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By Kristy Blackburn, Daisy Renazco, Todd SummersNIOS Coordinators/Teachers Hi everyone! We are very excited about the launch of the new Not In Our Schools (NIOS) website. This is going to be a great resource for schools. My colleagues and I are going to be sharing our experiences over the past 8-9 years with NIOS at our school in Palo Alto, Calif. What started out as a small campaign led by our Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) has evolved...
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Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations volunteers in the Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho July 4, 2007 parade, carrying small billboards honoring civil rights leaders from throughout history. For many in the anti-hate movement, the lessons that have emerged from Northern Idaho are legendary. People like Father Bill Wassmuth, whose house was bombed by neo-Nazis in Coeur D'Alene, helped influence many community leaders working to address the...
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Not In Our Town: Princeton has been tackling racism since the group was founded in this New Jersey university town more than a decade ago. Their visible actions appear on the streets, in schools, and in their public library. Three key programs include:outreach to downtown merchantsongoing public conversations about racism and privilegeUnity Awards for local students Princeton is a well-heeled town, home to Princeton...
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When residents of Gettysburg, PA, learned that the Aryan Nations was planning a rally at the Gettysburg National Military Park, spewing their hate on the very spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered his most stirring defense of American democracy, they knew they couldn’t ignore it. The town had experience standing up to hate. In 2006 the Ku Klux Klan visited Gettysburg, and a coalition of city leaders, faith groups and civic...
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What can a community do when a hate group comes to town and targets a wide variety of organizations, each of which have different ideas of how to respond -- or not?
That's what happened in Charleston and Wheeling, West Virginia in March 2010. The Westboro Baptist Church hate group announced it would picket Jewish and Catholic institutions, a local university, and, as a last-minute addition designed for maximum emotional...
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News Organizations Have Served as Powerful Allies in NIOT Campaigns Across the Country By Kelly Whalen, NIOT.org Producer Members of the news media often find themselves on the sidelines of an issue to remain neutral or without bias in their reporting of the day’s events. But from the choices they make in what to report on to the content of their editorial pages, news organizations hold powerful influence over our...
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Inspired by the 1960s sit-ins, Billings NIOT members stage a series of eat-ins to support the owners of vandalized restaurants By Cindy Konecny In the late Spring of 2008 Billings, MT, was hit with a wave of hate-motivated vandalism. It began with hate graffiti spray painted on the building of Papa Eddie’s Grill and a brick thrown through one of the windows of the minority-owned business. The brick had a swastika and the...
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