SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — Community leaders and lawmakers held a town hall Sunday night in Sandy Springs to discuss combatting hate in the wake of dozens of people discovering antisemitic flyers in their driveways earlier this month.
Senior Rabbi Spike Anderson with Temple Emanu-El in Sandy Springs hosted the town hall. He said doing nothing was not a choice they wanted to make.
“We decided doing nothing was a choice we didn’t want to make,” said Anderson.
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The event happened three weeks after the discovery of antisemitic flyers in the Sandy Springs and Dunwoody areas.
“This type of hate that has infiltrated our neighborhood just won’t stand,” said Anderson.
Dunwoody Police were unable to charge anyone with a crime responsible for the flyers, citing free speech. Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League reports that harassment, vandalism and violence against Jews continues to rise across the country.
“I have felt this personally as well,” said State Rep. Esther Panitch, a Jewish state lawmaker who found the flyers in her driveway earlier this month.
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She’s now putting her efforts toward advancing HB 30 at the State Capitol. HB 30 a law that would define antisemitism for Georgia law enforcement who would then be better able to prosecute hate crimes.
“We all have to be very vigilant,” she said. “We don’t have the luxury of ignoring it or saying it’s a few bad apples because we see how bad it can get if we don’t take it seriously.”
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