I sponsored House Bill 1095, which enhanced the penalty for a crime committed because of the person’s “race, color, religious beliefs, or national origin.”

Since then, the law has been expanded to protect a victim of a crime “motivated…by another person’s or group’s race, color, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or national origin, or because another person or group is homeless.”

Those additions didn’t come about in one bill.

Each time, legislators and advocates made the case that was first made in 1988.

If a crime is motivated by a certain characteristic of the victim, the penalty should be greater.

Recent events should remind us that criminal acts or rhetoric directed at one group are harmful to us all.

“We must be concerned with the anti-Semitic attacks and they must be condemned as strongly as attacks against Blacks. We must speak out against all wrongs or else we have no standing when we have been wronged.” Reverend Al Sharpton said that.

“ADL is the first call when acts of antisemitism occur. ADL’s ultimate goal is a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias, discrimination or hate.” Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League said that.