Even As We Grieve, We Need to Prioritize Prevention and Find Effective Interventions

Even at this time when our discourse has gone from heated to over-heated to ugly, last week was shocking and deeply disturbing. Three horrifying incidents of hate-motivated violence left death, destruction and fear in their wake. We are profoundly saddened by this terrible violence and we stand with all who lost loved ones or were injured, terrorized or in other ways affected. We will do all we can, today and always, to fight the scourge of anti-Semitism, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment that plagues our country and drives this kind of violence.

Watching the funerals of Jews murdered at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pennsylvania and African-Americans murdered at a grocery store in Kentucky is excruciating. Their families and communities need our love and support, as do all those affected by the bombs a deranged man mailed to a dozen public officials and figures.

We all need to demand an end to hate speech, driven by hatred and bigotry, which is all too common in our country – and we need to promote prevention and invest in effective interventions that will prevent violence in the future. In many cases, the deviant behavior that ends in violence of this kind begins early in a perpetrator’s life and is driven by toxic speech. We must find ways to interrupt escalating violence or we will have more weeks like the last one. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Esta Soler
Founder & President
Futures Without Violence