Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney, calls for a summit in New York City to address the escalating pattern of hate and violence. The summit aims to bring together people from various communities to discuss the causes of hate, explore ways to combat it, and develop a consensus on an actionable plan. Mayor Eric Adams supports this initiative, emphasizing the need for basic human kindness and understanding to unite the city and combat pervasive hate.
Norman Siegel, Civil Rights Attorney: Generally, we New Yorkers try to get along. Of course, we’ve gone through periods where tensions and differences boil over, and we need to take stock at how we are doing. I submit this is one of those moments. We’ve witnessed too many, too many acts of hate and hate violence in New York City, both protected and unprotected. We need to address this escalating pattern.
In February 2004, in Staten Island, the Daily News reported, and I quote, a man was bashed in the head with a metal bat by a stranger who called him a, quote, “Dirty Jew,” after confronting him. The man attacked was wearing a yarmulke. Muslim women wearing hijabs have been physically attacked. In some cases, the attacker has attempted to remove the hijab. During COVID, and more recently, attackers assaulted Asian men and women, telling them to go back where they come from. Too many women, including a 13-year-old girl, accompanied by her mother, on a recent Saturday afternoon at Grand Central Station, was punched in the face by a man for no apparent reason.
Manifestations of stereotyping, prejudice, and bigotry, revealing racism, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, unfortunately continue. We gather here today to attempt to discuss hate and hate violence. How does it occur? Why does it occur? Can we realistically ameliorate it? If yes, can we reach a consensus on an action plan? We’re not here just to talk. That is, I submit our challenge today. We need, we must, speak up in opposition to hate and hate violence. Otherwise, our silence can be interpreted as condoning hate and hate violence.
Let me conclude with the following story. It was a Sunday morning, September 15th, 1963, at Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church, where four African American girls, Addie Mae Collins, age 14, Denise McNair, age 11, Carole Robertson, age 14, and Cynthia Wesley, age 14, died as a result of a horrific church bombing. My mentor, Charles Morgan, a Birmingham civil rights lawyer, was scheduled to speak the next day at the Birmingham Young Men’s Business Club.
In his speech, he condemned the specific act, but also focused on the people of Birmingham and the climate. The climate that forced this despicable act to have taken place. Mr. Morgan said in part, and I quote, “Every person, every person in this community who has in any way contributed to the popularity of hatred is at least as guilty as the demented fool who threw the bomb. Who did it? Who threw the bomb? The answer should be, we all did it. There is a time to speak, there is a time to act.”
Now I submit, it is our moment in New York City to come together. People of goodwill, you all, to begin to build bridges across racial, religious, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, and economic lines to develop and implement a city-wide campaign to abate hate. Hopefully, today we can achieve that goal.
We will have, and we will hear presentations from many speakers. Then we will discuss the presentations with the aim of determining by 3:30 this afternoon whether we can reach a consensus on an action plan that might consist of the following. Town hall meetings conducted by the City Human Rights Commission and the State Human Rights Commission. People from both of those agencies are here this afternoon with the assistance of New York City Civil Rights and Social Justice groups.
Second, can we get the community boards, all 59 in the city, conducting hate and hate violence forums? Third, can we get the churches, the synagogues, and mosques to conduct hate and hate violence forums? Finally, can we get the block associations and the tenants associations conducting similar hate and violence forums? Again, thank you all for being here today.
Now, it gives me great pleasure. First, I want to thank the mayor for believing that this is an issue that is of critical importance to the city. I want to thank him for sponsoring this and thanking him for encouraging us to speak up and be in opposition to all forms of intolerance. Now, it’s a great pleasure to introduce to you my long-time friend, who is now the 110th mayor of the City of New York, Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you so much, Norman, and really thank all of you for taking the time to come out this morning to have what I believe is one of the most important conversations and discussions we could have, not only in the city, but throughout the entire country. I want to thank my Commissioner of Human Rights, Commissioner Palma, who’s here to show just how serious this matter is to all of us.
Many years ago, when I was a younger man, I played JV football at the beginning for Bayside High School. We had an amazing coach there, Coach Nelson. If you know the history of high school sports in the city of New York, you know that Bayside had one of the most formidable varsity teams in the country. I tried out for the JV, I never was able to make that, and I didn’t even make the varsity. We started losing, season after season. Coach Nelson brought the team together and stated that it’s time to go back to basics. We saw the success throughout the years, but it’s time to just learn how to run again, how to throw again, how to pass again, how to catch again, how to be a team again.
I believe that’s where we are right now, not only as a city, but as a country, and possibly as humanity. We have been engulfed in all of the things in our successes, from AI to computer technology, to our ability to solve major problems. From quantum computers to EV vehicles, all of these things that we have invested in and continue to evolve. We have not evolved in kindness, we have not evolved in the hate that we’re seeing. In fact, it has been hidden under the surface and it has engulfed us as a human race. It’s time for us to pause for a moment and have a true reflection on where are we going and what does the future look like.
