---

A community unified in delivering a message that Love trumps Hate gathered for close to 3 hours at Springwood Avenue Park on Labor Day for a Stand Against Hate Rally.

Two women – Nicolle Harris, a lifelong city resident, activist and minister, and Jess Alaimo, a comedian known for her organizing LGBTQ and other social justice support and awareness events, led a committee of close to 50 people, organizations and City and County leaders in bringing to fruition an event that drew a crowd of hundreds.

The city’s diverse makeup was represented, with Muslim, Christian, and Religious Unbelievers, standing side by side with every conceivable ethnicity; be it Straight, Gay and/or Transgender.

“A Jew and a Muslim walk into a Rally is the start of a really terrible joke – yes, it is also something that is completely unprecedented in certain parts of the world,” Alaimo said, taking the stage with Hazim Yassim of the American Muslim Action Network. “But here we are in Asbury Park, New Jersey, all of us together standing against hate.”                

In quoting Bob Dylan Mayor John Moor said, “The times they are a changin.” Moor said during the 1960s when Dylan penned those words “bigotry and hatred were common. The Civil Rights Movement fought tirelessly to guarantee rights laid out in the Constitution were met for all people. People were more likely to find division among themselves than the common ground that is so clearly there if we just put in the effort to look for it…

“We have come here today in Asbury Park to make it clear that hatred, bigotry and discrimination are not welcome in this city and should not be welcomed anywhere on this planet,” he said. “We will not be intimidated by threats. We will not fear those that wish to bring this country backwards. Nazis and white supremacists have no place in a society that wishes to move forward, learn from one another, and place their faith in people of all races, creeds, genders, and religions…So when people make it seem like those that are against white-supremacy and fascism are equal to those waving swastikas and burning crosses, it is people like us that need to step up and make it known that we stand for unity and peace. As our former First Lady Michelle Obama famously stated, ‘When they go low, we go high.”

And, Board of Education President Angela Ahbez Anderson reminded the crowd through her words and song that “This little light of mine, I’m going to make it shine.”

The peaceful event featured a host of speakers and entertainment by Desiree Spinks of Des + the Swagmatics, Mychal Mills of Konscious Youth Development & Service [KYDS], Crystal McGhee, and a very special closing with words of wisdom from the youngest among us, who said in a unified message: “We are all the same on the inside, we are all unique on the outside.”

Garden State Equality’s Christian Fuscarino said, “We are strongest when we stand united and weakest when we are divide.” In summoning the words of Bayard Rustin, he said, “I give you fair warning, we will call upon you, again, and again, until the very grounds we stand upon shake with the power that you represent.

“When our black brothers are shot in the back by the people we expect to protect us, what do we do – we stand united,” Fuscarino said. He went on to use the same example of transgender, Mexican, and Black women. “Let our message be clear to anyone who stands in the way of justice and equality,” he said. “If you don’t make room for everyone at your table, do not be surprised when we come for your chair.”

Black Lives Matter founding member Jennifer Lewinski challenged everyone to move forward in a stance against conversations that demean any segment of the population.

“If every single person decides that we make our space what we want it to be and we do not allow those things to happen in our space, that is how you spread love,” she said. “You spread love by stamping out hate when your neighbor is talking it.”

Chris Rapaglia of the Racial Justice Project reminded the crowd to celebrate one another’s differences, while Women’s March Dallas Hlatky asked the crowd remember that some issues are not about right vs left but about right vs wrong.  

Local NAACP President Adrienne Sanders gave thanks to the life of Heather Heyer, who was killed during the Charlottesville rally.

“We as a people are not born into this world with a conscious knowledge of hate,” she said. “We are simply taught to hate.”   

North Beach resident Rev. Gil Caldwell, a self proclaimed foot soldier of the Civil Rights Movement who marched alongside Rev. Martin Luther King, used Shakespeare’s ‘full of sound and fury and signifying nothing’ to accent his point that “hate has a distant cousins that is called unconscious bias [racism and prejudice],” he said.

Caldwell, a retired minister, chose to settle in Asbury Park with his wife Grace, and has since championed on behalf of same sex marriage, the homeless, HIV/AIDS, and black empowerment.

“If in fact our words, our preaching, our speech does not talk about social justice, which means racial justice, then we are nothing,” he said. “I say this in Asbury Park because Asbury Park has demonstrated the ability to deal with unconscious bias.”

And then, from community elder Tyrone Laws delivered the message that everyone has “the right to be who they are, where they are. I am a universal citizen, I have the right to be any place that I am led.”

In the end, Harris reminded the crowd of her Women’s March AP message: “We are going to have to love the hell out of somebody. We cannot allow hate to win because it is not an option.”

A march to further the community unity is being planned for along the boardwalk on Oct. 8, as well as marches in celebration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day, said Community Leader Dan Harris.

——————————————————————————————————————-

Follow the Asbury Park Sun on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Asbury Park Sun is affiliated with the triCityNews newspaper.

---