody settlement is pending. Madelyne has agreed to supervised visits with her daughter (where she can be watched). Madelyne's mother has agreed to move to Indiana so she can have custody of her granddaughter Martha (under the watchful eye of Child Protective Services, who first checked out Gorman's record and found no evidence of criminal activity). So Peyser's remark about being watched can be interpreted to mean being cooperative with the legal system and Child Protective Services. Personally, I think Larry is crying wolf by crying "Nazi". To be sure, there is neo-Nazi activity in the US, but I don't think it's to be found in Peyser's editorial. I'm very sorry to hear that members of Larry's family were persecuted and killed in Europe during the Holocaust (see Larry's post of 15 Oct 02 - 07:46 AM on this thread), and I can see where his surviving family's trauma might cause him to see a Nazi in the face of everyone who criticizes anyone who happens to be Roma, but people can express anger about child abuse – and what they perceive as child abuse – without being Nazis. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Grab Date: 22 Oct 02 - 10:35 AM Larry, the one thing no-one argues with is "after she was videotaped beating her daughter". You've yet to show any evidence of discrimination in how she has been treated. I'm sorry, but that's it. You've shown plenty of prejudice in the media and in the police in general, I'm quite convinced of that. But in how this woman and her daughter were handled, every single stage in child abuse procedures was followed to the letter, to ensure the child was safe from harm. As a side-note, remember that op-ed columns are a "cheap shot". In the UK, I've seen op-eds over the last year or so saying that any one of the following groups should be banned: (a) gypsies, (b) caravanners, (c) campers, (d) walkers, (e) cyclists, (f) BMW drivers, (g) football fans, (h) smokers, (i) non-smokers, (j) hunt supporters, (k) hunt saboteurs, (l) folk musicians... I could, without too much trouble, find you an article for every one of these. Whether the columns are anything worth listening to, or whether it's some joker running their mouth trying to get a reputation as "controversial", is up to an intelligent reader to decide. Using such an article to show nationwide prejudice is not an intelligent move. I'm afraid it rather shows you don't understand the nature of newspapers, in spite of your links to the media. And comparisons to the Nazis don't help either - quoting from the ever-helpful Jargon File:- Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Most of us on Mudcat will be familiar with this rule, so you've rather depth-charged your argument there... Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: GUEST,Sceptic Date: 21 Oct 02 - 10:31 PM Hey Larry, Thanks for posting the article that led to your conclusion that the prejudice against Irish Travellers in America is comprable to that faced by the victims of the Nazis. Yes, the article is prejudicial. However to suggest that that article is any way comprable to the kind of scapegoating and anti-Jewish, etc. propaganda of the Nazis is ludicrous. Your rhetorical comparisons only serve to discredit you and your cause. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: SharonA Date: 21 Oct 02 - 04:50 PM An interesting development made the news over the weekend: another felony theft charge against Madelyne Toogood. For those who didn't hear about it, here's the story... Reprinted from the South Bend Tribune, October 19, 2002 LaGrange issues warrant for Toogood Shipshewana department store claims theft of fabric By JOYCE MCCARTNEY, The Journal Gazette LAGRANGE -- Madelyne Gorman Toogood, the woman police say was caught on a St. Joseph County department store surveillance camera beating her daughter, is now facing a theft charge accusing her of taking fabric from a Shipshewana department store. The felony theft charge was filed Thursday against Toogood and Margaret Jean Daley, Toogood's sister, LaGrange County Prosecutor Jeff Wible said Friday. The charge alleges Toogood and Daley went to Yoder's Department store in August, took some fabric and told a store clerk it was already paid for, Wible said. Neither Toogood nor Daley have been arrested on the outstanding LaGrange County warrants, officials at the LaGrange County Sheriff's Department said.... [Toogood's] sister, Daley, was charged in St. Joseph County with failure to report child abuse. Last week, a St. Joseph County judge ruled that Daley could leave the state, allowing her to go to Missouri, where her husband and four sons were. Randy DeCleene, spokesman for the St. Joseph County prosecutor's office, said the LaGrange County case will likely have no bearing on Toogood's case here. "Assuming that it's true, it's unlikely it would have an effect on the case in St. Joseph County because the supposed (LaGrange