Story by Donald H. Harrison; Photos by Fred Kropveld
SAN DIEGO — Elected officials and Jewish communal leaders on Monday, Sept. 9, asked San Diegans to write to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and urge him to sign Assembly Bill 3024, the Stop Hate Littering Act which had its genesis here in San Diego.
The bill’s legislative author, Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego), said “eight instances of hate flyers were distributed throughout the city last year. This tactic, also known as ‘hate littering,’ has continued to grow each passing year and it is happening in neighborhoods right here in San Diego, Los Angeles, Fresno, and San Francisco, and it is time for this to stop.”
“The spread of these messages goes well beyond free speech; it is a deliberate strategy to instill fear and make people feel unsafe even in their own communities, stifling their freedom to express themselves and live authentically as themselves and as our neighbors,” Ward continued at a news conference at the San Carlos Recreation Center. “The hateful bigots distributing these flyers are targeting our Jewish, LGBTQ+, and other protected communities because currently there is little accountability for committing these acts.”
The location of the news conference was symbolic because last year a spate of antisemitic flyers were dropped onto lawns, over fences, and onto the windshields of cars — all private property — in the San Carlos, Del Cerro, Allied Gardens and Grantville neighborhoods, all part of City Council District 7, represented by Councilman Raul Campillo.
Campillo collaborated with Ward to draw up legislation that would curb hate littering while not impinging upon legitimate free speech. The bill survived scrutiny in the Judiciary Committees of both the Assembly and the State Senate, and also underwent amendments suggested by legal assistants to Gov. Newsom. The governor now has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill, which would go into effect immediately because its urgency clause was approved by more than two-thirds of the memberships of both houses.
“The distribution of threatening flyers is not just immoral but now with this legislation, it is illegal,” Campillo told the news conference. “AB 3024 strengthens the Ralph Civil Rights Act of 1976 by expanding the definition of ‘intimidation by the threat of violence’ that includes these materials on private property without permission and the intent to terrorize and harass individuals.”
Campillo said that hate litterers can now face civil penalties up to $25,000 per incident.
City Attorney Mara Elliott pointed out that if Gov. Newsom signs the legislation, it will go into effect a few days before Thursday evening, Oct. 3 when Rosh Hashanah begins. “The fact that families will be gathering in the shadow of a 360 percent increase in antisemitic incidents should be a source of deep concern for all of us,” she said.
“Free speech isn’t a free path to intimidate and terrorize our communities,” the city attorney added. “Distributing hate flyers with the intent to intimidate and dehumanize people is unacceptable and very soon it will be unlawful.”
Fabienne Perlov, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, cautioned that “while this bill is a critical foundational step in the right direction, hate does not disappear with a stroke of a pen. We must continue to work together, to fight back against hate, speaking out, educating our students, providing facts and research, enforcing our laws, and, most of all, looking out for each other.”
In a post-news conference interview, Rabbi Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El, which is located in the affected Del Cerro community, commented that “our neighborhood was targeted multiple times. … There were Holocaust survivors … who were truly terrorized and shook to their foundation as people witnessing the rise of the kind of hate speech propaganda that is meant to incite violence, that is meant to incite aggression, that they hadn’t seen since they were children, since they were growing up at the dawn of World War II.”
On the other hand, she said, she was pleased with the way the community united against the haters. She recalled that two elementary school students who saw the hate flyers when they came home with their parents from a late-night event awakened early, got on their scooters, and “went through the whole neighborhood trying to take down all the flyers that they could find so that no one would have to wake up and see them.”
Jeff Schindler, whose late parents Max and Rose Schindler survived the Holocaust, declared, “Cowards need to be held accountable and that is what we’ve got going on here!”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.
Stop all hate representations!