Our community leaders often say: an act of hate towards any one community is an act of hate towards all.

As upstanders in our community, we assert that Cincinnati is no place for hate. With the re-emergence of white supremacy in the wake of the 2016 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Cincinnatians came together and formed the Cincinnati Regional Coalition Against Hate (CRCAH). With rising division across our nation, it became critical to mobilize. Nineteen founding organizations created this non-partisan coalition; an allyship committed to vigilance against hate activity by supporting impacted communities and fostering acceptance, compassion, and justice for all across Greater Cincinnati. Today, there are more than 40 partner organizations working together to educate the community and monitor incidents of hate in our community. Our rapid response model allows us to effectively respond to hate activity within 24 hours by leveraging a diverse network as the connective tissue between communities thereby providing key resources specific to any particular community. Whether incidents occur on the street, in the workplace, or at school, CRCAH is able to tap into community leaders as needed.

As of January, the Coalition now operates under the umbrella of the Holocaust and Humanity Center (HHC) as its convening organization. As such, we have a new home at Cincinnati’s historic Union Terminal, one of our city’s greatest symbols of an America for all. With a focus on the Humanity Gallery and community education, HHC is perfectly suited to help push the work of CRCAH forward. We are now expanding the team and seeking to fill the new position of CRCAH Program Manager. We are seeking a fellow upstander who shares a passion for our mission: a belief in denouncing hate and promoting tolerance by working collaboratively with people of all identities. Such an individual would have leadership experience in nonprofit settings and excited to continue our work to ensure that this is no place for hate.

For more information about the Coalition, or to get in touch, please visit https://cincinnaticoalition.org/ and join the cause!

If you are interested in the Program Manager position, please visit the job posting.

Jaipal Singh
Executive Board Member
Cincinnati Regional Coalition Against Hate

At the core of every faith tradition is a reverence for creation. This is a belief that creation is sacred and thus should be honored within the tradition and foundational to their moral vision. In recent years more and more attention has been paid by all of the world’s faith traditions to what that the moral responsibility entails and how faith traditions can play an important role in- confronting the growing climate crisis. This is not only based in the recognition that the climate crisis is an existential threat, it is also a theological imperative.

To help our faith communities better realize this imperative and the resources available to them, Green Umbrella (https://greenumbrella.org/) the regional sustainability alliance of Greater Cincinnati, is providing a new platform for collective, interfaith action.

Green Umbrella, has over 200 member organizations and over 200 individual members who are passionate about enhancing the environmental health and vitality of our region. Their mission is to lead collaboration, incubate ideas and catalyze solutions that create a resilient sustainable region for all. Working together they envision a vibrant community where sustainability is woven into our ways of life. Green Umbrella serves a 10-county region in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Thank you members and friends of InterfaithCincy for pouring your support to our open letter issued by our board chair Lee Wong, US Army (retired), with over 20 years of active-duty service (24/7) to the nation.

With nearly 90 advocacy groups and individuals from the region co-signing this letter, we stand in solidarity and with the resolve that together we say NO, loud and clear, to hate, to violence, and to racial discrimination and biases.

But that’s not enough. We must take actions to prevent the next tragedy from happening. While we can go through the routines and let ourselves be buried in the entanglement of processes and bureaucracies, we can take these actions to move forward:

1. Endorse this letter and condemn publicly the violence and microaggressions on Asian people.
2. Call for legislation to establish clear definitions of hate crimes towards Asian people. Current federal laws make it extremely difficult to define and prosecute a hate crime aimed towards Asian people in this country.
3. Call for tougher penalties on first-time violations of hate crimes. Many offenders walk free without any penalty.
4. Increase the visibility of Asian Americans in senior and top leadership in both the government and the private sectors.
5. Promote diversity, inclusion and awareness of Asian culture and history, especially the history of Asian immigrants and their contribution to this country. We offer webinars that talk specifically about the history of East Asian countries and business etiquettes. Please encourage your colleagues to join us.

This month marks the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, a virus which has killed more than half a million people in the U.S. The fear, uncertainty, and isolation experienced during this time left many feeling helpless. For those responsible for accompanying the sick in their spiritual needs, hospital chaplains, their ministry called them to face this novel virus with new forms of prayer and solidarity.

The Department of Pastoral Care at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center responded to this call by creating “Prayers for those Affected by COVID-19,” a booklet of more than a dozen prayers, which could be used across hospital settings — with sick children, with sick adults, or with healthcare staff. Ten staff members, two of them Rabbi’s, contributed to this booklet.

This project began at the beginning of the pandemic, when a former palliative fellow at CCHMC, now working at the Children’s Hospital of Montefiore in New York, reached out to their friend, Rev. Karen Geiger-Behm, staff chaplain at CCHMC. According to Rev. Geiger-Behm, “They had moved many of the children out to make space for COVID positive adults. As the director of the palliative program, [my friend] was supporting all end of life care, which was overwhelming. She didn’t have a chaplain on staff, and so she asked me to provide prayers for all the situations they found themselves in. I called upon the team at CCHMC, and within a weekend we put the prayer booklet together.”

These prayers, it seems, met a real and urgent need, because, since it was written last spring, this booklet has been shared across the country and even translated into Spanish. This act of compassion and solidarity, “was our small way,” said Rev. Geiger-Behm, “of offering care to the areas that were much harder hit from the pandemic.”

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We are grateful to the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab for making us aware of this ministry of the Department of Pastoral Care of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Click Here to view the resource in English

Click Here to view the resource in Spanish

by Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr. Texts: Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9, 22-23 and Psalm 146

After several days of sheltering in place with my immediate family, I returned to my Ohio home.  At once, I I was greeted by two old friends who were waiting for me at my place.  They were not human beings.  Instead, they were piles of dust, behind two doors.

So, as I looked at the piles of dust, trying to decide which one I would attend to first, I imagined one of them saying to the other in an enthusiastic tone, “I have decided that I am better than you.  This means , I am worth more than you, and I am more important than you.”  So then, I imagined the other pile of dust being startled and issuing a rather stern rebuke: “Say what?  Aren’t we both just piles of dust?  How are you any better than me?”