This is no time to be nonpartisan

As I reflect upon our presidential election, childhood memories flood my being. I remember growing up as a young man in Forest Hills, Queens, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. We were a predominantly Jewish, first-generation immigrant community. The Holocaust and its devastation was never far from our consciousness. I was curious about the Holocaust. How could this happen? How could Germany elect a buffoon like Adolf Hitler as its leader? As I grew older and wiser I often wondered why we (Jewish people) didn’t stand up earlier and more strongly in the face of Hitler and his array of racist, anti-Semitic hooligans. I would fantasize about how I would have conducted myself as a German Jew. Would I have stood up to Hitler and Nazism? Finally, I often wondered how Hitler could have ever come to power. How in the hell could an educated, civilized nation elect someone as obviously hateful and unstable as Hitler

Immediately following the election of Donald Trump, I received a plethora of emails from leaders – university presidents, association chairs – all recommending calm and unity. Each of these emails mentioned the divisiveness of the campaign while noting that some of the rhetoric of our president-elect was troubling. Each of these communications also included a note from the sending organization stating in various ways that they are a “nonpartisan” organization dedicated to serving their students, community or university.

I found myself concerned by their uniform declaration of nonpartisanship. Why did they include this pronouncement in their communication? Are they unwittingly normalizing Trump?

As I reflected upon this, I remembered vividly a book I read on the Holocaust – “I Will Bear Witness – A Diary of the Nazi Years,” by Victor Klemperer. Klemperer, a German Jewish professor, veteran of World War I and noted historian, recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secret, offer a vivid description of everyday life in Hitler’s Germany. Klemperer first loses his job, then his car, then he and his wife are forced to move into a “Jew House.” As I read his diary, I was unnerved. I was struck by his desperate attempt to understand and reconcile himself to the horrors of Nazi Germany. I remember his frantic ruminations: He had fought in WWI, he was a “good” German and “they” would not do this to “us.”

I often wondered could the Nazi’s have grown as powerful and evil if we had all fought back earlier and stood up while we were able to stand up? What if we had fought back every inch of the way, every moment of the day? Why did we make it easier for them to treat us as they did? Perhaps we tried too hard to understand, to be reasonable and protect ourselves as they exterminated the handicapped, the gypsies, the Communists, and of course, us. And perhaps, as frightening as it may seem, history is about to repeat itself.

If you ask me, Americans have every reason to be concerned. If not for ourselves, for our communities of color: our Muslim, African-American and Latino brothers and sisters. We must be concerned for our LGBTQ community. While we are all ultimately at risk, at the greatest risk are those members of our society who are already currently ‘at risk.’

As a 19-year-old in 1961, I journeyed to Mississippi as an original Freedom Rider. I spent 40 days incarcerated in a Mississippi state penitentiary, Parchman Farm, where I experienced first-hand the terror of what it was like to be a black person in Mississippi in the 1960s. I journeyed throughout the South as a civil rights activist. I met Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. I saw and felt the horrific poverty of the Mississippi Delta, experienced the depraved terror of Bull Connor and his Birmingham gestapo, mourned the horror of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four innocent black girls in Birmingham. Most of all, I remember the terror and fear that black folk were forced to endure. I remember Rabbi Perry Nussbaum telling us Jewish Freedom Riders how difficult life was for Jews in Jackson, Miss. And now our presence was making it even worse for Jackson’s Jewish community, he said. Only weeks after he met with us at Parchman, both his home and synagogue were firebombed by the Klu Klux Klan. I met a wonderful African-American civil rights activist while in Mississippi in the 1960s – the Rev. Vincent Harding. He would often counsel us “young-uns” to remember that one never ultimately wins the struggle for social justice. He reminded us that history is replete with injustice and the endless struggle to correct such injustice. It is a struggle we need to engage in each day of our lives, being ensured of nothing, being guaranteed neither victory nor justice.

Today, I struggle daily to protect the lives of at-risk East Harlem and South Bronx youth, so it is difficult for me to remain calm and patient. One cannot tell me that all is right. As Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses in his wonderful book “Between the World and Me,” we should beware dreamers who wear rose-colored glasses and tell young black folk that America has turned the corner on racism. Should I remain nonpartisan when my Muslim City College of New York students tell me they are literally afraid to walk the streets and travel on our subways?

This is neither the time for bipartisanship or nonpartisanship. This is also not the time for reticence. If we settle for apathy, we are turning a deaf ear to our president-elect’s hateful rhetoric and the fear it is engendering in communities of color and beyond. When we declare nonpartisanship, we are saying we take no position regarding the hateful rhetoric of Trump, Steve Bannon and their fellow travelers. If we remain nonpartisan, it will become easier for those voices of divisiveness and hate to gain the upper hand.

So what do we do today? Well, we must struggle with and for our Latino, Muslim, LGBTQ, African-American and all of our fellow at-risk Americans. If we have learned anything from the lessons of the Holocaust, it is to speak up: Speak up loud and clear for all who are threatened by the purveyors of hate else they will soon enough come for us.

Lew Zuchman is a civil rights spokesperson for Facing History and Ourselves, an organization dedicated to confronting bigotry, racism, and anti-semitism. Zuchman was an original 1961 Freedom Rider and 1960s civil rights activist. Zuchman is the Executive Director of SCAN New York, an East Harlem/South Bronx based Youth and Family Service provider, as well as, an Adjunct Professor at CCNY’s Colin Powell School for Civil and Global Leadership.