Thread by @csoandy

Dear @MayorLungoKoehn (cc @Morell4Medford @zacbears):
This will be a bit long, but it’ll be a series of tweets, not just a picture, so it’s accessible to more humans.

I think I can see your effort here, but this semi-apology is highly problematic. 1/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

https://twitter.com/MayorLungoKoehn/status/1466851295344705541

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears Let’s start with your language. An apology should always start with “I,” not “We.” “I” owns. “We” deflects. Who is “We”? There are some exceptions, but “I” is more powerful, and, actually, helpful as you write the rest of the apology. 2/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears Why are you apologizing? You need to reiterate the action. Are you apologizing for the harm? No, you *regret* the harm. You need to apologize for the action. *How* did your office fail this spectacularly? What specific things did your team do or not do? 3/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears Why are you apologizing to the community at large? By the way, this is a dog whistle; almost every time that a public official apologies or notes an antisemitic action, it’s “all forms of hate” or “community at large.” Can’t you just apologize to us? 4/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears Now let’s talk about “used in error.” The *error* is the entire point of your apology, but it’s glossed over. This should be where you really go. Maybe: “We did not reach out to faith leaders in the community, despite a long tradition of doing so.” 5/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears Really, I want to understand precisely how an image associated with a fringe messianic Christian movement came into play here. How did your staff find this image? How did no one have enough knowledge to even question it? This is the meat of the failure. 6/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears The optics from over here, which I’d like to think is wrong based on past history, is that City Hall communicates more with antisemitic eliminationists than with Jews, and doesn’t have enough in-house awareness to detect awful rhetoric. 7/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears “attributed with Christian symbolism.” First, copyediting should have been done here; but let’s not tarnish all of our Christian siblings with this one. I’m pretty sure that most of them would find this image offensive (my sample today agrees). 8/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears The problem is language that calls for Jews to “atone for Israel”, be “clean from sin,” mixed in with the Christian language. How disconnected is your office that *no one* questioned this? 9/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears Also, as an aside, the Hanukiyah was displayed backwards from general practice (minor nitpick). Like, who set this up? 10/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears In short, I am disappointed in the lack of general process here, and it probably applies elsewhere: how did no one second-guess and triple-check this? I hate recommending sensitivity training, but Judaism 101 might be a good idea. 11/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears I don’t know how many Christians were discomfited by the use of a tree, versus a nativity scene, to represent their holiday, and whether that’s tied up in First Amendment jurisprudence, which might be a better educational display! 12/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears That’s it. I hope this was helpful, so you can better understand what it feels like over here. I’m off to go welcome Shabbat (that’s our weekly celebration of the day Adonai rested after creating the world). May you find peace and joy. 13/ #MedfordAntiSemitism

@MayorLungoKoehn @Morell4Medford @zacbears If you got this far, and are looking for the original image:

https://twitter.com/enmalkm/status/1466803224720158730