County) incident happened before her problems in St. Joseph County," DeCleene said. However, Michael Gotsch, attorney for Child Protective Services in St. Joseph County, said there could be an impact on efforts to reunite 4-year-old Martha Toogood with her parents. Martha is living in the St. Joseph County home of her maternal grandmother, Mary Agnes Gorman, who is functioning as a foster parent for the little girl. Martha could remain in her grandmother's care six to 12 months. "It could have an effect," Gotsch said late Friday night of the LaGrange County charge. "It may complicate our providing services to the family." Assuming the child's safety can be assured, Gotsch said, federal and state laws require CPS to consider reuniting the family. The family is next due for a court hearing Wednesday, Gotsch said. At that time, CPS makes recommendations about services the family needs. "We'll advise the court of what we know (about) additional new information," Gotsch said. In LaGrange County, Toogood is accused of assisting her sister in the theft of fabric from the store, Wible said. The two women went to the Shipshewana store on Aug. 21, took fabric to a cashier and said they bought the fabric the Saturday before but forgot to take their package because their children were distracting them, said Larry Yoder, a manager at the store. When the women left the store, employees realized the fabric had just been cut that day, he said. At the time, store employees and management did not know who the women were, but when St. Joseph County authorities released the surveillance tape, she was recognized, Yoder said. By the way, I have much to say in response to Larry's last few posts, but I've been off having a life and posting to a small number of the other threads on Mudcat for the last week or so. But since Madelyne's story has been refreshed in the news by this latest charge, I guess it's time to refresh this thread again. I'll be back later today or tomorrow to post my reactions to Larry's comments from last week. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 16 Oct 02 - 01:39 PM My Dear Sceptic: No I am not 60... though closer to it than away from it, I was... but as to my rhetoric. Here is the offending article upon which I was commenting. Now, as I said to the reporter, who catured very nearly exactly what I said, fair play to her... was that I rarely make compairisons to the Nazis. However, when one writes, as below, that a people should have their children removed... see towards the end of this trashy writing, she says their children should be kept far from them, refering to Travellers... I expect she feels the same about all Roma as well... here it is in all it's ignorant horror and glory. All the best, Larry New York Post Andrea Peyser TOO BAD, TOOGOOD - YOU'RE A LOUSY EXCUSE FOR A PARENT By ANDREA PEYSER I'M GUILTY - NO, INNOCENT! Madelyne Toogood, with hubby John, admitted smacking around her 4-year-old daughter - then pleaded not guilty in an Indiana court yesterday. - AP September 24, 2002 -- MOTHER of the Year Madelyne Toogood has three small children, four driver's licenses, and two names to chose from - depending upon the state in which she parks her trailer. But Mommie Dearest has not one permanent address. The country now is as familiar with Toogood's parenting skills as it is with the danger of Hurricane Isidore. This past weekend, the savage in blue jeans was all over TV, furiously whacking her small daughter about the head, a scene caught on surveillance videotape. As horrifying as it was to watch, I could not look away. She had to be stopped. By the time Toogood surrendered to authorities Saturday - after running to two states and dying her hair brown - she'd morphed into the most despised human this side of Saddam Hussein. She also presented a self-serving story. Toogood says her child, Martha, made her angry by wandering off in a store, forcing management to page her - twice. What kind of a mother lets a 4-year-old out of her sight? This train wreck of a mom is one of the so-called "Irish Travelers" - nomadic misfits of which I'd never before heard. Travelers wander with the seasons, looking for work in home repair. Previously, they drew the attention of authorities only for scamming customers. Toogood is charged in Texas with skipping out on a traffic ticket and stealing goods from a department store. About the beating she inflicted on Martha, she told an interviewer: "I shouldn't have did it." And, "Don't raise your hand to a child, it ain't worth it." Ain't it the truth? The truth is that Toogood's appalling attitude toward child-rearing is not so different from the thinking of many who see children as personal property to be raised as they see fit. Little Martha Toogood is now in the care of strangers, while her brothers, ages 5 and 6, are with relatives. I feel for a child ripped from her parents. But this travesty of