In a show of solidarity and support for the Kansas City Jewish community, Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas and Leawood Mayor Peggy Dunn have signed onto the Mayors United Against Antisemitism initiative.
“Our diversity is what makes Kansas City and this country great, and it is important that we continue working to make all of our communities places where all feel welcome — and part of that effort is unequivocally denouncing any form of antisemitism,” Lucas said in an email to The Chronicle. “I am proud to be part of this bipartisan coalition of mayors working and speaking out against growing anti-Semitic conspiracies and fields of thought.”
“Antisemitism has no place in the City of Leawood. I can say with certainty that it would not be tolerated by any of our elected officials nor by our professional staff,” Dunn said in an email. “As Leawood Mayor, I was honored to join fellow mayors from across the country to stand up against antisemitism.”
They are two of more than 250 mayors from across the country who have signed a statement declaring that antisemitism is incompatible with fundamental democratic values. Other area mayors who have joined the effort include Topeka mayor Michelle De La Isla and St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson.
For Gavriela Geller, executive director of JCRB|AJC Kansas City, efforts like these are part of the year-round conversations the organization has with local leaders about fighting antisemitism.
“When public officials stand strong against antisemitism, they send a clear message that we as Americans have no tolerance [for] bigotry and prejudice against Jews,” she said.
The initiative, which was launched last month on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is a national effort to combat antisemitism from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM).
“Antisemitism is a growing societal menace, it comes from multiple sources, and mayors are uniquely positioned to lead their cities in taking concerted steps to fight it,” said AJC CEO David Harris said in a news release.
Geller said she hopes it’s heartening to the community to see mayors and leaders in our region recognize the growing need to fight antisemitism.
“What I like about the statement that the mayors are signing onto is that it’s pretty explicit in condemning antisemitism in all forms,” Geller said.
Those forms include “hatred and prejudice directed toward Jews, stereotypes or conspiracy theories about Jews, Holocaust denial or distortion, and denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and/or the Jewish state’s right to exist,” the statement reads. It also declares support for efforts to prevent extremist indoctrination and recruitment, and recognizes the need to be vigilant about efforts to prevent or report anti-Semitic incidents or hate crimes.
The AJC-USCM initiative comes as incidents of antisemitism, some of them violent, continue to rise across the United States, confirmed in FBI reports and AJC public opinion surveys. American Jews, who make up less than 2% of the American population, were the victims of 60.2% of anti-religious hate crimes, according to the FBI 2019 Hate Crimes Statistics report. In its annual audit, the Anti-Defamation League reported that there were 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2019, a 12% increase from 2018.
AJC’s 2020 State of Antisemitism in America report found that 88% of Jews considered antisemitism a problem today in the U.S., 35% had personally been victims of antisemitism over the past five years and 31% had taken measures to conceal their Jewishness in public. Moreover, the AJC report revealed that nearly half of all Americans said they had either never heard the term “antisemitism” (21%) or are familiar with the word but not sure what it means (25%).
“In the last few years, we have seen a significant increase in hate crimes directed at individuals and institutions based on faith, with the biggest increase among these incidents having been those directed at Jews,” Tom Cochran, USCM CEO and executive director said in the news release. “We have always called on mayors to speak out against hate crimes when they occur, and the statement we are inviting mayors to sign provides a way for them to register their opposition to the dramatic increase in antisemitism we have experienced in our country and work together to reverse it.”
To Geller, seeing mayors sign onto the initiative is not only impactful to the Jewish community, but the Kansas City community as a whole.
“Antisemitism is not something that gets enough attention from the non-Jewish community always, so I think whenever we have the opportunity to enlist our allies that are not from the Jewish community... to really stand up for us and be loud and public about (their) support is really meaningful,” she said.
Geller said one demographic this could be particularly meaningful for is Jewish high school students.
“We are seeing a really troubling trend of significant antisemitism in the school districts in our regional schools,” she said.
In August, AJC|JCRB conducted its Antisemitism in Schools survey, which showed that 75% of Jewish students in the community have experienced or witnessed antisemitism at their school in some form. Only 29% said antisemitism wasn’t a problem at all in their school. Recently, Pembroke Hill School had an anti-Semitic incident where a swastika was found on a desk, and anti-LGBTQ+ language was found in another classroom.
“Based on the results of this survey, we can understand the need for bringing more attention and education to this issue, because it is something that’s affecting Jewish students every day,” she said.
Geller is proud of the progress the initiative has made in such a short amount of time and excited at how it can “spur dialogue and action” with local leaders in the future. AJC|JCRB is inviting some of the mayors who have signed onto the initiative to participate in its annual Unity Seder on March 16 and virtually read the statement together.
“It’s something that’s attended by a lot of different faith and civic partners, so it’s an excellent way to raise awareness of the campaign,” she said.
