“Get Out of My Country”
Kansas Hate Murder in Trump’s America
February 25, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Srinivas Kuchibhotla, left, poses with Alok Madasani and his wife, Sunayana Dumala, in an undated photo. (Photo: Kranti Shalia via AP)
On February 22, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, two young engineers born in India, were relaxing at a bar and grill after work in Olathe, Kansas, a town of 130,000 near Kansas City. Then Adam Purinton, a 51-year-old white man, began belligerently interrogating and harassing them. “He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally,” Madasani told the New York Times. (Both Kuchibhotla and Madasani had gone to school in the U.S. and were legal immigrants.) Others reported that Purinton shouted racial slurs and told Kuchibhotla and Madasani they didn’t belong in the U.S.
Other people who were in the bar complained, and the restaurant threw Purinton out. But he came back, armed. He started shooting—reportedly yelling, “Get out of my country!” Purinton murdered Kuchibhotla and wounded Madasani. Also wounded by the gunfire was Ian Grillot, a young white man who tried to stop the shooting. “People call me a hero,” Grillot said at the hospital where he was being treated for his wounds. “I was just doing what anyone should have done for any other human being.”
Purinton fled across the state line to Missouri, where he reportedly told a restaurant employee that he needed a place to hide because he had killed two men from the Middle East. Purinton was captured and now faces murder and attempted murder charges.
Anti-Immigrant Hatred Being Stoked by the Fascist Trump/Pence Regime
After this murderous attack, the Trump regime was asked directly whether there was a connection between this shooting and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Reuters reported that White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Friday that “any loss of life is tragic but it would be absurd to link the action to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric.” And that it was “too early to guess” at Purinton’s motives.
“Absurd”? “Too early to guess”? It would be absurd NOT to link this murder to Trump’s relentless racist demonization of non-white people and people from other countries. The murderer had yelled “get out of my country” before firing his weapon—and it’s “too early” to guess at his motives? Imagine the Trump/Pence regime’s response if a non-white person walked into a restaurant and shot white people.
In reality, this horrendous violence in Kansas against two human beings—reportedly much loved and respected by those who knew them—reveals a lot about the racist, anti-immigrant, anti-foreign hatred being stoked by the fascist Trump/Pence regime. Now every ignorant asshole who thinks the U.S. belongs only to white people... who thinks they can do whatever they want to those they see as “outsiders” and “threats”... who expects other white people to think like them... is emboldened and feels entitled to grill and harass people who look “different” or “foreign” about their legal or immigration status.
This climate—and the ugly acts it inspires and encourages—is not an aberration. It is a core component of the Trump/Pence agenda, and will grow and escalate in unimaginable, horrific ways unless this fascist regime is STOPPED and DRIVEN OUT from power.
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.