ADL Coalition for Mutual Respect Prays We Can Move Forward Peacefully and Constructively Following George Floyd’s Murder
ADL’s Coalition for Mutual Respect was founded in 1995 for religious and community leaders to speak out with a unified voice and provide leadership in the fight against prejudice, bias, and hate.
Millions in this country have spoken with raised voices to condemn the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the treatment of Blacks and other minority groups at the hands of police. The Coalition joins those voices and proclaims its solidarity with the hue and cry of the protesters demanding an end to systematic racism. In addition, systemic racism must end beginning with each of us and moving into all aspects of our society: medical care, education, policing, criminal justice, and prison sentences. As we continue to process our grief and offer prayers of peace and condolence to the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we look ahead to the work before us.
We pray that we can move forward from this peacefully and with strong resolve to end violence, hatred, and create a new culture in this country that promotes equality, love, fair treatment and respect for every person, regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or ability. Systemic injustice and inequality call for systemic change. We must demand that our political leaders make changes to laws, training, culture, and recruiting in police forces and throughout the criminal justice system to eliminate all acts of police brutality, racial profiling, unjust sentences, and the use of militarized force throughout the country.
Pursuit of justice is a central tenet of all faith traditions and of all faiths represented within the Coalition. It is not lost on us the duty that faith and community leaders have not only to join in the public mourning of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the thousands of others not named; not only to join the call for systemic and systematic change that is long overdue; and not only to support proposed reforms to elected leaders, but to commit to the sustained pressure and insistence for criminal justice reforms that bring life to the promised but not yet achieved self-evident truth that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. People of color are being deprived their unalienable rights; we must work to end this injustice.
Coalition Members:
Regina Rogers, Coalition Founder, Attorney and Community Activist
Dean Leonard Baynes, University of Houston Law Center
Ghulam Bombaywala, Five Star Merchant Services
Michael Y. Chou, Quadrant Consultants, Inc.
Pastor Harvey Clemons, Pleasant Hill Baptist Church
Bishop James Dixon, The Community of Faith
AJ Durrani, eMgage-Texas
Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston
Rabbi Samuel E. Karff, Rabbi Emeritus, Congregation Beth Israel
Mark Kaufman, ADL Southwest Regional Board Member
Dr. Basheer Khumawala, University of Houston Bauer College of Business
Dr. Stephen Klineberg, Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research
Reverend A. William Lawson, The William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Rabbi David Lyon, Congregation Beth Israel
Reverend Laura Mayo, Covenant Church
Sister Jane Meyer, St. Agnes Academy
Reverend Donald Nesti, Donald S. Nesti Center for Faith and Culture, University of St. Thomas
Father Binh Quach, Donald S. Nesti Center for Faith and Culture, University of St. Thomas
Pastor Steve Quill, Truthouston
Dr. Joe Samuel Ratliff, Brentwood Baptist Church
Bishop Mike Rinehart, Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, ELCA
Rabbi David Rosen, Rabbi Emeritus, Congregation Beth Yeshurun
Manpreet Singh, Fanaff & Baldwin LLP/Sikh Coalition
- Michael Solar, Solar and Associates, LLP
Jack Sweeney, Houston Chronicle
Mustafa Tameez, Outreach Strategies, LLC
- Michael Trevino, Trevino and Company
ADL is the world’s leading anti-hate organization. Founded in 1913 in response to an escalating climate of anti-Semitism and bigotry, its timeless mission is to protect the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all. Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of hate with the same vigor and passion. A global leader in exposing extremism, delivering anti-bias education, and fighting hate online, ADL is the first call when acts of anti-Semitism occur. ADL’s ultimate goal is a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias, discrimination or hate.