“I’m here because this feels like a very dark time for me, and I don’t know what else to do.” Those are the words Robert Yerachmiel Snyderman, program specialist at the Tucson Jewish History Museum, used to begin his presentation at Wednesday night’s We Stand Together event organized by YWCA Southern Arizona.
I don’t know how many people nodded “Yes” to Snyderman’s words. I certainly did. “Give this a shot,” I thought as I drove to the event. “Maybe the organizers have some ideas about how to bring together a community of people who will stand as a unified force to combat hatred addressed at individuals, and, if Trump makes good on his promise to deport immigrants and register Muslims, stand up to him in any way we can.”
I left feeling more hopeful than I have in the past few weeks. It was a well organized event, the first of many which are in the works, and the YWCA has the necessary organizational heft and the historical commitment to human rights—the phrase at the top of the YWCA’s national and local websites is “eliminating racism, empowering women”—to create a kind of umbrella organization which can unite local individuals and groups for a common purpose.
Was this event a beginning which will lead to greater unity and further action in Pima County? I’m encouraged by what I saw and heard, but there are no guarantees. Kelly Fryer, CEO of YWCA Southern Arizona, warned that too often, efforts like this fall into “the cycle of action, reaction and despair.” But that doesn’t have to be the case. “We’re here tonight,” she told the 250 people in attendance. “It’s an urgent moment, but we can’t let this be just another moment, not in Tucson, not in Arizona, not in the U.S.”
More on the event in a moment. First, if you want to keep current with what the group is doing and become involved in any way, go to the Join We Stand Together page and register.
YWCA Southern Arizona’s Chief of Staff Michelle Pitot said the organization put a link on its Facebook and web pages asking people who have seen or been a victim of hate crimes to report them. In 10 days, 20 incidents were reported, many of them directly related to Trump’s election. It’s a disturbing but unsurprising statistic, given the 900 similar incidents noted across the country by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Both Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and Police Chief Chris Magnus spoke, urging people to report hate-related incidents. Magnus said people should call 911 if they are victims or witnesses, or even if they encounter something like graffiti scrawled on a wall, since the department wants to have as complete a record as possible of these kinds of problems around the city. The audience was told the police doesn’t ask witnesses or people reporting problems about their immigration status. And Magnus said he “holds fast to the view, when it comes to immigration enforcement, we refuse to become an arm of the federal government.”
Other speakers talked about personal experiences with hatred directed toward themselves or others and emphasized that, if possible, bystanders should not remain silent, since silence is a form of consent. Debi Chess Mabie, Executive Director of the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona, joined Pilot and Snyderman on the stage to present a short workshop suggesting ways individuals can intervene and show support for people being verbally assaulted.
If this were a normal time, I would have left the event with a bit more knowledge and understanding along with some tools I can use if I encounter instances of hate among friends and associates or in the general community. But this is not a normal time. With Trump as president, the country faces the potential of extraordinary threats to our safety, our liberty and our right to express ourselves. People need to be vigilant and prepared. The We Stand Together Network is laying the groundwork to become a vital part of our local response, and I’m planning to be part of the effort.
If you’re interested in becoming informed about or involved with what the organization is doing at any level, register here.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2016.
Can you fear mongers give the HATRED mantra a rest? Just because somebody has a different opinion or does not agree with your lifestyle it does not make them a hater. Using that analogy anything you don’t do makes you a hater of that activity. That is stupid and all your are doing is further dividing our citizens.
Why don’t we start by coming back together as a nation and supporting enforcement of existing laws? One of the political persuasions has started picking and choosing which laws they will support and enforce. This includes our Mayor and our Chief of Police.
Also, when an officer is shot in the line of duty it would help if you would denounce this murderous activity, rather than coddling a group that wants special rights for what appear to be justifiable shootings. Just take a look at the conviction records so far. The jury is not out on this. They have sided with the defendants.
And while we send trillions to the federal government for law enforcement and homeland security, this is our Chief of Police?
And Magnus said he “holds fast to the view, when it comes to immigration enforcement, we refuse to become an arm of the federal government.”
But you sure will belly up to the trough when federal grants are passed out. Sanctuary cities will no longer receive them. That is my hope. Work together or work alone.
But drop the hatred. It’s not becoming.
Pity Party!!!!! Yeeehawwww!
David,
Unlike you, I have found these last weeks filled with light and hope. Above all, as a Latino of American birth, I see no reason for anyone to fear the new US we will find under Donnie.
