With 80 years to the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where Jews and their families were lined up and shot, we pause to remember the victims of the Holocaust including the survivors.
On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day and reflecting on the ultimate symbol of human cruelty, we publish for the first time a keynote address that touched on the Holocaust and was delivered June 19, 2012 at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Annual Distinguished Leadership Dinner at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan. AJC is said to be the first global Jewish organization to engage the government of Germany after World War II and following the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.
The speech was given by Bankole Thompson, a nationally acclaimed journalist, standard-bearer for economic justice issues and a bridge builder, who was invited by AJC to serve as the keynote speaker for its leadership dinner. Thompson is the founding dean of the anti-poverty think tank, The PuLSE Institute, a twice-a-week opinion columnist at The Detroit News, and the host of the weekly national podcast, Bankole’s Nation.
At the time of the speech, Thompson, was the intellectual voice and editor of the Michigan Chronicle, the state’s African American newspaper which he helmed for almost a decade.
In his address titled, “In Search of Crossover Emancipation,” Thompson discussed not only the evil of the Holocaust, but also dwelled on the themes of emancipation as well as the historic bond that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared with the Jewish community and called for a rekindling of that kind of engagement.
Three years after his AJC speech, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metro Detroit (JCRC) honored Thompson with a leadership award called “Tzedakah” which in Hebrew means justice or righteousness during its annual meeting at the Max Fisher Federation Building in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. That same year he initiated and hosted a special broadcast roundtable featuring some of the survivors of the Holocaust in partnership with Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan under the theme: “How Far Has America Come Since the Holocaust?”
Below is the full text of the AJC speech given 13 years ago.
Thank you for that generous introduction.
I want to thank the board president of the American Jewish Committee Detroit Region Bryant Frank and his colleagues for your work to ensure that this organization continues to live the meaning of what it was conceived to be.
To the president of the AJC Kari Alterman, whose energy and passion for this organization is so real, that during our first encounter at lunch it became somewhat of a reunion and a meeting of like minds, I say thank you for the invitation. I walked away after our meeting encouraged that beyond the narrow confines of our own existence, there are men and women who share similar passions and beliefs in changing the world for the better.
I want to recognize all of you distinguished guests from all professional walks of life who are here this evening including the venerable civil rights icon and U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Judge Damon J. Keith. Judge Keith is a national treasure and his groundbreaking work must not be forgotten. I also want to recognize Federal Bankruptcy Judge Walter Shapiro, who reminds me every time that I see him that he avidly follows my work. Certainly there are other members of the federal judiciary here as well as civic and political leaders gathered this evening.
I want to especially congratulate AJC’s honoree tonight Cynthia Pasky, founder, president and CEO of Strategic Staffing Solutions for a recognition well deserved to come from no other organization with such historic distinction than the American Jewish Committee.
Cynthia Pasky has and continues to be a remarkable force for good in this region. She agitates from all angles and is not bound by the silos that sometimes distract collective progress or the title that defines her as a business leader.
From humble beginnings, out of extraordinary background, Cynthia has written her own life story in the work that she now does. It is fitting that she receives the 2012 Distinguished Leadership Award.
Ladies and gentlemen, the leadership of the AJC, this is a momentous occasion where we recognize Cynthia Pasky and re-affirm AJC as a force for good in the modern era.
In preparation for tonight’s function I had to do my homework. I looked at the pages of testimony from significant individuals on the global stage who attest to the ideas that have informed the founding of this noble organization. It became clear to me that your work has been consistent with the very notions that gave rise to the AJC at the turn of the century.
As former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres testified that you were the first organization to globalize Jewish life.
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel also testified that you were the first organization to contact Germany after the Holocaust.
In that same line of an abiding fact, I also come here this evening at the Townsend Hotel humbled by your invitation to serve as this year’s keynote speaker and with a deeper sense and realization of the extent to which the AJC has been a historic force for immense good and positive impact.
Your work affirming the dignity and rights of every human being as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights implores all of us, is testament to the need for all forces of goodwill to join hands and build coalitions to tackle some of the most pressing and urgent problems of the 21st century.
We cannot turn the clock back. We cannot turn it back in Detroit, we cannot turn back in Michigan. We cannot turn it back in the country. And with organizations like the AJC in the forefront we will not turn it back on the global stage.
In 1965, the American Jewish Committee invited the world’s premier peace officer and this nation’s foremost civil rights leader of the 21st century Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to address its 58th Annual Meeting in New York and to receive the AJC’s American Liberties Medallion Award.
In his address to the AJC, Dr. King said, “I particularly cherish the opportunity to address so distinguished an organization as the American Jewish Committee, whose founding statement declared many years ago what is a fundamental truth, that ‘Jews cannot ensure equality for themselves unless it is assured for all.”
Therefore distinguished ladies and gentlemen gathered here in the beautiful Townsend Hotel, the history that informs all of us in this room tonight is one that is sacrosanct.
It is a noble history well documented in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It is a proud history boldly written in the life of Abraham Joshua Herschel.
Therefore the coalition that was born out of the tireless, dedication and loyalty of Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Joshua Herschel challenges us today.
Out of the legacies of King and Herschel must spring up new coalitions in the business sector, and in cultural and community life and in political development, all driven with a deep knowledge of the history that has brought us this far.
We cannot be mistaken tonight ladies and gentlemen that what we celebrate in the form of this distinguish leadership award is a great challenge. We cannot be mistaken that our gathering here tonight is advancing the vision of AJC as a public gift in our shared humanity.
