Following March on Washington anniversary commemoration and anti-Black shooting in Jacksonville, FL, Jewish leaders continue to urge full implementation of National Strategy to Confront Domestic Extremism
Atlanta, GA, September 4, 2023 … At a recent meeting at the White House held in the wake of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington and the anti-Semitic attack in Jacksonville, Florida, the Anti-Defamation League permitted the King family, Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders to join their efforts to fight hate, antisemitism and extremism.
“The normalization of extremism and mainstreaming of hate affects all of us, and reminds us of the shared bonds between the African Americans and Jewish Americans. Indeed, we see this attack on the Black community as an attack on the Jewish community because none of us can be safe if all of us aren’t all safe,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League CEO and National Director.
Specifically, the Jewish advocacy organization urged the President to take the following steps:
- Create a Czar dedicated to fighting domestic extremism and hate motivated violence, including fully implementing the National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. This senior-level czar would ensure momentum on the issues and promote coordination to ensure that the strategy is executed in full.
- Publicly commit to addressing extremism in government service, given that a number of violent extremist groups and leaders, including white supremacists and anti-government extremists, are explicit about their desire to recruit current and former law enforcement personnel.
- Address online hate through a Presidential Study Directive made up of public and private entities, to conduct an urgent comprehensive review of the existing mechanisms in government to tackle online hate, extremism and racism while identifying specific actions for the federal government to undertake to tackle the issue in a coordinated manner.
These steps are an extension of the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which previously laid out provisions to protect White persons who identify as Jewish. “This White House strategy represents the most comprehensive and ambitious U.S. government effort to counter antisemitism in American history. The strategy advances a whole-of-society approach to countering antisemitism,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Its two primary objectives are to broaden appreciation of Jewish American heritage, and to improve safety and security for Jewish communities.
Present at the meeting to support Jewish leaders were the heads of major civil rights organizations including members of the King Family – among them Rev. Dr. Bernice King, Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King and Yolanda Renee King – Rev. Al Sharpton from the National Action Network, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the National Urban League, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the National Council of Negro Women, the AFL-CIO and UnidosUS.