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.
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Earthquake damage forces Seattle Hebrew Academy to split in two
By Donna Gordon Blankinship
Transcript Editor
The wandering Jews of the Seattle Hebrew Academy are moving again this fall.
As a temporary solution to keep the school running while earthquake damage is addressed, the Orthodox Jewish day school is splitting its student body in half this year. Middle-school students will be learning in portable classrooms on the Capitol Hill campus, while younger grades will be studying in portables in the parking lot of Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath Congregation in Seward Park. The Stroum Jewish Community Center Preschool meets in a newer wing of the SHA building on Capitol Hill, which was not damaged in the quake, and will continue to meet there in the fall.
The school’s ever-optimistic headmaster, Rabbi Shmuel Kay, says he still doesn’t know what the future will hold for the school, whose historic building was heavily damaged in last spring’s earthquake.
“We’re hoping there will be blessings here. The fact that we’re going to be in two campuses will help us develop our middle school into a separate entity,” Kay says. “I’m hoping that after it’s all said and done that we’ll be able to have a better campus than we ever had….Hopefully the crisis mode will be a way for all of us to band together.”
He’s happy with this year’s solution and confident the school’s volunteers and supporters will find a positive way to resolve their long-term delimma.
“The parents who live in Seward Park and have kids in Seward Park are obviously excited,” Kay says, adding that the portables are nicer than some of the school’s old classrooms. “Parents who live on the North End and have kids in Seward Park are not that happy.”
Transportation will be the biggest issue of the year, especially for parents who have kids at both sites. “The biggest tragedy for me is if we lose any children,” Kay says. “We definitely lost five or six children because of the shlepping factor, which is a tragedy in my opinion.” Some of the parents not sending their kids to SHA this year have chosen to send them to another Jewish school, which makes Kay happier than stories of kids missing out on a Jewish education because they can’t get a ride to SHA.
Many organizations are helping make the 2001—2002 school year a reality for SHA. Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath is hosting the portables in its parking lot and other school activities in its social hall at no cost to SHA. Across the street, Sephardic Bikur Cholim has opened its parking lot to SHA teachers and the members of the Ashkenazic synagogue who will not have a place to park for events. The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and the Samis Foundation have both provided money to help pay for studies and equipment to keep the school going. The move will cost a total of about $500,000, including the cost to run some portables, buy others and transport the portables and build foundations at both sites. University Prep, which recently completed a construction project at its school, sold SHA four portables for $40,000, a highly discounted rate, according to Kay.
A committee led by SHA Board President Rebecca Almo is still in the process of exploring long-term solutions for the school. A number of community members, including architects, developers and other experts, are helping to assess whether to repair the historic landmark or move elsewhere. “It’s going to cost us millions of dollars to fix our building. Knocking it down it not so simple; it’s a historic building,” Kay explains. “We’re really trying to spend a few months trying to analyze what we’re going to do and then have a campaign to pay for it.”
In March, school officials estimated that to repair earthquake damage and bring the 1909 Seattle Hebrew Academy building up to the modern earthquake code could cost between $2.5 and $5 million.
The nearly four-acre property was appraised at $5.8 million before the 6.8 magnitude quake on Feb. 28. The school does not have earthquake insurance, and government assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Act has not been forthcoming.
The building was more severely damaged than first thought. After opening up some walls, structural damage was uncovered in the building built to earthquake codes of the 1900s, with unreinforced masonry walls — no steel, just bricks and mortar. Almo said no earthquake preparedness improvements have been done since the building was first constructed.