Following a year in which hate-motivated incidents have increased nationally and in Long Beach one city councilwoman has taken the lead in organizing a community conversation centered around people’s differences and fostering a more accepting environment.
Third District Councilwoman Suzie Price is hosting the March 22 event at Temple Israel in Bluff Heights where she will be joined on a panel by representatives from the synagogue, the California Conference for Equality and Justice and The LGBTQ Center of Long Beach.
Price said that over the past year hate incidents have increased, even if they haven’t risen to the level of a hate crime. During an October 2017 public safety committee meeting, of which she is the chair, Long Beach Police Department Deputy Chief Richard Conant said that the department had logged 16 hate incidents since January 2017, an increase from previous years where the totals were 10 in 2014 and 2016 and 12 in 2015.
A recent example of such an incident happened in Price’s district earlier this month when an Orange Coast College faculty member was captured on video telling an Asian-American family to go back to their country. The video went viral and the woman was placed on leave.
“That’s exactly the kind of situation that sparked this particular event,” Price said. “Specifically we had a situation at the local schools where Jewish kids were getting teased and made fun of. In my recollection of things, even if those prejudices may be out there, it’s not something that we’ve seen people so openly admit to.”
Price said she is no stranger to discrimination. While she was born in the United States, her family moved back to Iran while she was a baby and lived there until the Islamic Resolution pushed her family back to the US in 1979. She recounted having to learn English at age seven and being made fun of for her accent.
However, she said that most of her life was free of discrimination until the early 2000s when former President George W. Bush declared Iran to be part of the Axis of Evil.
“Shortly after that I started to get comments in the workplace, comments in social settings and after everything happened with 9/11, even though none of the terrorists were Iranian, there was this assumption that because they were Middle Eastern everybody’s the same and can be painted with a very broad brush,” Price said. “I don’t think people realize how hurtful those kinds of stereotypes are to those of us who consider themselves American and as much a part of this beautiful country that we live in as anyone else.”
She vowed that if she were ever in a position of power she would make clear to every child that they are special and to push an agenda of tolerance. The event adds to her annual anti-bullying event that the councilwoman has hosted in the past.
In partnering with Temple Israel and The Center, the councilwoman will bring together two of the most targeted minority groups when it comes to hate crimes in the region.
According to a 2016 report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, Jews and members of the LGBTQ community were two of the top three groups targeted in both 2015 and 2016. Together they accounted for 38 percent of all hate crimes in the county in 2016. Statewide, hate crimes increased by 11 percent.
The report found that 81 percent of homophobic crimes in 2016 were violent and two-thirds of religiously-motivated hate crimes were against Jews. There were over 480 hate crimes reported in the county in 2016.
“We know that hate violence is increasing across the city, across the county, and if you look at statewide data, across the state,” said Porter Gilberg, executive director of The Center. “Data is showing that people are either reporting more or that incidents are actually on the up and up.”
He said that numbers are likely higher than recorded data shows as hate crimes are tracked but hate incidents, or even targeted harassment based on a person’s identity status, are not. Gilberg said safety remains a large concern for clients of The Center, while he has also faced forms of harassment in the past six months even while walking with other people.
“If that’s happening to me in a large group of LGBTQ people I can imagine that’s happening to people when they’re alone,” Gilberg said.
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Cantor Sara Hass, who helped coordinate the event at Temple Israel, said that the community has felt a rise in anti-semitism over the past year and a half but it has only magnified her pride in being a Jew and in the congregation’s ability to support one another.
With the event next week, Hass said they hope to open their doors to all people as they view Temple Israel as not just a place for their congregation but as a community center for everyone. She hopes the dialogue will serve as a building block toward stopping future discrimination and strengthening the bonds between all residents of Long Beach.
“We don’t want this to be an opportunity for people to come and say ‘Oh, these things have happened to me’,” Hass said. “We want to hear about these things that have happened and then talk about how we as a community can come together to combat it or to support each other. I think the more educated that we can be about each other, the stronger we can be as a community.”