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The suburbs mobilize for Black Lives Matter
Jews in the D jews and racial justice
MAYA GOLDMAN/JEWISH NEWS
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Weekend protests in suburban neighborhoods support Black Lives Matter.
JN STAFF
Across Metro Detroit, many protesters in majority-white suburbs with large Jewish populations mobilized on foot and in vehicles in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Jewish News staffers reported from several of these scenes.
WEST BLOOMFIELD
About 500 people gathered at a police reform protest in West Bloomfield Friday afternoon, June 5.
As the crowd amassed, volunteers walked around to help attendees register to vote. Protesters stood on either side of Orchard Lake Road between 14 and 15 Mile roads. Cars honked in solidarity as they passed.
It was organized by college students Thomas Callahan of Southfield and Raniyah Reynolds of Detroit. The pair founded an organization called Black Leader’s Reformative Institute. Reynolds, a junior at Michigan State University, said it was important to her and Callahan that the police reform movement have a presence in the Detroit suburbs.
“I just wanted to make sure that we took it outside to places that are not necessarily known for police brutality but making sure that we’re all united, we’re all a community, we all understand that this is not OK,” Reynolds said. “We wanted to make sure that West Bloomfield had a voice as well.”
While many organizers across the country — including in Detroit and Ann Arbor — are demanding that their cities defund police forces and instead invest in other community services, Reynolds and Callahan organized their march around police reform.
People from across West Bloomfield and surrounding cities came out to protest. Nancy Cohen, a West Bloomfield resident and a Hillel Day School teacher, said she came to the event to send a message to her students and her own children.
“As a woman in her 50s, I’ve never felt so disheartened by the events and the political divide of our country,” she said. “You can’t sit quietly. You’ve got to be involved.”
Teri Weingarden, who serves as the treasurer of West Bloomfield Township, said she felt the Jewish presence at the event was important because of Judaism’s belief in tikkun olam. “It is our responsibility to repair the world,” she said.
Weingarden believes the township board would fund additional anti-bias training for their police department if a proposal were to be made.
The crowd marched down Orchard Lake to the West Bloomfield Police Department for a short rally.
Rabbi Rachel Lawson Shere of Adat Shalom Synagogue held two signs — one with a Hebrew verse from the Torah and the other saying “I Can’t Breathe,” the final words of George Floyd.
“The word in Hebrew for ‘breathe’ is the same word for ‘spirit,’” Shere said. “People’s
ANDREW LAPIN/JEWISH NEWS
ANDREW LAPIN/JEWISH NEWS
spirits are dying and we’re standing idly by… We’ve lived too long in a completely ignorant and racist society, and I’m sick of it.”
In the police station parking lot, Reynolds and Callahan each said a few words, followed by a short speech from West Bloomfield Police Chief Mike Patton. Protesters also observed a moment of silence for Breonna Taylor’s birthday. Taylor was killed in her Kentucky home on March 13, when police officers entered her apartment on a search warrant and shot her at least eight times.
“Right now is a time for police officers to listen to what their communities are telling them,” Patton said.
There was one uncomfortable encounter near
— RABBI RACHEL LAWSON SHERE
the beginning of the protest. A man with a gun clipped to his waistband approached a group of protesters.
In a video clip posted to Facebook by West Bloomfield resident Claire Jolliffe, Callahan tells the man the organizers didn’t want any private citizens with guns in the vicinity. The man said he believed in the same cause as the organizers, but that he wanted young people to understand that “firearms don’t incite violence.”
After a few moments, West Bloomfield Deputy Chief Curt Lawson came over to explain the man had a right to be at the protest with his gun. “I know him, he’s not a threat,” Lawson told Callahan.
Callahan told the JN after the protest that although the situation was uncomfortable, he understood the man had a right to bear arms. He also appreciated Lawson’s efforts to “help contribute to the de-escalation of the situation, which is what we stand for.”
Jolliffe hopes there will be another protest in West Bloomfield soon that highlights the problems with policing in Oakland County. - Maya Goldman
HUNTINGTON WOODS
An estimated 700 people, many of them teenagers, staked out their own Black Lives Matter protest in Huntington Woods, a city of around 6,000 residents, late in the afternoon on Friday, June 5.
Marchers largely stuck to the sidewalks as they made their way from the Huntington Woods Lutheran Church on 11 Mile Road and Scotia, onto a brief, busy stretch of Woodward Avenue, before turning down Lincoln Drive into a residential neighborhood. Many cars along Woodward honked their approval.
