By , Special to JTNews
Cooper thanked 13 police officers assisting in the investigation who were volunteering their off-duty time to provide security at the day’s rally. He concluded by asking the community to “step up and give us 22,000 pairs of eyes and ears and to give us a hand,” and vowed: “We will solve these cases.”
U.S. Congressman Jay Inslee, a Bainbridge Island resident, stated that fear and hatred were not acceptable and urged listeners to tell their representatives in Washington, D.C., to make the Hate Crimes Bill of 2001 federal law.
“I can’t believe the people I listen to in the U.S. Congress who are so captured by a certain ideology that they fail to stand up to help law enforcement fight against this type of crime,” Inslee said. “They say, “˜Isn’t it just vandalism?’ When a 12-year-old kid throws a rock on Halloween, it might be vandalism. But when someone sprays “˜white power’ and then throws a rock through a window, it’s Kristallnacht all over again.”
Carol Shakow, a representative of the Bainbridge Island Jewish community, spoke of her stepfather, Arnold Braunstein, who was a survivor of Auschwitz, and her late husband, Don Shakow, whom she described as “a lifelong social activist, a teacher, a mediator, whose life was guided by the biblical notion of tikkun olam [healing the world].” Both stepfather and husband were buried in Port Blakely Cemetery, and both of their headstones were vandalized.
Shakow thought it would be ironic if the attack on her husband’s grave promoted his ideals by helping to unite the community against injustice.
At the conclusion of the speeches, the crowd marched eastward on Winslow Way some distance before circling back to the church parking lot for the conclusion of the program, which included musical performances. Many of the marchers carried placards declaring their opposition to hate and support for diversity.
State Rep. Phil Rockefeller of Bainbridge Island was a listener at the rally. Of the spate of hate incidents on the island, Rockefeller, whose wife is Jewish and whose mother-in-law fled the Holocaust, said: “For us, any kind of echo of racism reverberates especially…We like to think that this could never happen here, but the only way that it will not happen here is if we continue to take a stand and speak out upon seeing any manifestation of hate.”
Brian David Goldberg, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Northwest chapter, was happy with the attendance on Sunday. He later commented: “Look, you’re not going to stop hatred completely: There’s always going to be individuals capable of doing something like this. But the people of Bainbridge Island are taking proactive steps to address it. The chief of police is not afraid — the mayor is not afraid — to say, “˜Hey, we’ve got a problem here.’ It doesn’t mean Bainbridge Island is a bastion for hate groups…What they’re saying is: “˜We’re going to do something about it so that our community does not become a bastion for hate groups and hate activity.’ ”
Jing Fong, one of the rally’s organizers, listed the program’s three objectives: “One, to tell the perpetrators [of the hate incidents]: “˜Stop, it’s not okay, it hurts people, stop what you’re doing’; secondly, to send a message to the community to come together to stand up against hate and stand together for respecting each other; and thirdly, while we are all affected by what has happened, to let the people who were directly affected and directly hurt by these hate crimes and other acts of prejudice know that they are not alone, that they are surrounded by people who really do care about them…”
Clarence Moriwaki described various ways that the community was pulling together to combat hate: By amassing a reward fund ($11,500 as of Monday) for information leading to the arrest and conviction of hate-crime perpetrators; by amassing a restoration fund (already over $1,000) to restore vandalized gravesites, remove graffiti and repair other damage resulting from hate incidents; through the formation of an anti-bias emergency response team via the Kitsap Human Rights Network, including a 24-hour 800-number hotline to collect information on hate incidents and provide assistance to victims of hate; through the formation of a volunteer work party to repair the damage to the Port Blakely Cemetery; and through the formation of study circles to address issues of hate.
Another rally organizer, Karen Ahern, is a founding member of the Bainbridge Unity Coalition, established in 1992 in response to white supremacist leafleting incidents on the island. Ahern said the rally “proves that this is a community that will never allow hate in our town, and no town should. This is what every town needs to do when hate comes to town. You need to organize quickly; you need to have anti-bias teams in place in every community across the state and nation.”
In a telephone interview Tuesday morning, Bainbridge Island Police Chief Bill Cooper said that his department had been tipped off to four “people of interest” in connection with recent vandalism incidents on the island. The four individuals, island residents ages 16 to 17, were being sought for questioning but had not yet been located.
Cooper also said that men in their late teens or early 20s and wearing dark trenchcoats and boots despite the hot weather had been observed at Sunday’s rally against hate. The men were reported to have been questioning attendees about the rally; the men moved off when approached by police officers.
Asked if any organized hate groups are currently operating on Bainbridge Island, Cooper replied: “There are none that are known to us at this point. Now, are there members of these groups that live on the island? There may be. We don’t know them; we have not seen any attempt to organize on the island; we have not seen any of the traditional manifestations of hate groups on the island,” such as leafleting.