How can law enforcement agencies and community leaders open the conversation about hate crimes so that incidents and threats can be reported before they turn to violence? A central California community held a screening of Not In Our Town’s (NIOT) new film to affirm relationships in their city and stand united against hate and bias.

NIOT’s film Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life documents Pittsburgh’s powerful community response to hate in the aftermath of the assault at the Tree of Life synagogue that killed 11 people—the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. The film shows the resilience of a vibrant city working together to understand what it means to be "stronger than hate."

NAACP leader and longtime NIOT network member Gladys Williams says, “A film like this shows our community why we need to be proactive.” Williams says Stanislaus County has experienced anti-LGBTQ+ organizing in the past; more recently, and leaders have recently responded to reports of swastika signs appearing in people’s yards and an African American student being targeted by racist taunts at school. “The challenge is getting people to talk about it—especially in our schools.”

After the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) in Sacramento hosted a screening, she decided to bring the film to Modesto.

Co-sponsored by the USAO, local NAACP, California Teachers Association, and other diverse community partners, the October 2023 event in Modesto featured the mayor, law enforcement, representatives from the Jewish and Latino communities, and NIOT and school district leaders. U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California Phillip Talbert moderated a post-screening discussion. U.S. Attorney Talbert’s office has previously used NIOT films, including Waking in Oak Creek, to convene leaders.

A Familiar Pattern of Threats

At the outset, Modesto seems to have little in common with Pittsburgh. Located in Central California’s San Joaquin Valley, Modesto offers an urban environment within an agricultural region known for producing almonds, milk, cheese, wheat, peaches, and more. “We feed the world,” says Mayor Sue Zwahlen. In recent years, the region has become home to refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, and other countries, and an increasing number of residents commute to work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Modesto is an ethnically diverse community with a large Latino population. Mayor Zwahlen describes it as “a big city in California with a small-town feel.”

Gladys Williams says, “The film opened the eyes of a lot of people in our community.” In the discussion that followed the screening, residents commented on important similarities between events in the local community and those in Pittsburgh. Mayor Zwahlen recognized the threats: “Every scenario, other than the mass shooting, we have experienced here.” She describes horrific antisemitic flyers distributed around town, City Council chambers disrupted by the Proud Boys, and a Zoom public comment session and in-person city meeting disrupted by individuals spouting antisemitic hate. In response to these threats, she says the entire City Council has declared loud and clear that they do not want that activity in their city.

Audience members recognized the positive, interlocking relationships they see in place between different leaders and communities in Modesto.

Modesto Police Department (MPD) Captain Christopher Adams, who participated in the panel discussion, emphasizes this strength and points to the make-up of the screening event: “You saw a lot of different people, a cross-section of stakeholders, come together.” From the law enforcement perspective, he says Police Chief Brandon Gillespie has been intentional about building relationships, making department leadership accessible to leaders representing the different groups in their diverse city and attending their events. The department also hosts bimonthly Coffee with a Cop sessions in different communities and yearly town hall meetings in each of the city’s quadrants.

A critical component of the MPD’s community outreach is educating residents about the different ways to report hate incidents, including anonymous reporting for information about hate crimes and those involved in extremist groups. The department strongly encourages residents to report incidents, even if they aren’t certain the activity is criminal. The MPD is proactive about tracking flyers distributed by hate groups and liaises with the FBI as necessary to determine if the materials represent protected speech or illegal activity.

Captain Adams says the Pittsburgh story gave him a deeper understanding of the fear Jewish residents might experience attending public events like the lighting of a menorah. Describing his reaction to Repairing the World, he says, “For me personally, it is recognizing that it can happen anywhere, and we have to be diligent about precursor events and not write them off as one-offs.”

Lessons from Pittsburgh about Monitoring Hate Incidents

In Repairing the World, Brad Orsini, Director of Community Security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and a 28-year FBI veteran, displays a map representing police- and FBI-reported hate incidents. The mass concentration of green dots is in the Squirrel Hill area where the Tree of Life synagogue is located. Speaking about reporting, Orsini’s successor, Shawn Brokos, a 24-year FBI veteran, says, “Outside of training, this to me is the most important facet of security that we can focus on.” In the years since the attack, their security team has conducted outreach to encourage all Pittsburgh residents to report suspicious incidents—not solely antisemitic activity—using their brief online form. Brokos follows up on every incident, and all activity is reported to the police. The team also offers training addressing active threats, defensive tactics, de-escalation, first-aid, and programs for faith-based and vulnerable communities.

In his hate crimes presentations, U.S. Attorney Talbert emphasizes that people who commit hate crimes typically don’t know the victim--they are really attacking a community. “The message is, ‘You and this community don’t belong, you shouldn’t be here, and any of you could face the same violence.’” Reflecting on the film, he points to a Pittsburgh resident’s statement that the violence was not just an attack on the Jewish community, it was an attack on the city itself. The message of Pittsburgh’s collective response, and the message we need to communicate now, Talbert concludes, is “When one part of the community is attacked, others need to come, stand with them, and help them heal—and show that it’s all of Pittsburgh, all of Modesto, all of Sacramento that is in this together.”

WATCH the trailer for Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life.

HOST a community screening or agency training.

By Not In Our Town

Photos courtesy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California

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