The pen may be mightier than the sword, and the broom may be mightier than racism and anti-Semitism.
Several local groups will be using their brooms and mops to hold a cleansing ceremony on Sunday afternoon at the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin Federal Courthouse in response to a rally there by white supremacists planned for Saturday.
The cleansing is the first event of “Build Hope, Not Hate,” a new coalition of community organizations and faith groups, including the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee and its judicatories, the American Jewish Committee Milwaukee Chapter, NAACP Milwaukee Chapter, National Conference for Community & Justice, Project Equality of Wisconsin, the Social Development Commission, Milwaukee Urban League and YWCA of Greater Milwaukee.
Among the Interfaith Conference’s judicatories are the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis.
“This whole idea of cleansing is a wonderful idea,” said Harriet Schachter McKinney. “I talked with one woman who said, ‘I’m bringing Lysol.’”
When the organizations first met to discuss the rally, McKinney explained, “We clearly had in our minds that our function was to bring hope, not hate and that our act and our energies would move us forward in that direction.”
Build Hope, Not Hate also “wanted to make a distinction between faith and the positive things that faith can do,” in comparison to the message of one of the participating white supremacist groups, the World Church of the Creator, said Paula Simon, executive director of the MJCCR and secretary of the Interfaith Conference.
Simon explained that the coalition’s intention of holding an event on the following day is to downplay the hate rally. “There are negative consequences to bringing more attention to the event by having more people there,” she said.
Gigi Pomerantz, vice president of coalition building for AJC, is involved with organizing another response to the rally. A grassroots coalition, spearheaded by Education for the People, called Take a Stand Against the Klan, hopes to protest on Saturday louder and clearer than the white supremacists.
The counterrally’s goal is to “show that Milwaukee is a diverse community that stands together against hate groups,” explained Pomerantz. “There are more of us that don’t believe in hate than do.
“My whole life I’ve had this feeling — being born after the Holocaust — that I should have done something to stop it. You have to stop it. That’s my reason for being there,” she said.
The counterrally will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the War Memorial. At 12:30 p.m., participants will walk to the Federal Courthouse.
The protest events are “distinct and separate” from each other, explained Simon. “The two events do not conflict; we wanted to offer an alternative.”
The white supremacist rally aims to bring together leaders of the World Church of the Creator, the Ku Klux Klan of Wisconsin and the National Socialist Movement. A similar rally was planned for Milwaukee five years ago, said McKinney, and “they wound up not coming.”
The groups believe that Milwaukee is “fertile field for the message of white supremacy,” said McKinney. “They’re perpetuating the myth that there are roaming bands of African-heritage young people, and maybe adults, that are wreaking havoc on the white citizens of Milwaukee, and they also just hatefully connect it to the murder of Charles Young.”
The AJC Milwaukee Chapter is also conducting Project Lemonade, a targeted fundraising drive that runs in conjunction with the planned hate rally. Named for the aphorism “When God gives you lemons, make lemonade,” the drive asks that people make pledges by the minute that AJC will collect for the total number of minutes the hate rally lasts.
The money will be used for anti-bias and anti-hate activities, not necessarily just AJC activities, explained McKinney. As of last Thursday, she had collected more than $2,000 in pledges.
“Some of these hate groups are the sourest, most shriveled, unappetizing lemons and they need tons of sugar,” she said.
The one-hour cleansing ceremony is slated to begin at 2 p.m. in front of the courthouse, 517 E. Wisconsin Ave. For more information, contact Heidi Rattner, Director of Justice Programs at the Interfaith Conference, 414-276-9050.
In the event that the hate rally does not take place, the cleansing ceremony will be canceled, but the Take a Stand Against the Klan event will still be held. For more information on that event, contact Pomerantz at 414-351-2141 or gigipomerantz@yahoo.com.
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