Berke: ‘No Hate’ Act shines light into darkness

As I pointed out when I announced the Council Against Hate last year, Tennessee occupies an uncomfortable leadership position among states grappling with the rise of hate crimes and violent extremism. As recently as a few years ago, the FBI ranked Tennessee as ninth in the nation for hate crime offenses. According to the TBI, hate crimes and violence against law enforcement officials both increased in Tennessee last year.

Of course, these statistics refer only to the incidents we know about – not the myriad encounters and acts that go unreported to law enforcement. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 250,000 hate crimes occur every year. Only 2% are reported.

We should never lose sight of the real harm represented in these numbers. Swastikas spray-painted on houses of worship. Ethnic slurs yelled at parks and playgrounds. Intimidation toward LGBT individuals in the workplace. When we tolerate acts of intolerance – the vandalism, the racist jokes, the harassment of minorities – our silence emboldens the intolerant. This is what the Anti-Defamation League refers to as the base of the “pyramid of hate,” which shows that moments of seemingly harmless bias can escalate swiftly to lethal acts of violence.

Everyone in Chattanooga has a daily responsibility to demonstrate our values of inclusion and peace. That’s what the Council Against Hate is all about – and I hope everyone is able to join me Monday evening at the Camp House at 5:30 p.m. for our next public meeting. The Chattanooga Police Department works tirelessly to make sure that victims of hate crimes get the same outstanding care and services as any other criminal victims in our community. Being more proactive and strategic about understanding how hate groups are organizing and what they are planning will require substantially more help. As of right now, we are starting from a serious deficit of knowledge.

Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI and other intelligence-gathering operations pivoted their resources to focus on foreign terrorist threats. One of the consequences of this decision was that vital information about domestic terrorism, particularly ethno-nationalists and other hate groups, dried up. Today, when hate groups mobilize, police departments, sheriff’s offices, and other agencies may lack the information they need to prepare.

That’s why I am encouraged to see U.S. Reps. Don Beyer, D-Virginia, and Pete Olson, R-Texas, introduce the bipartisan National Opposition to Hate, Assault, and Threats to Equality (NO HATE) Act last week. This landmark legislation will, if passed, improve the way hate crimes are reported and provide new resources for their victims. Specifically, the NO HATE Act has a pair of principal components: First, it would expand the National Incident-Based Reporting System – also known as NIBRS – which collects uniform data from state and local law enforcement agencies about criminal activity, and second, it would create new hotlines that would allow the public to contribute information about hate crimes and connect victims with law enforcement.

Cities like ours will need much more support from the federal government in the months and years ahead to end hate for good, but the NO HATE Act is an important start. I’m asking Tennessee’s congressional delegation to join this bipartisan effort to help state and local law enforcement get the tools we need to adequately address the rise of hate here at home.

As we see, month after month, year after year, hate groups are continuing to recruit, radicalize, and organize in cities and towns across our country. There’s a lot we still don’t know about hate – and what we don’t know could hurt us. The NO HATE Act shines a light into this darkness. I look forward to Congress’s swift action to move it forward.

Andy Berke is the mayor of Chattanooga. For more information on the Mayor’s Council Against Hate, please visit cha.city/againsthate.