The Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage will feature a session at 1:30 p.m. Friday on addressing hate and discrimination — put on by the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL was founded more than a hundred years ago to fight anti-Semitism. But their mission also includes securing “fair and just treatment to all,” and for its Pacific Northwest office, that includes in Alaska.
Regional Director Stephen Paolini and Advisory Board member Miriam Aarons say the Anti-Defamation League wants to do more work in Alaska in the future.
Listen:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Miriam Aarons: Well, racism in Alaska, especially against Alaska Native people, is not new. And I’m really excited that the ADL is expanding its anti-racism work here in Alaska. I’ve seen a lot more emboldened hate speech. I think that you don’t need to look much further than the Anchorage Assembly meetings. And it’s really concerning to me. I think that racism has no place in our society, and especially no place in public forums, such as the Anchorage Assembly.
Casey Grove: Yeah, I mean, even even if we’re just talking about the Anchorage Assembly, things in the last few years have gotten, I think it’s fair to say, really tense there. But just in general, how have you seen this change in the last few years?
MA: It’s definitely more out in the open. When I was growing up, I would hear things in the hallways at school, but I never really heard adults speak openly, say racist things about Alaska Native people. But within the last few years, I’ve definitely seen a lot more of that. And it’s, it’s really disconcerting.
CG: Yeah, definitely. Stephen, tell me just a little bit about the Anti-Defamation League, what that is, and then also, is there maybe more of an increased effort to be involved in Alaska here more recently?
Stephen Paolini: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for that question. So we are certainly founded in a support for the Jewish community, but we want to work and support all communities. I’m not Jewish myself, but I come to this work with firsthand experience with ADL supporting me when I experienced hate and bias. And over the last year, we’ve really looked to redouble our commitment to working in Alaska. But one of the key challenges that we have is reporting here in Alaska, is really, really sparse. FBI Uniform Criminal Code data showed just nine incidents of hate crimes last year. And we know that’s not indicative of the experience on the ground. And it shows a real gap. And for my role at ADL, we want to help close that by being a source where folks can report when they’ve experienced hate and bias and get that support that they need. That’s my job, is to support victims, and most importantly, make sure that we understand the size and scale of the problem, which is quite, quite extreme here. And in all communities, really.
CG: When you talk about tools for reporting hate and bias, what does that look like? I mean, what does reporting hate look like when someone’s experienced that?
SP: Yeah, so individuals report to ADL for a variety of reasons. Our office has handled a little bit under 500 incidents of hate and bias. And they run the full gamut from, you know, noncriminal incidents that are nonetheless very serious and must be condemned. Just to give a quick example, one of our board members here in Alaska was recently victimized by really virulently anti-Semitic fliers that were distributed around Anchorage. And it might not be a crime, but it’s really serious and concerning and indicative of a larger trend of toxicity in our discourse and harassment of people based on their identity. And then it ranges all the way up to criminal acts. And folks report to us sometimes because they don’t feel comfortable reporting to law enforcement. But other times because they just want to make sure there’s an advocate to help work closely with law enforcement to make sure they understand the full context of what’s happening in that incident. But we like to see ourselves as sort of an ally and an advocate for people.
CG: Miriam, for you, I mean, you’ve been to AFN before, this is kind of one of these breakout sessions, away from the main floor. What do you expect from this? I mean, what do you think it’s going to be like, and what do you think people are going to tell you?
MA: I really don’t have any expectations. I hope that people are willing to attend and share their experiences and their concerns. I hope that they learn about the ADL’s mission, and that the ADL learns more about what people are experiencing on the ground here in Alaska. I think that doing nothing when incidents of racism occur supports that kind of behavior. So I think it’s really important to stop it when you can. It’s poison. It’s contagious. And it’s it’s not something that I think the majority of Alaskans want to see in our society.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Casey here.