a family can't continue. By foisting a bizarre, authority-shunning way of life on kids, the Travelers put them in danger. Toogood and her kind should be kept miles from children. Unless they agree to settle down in a place where they can be watched. Until then, I thank God for videotape. line breaks added by mudelf ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: GUEST,Sceptic Date: 16 Oct 02 - 09:07 AM Hey Larry, Thanks for the articles. All I wanted some verifiable backup to your claims. Always check your sources they taught me in college. A question though. Just how old are you? In the first article you supply, you are quoted as saying: "The last time I remember reading this type of language was when the Nazis were rounding these people up to throw them into ovens." You claim to have been reading that type "when" the Nazis were perpetrating genocide. That was 60 years ago my friend. Assuming you learned to read when you were about 6, you must be at least 66 years old. We've met in person and I'm sure you're not that old. Now, I haven't studied the Irish Travelers the way you have, but the discrimination they may face here in America is not comprable to what was faced by the many millions of Jews and others who were exterminated by the Nazis. I've not heard of any plan by the Bush Administration to round up all the Irish Travelers, turn them into slave labor and and put them to death just because they are Irish Travelers. Your overuse of such rhetoric cheapens your cause. The language that you quote, such terms as "her kind" and "obscure clan" is mild compared to the way that many other groups have been characterized in recent years. Think of Jews in the Arab world, Arabs among the Israeli Wet Bank settlers, African and Native Americans here at home, Catholics in Northern Ireland and countless other examples. Larry, my man, your rhetoric is so far over the top that you discredit your cause. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Amos Date: 16 Oct 02 - 01:07 AM First, I would say that Larry has convinced me that the case has acheived national scale and been exagerrated to the proportions of President Clinton's moral lapses, largely because of the ethnic vector and the misuse of it as a factor in the case by the media and some of the participants. There is a clear case to be made for the weight of prejudice at play in the media treatment of the case, and Larry has made it. Second, if in addition to being a bad-tempered and violent mother on occasion Ms Toogood has also become the poster child -- not by her own choice, but by the invocation and mellerdramatizing of the media -- for bias and incivility toward those who choose to live the Gypsy or Traveller life, that was not Larry's doing and if he uses the fact to assist those he is committed to helping, let him. He is doing good in the world, and his rhetoric, if occasionally imprecise, is not a patch on the baloney being promulgated through some mass media channels. If you really want a study on tight-lipped secretive clannish folk who worship material wealth, have a low regard for the conventions of law, and commit fraud through deception, study the lives of the two Georges Bush. These Travelers are pikers compared to what a REAL white-collar crim can get away with. And as the newsclips offered above show plainly, Ms Toogood's alleged crimes are picayune compared to some of the Good Ol' Boy woodpile lessons being administered out there. Let us trust the courts to maintain a balanced hand as they have done so far. Personally I am grateful to Larry for opening the door to a whole world I had not been cognizant of. Let it rest. I suspect wee Martha will be just fine. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 15 Oct 02 - 10:36 PM One more thing, wee hobbitt Troll, why don't you have the good graces to sign your name to your ad hominum attacks? Could it be that you have never done a thing in your life worthy of signing your name? Maybe you could barrow one? Cheers Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 15 Oct 02 - 10:29 PM Here is a cut and paste, unless someone would like to do a blue clickie for the little hobbit troll who sais no one other than Mudcat knows about my band. It is the unsigned band page for BBC Scotland. My CD has been played on some 20 0r 30 radio stations... and often is played on Bernard White's show on WBAI in New York, he likes the Amadou Diallo song, espcially... So, go to the link below, and click on the MP# to hear the band. By the way, obviouly 12 steps are not enough for you... perhaps you may try getting a life. http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/musicscotland/celticroots/unsigned/index.shtml Larry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 15 Oct 02 - 10:24 PM Oct. 6, 2002, 1:30AM Irish Travellers live on the fringes By ALLAN TURNER Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle To