By Charly SHELTON

There has been a surge in hate crime reports across the country since the recent Presidential election. According to a study from civil rights advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center, in just the first 10 days following the Nov. 8 election, there were 867 reported incidents of harassment and intimidation nationwide. This is a drastic uptick from the previous year’s average of about 160 incidents in the same time, according to the FBI statistics.

Included in the study, the data of which was compiled through their #ReportHate page of the SPLC website, are direct reports from victims and witnesses of hate crimes, like a teacher from Washington who observed “‘Build a wall’ was chanted in our cafeteria Wed [after the election] at lunch. ‘If you aren’t born here, pack your bags’ was shouted in my own classroom.” Or a report from another woman who lives in Louisiana, “I was standing at a red light waiting to cross the street. A black truck with three white men pulled up to the red light. One of them yelled, ‘[Expletive] your black life!’ The other two began to laugh. One began to chant ‘Trump!’ as they drove away.”

This is sadly not an uncommon occurrence even in California. Of those 867 reported incidents in the 10-day period, 99 incidents came from California. This is more than the 23 on average for the same time period in 2015.

The Crescenta Valley has recently felt the sting of hate crime with targeted graffiti of “Trump” along with a swastika spray-painted on a garage, accompanied by a threatening note. This and other reports have been posted to the neighborhood social media app Nextdoor. The discussion raged on by residents who were shocked and saddened by these hate crimes.

“This created quite a reaction from people who said this is not what we want our neighborhood to say to people, this is not what we’re about. There was a lot of conversation and then, as we continued the dialogue, people were asking, ‘Is there some kind of action or statement we can make to say we don’t want that to be the message, we want [something better] to be the message of what our neighborhood’s all about?’” said Pastor Steve Poteet-Marshall of the Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church.

This spawned the idea to host a How to Handle Hate Crimes workshop at the CVUMC. Inviting the public in, the hope is that education and discussion can help to reduce hate crimes and handle them in a better way.

“[We thought], ‘Why don’t we have some kind of a gathering to think about what that [better message] might look like and get some feedback?” Poteet-Marshall said. “The idea was maybe to get the police and sheriff departments involved, because they’re both active in this area, and talk about hate crimes and what happens as far as they’re concerned with their investigations. And if there are things we can do for those victims, what should we be looking out for? [We want to] get some practical advice and we’ll also focus on how we create a positive out of this negative. That’s what we are hoping will come out of this meeting.”

The meeting will be held March 2 at the CVUMC church at 7 p.m. There will be guest speakers, information from the SPLC as well as local law enforcement, discussions and possibly even break-out groups to tackle specific issues and define a message for the community.

CVUMC is located at 2700 Montrose Ave. in Montrose. For more information on hate crimes from SPLC, visit SPLCenter.org.

  Charly Shelton