Enclave is out this morning with a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center about violence against immigrants in Tennessee communities. The blog includes this clip:
JULY 20, 2006
Dayton, Tenn.
Gilberto Mejía, owner of the Mexican grocery store Carnicería Los Primos, is verbally assaulted by anti-immigration activist June Griffin, who barges into the store and tears down a Mexican flag. Griffin then allegedly harasses Mejía and leaves threatening phone messages, which Mejia saves for police.
"It was an act of war," says Griffin, who has unsuccessfully run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican. Charged with civil rights intimidation, phone harassment, theft and vandalism, Griffin is released after witnesses fail to turn up at a court hearing.
"I'm not ashamed of anything I did," Griffin tells The Herald-News.
Dayton, you'll recall, was the home of the Scopes monkey trial in 1925.
- Jim Grinstead
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