police, the Irish Travellers are clannish, tight-lipped masters of scam. Give them the chance, and they'll resurface your driveway with motor oil. Lower your guard, and their $35 roof repair will cost you 100 times that much -- and all you'll have to show are shingles swabbed with silver paint. To their friends, the Travellers are victims of discrimination, targeted because they are transient blue-collar workers who prefer to be left to themselves. Descendants of 19th-century potato famine refugees, they are loyal, hard-working, family-loving and devoutly religious. But to most people, perhaps, the Travellers are simply a mystery -- a group hardly noticed until one of their members, Madelyne Toogood, shocked the nation when she was caught on a security videotape beating her young daughter in the parking lot of an Indiana department store. Now, with the repeated televising of the beating, tales of Traveller transgressions -- including a Fort Worth shoplifting charge against Toogood -- have filled the news. "People always ask me what percentage of them are honest and what percentage are crooked," said Joe Livingston, a South Carolina state intelligence agent considered an expert on the group. "It's very hard to provide an answer." Toogood's defense attorney, Houston's Rocket Rosen, said he became involved in the Indiana case through his long-standing connection with the Travellers. "It's a joke," he said, "but people call me their 'corporate lawyer.' " Rosen has handled about 20 defenses for members of the group in 15 years, most of them minor crimes -- and he finds the Travellers delightful, despite their reputation for reclusiveness. "They are nice people," he said. "They are friendly. On my birthday, I always hear from six or seven families." Rosen, who also is representing Toogood's husband, Johnny, in a Montana scam case, suggested that complaints against the group often stem from simple business misunderstandings. Travellers frequently work in home-repair trades. And, said Rosen, "paving, roofing and carpentry lend themselves to grievances. There's always a battle about how much you owe." Houston police disagreed. "These are organized criminal families," said Lt. Mark Glentzer of the major offenders division. "The women run different types of scams. The men are the ones we run into a lot. Basically they prey on the elderly, and they are very smart." Glentzer said the Travellers -- one of several transient groups on police radar -- divide the city into sectors to avoid competing with themselves for victims. Investigators, he said, often find Travellers using false names. "You don't find legitimate people with six or seven names," he said. "They'll rent apartments under different names. Everything they do is just on the other side of the law." Typically, the workmen will arrive in a neighborhood with equipment in tow. Sometimes they'll claim to have supplies left over from another job and offer to paint, pave or repair at an astoundingly low price. "They'll find someone living alone and, say, offer to repair his roof for $35," Glentzer said. "They'll be very insistent. Then they'll get on the roof and take paint and slop it around and then give him a bill for $3,500. The price will have increased to $35 a square foot. They basically intimidate you into paying, then they run to the bank and cash the check in a matter of minutes." By the time police arrive, the perpetrators are well down the road, the policeman said. Such crimes are not uncommon, Glentzer said, although he could not provide the number of such incidents reported involving Travellers because police do not classify such crimes by criminals' ethnicity. "I tell people Travellers will do what opportunity will allow," said Livingston, a senior intelligence officer with the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division. In South Carolina, which is home to a major Traveller encampment -- as is White Settlement, near Fort Worth -- Livingston admonishes residents to use common sense when dealing with itinerant workmen. "If someone knocks at your door offering to do work," he said, "be leery, very leery. Ask for references. Get a contract -- and not just on a blank sheet of paper or the back of a McDonald's bag." Livingston acknowledged that transient groups such as Gypsies or Travellers naturally inspire suspicion in settled populations -- an observation Indiana University professor Donald Baird seconded. Baird said he encountered "perceptions that they were no-good, lying thieves" when he studied Traveller culture in Scotland. "But they were absolutely wrong," he said. "They were 100 percent wrong. The majority of Travellers were hard-working and generous, decent people. The perceptions were based on hearsay, wild imaginings and things of that nature. Maybe human beings just need an outcast to blame so they don't have to look at themselves." Until the Toogood incident, Irish