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essay

Break the Silence

A

RICH
FELDMAN

s a citizen
of Oakland
County, as a
Jewish American and
as a retired UAW union
member and elected
official, I believe we are
at critical times and that
we need to break our
individual and collective

silence.
During the past year, I have been chal-
lenged to think about my childhood in
the 1950s and 1960s, as a young kid in
Brooklyn, N.Y. I vividly remember the
pictures and stories from the Holocaust
and also watching on television the
pictures of angry, viscous white people
and police hosing, screaming, yelling,
encouraging dogs to bite, beating and
arresting the children and citizens of
Birmingham, Ala.
It was the television coverage of the
Birmingham Children’s March of 1963,
which led to MLK’s “I Have a Dream”
speech first given in Detroit and then
Washington, D.C. Just as vivid in my
mind are the pictures of the murder
and bludgeoning of Emmitt Till and the
courageous act of his mother to have an
open casket. I remember clearly how this
led to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery
Bus Boycott.
I was fortunate to be raised in a family
that was clear about good and evil and

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the fact that the barbaric white rage we
were witnessing was on the wrong side.
These past few months, I was in
Pittsburgh and visited memorials of
the 11 Jewish Americans killed as they
attended the Tree of Life synagogue. I
have also watched immigrant children
placed in cages, and now I watch families
and children being tear gassed at our
borders.
As I grew up and learned more about
“good Germans” and more about chil-
dren, immigrants and refugees who were
denied entry into the U.S. during the
1930s and 1940s, this silence has become
more significant.
Many of you know this story and tell
your children and grandchildren about
the voyage of the St. Louis: “In May
1939, the German liner St. Louis sailed
from Hamburg, Germany, to Havana,
Cuba, carrying 937 passengers, almost
all Jewish refugees. The Cuban govern-
ment refused to allow the ship to land,
and the U.S. and Canada were unwilling
to admit the passengers. The passengers
were finally permitted to land in western
European countries rather than return to
Nazi Germany. Of those passengers, 254
were killed in the Holocaust.”
What has changed?
We continue to go along and be
more concerned with our comforts and
our “own.” Even when the tragedy in
Pittsburgh makes it clear that we live in

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dangerous times, we remain silent to the
“other.” While a small number of reli-
gious activists and community social jus-
tice organizers have organized caravans
to the border, and there have been some
conversations about racism and immi-
gration, most of us go back to business
as usual. Do we go back to business as
usual because we are hopeless or because
we have no moral compass or vision of a
more humane way to live and relate?
We have a special responsibility to
break our silence now.
I call upon synagogues to declare
themselves “sanctuary synagogues.”
I call upon the social justice com-
mittees to commemorate MLK’s 2019
birthday by listening to, reading and
creating sermons in January based upon
the words of Martin Luther King’s 1967
speech: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to
Break Silence.”
In this speech, he challenged us to
overcome the evil triplets of racism,
materialism and militarism, and create
a life based upon a radical revolution in
values.
Lastly, I share this tool that “we look
forward as we speak out against injus-
tice.” I call upon every synagogue to
place on their websites and share on
Facebook the three-minute video by
Vincent Harding: “I am a citizen of a
country that does not yet exist.”
As a citizen of Oakland County, I

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SCAN THIS PAGE TO SEE MLK’S
1967 SPEECH: “BEYOND VIETNAM:
A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE” AND “I
AM A CITIZEN OF A COUNTRY THAT
DOES NOT YET EXIST” BY VINCENT
HARDING.

think it is time to speak out loudly and
clearly that Brooks Patterson is an obsta-
cle to creating a new unity in our region.
Brooks Patterson launched his career
representing a group that railed against
school integration in the 1970s. He has
ridiculed, belittled and disrespected peo-
ple in Detroit and upheld the materialist
values of Oakland County.
We need to break our silence and the
Jewish community can lead the way
in demanding that Oakland County
become a sanctuary city based upon val-
ues of compassion, empathy, caring and
human dignity for all.
As a retired UAW international staff
person, I pledge to continue to create
conversations with workers who find
it easier to blame and condemn than
engage and create a future that is based
upon the principles of love and solidar-
ity.
If we remember our own histories,
maybe we can create a county, a com-
munity and workplaces that are an alter-
native to the current narrative driven by
hate and violence that is dominating our
area and our country. ■

Rich Feldman lives in Huntington Woods. Contact
him at Richardfeldman60@gmail.com if you want
to help create a “Democracy Circle” to break the
silence in your synagogue, community or city.

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December 13 • 2018

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