Names matter.
Our hearts go out to the families of the victims of the Pittsburgh massacre and and Louisville murders last week.
Pittsburgh:
Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69
Louisville:
Maurice Stallard, 69
Vicki Lee Jones, 67
Names matter.
It is heartbreaking to me that there are Holocaust survivors on the list of Pittsburgh massacre victims. To think that they escaped Nazi Germany only to be killed in America in 2018 because they were Jewish. This could have been my grandfather or his brothers or sister. In some ways I am glad they are no longer around to witness this horror.
Never again.
I am sad and sickened that Jews cannot feel safe in today’s America. Just as our Muslim and Black and Latino and LGBT and immigrant communities cannot feel safe.
In covering the hate-filled violence across the country last week, many media outlets did not even mention the murders of Maurice Stallard and Vicki Lee Jones in Louisville by a white supremacist.
In trying to find some hope in the darkness and look for the “helpers” (as Mr. Rogers used to say), I am heartened to see members of the Muslim community raising money for the victims and their community, reminding me that members of the Jewish community raised money when a mosque was attacked by arson last year.
Never again.
Hate will not win. We must grieve, but then resist. Rest, resist, repeat.
~ Allison Elgart, Legal Director, on behalf of all of us at the Equal Justice Society