Travellers made few media ripples in the United States. There was perfunctory news coverage of a January 2000 auto accident in Fort Worth in which five Traveller teens were killed. All were younger than 14 and carried false identification. In 1997, the stereotype of the group's penchant for criminality was exploited in Traveller, a Southern road flick produced by and starring Fort Worth native Bill Paxton. The movie had limited distribution and little impact on Paxton's career. In Ireland, Travellers frequently have been in the news as they battle entrenched prejudice. Frequently impoverished -- Travellers typically die a decade earlier than their mainstream Irish counterparts -- they face discrimination as overt as being barred from pubs. In Ireland and the United States, Travellers are devoutly Catholic and often speak their own language. Breandan Mac Suibhne, program director for the Keough Institute for Irish Studies at Notre Dame University, traced the Travellers in Ireland to at least the 1600s. The nature of their work as tinsmiths and horse traders required that they travel in search of new customers. Coincidentally, their travels made them cosmopolitans, and they became the torchbearers of Irish musical culture. "They were the great fiddlers," Mac Suibhne said. With the growth of the 19th century's Industrial Revolution, Traveller skills were less in demand. And in the aftermath of the midcentury famine, in which at least 1 million perished, the Travellers were marginalized. "There was a shift in society," Mac Suibhne said. "Before the famine, an acre of potatoes could support a family for a year. Afterward, land was more important, massively important. It went from a society that married young and had many children to one that married later and had fewer children." By contrast, the migratory Travellers placed little importance on land. They continued to marry young and rear large families. Their trades were mildly disreputable -- tinsmithing was associated with constructing moonshine stills and horse trading was analogous to selling used cars. Fiddling likewise was viewed as a dubious calling. "After the famine," Mac Suibhne said, "the Travellers became an affront to an increasingly conservative society." Many Travellers immigrated to the United States -- today, estimates of their U.S. population vary wildly from 7,000 to 40,000 -- and pursued their old trades along with new ones such as barn painting. "In five generations they struggled their way up. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps," said Ruth Andersen, an Austin-based folklorist who has studied Irish Travellers for about 20 years. "They were family oriented -- they tended to pull kids out of school at 15 or 16 to be homemakers. There aren't a lot of Ph.D.s in anthropology, but they learned to cook and clean and do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. They were earthy. They tended to gravitate to trades that didn't require a high school diploma. Ones that would leave them free in the evening to be with their families, not bringing home a briefcase of work." John Clapp, a police spokesman in White Settlement, said Travellers own four mobile home parks in the community of about 15,000. The group stays in camp for part of each year. Clapp said Travellers occasionally are ticketed on traffic stops but have not been involved in reported crimes in his community. "They stay to themselves," Clapp said. "They're into paving, blacktopping, things like that. They home-school their kids. They very seldom go to public schools. I guess they're like everyone else -- they just keep to themselves." But the Travellers don't exactly blend in. "Around our community, we're pretty lower-middle-class," Clapp said. "Their trailers are pretty nice. They're the ones driving the really expensive automobiles, the Porsches, the fancy Excursions." "They do like to display certain types of wealth," Andersen said. "If (mainstream) people liquidated their house and didn't send any of their kids to college, then maybe they could spend it all on cars and jewelry. "The Travellers just have a different worldview. They have always lived in small places like trailers and carts and wagons. In their traditions, to show you're hard-working and not a layabout, you have to have the accouterments, a nice watch or jewelry or a suit for church on Sunday." Larry Otway, a New York political scientist, lawyer, Irish boat builder and musician who has studied with Irish Travellers, suggested popular -- and especially police -- portrayals of the group simply are misleading. "I'm a Quaker," he said, "and in many ways they are more mainstream than we are." Otway dismissed claims of widespread Traveller criminality as "finding crime where you look for it." "Travellers have been the focus of the most aggressive racial profiling by police departments in modern times," Otway said. "They've been described