The debate continues around the building of an Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero. According to a New York Times report, the center's organizers reached out to key interfaith leaders, including those from the Jewish Community Center, Trinity Church and the 9-11 victims' families, but they did not anticipate the firestorm in the media that followed.
In the midst of this controversy, Not In Our Town offers these stories from communities about interfaith action and understanding. We encourage you to use these films to begin a dialogue in your town and with your firends. Please let us know about the creative ways you develop to start a conversation.
A City Unites After Synagogue Arsons
Blog
August 4, 2010 - 2:10pm
This month, we're turning the NIOT Group spotlight on Not In Our Town Princeton, an interfaith, inter-racial coalition that has been tackling racism since its founding in Princeton, NJ more than a decade ago.
July 21, 2010 - 5:20pm
We've been burning the midnight oil in our Oakland editing room to bring you preview scenes from our next PBS film, NIOT III: The Patchogue Story.
It's the story of a small Long Island community where Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was murdered in November 2008 in an attack by seven high school students who were looking for "Mexicans" to beat up.
NIOT film crews have made more than a dozen visits to Patchogue. We've gotten to know the Lucero family as well as civic leaders and elected officials, who tried to bring the community together in the aftermath of this shocking hate crime.
July 16, 2010 - 2:23pm
Gettysburg, PA: When folks in Gettysburg, PA heard the Aryan Nations hate group was planning a rally on the very spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous defense of American democracy, they knew they couldn't sit by in silence."Silence is the welcome mat for hate," notes Ann Van Dyke of Pennsylvania's Human Relations Commission, who has worked with almost two dozen communities throughout the state that were targeted by hate groups. The activist groups that formed in those towns are now part of the Pensylvania Network of Unity Coalitions, longtime members of the Not In Our Town family.
July 12, 2010 - 3:21pm
Oakland, CA: Last Thursday, July 8, former BART transit officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the Jan. 1, 2009 death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed young African American man.