As a writer and a public intellectual, who chronicles and speaks to the diversity of the human experience, it is imperative for me to at this juncture talk about the last decade, and what we have seen in political movements, because some of us have been a part of those movements where we saw administrations in Detroit, Lansing and Washington change like musical chairs.
On the world stage we have seen governments and regimes being forced to recognize the dignity of their people by giving them the cherished ideals of free speech, freedom of the press and other attributes of a democratic society born of out of the British Magna Carta, and given to us through the Bill of Rights here at home.
We see on the global stage the Arab Spring and the challenge it presents to the wisdom of our leaders across the globe to define carefully and to delicately exercise the balance between freedom and security.
In the midst of all these changes something has remained: our determination to rise up and break the bonds of stagnation, do everything we can to embrace opportunity and move forward.
That is why I come here to AJC tonight to tell you that I agree with the noble truth embodied in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman where he talks about the difficulties, moral and materialistic challenges of changing with the time.
That as some point we must confront our innermost conflicts that mirror our external conflicts in our search for wholesomeness.
But the Death of a Salesman reminds us that despite the whirlwind of changes facing Detroit, the suburbs of Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills or the township of Oak Park, we see what is happening on the horizon. And we say Capi Diem! Seize the Day.
The customs and mores of the marketplace in the American system justify us in having new vision and being able to articulate that vision to others.
In short we are salesmen and saleswomen. And we must be salesmen and saleswomen of justice, freedom and dignity.
Former British war time Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill put it another way. “An optimist sees opportunity in every calamity but a pessimist sees calamity in every opportunity.”
Detroit’s economic inequality crisis today is an opportunity to redefine past practices and to no longer do business as usual.
Detroit’s political challenges is an opportunity for men and women of goodwill who have a deep concern and deep love for the city to speak out because the philosophical adage reminds us that “the price that honest men pay for keeping quiet is to have dishonest men rule over them.”
In building coalitions the various pockets of the state that have greater economic power must join hands and help its most prominent city.
We do not expect Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills and others to simply sit on the sidelines and watch a city that once personified the arsenal of democracy go under because Detroit represents all of our past glories and our collective challenges for the future.
And I say here tonight at the Townsend Hotel that Detroit, the iconic city that reminds us of the conflicts of the past, the cultural struggles and the drive for economic empowerment – the ever present need to affirm the rights and dignity of all – the very principles that give the AJC its unique existence and identity- forces us in this room into a unified moment in which we play a significant role to foster our common interest.
Because as King stated in eloquent terms “we are all caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
And therefore I ask all of you here tonight to seize the opportunity that presents itself to make a lasting difference in these communities that are connected by highways and freeways in this great state of Michigan, and in this democratic experience called the United States.
Because honestly at the end of the day when the evening candle light is deemed and the hour is late, all that will be asked of us is our legacy.
Our legacy to the fulfillment of the visions of the AJC, our legacy to our families and generations down the line, our legacy to this region of Southeast Michigan, our legacy to the very ideas that informed the Declaration of Independence that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created.
As I chronicle the Black experience as an inherent part of the greater American experience I see a rainbow over the struggles of our time.
I see an urgent desire among men and women confined in their own experiences searching for what I call a crossover emancipation to reconcile with all of their brothers and sisters in the human family, to reconcile with their brothers and sisters across eight mile.
Whether it was the Black-Jewish Forum set in the beautiful and hallowed grounds of Temple Beth El under the eminent Jewish scholar and Rabbi Daniel Syme, or the regular conversations that take place at dinner tables but do not make the front pages of our newspapers or on the evening news, there is a sense of urgency among today’s generation for crossover emancipation.
Because crossover emancipation allows for a real cross-pollination of ideas on working together for positive change bound by the same interests and inspired by similar historical struggles.
And in Birmingham tonight, I say there is some sort of a natural law that we all understand all too well without having gone to law school: and that is the inescapable responsibility to hand over the mantle of leadership to the next generation.
This generation is creating a revolution in the age of social media, their worth cannot be underestimated, their value cannot be ignored and their energy cannot be stopped with the unprecedented innovation in technology that is taking place.
We find this generation in Detroit, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Farmington Hills and the rest of the interconnected cities.
So tonight I remain optimistic that this 2012 Distinguished Leadership Dinner of the AJC honoring the work of Cynthia Pasky for her great contributions to this region and whose life and work define corporate social responsibility we can reach for a crossover emancipation.
Because the theme of emancipation and the resources that bring together this reality are found in the profound statement of the 19th century prophet of freedom Frederick Douglass who boldly declared: “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
My friends we can do this.
Members of the AJC leadership continue this positive fight.
History tells us that you will be vindicated and that those who say we have no battles to fight in Detroit, Michigan and the nation will be proved wrong.
Those who say leave things as they are. Do not raise hell, water down the work of the AJC are asleep in a great time of change and a revolution of values and they will be reminded everyday by the work of good men and women that the struggle for emancipation and freedom must continue.
And that is why I agree with Fyodor Dostoevsky in “The Brothers Karamazo,” where the forces of good and evil come to meet and were forced to face the ultimate question: will good triumph over evil.
And when we talk about a conflict between good and evil, about good triumphing over evil we think of the Holocaust. We think about the innocent lives that were massacred at Auschwitz and the survivors of the human carnage. Where ultimately the scourge on history were removed by the forces of good. Despite suffering, good triumphed over evil.
And let this be our lesson for generations to come. May we never encounter the gate of death anymore. May we never encounter another Auschwitz in this era.
Thank you. And I say to all of you here tonight Shalom.