in the media as being a `criminal cult' and of having a `bizarre culture.' Those accounts touch on a primitive aspect of the human soul that says, `other.' It's that sense of other, the dangerous other." Traveller migrations are "not random," he said, but reflect a pattern of annually visiting old customers. "The police giving a sense of Travellers wandering and looking to scam is inaccurate. It's a matter of returning and doing work for people you know. "If indeed theirs was a criminal culture, everyone in America would have been robbed several times over." line breaks added by mudelf ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 15 Oct 02 - 10:23 PM After video beating, experts shed light on reclusive, nomadic clans Associated Press Sept. 25, 2002 06:35:00 DALLAS - The tearful testimonial Madelyne Gorman Toogood gave in front of glaring TV cameras after she was videotaped beating her daughter was starkly uncharacteristic of the reclusive, media-shy Irish Travelers culture to which she belongs, experts say. Toogood, who was caught beating her 4-year-old daughter, Martha, in a department store parking lot, said she is a member of the clannish, nomadic culture of Irish descendants, most of whom came to the United States as refugees during the potato famine in the 1840s. "By nature, they're very reclusive people," said Joe Livingston, a South Carolina state investigator who has been tracking Travelers for nearly two decades. "They tend to shy away from publicity." Some law enforcement experts who have studied the culture paint it as a secret society, fond of material wealth evidenced by gaudy jewelry and new vehicles. Police often associate Travelers with scams involving fraudulent home repair that target the elderly. They tend to use aliases, carry bogus identification cards, and avoid contact with non-Travelers, whom they call "country folk," authorities said. But professors and academics said the reclusiveness is a defense mechanism against stereotypes and the ancient persecution that has haunted nomadic peoples throughout history. Travelers, who may be Irish, English, or Scottish, have no more criminals among them than any other ethnic culture, experts said. "If there were, they could not sustain their living," said Larry Otway, who began studying Irish Travelers in 1977 and has worked as a paralegal and adviser on court cases involving Scottish travelers. What the clans in the culture do share, Otway said, is a nomadic lifestyle, a language called "Scelta" with roots in Gaelic and Romani, an almost "pathologic" devotion to Catholicism, and an anti-bureaucratic form of self government that he describes as a "consensus democracy." The largest Traveler settlement is a group of 3,000 in Murphy Village, S.C., experts said. Toogood is believed to belong to the Greenhorn Carrolls, a Traveler group in the Fort Worth area. Estimates of the U.S. Traveler population vary from 20,000 to 100,000. Ian F. Hancock, a professor at the University of Texas who wrote the Irish Travelers entry for the Encyclopedia of the South, said a distraught Toogood called him Thursday seeking advice. "She was scared to turn herself in because she knows very well how the police feel about the Irish Travelers," said Hancock, who has a reputation as a sympathizer of the group. "She didn't think she'd get a fair shake and she knew she'd been rough with the child." Toogood, who also has two young sons, remains free on a $5,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court Oct. 7. If convicted, she faces up to three years in prison. She was scheduled to have a 90-minute supervised meeting with her daughter on Tuesday but the child, who is in foster care, was sick. An attorney for the state said Toogood would be allowed to see Martha on Wednesday if the girl has recovered from the flu. Hancock and other academics said they believe Toogood's case has been sensationalized by the media because of her ethnicity. "As bad as what she did, and it's inexcusable, I still think there's an awful lot of profiling going on," Hancock said. "Very much is being made of her ethnic background. If she were German American or Italian American, would that even be an issue?"
