1. Truly No Place for Hate
By: Courtney Denning
11/5/2010
Salem, Mass. -- At a November 2nd meeting in Salem, the No Place for Hate Committee met
to discuss a memorial intended to signify the efforts to stop the defamation of all people, a
monument that they hope to unveil within the next six months in the city.
Meghann Ackerman, the Director of Constituent Services at Salem City Hall, explained that
the memorial will be for “the persecuted or abused, like those who were victims of the
Holocaust.” The committee chose a quote from Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, author
and winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Peace. The quote, “the opposite of love is not hate, it
is indifference,” comes from a longer piece by Wiesel, whose books have touched millions
over the last few decades.
The memorial will be installed prominently in the downtown area for the people of Salem
to enjoy and reflect about how they live, and hopefully how they treat others. The
committee is hoping to obtain donations from businesses and individuals around the city in
order to pay for this beautiful vision. The donor’s names will be added to plaques that will
be placed on the memorial, displaying, for everyone who goes to see it, those who opened
their hearts to help the No Place for Hate Committee achieve this small step in making a
more diverse and tolerant environment for all of us. Committee chair Scott Weisberg and
other members have been talking about location, content and budget for this project and
how to get the city of Salem really involved. Donations seemed to be the perfect avenue.
Weisberg mentioned how their funding is limited and how they keep their important
program alive by working hard to attain the goals they hope to reach. “We have to do two
programs a year to keep our status… Last year we spoke on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and
we have plans to do it again this year,” Weisberg said. They were also out this year on
Halloween spreading the word about their work with literature that they call “outdated.”
With low funding, the goal is a reach, but they hope to get some new information with
better statistics to really show people how hatred is still alive in this day in age, and how
they plan to help stop it. Last year on Halloween, the committee had a visit from a group of
Neo-Nazi activists, which only begins to explain some of the dangers that they, and we, may
face.
No Place for Hate (www.noplaceforhate.org) is only a sub-group of the larger group, the
Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, whose goal is to “stop the defamation of Jewish people…
to secure justice and fair treatment for all,” (www.regions.adl.org). There are sub-
committees of this enormous project in every state in this country working to make
diversity and social justice an accepted part of our everyday lives.