Indeed, many changes he will bring are essential. Just look at the issues illegal immigration have wrought on our Tucson. I doubt that you are integrated into the Latino community, as I am through church and extended family, so you will neither see nor understand the depth of the underlying problems vested on us by the hoards, yes hoards, of illegals.
Have faith in America; it got me through 8 years of Obama and it will get you through 8 (I pray) of Trump.
As a Sanders Supporter who voted for Jill Stein in the Presidential election, I am truly baffled by much that people seem to be feeling in the wake of this Presidential election. At first I was incensed by the self-pity and victim posturing of people who supported Clinton’s “independents-can’t-vote-in-many-primaries,” super-delegate-padded, Wall-Street-funded, DNC-facilitated and NYTimes-manipulated campaign.
They expect Sanders supporters to join them now in being outraged by Trump’s victory in the electoral college? What do we call superdelegates? Grass roots democracy in action?
With this piece of Safier’s, I feel more pity than outrage. When I look at the public institutions governed in Southern Arizona by Pima County Democrats, I see plenty of real social justice problems that need our attention and on-the-ground advocacy and effort. As far as I know from following Safier’s commentary for more than three years now, he and his buddies don’t care about minority incarceration rates in Pima County; they don’t care about the high rates of prosecutions for non-violent victimless crimes; they don’t care about whether the desegregation order is being implemented in TUSD; but they’re going to hold each others’ hands and attend vigils and self-pity sessions over Trump’s election and enter into a self-righteous fantasy that we’ve now entered an entirely NEW and UNPRECEDENTED phase of this nation’s history in which we’re only one step away from the gulag because — surprise, surprise — people rejected their particular “rainbow” flavor of neoliberalism and we’ve got yet another wealthy white businessman in the White House.
Do they now the tactics Woodrow Wilson used against Alice Paul during the years preceding the passage of the suffrage amendment? This is not the first self-deluded, dangerous narcissist we’ve had in the White House. The examples could be multiplied, but I don’t have all night to sit here and pull the copious skeletons out of the yes-this-is-AMERICAN-history closet.
We may be witnessing the collapse of the democratic party. Add Keith Ellison and his anti semetic comments. He may be put in charge of the last of the democrats. He wants to give blacks 5 or 6 southern states.
Trump just may bring 70% of the country together. Lets rebuild our country with optimism.
The only “fresh” post I’ve found on this thread was written by “Self-pity doesn’t add points.” The rest of the posts are the same old redundant, boring gibberish. Heard it all before and sick of hearing about it. Whatever.
If these people want to form a group, they have a right to do so. Complaining about it won’t stop them from doing so. In fact, it will probably motivate them further and they’ll form more groups and movements.
No, Trump won’t bring 70% of the country together. It’s a sweet dream, but it is only that – a dream. Every time we have a new President, the winning side believes that their President will bring the country together, but the losing side always fights back. And the cycle continues.
I can’t remember the last time this country was united under a President. In my lifetime, the country has never been united under a President because the other side always complains. Why anyone would post naive comments asking for unification is beyond me.
When Clinton was President, Republicans complained. When W. Bush was President, Democrats complained. When Obama was President, Republicans complained. Now that Trump is President, Dems will complain. The cycle never ends.
Joining a third party is the best option, then you can complain about both Republicans and Dems.
Kris,
A good post indeed, one I understand. I suspect I am a good bit older than you, as I remember the two parties working together under Truman and Eisenhower. To be sure there were many, many differences, but we rebuilt Europe and Japan, kept American labor unions from dominating the economy. JFK got off to a good start, but his successor LBJ sowed the seeds of the discontent we see today.
Against the counsel of America’s greatest General, MacArthur, he got us deep into the Vietnam conflict, which divided America. Further, the implemented “The Great Society” which deepened racism and destroyed the American Black family. This further divided America.
Asians and Latinos survived this by assuming individual responsibility and not allowing government to dictate.
Perhaps a third party is the way to go. Teddy Roosevelt attempted it in 1916, but lost and gave the White House to Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who did little to help America, except set the stage for the Great Depression.
“Pity Party!!!!! Yeeehawwww!”
All the exclamation points, All the repeated letters. Always paying attention to a news site he obviously dislikes, yet returning again and again and again…just to hate on all that he reads. There’s gotta be a teabagger site that caters to such an @$$hOle personality, yet, this troll feels the need to leave his stains all over this site. What a sad, angry and…more likely than not…depressed individual.
Wrong, Again would make a great case study for a prominent psychiatrist.