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: InOBU Date: 15 Oct 02 - 10:22 PM October 7, 2002 Travellers: Media coverage racist, unresearched Group is 'the most family-oriented ethnic culture beside the Amish' By SHEILA FLYNN Southbend Tribune Staff Writer See Related Stories: Toogood saga unfolds... As Madelyne Toogood returns to court today, Irish Travellers and some experts on their culture are alleging that media coverage of Toogood and Travellers over the past three weeks has been unfair, unresearched and nothing short of racist. Toogood, an Irish Traveller, was videotaped by a security camera Sept. 13 apparently striking her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat of a vehicle parked outside a Mishawaka department store. "The last time I remember reading this type of language was when the Nazis were rounding these people up to throw them into ovens," says Larry Otway, a political scientist who has studied Travellers and fought for their rights since the 1970s. "And I've only made comparisons to the Holocaust maybe two or three times in my life." Otway cites phrases from various newspapers nationally, which spoke of Toogood and "her kind" and stated that the "obscure clan" should be rounded up and forced to stay in one place so they could be watched. "There is a need for the recognition of rights," Otway says. Richard J. Waters, who is of Traveller descent on his mother's side, expresses similar views on his Web site "Travellers' Rest: Fact and Fiction About Irish Travellers in the USA," at http://www.travellersrest.org/index.htm. "Is the question, 'I just wanted to know if, from your experience, it is considered OK in (the Traveller) culture for parents to beat their kids so mercilessly?' one you would ask of a Chinese, or a Mexican, or a black under the same circumstances?" he asks. "Then why us?" Although there are no definite statistics stating how many Irish Travellers live in the United States, estimates gauge the population to be between 10,000 and 40,000. When combined with Scottish and English travelers and members of the roma clans, who are commonly referred to as "gypsies" and are of Eastern European descent, the number probably reaches to more than 1 million, Otway says. "If, in fact, this was a criminal subculture, than everyone in the U.S. would have been robbed so many times by these people that they would not be able to maintain their existence," Otway says. Reports of home repair scams are sensationalized, Otway says, adding that as in any culture, only a small minority of Irish Travellers are con artists. "There are those who say that they (or perhaps we) are none but scam-artists and thieves," Waters says. "I say not, that I have been privileged to be kin to a clan of hard workers and survivors, by and large an honorable people. "Are there grifters among us? Yes," Waters says. "But there are many among you who may also be justly called 'criminal.' Surely not all or even most of you, however. Nor most of us either." Many accusations are brought against members of the group simply because they are Travellers, Otway says. "Because of old stereotypes, they have criminalized certain things for Travellers that are not criminal for others," Otway says. "Overcharging on a paint job, which is a matter of art, is prosecuted as a felony, and I would challenge anyone in this country to try and bring felony charges against any other contractor who is not a Traveller." Otway explains that most Travellers do not traverse the country scamming people, but rather travel to the same locations every year to work for an established clientele. "The patterns of migration are not random," Otway says. "For generations, the same families have returned to the same places that they have gone before. "They've done excellent work and as a result have built up a client base that they count on. The police have the idea that these are fly-by-night businesses. This is not reality. They are nomadic businesses. "Frankly, scamming people is bad business." Many Travellers acquire long rap sheets because, after being falsely accused of crimes or faced with overblown charges, they post bail and leave, Otway explains. "If you arrest a Traveller and hold him for trial, his family has real hardship," Otway says. "They pay it back in order to go on with their life and their career, and then they develop these long rap sheets. "I know very few Traveller criminals. But I don't know any Travellers that have not had their civil liberties abused." He says that, amidst the hype of the Toogood case, an extreme injustice is being wrought upon Martha, the child involved. Authorities placed the girl with a foster family after Madelyne Toogood turned herself in. "By the age of 4, a Traveller child has a complete sense of identity of a Traveller," Otway said. "Being a Traveller is as much a part of her as being human. When that child is placed with a non-Traveller family, the message that is sent to that child is that her community is incapable and unworthy of raising her. "There is a syndrome of failure that follows that because we cannot remove one identity and replace it with another. Rather, we have a person that has no identity, and every expert will tell you that has a recipe for failure. "That is a human rights abuse." His ideas support Toogood's campaign to place Martha with family members, keeping her within the Traveller community and in a familiar lifestyle. Even their primary language is different from that of mainstream Americans; Travellers speak Scelta, which is a mixture of romani language and Gaelic. They speak English, too, but the linguistic