Please add your name to the letter below, which is being forwarded to New York City local, state, and federal leaders.
To Federal, State, and New York City Municipal Leaders:
The New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), a 44-year-old organization founded to fight bias-related violence against LGBTQ people, receives significant public support. As a publicly-supported agency, it has a duty to care for all of New York’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities in the fight against violence.
There are serious issues regarding AVP’s management, staffing, and attention to mission that raise profound concerns. We urge that there be an immediate investigation into how AVP operates and implements its policies, and procedures to ensure that the public support this organization receives is being used in a way consistent with its mission and the public good.
On October 7, 2024, when people around the world marked the first anniversary of the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, AVP issued a statement accusing Israel of “genocide.” The statement was inflammatory, unhelpful, and reflected a callous indifference to the human suffering experienced that day and since, particularly by LGBTQ Jews in New York City.
Rising antisemitism constitutes an emergency, including in the LGBTQ community that AVP is charged with helping to keep safe. Sadly, hyperbolic rhetoric in the AVP October 7 statement, based on an extremely limited understanding of the situation in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, has only added fuel to the fire.
Subsequently, AVP reframed their statement. While we appreciate their newly-expressed commitment to serving their Jewish clients, they missed the mark and missed it widely.
They continued to accuse Israel of “genocide” as if that is an accepted fact, which it is not. They failed to mention Hamas by name, a glaring and seemingly purposeful omission. AVP’s assertion that they will provide all community members with the same level of empathy when there is clear bias against some – Jews and people who support Israel – is simply impossible based on a plain reading of their restatement.
Hamas militants, with avowed genocidal intent, violently murdered 1,200 innocent Israelis. Hamas militants violently raped countless women, many in front of their families and friends. Hamas militants violently kidnapped over 250 precious souls, including infants, children, elderly survivors of Holocaust-era violence, and members of the LGBTQ community. Hamas militants have subsequently murdered many of their captives. The remaining hostages are held in horrific, violent conditions.
To exclude mention of Hamas is telling. Worse, the accusation of “genocide” is precisely the kind of trigger language that an anti-violence group should know to avoid. Not naming Hamas – whose charter calls for overthrowing Israel and murdering all Jews – while including an accusation of genocide by Israel defines AVP’s stance in a way that continues to make us feel less safe. Similarly, to mention Lebanon in AVP’s restatement without acknowledging that Israelis have been bombarded by more than 10,000 rockets since October 7, 2023 from Lebanese territory by Hezbollah – an Iranian proxy allied with Hamas – does further violence to the truth and to our community.
A key reason we call for an investigation is that the staff of AVP, by clear admission in the restatement, felt they could speak out publicly on a complex global issue without board approval. We understand that the staff further refused board direction to remove the statement.
Together, the statement and restatement continue to alienate a significant constituency of LGBTQ Jews, whether AVP cares to acknowledge it or not. It strains credibility that AVP felt compelled to issue either the initial statement or the weak restatement because a segment of the community felt that this domestic service agency was not sufficiently devoting itself to a foreign policy matter – least of all one that it so minimally understands.
As members of the LGBTQ community, we know better than most the weight of being targeted and marginalized solely because of our non-majority identities. AVP must stand with all victims of hate and violence –- including those suffering from antisemitism within the LGBTQ community. And it must do so with sensitivity to all, not just some.
The LGBTQ Jewish community feels attacked by the very organization that is supposed to be here to support all of us. Yet more than two weeks later, AVP remains unwilling to rectify this terrible error.
Something is amiss in the operation of AVP that could allow all of this to happen. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Going forward, AVP’s board must exercise control over its staff, policy, and activities, not the other way around. External oversight may be necessary to restore confidence that an investment in this agency’s necessary work furthers the public good for which AVP was chartered.