anti-Semitism – Sandy Rosenberg

Maryland’s hate crimes law was enacted in 1988.

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.

Voters in Alabama got this robocall last week from “Bernie Bernstein”:

I’m a reporter for The Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old, willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000. We will not be fully investigating these claims however we will make a written report.

This anti-Semitic travesty would violate Maryland law.

It is a crime to “influence or attempt to influence a voter’s voting decision through the use of force, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward.”

Shortly before the 2002 general election in Maryland, a flyer was distributed in neighborhoods of color urging people to vote on the Thursday after Election Day and implying that you couldn’t vote if you owed rent, child support, or parking tickets.

I responded by sponsoring the bill that made it illegal to “influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision whether to go to the polls to cast a vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward.” (emphasis added)

This is the fraud that is degrading our election process. Not the fake fraud that is the basis for Republican efforts to limit access to the ballot.