“Huntington Woods cannot be silent — we must support the movement for black lives,” Maya Edery, who co-organized the march with a group of seven of her friends, neighbors and immediate family, told the JN.
Edery, 27, is a Huntington Woods native home from New York for the summer. She said she was inspired by her grandparents, longtime Huntington Woods residents Arnie and Lainie Shifman, who “taught me the importance of speaking out when something is unjust and the importance of taking action to create the world you want to see.” Arnie Shifman died this January; Lainie marched on Friday alongside her family.
Chants reciting the names of police violence victims George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were accompanied by one marcher’s drums.
The peaceful march was organized on social media channels, as well as via email listservs, and the majority of marchers were white. Almost continued on page 24
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ALEXANDER CLEGG/JEWISH NEWS
ALEXANDER CLEGG/JEWISH NEWS
Jews in the D jews and racial justice
Holocaust Memorial Center Speaks Out In a statement, the center called to “extinguish fl ames” of hatred.
MAYA GOLDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER T he Holocaust Memorial Center HMC in Farmington Hills released a statement urging the community to speak up when faced with injustice.
The center released and not wait for others to do it the unsigned statement June 3 for them. in response to protests across “We cannot rewrite history. the country after a Minneapolis But have we learned the lessons police officer killed resident of history? What will each of George Floyd on May 25. us do now, today, to ensure the
“Every day at HMC we teach safety of others? The safety of the lessons of the Holocaust the Other?” it says. “It is not — that hate has terrible and someone else’s job to make it long-lasting consequences. That better. What will I do today? it is not enough to stand by and What will you?” do nothing. That every indiIn response to the Jewish News’ vidual, family and community request for an interview, HMC can make a difference in our provided another unsigned world. As Elie Wiesel famously statement, sent through public said, ‘I swore never to be silent relations firm Marx Layne and whenever and wherever human Company. beings endure suffering and “At the Holocaust Memorial humiliation,’” the statement Center, we engage, educate reads. and empower people of all
The HMC called on people backgrounds by teaching about to “extinguish [the] flames” of the senseless murder of milhatred. lions during the Holocaust,”
“How many photographs the second statement reads. have we seen of bystanders “Our message is that each of watching passively as books us must respect and stand up were destroyed and synagogues for the rights of others if we burned during Kristallnacht?” it are to prevent future genocides reads. “If only people had stood and hate crimes. We empower up for their Jewish neighbors, individuals to react to contemprotested the Nuremberg laws, porary issues like the killing of refused to buy newspapers filled George Floyd and the events of with hate-spewing propaganda! the past weeks by taking action. Why didn’t more people do We all can be upstanders, not something?” bystanders, when we see hatred
HMC wrote that they hope and prejudice in our own compeople will stand up themselves, munities.”
continued from page 23
every protester wore a mask. - Andrew Lapin
A WOODWARD CARAVAN
Folks along Woodward Avenue saw a different kind of cruise on Sunday, June 7. No muscle cars or roadsters revving their engines — just Subarus, Toyotas and Nissans driven by mostly white suburbanites, sporting signs like “Black Lives Matter” and “We Will Not be Silent.”
The vehicles were part of the 250-car “Suburban Silence is Racist Violence Caravan” that drove down Woodward from 8 Mile to Lone Pine on Sunday afternoon. Several Jewish groups, including the Social Justice Committee of Birmingham Temple, Repair the World Detroit and Detroit Jews for Justice, were among the many social action groups supporting the event, which had more than 900 Facebook users interested, according to organizer Emma Green of Madison Heights.
One organizer of the family-friendly event, Rich Feldman of Huntington Woods, has been working for racial equality since the 1960s. “I made a commitment for life to transform our
culture and society,” he said. “It’s not a moment, but a journey.”
Robb Lippitt of Repair the World Detroit brought his wife, Debbie, and daughters Eryn, 20, and Molly, 22. “It’s important for Jews to speak out, recognizing that we know what oppression is like and we need to do something about it,” he said.
The cars slowly made their way down Woodward with hazard lights on, sticking to the two left lanes and honking in solidarity with spectators along the road who held their own “Black Lives Matter” signs. The procession ended in the parking lot of the Birmingham Unitarian Church on Woodward, where speakers addressed the crowd and led them in chants.
Noah Krasman, 25, of Farmington Hills, was at the protest with his father, Gary.
“This speaks to our human values, along with our Jewish values,” Noah said. “One informs the other.”
Gary added, “We are all God’s creatures, and it’s well beyond time people have started to speak out and inform the rest of the world.” - Jackie Headapohl
