Alliance to track anti-Semitic incidents in R.I., with community’s help

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In response to community concerns about rising anti-Semitic incidents, the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island has launched a web-based community anti-Semitism tracker.

If you experience or witness an anti-Semitic incident, the Alliance encourages you to report it to law enforcement, when appropriate, and then use the tracker, at https://www.jewishallianceri.org/report-it, to report hate speech, discrimination, harassment, threats, assaults and hate-group activity. All information reported is confidential.

The Alliance is committed to finding long-lasting and impactful ways to mitigate hatred of all kinds, which requires robust data on what is happening in Rhode Island. This data will help pinpoint geographic areas or communities where the Alliance want to address rising hate crimes. 

The tracker grew out of the Alliance’s strategic planning process in 2019, when community members expressed increasing concerns about security and anti-Semitism. Law enforcement and Jewish agencies also occasionally reported incidents, but it was difficult to know how many incidents were not reported.

With the new tracker, the Alliance hopes to fully capture the magnitude and breadth of these incidents, make the information accessible to our community, assist and follow-up when necessary, engage with law enforcement when needed, and collect data to share with state and national partners that track hate crimes.  

Hate crimes and anti-Semitic incidents have been steadily rising in the United States over the past several years. On a national level, we have witnessed violence targeting the Jewish community, as well as an increase in targeted violence and harassment across marginalized populations.  Information released by the FBI in November 2020 shows a 7% increase in religion-based hate crimes, with 953 reports of crimes targeting Jews and Jewish institutions in 2020, up from 835 the year prior. 

STEPHANIE HAGUE is the director of community relations at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island. She can be reached at shague@jewishallianceri.org.  

Alliance, anti-Semitism, hate