An eastern Queens Council candidate is calling for community-based initiatives and cross-ethnic solidarity to deal with the recent spike in antisemitic incidents and anti-Asian hate crimes.
Jaslin Kaur, a South Asian candidate in the 23rd Council District, released a detailed plan, titled “Standing up to antisemitism and hate violence,” that seeks to move away from a “prosecution heavy approach” and focus on implementing community-based programs that would help deal with the root cause of the problem. It is featured on the issues page on the candidate’s campaign website.
“We are relying on community-based organizations to be the ones to tackle the issues that arise in our communities, to be able to do the responses needed to help our communities feel safer, and feel like we’re actually in coalition with people together,” Kaur said in an interview. She is one of 66 candidates for the City Council who called for the removal of police officers and security measures in
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Shortly after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York managed to enrage much of the Jewish community with a single tweet.
After witnessing a large funeral in the Orthodox neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last April, de Blasio warned “the Jewish community, and all communities” that police would take extreme measures to enforce social-distancing restrictions prohibiting public gatherings. Many Orthodox leaders took offense to the singling out of their community and this particular funeral rather than cracking down on crowds in public parks. And others, across New York and the country, were infuriated by what they saw as “scapegoating” of all Jews based on the behavior of one sect.