Meme Dump

Imagine a World Without Hate

Imagine a World Without Hate™

In honor of our Centennial Year in 2013, the Anti-Defamation League launched the “Imagine a World Without Hate” video and action campaign, and we invite you to participate.

Take just 80 seconds of your time to watch this powerful video, which imagines a world without racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism — a world in which the hate violence that took the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, Daniel Pearl, Matthew Shepard and others did not happen. Imagine what these individuals could have continued to contribute to society if bigotry, hate and extremism had not cut their lives tragically short.

After 100 years of fighting bigotry and fostering respect, we are celebrating our successes, while at the same time recognizing that we still have a long way to go to achieve the reality of a world without hate. Join us by watching, sharing and taking steps every day to create a world without hate. Thank you for stepping up to create a world without hate as an individual, community, school or corporation.

ADL is most grateful to the families of those featured in the video, whose commitment and participation made this campaign possible, and to the Estate of John Lennon for granting us the rights to use his beautiful and iconic song.

Imagine a World Without Hate™. We do. Join us.

On April 4, 1968, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, Dr. King was struck by a sniper’s bullet. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where, at age 39, he was pronounced dead later that evening.

Imagine. What if .........

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929, before the Frank family moved to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazis gained control over Germany. As persecutions of Jews increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in secret rooms in Anne's father's office building when she was 13 years old. After two years of hiding, the family was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945. 

Imagine. What if .........

Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He served less than a year in office before he was brutally assassinated by another city supervisor. His life profoundly changed a city, state, nation, a global community and me. 

Imagine. What if .........

James Byrd Jr. was an African American, graduate from the last segregated class at Jasper’s Rowe High School. Byrd went on to marry and have three children. In the pre-dawn hours of June 7, 1998, Byrd was walking home when he was stopped by three white men who offered him a ride. Byrd got in the bed of their pick-up truck, but the men did not take him home. Instead, they drove him to a desolate, wooded road east of town, beat him severely, chained him to the back of the truck by his ankles and dragged him for more than three miles. The murderers drove on for another mile before dumping his torso in front of an African-American cemetery.

Imagine. What if .........

In October of 2000, Daniel Pearl and his wife moved to Bombay, India where he became the South Asia Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. Pearl covered many issues, including the "war on terrorism," occasionally venturing to Pakistan. He was retracing the steps of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid when he was abducted in Karachi on January 23, 2002. Millions of people around the world rallied for his release until a video, posted on the internet, showed his captors beheading him. In his final words, Pearl declared "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish." His tragic murder was confirmed on February 21, 2002.

Imagine. What if .........

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming where he studied political science, foreign relations and languages. On October 7, 1998, a few hours after he had attended a planning meeting for Gay Awareness Week events on campus, Shepard was tortured and left tied to a fence by two men. After being discovered, he was taken to a hospital in Fort Collins; he died on October 12, 1998.

Imagine. What if .........

On November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin appeared at a large peace rally in Tel Aviv, joining the singing of "Shir L'Shalom" (Song for Peace). Minutes later, as he was leaving the rally, an Israeli Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir, jumped out of the crowd and shot Rabin. Less than an hour later, Rabin was pronounced dead at a Tel Aviv-area hospital.

Imagine. What if .........

Imagine a World Without Hate

Changing History

So, yesterday I posted about a school board in Oklahoma not bowing down to a couple of wingnuts who wanted a book banned because it featured a couple of minor characters with two mommies. and, for a second there, I thought to myself, Self? Are things changing? I mean, Oklahoma is changing, maybe everywhere is changing.

Then I woke up.

And heard about Virginia, and Culpepper County [sidenote: does it get more "bumpkin"than Culpeppah Countay?] where public school officials have decided to stop assigning a version of Anne Frank's diary after a parent complained that the book includes sexually explicit material and homosexual themes.

The book in question, "The Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition," was published on the 50th anniversary of Frank's death in a concentration camp, and will not be used in the future, according to James Allen, director of instruction for the Culpepper County school system because the school system did not follow its own policy for handling complaints about instructional materials. Allen said that the more recent version will remain in the school library, but only the earlier version will be used in classes.

The version of the diary in question includes passages previously excluded from the widely read original edition, first published in Dutch in 1947. Some of the extra passages detail Anne Frank's emerging sexual desires, while other parts of the book include unflattering descriptions of her mother and other people living together.

What people seem to forget is that, even though she was a prisoner, living and dying in a concentration camp, Anne Frank was still a girl, with the same thoughts and feelings and questions about sex that every young girl, and boy, has from time to time. and she probably got a little angry at her mother every so often, and wrote nasty things in her diary. See, that's what she was writing: a diary.

Anne Frank didn't know her thoughts would ever see the light of day, and had no way of ever knowing the impact her diary would have on anyone who's ever read it. And now, thanks to asshats like those up in Culpepper County, the students in Virginia will never know the real girl, but will be taught the sanitized version of her too-short life.

Another Hero Passes

Miep Gies, the Dutch citizen who helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the Nazis during World War II and discovered the writing that became Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, passed away Monday at age 100.

Gies was the last of the living non-Jews who assisted the Frank family as they hid in a secret annex in Amsterdam for 25 months before the hide-out was raided. During that time, the young Frank, who later perished in a concentration camp, wrote what would become her famous diary, which continues to be a global best-seller.

“People should never think that you have to be a very special person to help those who need you.”