A Word From
Social Justice Coordinator Jason Taper
Shalom y'all!
Social Justice is more important now than ever. I'm sharing opportunities to organize and respond from home.
The next Tzaddik is scheduled to go out on Erev Rosh Hashanah, and I might just make some bold pronouncements for the upcoming year. Then again, I might just leave those, and the obligatory jokes about still writing 5780 on my checks, to the rabbis, who are much better than I at that sort of thing.
But I did want to talk about a year-in-review trend I've been thinking a lot about lately. It's not a pleasant one, it's kind of a crisis. No, not the pandemic. Or the evictions. Or the climate-change-induced fires and storms. (Woof.)
I've been up late worried about Nazis. To say white supremacy is "back" would be to ignore my Jewish eyes and ears for the past, say, lifetime? But the extent to which they're emboldened and enabled now terrifies me. I'm sure I don't have to bring up the stats showing that hate crimes have spiked since 2016, or that Jews are the #1 recipient of religiously motivated ones. We know that anti-Semitism has been around about as long as Jews have, and that racism has been around even longer.
It's just in such stark relief right now. I won't glorify him by reprinting his name, but I think of the 17-year-old in Wisconsin. He felt called to protect ... something ... from a group of people he saw as less than human. He slaughtered peaceful protesters, one of whom Jewish, while wearing gloves to obscure his fingerprints. Premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
He wasn't the first, of course. An anti-racist Austin protester, Garrett Foster, was killed on our streets. Last year, a guy from my home county drove to El Paso to commit white supremacist mass murder. And 2 years ago, in my dad's hometown of Pittsburgh, white supremacist mass murder hit our own community. Hate is deadly, and always has been.
Strangely, that's not the thing that gets me. It's not the extreme deadly hatred of the fringe - it's the reaction of the rest. The Wisconsin 17-year-old went looking to kill unarmed people protesting racial injustice, and how was he treated?
His mother drove him across state lines. Police hydrated and thanked him, then let him walk away unharmed. Certain media circles glorified him, blaming the protester who tried to stop him killing more, and justifying his murders. At last Google, online fundraisers have raised more than $1M for his legal fees. Even the President has lent this Nazi punk credibility.
What scares me most is not the kid with the gun. Bigoted extremists have always existed. They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat, as every Jewish holiday goes. What scares me is living in a country where hatred like his isn't just tolerated, but where cable news calls him a patriot and some large chunk of the country agrees.
Maybe you'll write this off as my own personal political agenda, dismiss me as trying to cram something partisan down your throat. But all I want is for the place I live to say to anti-Semites and racists, we will fight against your hate, not laud you as a hero. It's not red vs. blue; it's people who want us dead vs. everyone else.
Is there an easy solution to this? Of course not. But if I convince just one of you to talk to your neighbors and your elected officials, to spend an extra hour or dollar fighting systems of white supremacy, together we take one step back from that cliff. So please, join me - all I want is that we live.
Regardless of shul affiliation, the point of contact for every initiative listed would be happy to have your help. And if you simply want to ask how best to be an ally, or how we got here, please reply to this email, fill out the form above, or call me. My email is jason.austinsocialjustice@gmail.com, and my number is 469-834-9987. Thank you!
L'shalom,
Jason Taper, Social Justice Coordinator