Terrific article and quite right. I’ll sign up. Is fear and hatred happening? If you’ve got a question, just reread the vitriol in some of the comments. We often don’t have much patience for sore losers; and here’s some sore winners! Unleashed from civility, they can call others names. We need to do whatever we can as a community.
Try joining it instead of blaming it for all your woes.
Obama spent most of his adult life as a community organizer in Chicago. What did he organize them to do? Collect government services and vote democratic.
How has that worked? Three thousand people have been shot this year and 700 have died.
People have figured out that the Democratic plan of pretending to be Robin Hood is actually a deadly plan.
I am angry that our current President never tried to keep a company in our country. he actually took measures to convince them to leave.
You are either an American or a globalist but you can’t be both.
I would like to thank most of the people commenting here on proving the validity of the article. Well said David.
You are very welcome.
I would like to add the new definition for hate so everyone can toe the line.
*When one person or group is doing something that is not acceptable to another person or group, that first person or group refers to that second person or group as a hater. Then all the people or groups that support that first person or groups actions can join in their celebration of the action with which another person or group disagrees.” (Formerly referred to as opinions and once protected under the US Constitution as a Right To Free Speech)
Amazing what some people will do to try to demand respect and acceptance. Why not go on without it? Guilt?
I’m saddened by the lack of compassion or basic human decency from some of the Trump supporters in these comments. A group of your fellow Tucsonans get together to express their absolutely valid concerns, and you insult them? Real nice.
You can call them absolute valid concerns if you want to. These same people deny trickle down economics. It’s how they roll.
Here’s some good news:
The network says the producer has been “disciplined.”
CNN has apologized to Donald Trump after a producer was caught on camera joking with reporter Suzanne Malveaux about the president-elect’s plane crashing.
Unbelievable!
I am a proud American. I am Black. I voted for Donald Trump. I’ve been cursed out on a bus TWICE just because I was wearing a Trump T-shirt! A THIRD time a Hispanic man called be a bigot and told me that I should be ashamed of myself! Hate? Nobody dishes out hate and intolerance like the Left! Suck it up, cupcakes! That’s why you lost!
I am proud of you Liberal Free 2016! Very proud.
The rest of you are racists.
LiberalFree 2016, God bless you, Sir. Way to go.
You want black truth? Google Shaq for Trump.
These comments deteriorate so quickly into either self congratulations or insults, missing the point of the article. Trump’s gonna get his chance, but now it is up to Trump supporters to stop escalating and fuming and start calling out bad actors across the country making real threats when someone disagrees and they want to “punch him in the face.” Millions voted for Trump but millions (and a couple million more) did not vote for Trump and they get to live here too.
You mean like Hillary denounced the Soros funded thugs that infiltrated Trump rallys or did you mean the way she told the rioters to stop? Winning the popular vote is like an NFL team that loses a game by a field goal, claiming the gained more yardage. It makes no difference.
It makes plenty of difference when +2 million more citizens tried to make it happen. But please, keep ignoring reality and let it smack you upside the head when you least expect it.
The Orange Devil and his minions haven’t shown us just how bad it will become yet, but you just wait. It’s going to serve a blind person such as yourself even worse than those of us who know what to expect.
Shaq is only trying to make the best out of what is a bad situation.
I give him credit for that. He’s always been a class act.
But even he realizes there could have been such better choices for a President-elect.
There’s some real truth for you, whether it’s in black or white.
“There’s some real truth for you, whether it’s in black or white.”
Don’t forget us brown people!
We despise Trump and his crew probably more than anybody else.
There’s even some of us who are Canadian that know how damaging this asshat will be to our whole continent…and to the other six.
Even the penguin population in Antarctica is freaking out, more so than the scientists. You know, the scientists, the people that the Uneducated Usurper thinks have so much less knowledge than his pampered and entitled ass. It takes all kinds, doesn’t it?
I want to thank Shelby, Rae Dawn, Robbi, Paris, Gilbran, Precious, Marcus and last but not least, my ace boon Cheech. We are all in this together, whether we are white, brown, black, Asian…or even a mixture of black and Asian…we are all in this together. Fight the Orange hate!
The orange hate. You guys fracture me.
No, Trump will fracture you.
And the rest of this country.
Turn down the vitriol. Together we thrive.
Anyone who says that Trump hasn’t divided the population of this country into warring groups is delusional. And please don’t spout any more “But Hillary..” or “But Soros..” or “But MSNBC..” stuff because that is precisely the problem. Already Trump’s office picks are aggravating divisions and defeating “togetherness.” Soon actions by Trump and by Trump only will be judged by history forever. That is if he doesn’t get bored and quit.