Some 50 people joined Eison in a vigil in front of the hospital that day. The protest, initiated by Democratic politician Alfred Sharpton, also included Thomas Eison, Moore’s stepfather; city councilman Charles Barron; and Rev. Herbert Daughtry of the African People’s Christian Organization. A contingent from the NAACP chapter in Jamaica, Queens, was present along with hospital workers on their lunch hour.

From the hospital, a motorcade went to the Lindenwood neighborhood, where Moore lives. It ended 10 blocks away at 79th Street and 160th Avenue, the corner in Howard Beach, the middle-class, largely white enclave where the attack took place.

Small clumps of onlookers from the neighborhood gathered as the motorcade passed. A few rightists staged a muted counterprotest, wearing T-shirts that read “Free Ench,” referring to one of the racist thugs arrested in the assault.

The targets of the racist assault—Moore, 22, Richard Wood, 20, and Richard Pope, 25—were walking in Howard Beach early in the morning of June 29 when three white men, Nicholas Minucci, 19, Frank Agostini, 19, and Anthony Ench, 21, jumped out of a Cadillac Escalade and chased them, shouting racist insults.

Wood and Pope eluded the attackers, but Moore stumbled and was assaulted by the three thugs. Minucci has admitted to beating Moore with a baseball bat. They then stole his earring, sneakers, and a bag of clothes and shoes for his six-month-old daughter, and left him semiconscious with a fractured skull.

Later that day, Wood and Pope identified Minucci and the vehicle that had chased them that night. Inside the car, the police found the aluminum bat used in the attack and two pairs of shoes that matched the description of those stolen.

The attack reminded many of a similar racist incident in Howard Beach. In 1986, three workers who are Black—Cedric Sandiford, Timothy Grimes, and Michael Griffith—were assaulted by a racist mob in the same neighborhood after their car broke down. Griffith, a 23-year-old construction worker, was struck and killed by a car while trying to escape, sparking large protests.

Both Minucci and Ench have been charged in the attack, with Minucci facing charges of first-degree assault, robbery, and weapons possession. The third attacker, Frank Agostini, who is the son of a New York City cop, has not yet been charged although he admitted he punched Moore.

“We want the DA to move swiftly to justice,” New York State NAACP president Hazel Dukes told the Militant. “Its been alleged that one of them is a son of a policeman and not being charged with beating. But if he hit, kicked, or touched Glenn Moore he has to stand trial.”

Minucci has a history of racist violence. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was arrested for beating a Sikh man in Queens with a bat saying, “You f….g Arab. Why don’t you blow this up.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials have sought to defuse the protests by publicly condemning the racist assailants. At a June 29 press conference held in Queens along with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Bloomberg said, “We will have no tolerance whatsoever for hate crimes against any groups in this city.” Virginia Fields, Manhattan borough president and a Democratic mayoral candidate, also condemned the attack.

In a July 5 statement, Socialist Workers mayoral candidate Martín Koppel, called for “the swift prosecution—to the full extent of the law—of the three racist thugs who assaulted Glenn Moore.” In moving quickly to make arrests, city hall seeks to put a lid on protests. It “had to weigh the outrage among working people and years of struggles against similar attacks in New York,” he stated.

“The attack on Moore is not an isolated incident. The cause of this violence is a systemic one: capitalism, based on the exploitation of working people’s labor by a handful of billionaire families, who profit from institutionalized racist discrimination in employment, housing, and schools,” Koppel said.

The cops claimed the three Black men were out trying to steal a car in Howard Beach that night and have publicized their police records. This has been used in some press reports in an effort to obscure the racist character of the attack. A July 1 New York Post editorial, for example, headlined “Thug-On-Thug Violence,” stated that it was a case of “punks with criminal records colliding in the predawn hours.”

Liberal columnist Sheryl McCarthy wrote in New York Newsday, “If young men go to a neighborhood with the intention of ripping off the local residents, I’m not going to feel so sorry if one of them happens to get his butt kicked in the process.”

Many working people in New York have rejected these arguments. “Who cares if they went there to steal a car. They didn’t steal a car,” said Angela Adams, of Jamaica, Queens. “That’s not the issue on the table. It was a racist attack.”  
 
 
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