Overnight, we saw a second incident of hate and violence following the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Closer to home, for the second time this summer, the New England Holocaust Memorial near City Hall was attacked. Now 17-year-old boy is charged with vandalism after allegedly smashing one of the memorial’s class panels.
It happened just a few hours after Mayor Marty Walsh stood with a crowd of political leaders and public figures and disavowed a rally planned by so-called “alt-right” groups for this Saturday on the Boston Common. Mayor Walsh said, “we reject racism, we reject white supremacy, we reject anti-Semitism, we reject the KKK, we reject Neo-Nazis, we reject domestic terrorism, and we reject hatred. And we will do every single thing in our power to keep hate out of our city.”
This latest attack is just the most recent of what could be considered a hate crime in Massachusetts, which leads the nation in such crimes after the election through February, with one hate crime 108,126 people, according to numbers from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Former City Councilor Michael Ross – whose father, a Holocaust survivor, founded the memorial – and former president of the Boston NAACP Michael Curry join Jim Braude to discuss.
