A reverend from Charleston, a rabbi from Pittsburgh, a Sikh from Wisconsin’s Oak Creek, a leader of a worldwide racist skinhead organization turned peacemaker and the Pennsylvania State Attorney General. What brought together this eclectic group of leaders on Valentine’s Day, 2019 - a day proclaiming “Love” - were acts of hate, terror and violence, and the call for bringing peace and understanding to our communities. They shared a common vision of hope.
At the annual “Unifying Our Communities In Response To Hate Conference” held at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, February 14, State Attorney General Josh Shapiro explained “hate speech begets hate actions and crime.”
Among the speakers were Eric S.C. Manning, pastor of Mother Emanuel AME Church, in Charleston, where nine congregants and their senior pastor were gunned down by a racist on June 17, 2015; Rabbi Hazzan Dr. Jeffrey Meyers, of Tree of Life Congregation, in Pittsburgh, where worshipers there were massacred in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in history on October 27, 2018; and Pardeep Singh Kaleka, a psychoanalyst and former police officer who co-founded the education program Serve2Unite after his father was murdered in the August 5, 2012 Sikh temple shooting, with Arno Michaelis, a former white supremist who helped to start the gang back in the late 1980s that produced the shooter.
Carole Landis, the founder the Carole Landis Foundation, attended the conference.
For Rev. Manning, “Words matter. They either build a community or tear it down… We all have a responsibility to come together to do our part in making safe communities. Communities need to turn down the temperature on our rhetoric.”
Words also matter for Rabbi Hazzan Meyers. “There is the other four-letter word that is vile and should not be uttered,” he said. “It begins with ‘H.’ People do not realize how many times a day they use this word: ‘I hate how my hair looks,’ ‘I hate Brussel sprouts.’ ‘I hate math.’ ‘I hate the cold.’ As innocuous as these statements may seem, what happens over time is that we become inured through overuse of this word that can cause pain when used in a different context against a group of people, or in a statement of anger, or against an individual. H speech draws H towards you.”
Here’s a challenge for you today: are you able to get through the day without using the H word?