Thread by @OJPAC

STATEMENT BY OJPAC! It doesn’t happen in a vacuum that a person is shameless enough to go on a 3 minute inflammatory public rant about Jews and for most people in attendance to take his side too. It’s a result of a toxic environment where agitators spent years weaponizing debates

about municipal policy with an outsized focus on Orthodox Jews and the commentary being loaded with one-sided reporting and flat out lies. Often, the conversation is framed that every local problem is the fault of Orthodox Jews and everything about Orthodox Jews is faulty.

This narrative has been pushed by political candidates; elected officials; Facebook group administrators and by some players in media. Just today, transcripts from the investigation into @andrewcuomo revealed that the COVID-19 “cluster zones” from last fall were with a bias.

Many areas with bad COVID—19 numbers got a pass while Cuomo and his enablers @RichAzzopardi and @melissadderosa kept pushing Orthodox Jewish-focused Red Zones including in neighborhoods that had better rates than whole counties. The focus on Orthodox Jews by Cuomo was followed by

hate attacks in the streets, discrimination in the private sector and targeted enforcement by government. It took hard work in the public arena and in the courts for the craziness to stop but scars were left. The Haverstraw scene is just an illustration of the issue at hand.

In many counties from Ocean in New Jersey to Rockland, Orange and Sullivan in New York, the inflammatory rhetoric and reporting has been scaled back due to responsible steps by press, media and officials who came to understand that words matter. More work is needed to assure that

when reporting about municipal policy; when campaigning about it and when enforcing rules such as during COVID-19, that the focus should not be on one ethnic community and sure not in a negative, inflammatory way. OJPAC continuously releases data, reports, studies, articles and

press releases to help steer the policy conversation in a truthful and productive direction. Candidates, officials and journalists are invited to reach out to request data, facts, comment and perspective that can help shape reporting and policy in an accurate and fair way.

Thanks public officials for speaking out about the latest incident including but not limited to @KathyHochul @TishJames @ElectEdDay @lawler4ny @KarlBrabenec @SenSchumer @Elijah4Senate @JamesSkoufis @RocklandDA and @kenzebrowski_ny. Please read this thread and share it. Thanks!

Listen to the laughter and applause as the bigoted person says “garbage cans stay out there from two [days] to a week after garbage is picked up… So I can stare at a garbage can for a week because they (Jews) are too lazy to take it in [or] because their maid didn’t pick it up.”