We can all be #PittsburghStrong

This weekend’s violence was personal for me. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh.

I had my Bar Mitzvah at Tree of Life Congregation – the site of this weekend’s tragedy. For many years, my mother was the Principal of the Tree of Life Hebrew school. My heart goes out to all this weekend’s victims and their families.  

I am Jewish and the son of an immigrant. To the credit of our amazing American society – day to day I truly don’t feel like someone who is subject to persecution. However, the cold reality is that I am the target of a (seemingly) select few who wish to kill people like me – because I’m someone who occasionally listens to country music, is a parent of a kindergartner, goes to the movies, shops at stores...the list goes on and on because the hate of a select few seems to continuously proliferate into our so called ‘safe places.’

I thought the Washington Post summarized the current situation well:

"The Pittsburgh massacre is yet another example of the homicidal fury and bigotry on the fringes of American society. It weaves together elements of many other active-shooter incidents that have horrified Americans in recent years, and highlighted the unusual frequency of mass casualty events in this country in comparison with almost every other nation in the world.

Once again the suspect was a man armed with a semiautomatic assault-style weapon — as was, for example, the gunman who killed 49 people in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in 2016. Once again the crime scene was a house of worship, a classic “soft target,” as was the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., where a disturbed gunman hoping to kill his mother-in-law slaughtered 26 people during a Sunday service last November.

And once again the victims were members of an ethnic or religious minority with a long history of persecution — as were the nine African American worshipers killed three years ago when a white supremacist invaded a Bible study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C."

This situation is unacceptable and I feel compelled to use my platform to share my thoughts. 

1)    We are not holding our country’s leaders accountable to the actual problem at hand. Our politicians do not directly speak to the ‘safe places’ issue nor do they state holistic objectives and strategies to solve the issue. Regardless of where we, as individuals, fall on the political spectrum this is clearly a problem and one that requires bi-partisan solutioning and compromises binding us in intent and tactics against those select few who hate the entirety of us. 

2)    Technology has provided many benefits to our society, but social media, in particular, has offered a haven for the darker elements of our society, who are inclined to hate and ultimately to violent acts, to congregate. The community building and encouragement of these extremists with each other emboldens the disenfranchised – where once they may have not have acted on their violent tendencies – they now commit to violence knowing that they will be celebrated in these communities. It’s imperative that the tech titans who control 99% of the infrastructure and have trillions of dollars in market capitalization make the appropriate investments to fully and properly monitor their platforms to ensure that these groups are deprived of the oxygen they need. I’m not looking to get into free speech debate here – these companies are for profit enterprises that can establish their owns terms of use which surely 99% of their customers and users would be supportive of. Let’s just call it good business and good corporate citizenship.

Whatever your political opinions are, I hope that all who read this exercise their right to vote this November 6th and hold our leaders and institutions increasingly accountable for fostering and maintaining a civil society and safe places.

Note: This is a personal statement and is no way affiliated with my employer