Read the article in the NY Daily News here
New York’s Jewish community faces two very different visions of safety.
Today, the City Council will vote on Speaker Julie Menin’s 5-point plan for combating antisemitism. The centerpiece is a proposal for the NYPD to impose “buffer zones” around houses of worship. The speaker’s plan is a response to demonstrations outside synagogues hosting events promoting the illegal sale of Palestinian land.
While earlier versions of the bills would have given the NYPD extraordinary power to control New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights, the current, watered-down version does — according to the NYPD — almost nothing, while maintaining the NYPD’s total discretion to selectively silence speech.
Meanwhile, last week, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) and more a dozen partner organizations released a comprehensive, data-driven plan detailing how the city government can and should invest $26-30 million in non-carceral hate violence prevention. Our recommendations outline a new prevention paradigm built around five pillars: reinvented reporting, proactive relationship development, capacity-building, community care and violence interruption, and anti‑bias education.
In January, the NYPD announced that hate crimes were up 152% compared to the same time last year — a notable failure amid record low crime rates. In NYC, antisemitic hate crimes make up a disproportionate number of reported crimes. But many communities — LGBTQ, Muslim, Arab, Asian, Black, immigrant, and others are regular targets of under-reported identity-based violence and hate speech. Hate violence is not something that Jews can or should fight alone.
We have compiled these policy recommendations because we reject the idea that the best we can do about antisemitism is “tough-on-crime” rhetoric and failed policies that have resulted in hate crimes increasing each year.
And yet the “solutions” often offered in response to hate violence are woefully insufficient. One reason may be a deep pessimism about what is possible. The solutions begin and end with containment: barriers, surveillance, policing, punishment, and censorship. Root causes and structural prevention — the hard work of building trust and reducing conflict across communities — are rarely part of the conversation.
Many of the priority initiatives backed by Jewish organizations are baffling: legislating a dictionary definition of antisemitism; lobbying for a mask ban and now a speech-free zone; those noxious magenta #EndJewHatred billboards all over New York. It’s unclear how any of this is supposed to make Jews appreciably safer.
It’s bad enough when giant, over-funded legacy Jewish institutions fail to imagine and advocate for real solutions to make Jews safer. It’s worse when the city government participates and leaves all New Yorkers at risk in the process.
That’s why JFREJ created a plan for actually preventing hate violence for all New Yorkers. It is an unprecedented, evidence-based policy proposal that looks at what our best research tells us about where hate comes from, what knits communities together, and what keeps us safe. And with the new Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, we have an opportunity to transform our city’s approach.
Fatalism about a problem cannot yield effective policy solutions. We do not believe antisemitism is eternal. We do not believe any enmity is inevitable. We are not content to pray, forever, behind NYPD barricades and under the watch of armed guards; isolating ourselves in the name of safety will do nothing but alienate Jews from our neighbors.
All of us want safety. Yet too many of our elected officials are so caught up in the performance of care that they seem to have forgotten it is also their responsibility to materially improve people’s lives. New Yorkers deserve solutions that meaningfully address hate violence — not political theater and half-measures.
Sasson is the executive director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.