On 5th Anniversary of Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Civil Rights Coalition Urges Trans-Atlantic Response to Hate Crimes
Washington – Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement on the 5th Anniversary of the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA). Next week, Henderson will head a delegation including Jewish, Muslim, Latino, African-American, Asian-American, and LGBT civil rights leaders to Berlin urging a stronger trans-Atlantic response to address hate crimes at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference on anti-Semitism:
“For the last five years, the HCPA has helped law enforcement prevent, track, and prosecute bias-motivated crimes and made the United States a leader in addressing hate crimes. But many across the world are still suffering under governments that fail to protect them from religious, racial, ethnic, homophobic, and xenophobic aggression.
Ten years after the OSCE’s historic declaration to take a proactive stance against hate crimes, implementation has been notoriously uneven and millions of people are still at risk of violence, persecution, and displacement for who they are and how they worship. The HCPA is a model for preventing and tracking bias-motivated crimes that we recommend all OSCE member nations to consider.
That’s why I am leading a delegation of diverse organizations to next week’s OSCE 10th Anniversary conference on anti-Semitism in Berlin. We certainly have a long way to go toward addressing the root causes of oppression in the United States, but our progress can be a model for the world, and inter-racial, inter-faith coalitions of minorities like ours can galvanize global change through shared struggle.
There is still much work to be done in the United States, but our lessons learned over centuries of struggle to be a more inclusive democracy – from emancipation, women’s suffrage, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, immigration reform, protecting religious minorities, and LGBT equality – can resonate in the global struggle for human rights for all.”
Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.