'Not In Our Town' Strikes Some Sparks

East Hampton is no Billings, Mont. But our town can learn a lot from what Billings residents achieved after a series of hate crimes stunned their community.

With that in mind, the Hamptons International Film Festival and the head of its education committee, Linda Biscardi-Mensch, on Sunday hosted a screening of the nationally acclaimed documentary "Not In Our Town" - a story of triumph over the bigotry of a growing white supremacist movement.

A panel discussion following the Guild Hall screening attempted to bring the lessons home. A healthy audience of students and community members attended.

United Against Hate

Originally aired on public television, "Not In Our Town" looks at how a spate of bias attacks led a whole city to unite and fight back against hate groups.

The 1993 incidents, though disturbing, were nonviolent at first. Ku Klux Klan leaflets were circulated, headstones in a Jewish cemetery were kicked over, swastikas were painted on homes, and skinheads began attending services at an African-American church.

The community responded. The local painters' union mobilized to repaint Dawn Fast Horse's slur-scrawled house, and people of all skin colors and denominations showed up for services at the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

10,000 Menorahs

When a cinder block crashed through a window displaying a menorah at a Jewish couple's house, the city felt attacked as a whole. The Billings Gazette printed a full-page picture of a menorah and urged all residents and merchants to place the nine-branched candelabras, symbolic of Chanukah, in their windows.

Several more windows were broken, and the response grew. More businesses and organizations began distributing menorahs and soon more than 10,000 windows in Billings were displaying them.

"Not In Our Town" became the basis of a grassroots movement last year to spread its message nationwide.

Lived Through It

Irene Shapiro of East Hampton, one of six invited panelists on Sunday, said she and her family had been the victims of continuing anti-Semitic intimidation in their former community of Hillside, N.J. She found the film inspiring, she said, because in Hillside, "nothing happened. In my town no one wanted it to be public."

Ms. Shapiro stressed that education was a key to battling prejudice.

"Prejudice is not inherited," she said. "Prejudice comes from the home. . . . It's one person passing it on to another."

Chris Wikane and Jaylee Lawler, two East Hampton High School seniors, also sat on the panel.

"That film really makes you think about East Hampton," Chris said, adding that he had never seen any "overt" racism. "I feel fortunate for that."

It was the "subtle" racism at school and elsewhere, he said, that bothered him. He noted that in the high school cafeteria, African-American students, white students, and Hispanic students sit separately, and that off-handed remarks go unchecked.

"Whenever I hear a subtle remark, I act on it," he said.

One audience member rejected Chris's assertion that the town was free of "overt" discrimination. He recalled that just last spring, on Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), graffiti had been found on a restroom at Ditch Plain in Montauk: Los vom elend, Los vom Juden - Freedom from misery, Freedom from Jews - and a swastika.

The man said he had put the incident out of his mind, but now intended to ask the police whether their investigation had turned up any suspects. "We must fight the denial within ourselves," he said.

Panelists

Others on the panel Sunday were Audrey Gaines, East Hampton Town's director of youth services and co-chair of the town's Anti-Bias Task Force, Rabbi Seth Frisch of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, and the Rev. David Parker of the East Hampton Methodist Church.

Ms. Gaines called bias crimes, even remarks, "wounds to the soul."

"People have to start looking around and asking, 'Does this really happen here?' And it does happen." She agreed that teaching children acceptance and "multicultural harmony" was crucial in fighting discrimination.

"We have a job to do, and that job is to educate those children so they can educate their families."

Disabilities

Others present included Ms. Biscardi-Mensch's eighth-grade Middle School students and members of the East Hampton Town Disabilities Advisory Board, who reminded the audience that disabled persons are discriminated against in a different way, by noncompliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The Film Festival plans to conduct another "Not In Our Town" screening and discussion in Southampton next month, and possibly in other locations afterward.