April 28, 2019
You don’t have to believe in coincidences to notice a marked uptick in hate crimes in the news.
Last week John William King was executed for the murder of James Byrd, Jr. Byrd, a black American, was brutally dragged to his death while chained to a pickup truck by King and two others a generation ago.
Also last week, President Trump reopened the controversy surrounding the “very fine people on both sides” at the neonazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 at which Heather Heyer was killed.
Last Sunday hundreds were killed in Sri Lanka while attending church services on Easter.
A month earlier another 50 were killed in an attack on a mosque in New Zealand .
Six months ago a domestic terrorist attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh killing 11 people.
Yesterday another one struck at a synagogue in California.
“Every year, at New York’s Annual Gathering of Remembrance, we come together as a community to say: we will never forget. Please join us on April 28 to observe Yom HaShoah, to honor the memory of those who perished at the hands of evil, and to pay tribute to those who survived and have made a better world for us all.” ~ Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.
“Just yesterday a gunman entered a synagogue in California, left a 60 year old woman dead and a rabbi wounded 6 months to the day since the Tree of Life attack.”
~Senator Chuck Schumer
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
~Pastor Martin Niemoller
Opening May 8, 2019 in NYC: Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.