Jewish Leaders Called to Aid Fight
By Charles Radin
The Boston Globe
A prominent Roxbury minister appealed to the Jews of Greater Boston yesterday to join the black community to stem the rising tide of youth violence on the city's streets.
"We cannot let this violence keep spinning out of control," the Rev. Hurmon E. Hamilton told about 250 Jewish community activists, rabbis, and representatives of other ethnic groups at the annual meeting of the Jewish Community Relations Council, which was held at the Parker House in downtown Boston.
"This is not a black problem," Hamilton said. ``It is a shared issue."
Homicides in Boston last year hit a 10-year high of 75, of which 52 occurred in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, according to the Boston Police Department. This year, 18 of 24 murders to date were in those areas.
Hamilton, president of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, allied with Rabbi Jonah D. Pesner of Temple Israel in Boston to rally faith-based organizations to push for the recently passed healthcare reform legislation. He said that campaign provides a model for attacking the root causes of youth violence.
"From all over the region came Jews of various persuasions, bringing their power" to the hard-fought legislative battle over healthcare, he said. "There you were standing with Seventh-day Adventists praying in a former Jewish synagogue in Roxbury."
Asked after the speech what he wanted specifically, Hamilton said that the last time there was an explosion of youth violence, in the 1990s, "the Jewish community came and stood with the black church, walked with the black church, worked with the black church, everywhere that the black church was standing, walking and working. That's what I want. I know they are ready."
Hamilton's speech was greeted with a standing ovation and pledges of support by Jewish leaders, who agreed the healthcare campaign and the black-Jewish alliance in opposition to genocide in Darfur provide models.
"One of the solutions is jobs," said Steven Grossman, a member of the community relations council board and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "There are inexhaustible intellectual and financial resources which this community has been able to put together again and again."
Grossman said that while the personal relationships among Jewish community activists and black ministers that were key to stemming youth violence in the 1990s are gone due to deaths and political changes, many healthy, newer relationships were created during the struggle for healthcare reform.
But, Grossman warned, solving youth violence is much more difficult than expanding healthcare to the uninsured, and "we have got a city that potentially is going to explode this summer."
