Messages of love, forgiveness trump hate
Armed with numerous facts, and messages of love and forgiveness, the Social Work 435 Class produced a daylong conference Wednesday aimed at combating fear and ignorance that leads to hatred.
Titled, “Hate: How it Preys on Or Fears and Ignorance,” the conference, which ran from 8 a.m.-4 p.m., featured six keynote speakers, presentations by three CSC students and remarks from CSC officials. In addition attendees participated in two table talks that dug deeper into the topic of hate.
Among the featured speakers were: Sammy Rangel co-founder of Life After Hate; Dr. Ferial Pearson Instructor of Education UNO; Christopher Eickholt attorney and ACLU lobbyist; Chris Singleton inspirational speak and former professional baseball player; Monique Mousseau Native American and LGBTQ advocates and Felipa De Leon, Certified Federal Police Officer.
By Samantha Persinger
Forgiving one’s self is key to
criminal rehabilitation
The Hate conference started off the morning with a testimony of how you can overcome hate and find forgiveness.
Sammy Rangel is a social worker that has spoken around the world about hate and forgiveness. Rangel wears many hats as he is an author, peace activist, father and speaker. He has founded Former Anonymous, a self-help program and Life After Hate, a network with the mission of leading people to forgiveness of themselves and others. Rangel introduced himself with why social work is his life and how he strives to help others see his profession the way he does.
“I spend a lot of time on the road going to institutions or other organizations where we have to convince, retrain, help social workers relearn the reason they got into the field in the first place,” Rangel said.
Rangel continued his speech with his life story. He talked about domestic violence in his childhood that led to his path of violence in his early life. Before he found forgiveness and a path much more suited to Rangel as he spoke passionately about social work.
“You can’t sign up to work for the condemned and the afflicted only to become an antagonist in that space,” Rangel said.
By Dinema Mate
Eickholt defines hate crimes
Christopher ‘’Spike’’ Eickholt, Government Liaison for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska, was the noon speaker at yesterday’s Hate Conference. The topics Eickholt covered were hate speech, hate crime and the First Amendment.
Eickholt explained that under the First Amendment everyone has the right to voice out an opinion, even if it is offensive or hurtful. However, free speech turns into hate speech when it attacks attributes protected under the First Amendment such as, race, religion, ethnic origin, sex, disability and sexual orientation. Gender identity is still not covered under hate speech in Nebraskan legislation.
A hate crime is define as a crime that has been motivated by prejudice. Eickholt, explained that hate crimes can only be tried as such if there is evidence that the victim was targeted due to perceived attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, disability and sexual orientation, as previously discussed, articles protected by the First Amendment.
“Spray painting a neighbors wall, though unpleasant cannot be categorized as a hate crime, spray painting racial slurs on the same wall, makes it a hate crime.” Eickholt said.
Eickholt’s presentation attracted both students and people from the surrounding communities, inclusing CSC Alumn Bill Stolldorf, 75, of Crawford, CSC class of 1968. “I came particularly for the ACLU speaker and I was not disappointed. The speaker provided a lot of information,” Stolldorf said.
By Zachary Carlson
Singleton speaks of forgiveness
“Stand up and hug someone that is different than you, then tell them that you love them.”
This is how Chris Singleton opened his talk at the Hate Conference in the Scottsbluff Room of the Student Center from 12:45-4:00 p.m. on Wednesday.
Singleton is one of many affected by the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015. On that day nine people were killed in the basement of the church during their bible study. Chris’s mother, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, was one of them.
Within a month of his mother’s death, his father also died from alcohol related issues.
Singleton, 18 years old, had no parents, two siblings to take care of, and still felt no hate for the killer.
“I still believe in forgiveness and how powerful it is for the person that was affected by it,” Singleton said. “Before, I just wanted to be an athlete, maybe an athletic director, but now my mission is really just focusing on young people uniting as one.”
Singleton said the killer’s motive was to start a race war, but as it turned out, the community was only brought closer together.
Not everyone affected by the killer is forgiving the way Singleton is. Chris said the first time his sister heard him express forgiveness for the killer, she was shocked and didn’t understand why. Later on, she came to understand Chris’s reasoning and has now also forgiven the killer.
An analogy Singleton made was that racism is taught, just like language. He said diversity should be taught in place of racism at a young age. Singleton said, “The reason (for the murder) was somebody was misled and mis-taught to hate black people,” Singleton said. “They were misinformed by different things on the internet and by different people. Unfortunately, it happened, so I’m just trying to make the best of it and make something good come from it.”
After the unfortunate events, he played baseball at Charleston Southern University in Charleston, South Carolina, and was drafted in the 19th round by the Chicago Cubs. He played for four years and three different teams in Minor League Baseball before being let go.
Since then, he’s been publicly speaking to schools throughout the nation with the motto “love is greater than hate.”
Other speakers not noted at the conference were partners, Monique Mousseau Native American and LGBTQ advocates and Felipa De Leon, Certified Federal Police Officer. Both are lobbyist for LGBTQ rights and pasing Marriage Equality and Hate crime protection laws for Native American Two Spirit.
President Randy Rhine and Chancellor Turman were also in attendance and gave comments on the conference.