Remembering Luis

Posted by Jocelyn Sida at 12:00 PM | Comment Now | Permalink

(This originally appeared on Rock the Trail -- a project of Rock the Vote and WireTap)

I was shocked when I found out that three teenagers beat a 25 year old Mexican immigrant to death. The Washington Times reported: "Three white teens were charged in what officials said was an epithet-filled fatal beating of an illegal Mexican immigrant in a small northeast Pennsylvania coal town."

Three caucasian teens were the cause of this heinous crime. I am 19 and these kids are 18, 17, and 16 years of age- just a year or two younger than myself. How can they be capable of doing this? These three teenagers beat up Luis Ramirez until he was left unconscious. He later died in the hospital.

I honestly thought that racism in our generation was a thing of the past -- I guess I was wrong. As these three young men were yelling racial slurs to Ramirez, they kicked him repeatedly in the head and in his body and he was left for dead. The three teens were yelling as they walked away and told Ramirez to go back to Mexico and that he didn't belong in this country. The words allegedly hurled at Ramirez, and the perceived sentiments behind them, have led prosecutors to label his death a hate crime. What were these kids thinking? The boys who committed the crime will be tried as adults in this case and their lives are guaranteed to change forever.

We need to understand that as a generation we must stick together and break the barriers of racism. According to CNN, "Eileen Burke, a retired Philadelphia police officer, had stepped out of her home after hearing Arielle Garcia's pleas to stop the beating. Burke recalled hearing one final ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin' bitch, tell your effin' Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin' next to him,' " she said.

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