My mother was 14 years old when she started sneaking out of the house to protest for civil rights in the mid-1960s. As a longtime civil rights activist and pastor, she instilled many values in me. But one of the most significant was her sense of justice.
I grew up watching my mother fight back against pervasive, generations-old racism and prejudice against African Americans, standing up for what was right. And I know well the stories of how the Jewish community stood with the Black community to demand justice and civil rights together. In so many cases, like the Freedom Summer of 1965, the Jewish community was on the front lines of the fight for equal rights for all people. Many of those activists were survivors or children of survivors of the Holocaust. Together, our communities changed our country for the better.
Today, we are in a moment that demands the same moral clarity. As the chair of the Kansas Democratic Party, as an American and as an advocate for justice, I strongly denounce and unequivocally stand against antisemitism in our country, which is surging at alarming rates.