Hate has become so pervasive and comfortable and we have normalized hate. If we’re honest with ourselves, in some way we all have a role to play in it, as I think Norman eloquently pointed out, as in the church bombing. I have to ask myself, as I said to my colleagues over and over again, what was my role? What did I do to contribute to some of the hate that we’re seeing?
When I sit down with my staffers that are Jewish, they state they’re afraid to ride the subway trains. They’re afraid to move about the city. They have to take off their yamaka before entering a place. Then I sit down with my Muslim brothers and sisters and I hear the woman tell me they have to remove their hijab because they are attacked. They are afraid to go to their mosque. When you do an analysis, we have a 79 percent increase in attacks and hate crimes against Jewish residents and double the number of attacks against Muslims.
Our Sikh brothers and sisters are under attack merely for wearing a turban. If you look at our LGBTQ+ communities, you’re seeing the levels of violence towards them as well. There is no community that escapes the hate that we’re seeing. It is almost as though hate has become the modern day COVID that is moving throughout our city and country and the globe at a pace that is alarming. It’s almost as we may feel sometimes, what can we do? Let’s throw up our hands. I say no. I say let’s go back to the basics.
Let’s learn how to shake hands again. Let’s learn how to smile at each other again. Let’s learn how to hold the door for each other again. Let’s learn how to have a decent conversation with each other again and don’t look to prove someone is wrong. Let’s be a deep listener so we can understand so we can be understood. Let’s understand as human beings, there’s nothing written in our anatomy to state we must agree all the time. What we must not do is be disagreeable.
I was so happy to stand near the councilman, minority leader, when we responded to the attempt to take former President Trump’s life. He said something that really resonated with me and I say over and over again, it’s okay to be angry. It’s not okay to hate. Anger motivates us to change. Anger motivates us to want to do something different. I was angry that I was undiagnosed dyslexic and did not get the support that I needed. It motivated me to do dyslexia screening in our schools. I was angry that mom did not get the food that she deserved to feed the family instead of feeding the chronic diseases that were pervasive in our community. It motivated me to have healthy foods in our schools.
Motivation through anger can allow us to do some very important things, but hate is to destroy. What we are seeing is hate. We’re seeing hate through social media that’s spreading and really has become the Trojan horse among our children. They sit in their bedrooms, in their basements, in their classrooms, and they’re being fed with algorithms that are having major impacts on their emotional and their mental stability, in some cases, their physical stability. We’re seeing many of our tabloids and papers and podcasts and radio shows is finding that if we could say the most harmful things, we would get the most attention. It’s driving us to see who could be as hateful and as shocking as possible.
We’re watching it in our schools and our college campuses. We’re watching it in our place of businesses. There’s no longer any filter on how do we say things in a very polite manner. People are looking to make you feel painful and to hurt. That is becoming what is driving all of us. I’m going to do my part. Last year, we did something called Breaking Bread, Building Bonds.
1,000 dinners across the city at each dinner table was ten people that came from a different ethnic, religious, or cultural background, and they did something revolutionary. They talked to each other. They shared a conversation. They talked about what it is to be a Sikh, what it is to be a Muslim, what it is to come from the Caribbean or the African diaspora. They left the room becoming ambassadors for love instead of ambassadors for hate. All of those small things are the basic principles that will allow us to win again.
We’re far from being perfect as a country or as a city or as a human being. In fact, I say we’re perfectly imperfect. There’s a level of dedication that we can bring to this conversation. This is the beginning point. When I take my hat off to Norman, when he called me, this was so important. It tugged at me what I watched, what is playing out, not only in the Gaza now, but what has played out on October 7th, and what’s playing out in the Sudan, and what is playing out in Haiti, what is playing out in the West Coast of Africa, and what’s playing out with Hezbollah, what’s playing out in South and Central America. You’re seeing the level of hatred that I have never witnessed in my lifetime.
If we do not do what we’re doing today, gather in our local gatherings, in our precinct council, in our block association, our civic meetings, in our mosque, our synagogues, our Buddhist temples, our Sikh temples, on our job spaces. If we don’t become intentional and focus on the dismantling of hate, then we’ll never be the champions that we once were. This is the greatest country on the globe, no other place is dream attached to its name. That dream should not be a nightmare that is rooted in hate.
I’m committed, and your presence here today tells me that you are committed. I’m excited about what the future holds as we start the process of uniting our city, and it cascades throughout our entire country, and I think it cascades throughout the entire globe. It starts here in New York, one of the most diverse places on the globe. If we can live together in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island, then we can live together across the seven continents of the globe. Thank you very much.
July 30, 2024 New York
Sources: Midtown Tribune news, NYC.gov
Big New York news BigNY.com
