On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the July 16, 2015, terrorist attacks, action teams for Chattanooga’s Council Against Hate gave an update of their progress in developing strategies to address the root causes of hate.
Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, 40; Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, 26; Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, 35; Sgt. Carson Holmquist, 25; and Lance Cpl. Squire “Skip” Wells, 21, all died in the attacks.
“By being here tonight, by speaking up, by showing that you do not stand idly by – that even if you are not the bullied, you are going to stand up to the bully, we appreciate that,” Alison Lebovitz, the council’s co-chairperson, told the crowd gathered at The Camp House Monday evening.
“There’s a lot of buzz about what you are doing right here,” said Allison Goodman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Southeast region. “People are paying attention to the good work in Chattanooga, and they want to find themselves similarly.”
Goodman shared some data that the Anti-Defamation League has been compiling for the last century. She said that, while incidents of hate have been on the rise over the past two years, “we also sit in a place where people are actively and eagerly fighting against this narrative defining themselves in a vision of an America that they want to be.”