difference marks a significant change in Martha's environment. And the assumption that Travellers, as an ethnic group, are unfit to care for the child is another example of the racist attitudes toward them, Otway says. Children are extremely important to Travellers "like to any culture -- any human beings." Waters also inveighs against what he calls biased media coverage. "It seems a regrettable enough occurrence without that factor, but let's face facts: The widespread media coverage does make it worse, extending what was perhaps an isolated 30-second act by an individual to a mass indictment against the most family-oriented ethnic culture in the USA beside the Amish," Waters writes. Staff writer Sheila Flynn: http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2002/10/07/local.20021007-sbt-MICH-A6-Travellers__Media_co.sto line breaks added by mudelf ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: WFDU - Ron Olesko Date: 15 Oct 02 - 09:16 PM Guest - No, I did not mean to insinuate that Larry was a "lousy" guest as you seem to enjoy calling. (I would say something about your choice of words but I don't want to offend the Troll population that might be reading this) Guest, it seems like you are no different than those you like to criticize. At least Larry uses his name. (I used guest before because I lost my cookie - sue me). Larry just isn't the circus clown that network news looks for. I may not agree with Larry's point of view but I sure respect him, and I have no problem with signing my own name. Having worked for NBC for 12 years, I would be the last to call them "reputable". Ron |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: GUEST,Sceptic Date: 15 Oct 02 - 08:18 PM Guest, Ron Olesko, You write to Larry: "The fact that Dateline cut you does not show their bias, it shows poor journalism and what is wrong with network television." Maybe Dateline cut Larry because he's a lousy guest. You go on to say: "Please don't take offense, but I saw your guest show on Fox News Channel with O'Reilly and I really think he ran circles around you." Or maybe as a more reputable news outlet than O'Reilly, they came to the conclusion that Larry is no expert. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: GUEST,Ron Olesko Date: 15 Oct 02 - 07:00 PM Larry, The fact that Dateline cut you does not show their bias, it shows poor journalism and what is wrong with network television. True, you can define that as bias, but in reality it is a symptom of the producers trying to put out a product that will grab ratings. Dateline looks for soundbites, not speeches. Please don't take offense, but I saw your guest show on Fox News Channel with O'Reilly and I really think he ran circles around you. O'Reilly is a pompous ass who doesn't want to hear any other opinion, but you didn't do a convincing job of getting a point across. The networks look for guests that have charisma and command. If they air views that are in opposition to the thrust of the story, the sound bite is going to come from someone who will capture the viewers attention, not send them to the remote to click off the show. I always look to Abbie Hoffman as an example. He realized that the media was a theater and he worked the stage well. His views were not popular at the time, but he managed to get his message across. I'm not saying that you need to levitate the Pentagon, but if your intention is to educate and get people thinking, you have to take a step back. You've presented some great facts here in recent times, but you've also let your frustration show at those who question you. You might influence more people with a little empathy for their lack of information. Ron |
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Subject: RE: BS: Traveller Discrimination in the US 3 From: Blues=Life Date: 15 Oct 02 - 06:58 PM I've got to say, Larry, that if your purpose has been to show that discrimination was at the heart of a little girl being beaten, you still haven't convinced me. If your purpose was to show the Travellers in a good light, you have had an opposite result. "I think he doth protest to much" holds true here. As in any other attempt to bypass individual responsibilty by the "not my fault" defense, this "Prejudice against travelers" defense ranks right up there with the "Twinkie" defense. What's next, "the devil made me do it?" I've always been enamoured with the mystique of the Roma and related people, haveing been smitten with wanderlust at an early age. However, I was also smitten with logic at an early age. You are doing the travellers no favors. I'm sure that I am not alone in tiring of the "You're all a bunch of racists, you don't understand, nothing happened to the little girl" argument that you've been presenting. As I've said since the beginning: "As in any ethnic group: They ain't all good. They ain't all bad. She still hit the kid." Back to music. Blues |