Student Union
- By Parth Vohra
Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus Walk for Unity
In a Washington synagogue, Susan Katz Miller sat beside an atheist, a Muslim and a Christian on Sunday.
No joke.
After listening to a Zoroastrian prayer, Miller - a Jew from an interfaith family - and two friends (an atheist and a Muslim), walked down leafy and elegant Embassy Row in Washington. They paid their respects at various churches, broke for an Indian lunch at the Sikh Gurdwara temple, and wound up at the Islamic Center of Washington, where they heard remarks by Imam Abdullah Khouj and listened to the famous Hindu “Gayatri Mantra.”
Close to a thousand people - members of different faiths, most of them residents of Maryland, Virginia or the nation's capital - joined Miller and her friends at Unity Walk 2017, an annual celebration of diversity and culture held in Washington for the past 12 years. They carried a message of solidarity, caring and inclusiveness on this sunny Sunday afternoon.
“We want to model that people do care about each other and want to learn about each other,” said Rabbi Gerald Serotta, executive director of the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.
“We believe God intends us to learn from each other,” he said.
According to Rasit Telbisoglu, program director at the Rumi Forum, a cosponsor of the DC Unity Walk, the event will help open eyes to the plight of others.
“These events are actually helping us build trust in each other,” Telbisoglu said. “You slowly build up a relationship. ... When you do that, it’s hard to harbor prejudice against another community.”
The first Unity Walk took place in 2005, at the suggestion of Kyle Poole and a group of his friends, along with volunteers from the many houses of worship in and around Embassy Row, a northwest Washington neighborhood that also is home to many diplomats' residences and offices.
The first Unity Walk focused on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks on the United States in 2001, but the annual event has drawn attention to other social themes since then, with the underlying goal of bringing together people of different backgrounds and faiths in a show of unity.
Poole said he started the Unity Walk because it’s important to learn more about other people, and he has been fascinated by the friendships that have resulted from the annual exercise.
The 9/11 Unity Walk is now an established nonprofit corporation, and Poole is a cochair of its board of directors. When there was a call for ideas for this year's event, Poole recalled, "I thought, ‘Well, we live on Massachusetts Avenue, where people from all different faiths open their doors to each other and, symbolically, to the world.'
"Especially in these times," he continued, when it sometimes seems "there are two Americas." Poole and his allies are trying to exemplify "the loving America that embraces all different traditions.”
Elissa Silverman, an elected member of the Council of the District of Columbia, the local government in the nation's capital, also feels that her city is part of the “loving America.”
“For all those who are new to Washington … let me assure you that the Washington, D.C., you read about … is not the Washington, D.C., I know,” Silverman said. “It's a community that is proud to be a sanctuary state” - a jurisdiction that tries to be welcoming to immigrants and refugees.
Several members at this week's walk condemned acts of intolerance, not only in the United States, but internationally. Some mentioned the ethnic cleansing of minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine State. Others mentioned an incident this week in Canada, where a Sikh political figure was assailed by a protester who mistakenly denounced him as a "disgusting" Muslim; the target of the protester's venom, Jagmeet Singh, responded with love and courage to those sentiments of hate.
Speaking to VOA Student Union about the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, Imam Talib M. Shareef, president of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, said: “The more you kill another human because their shade is different, because their religion is different, you are actually losing your humanity, and you're really killing yourself."
Walking into the Sikh Gurdwara on upper Massachusetts Avenue for lunch Sunday, the imam said he hoped those who took part in the Unity Walk would have a better understanding of the corrupting effects of hate.
More than 1,300 Unity Walkers turned up at the Gurdwara kitchen, where volunteers serving Indian delicacies including choley (chickpeas), mutter-paneer (cottage cheese and peas), kheer (rice pudding with sweet tapioca) and gulab jamun (sweet Indian donuts).
The Sikh Gurdwara offers a “langar,” or free meal, every Sunday to anyone. Hundreds of people attend, said Baldev Singh, executive director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
“We don’t question anybody. No invitation is necessary,” he said. “Bring your hunger, and bring your love, and just join all of us.”
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Police in Washington cleared a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at George Washington University early Wednesday, arresting 33 people, authorities said.
Arrests were made on charges of assault on a police officer and unlawful entry, the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department said.
A congressional committee canceled a hearing on the university encampment Wednesday. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Washington Police Chief Pamela Smith had been scheduled to testify about the city’s handling of the protest before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
University parents and faculty members gathered Wednesday afternoon for a press conference to condemn the handling of the protests by police and school leaders.
“The university clearly does not value the students at all and has endangered the safety of our children by unleashing officers dressed in full riot gear to assault and spray our children in their eyes with pepper spray,” said Hala Amer, whose son participated in the campus protests.
Police said they dispersed demonstrators because "there has been a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest."
American University professor Barbara Wien said she stayed in the encampment with GW students. She described the student protesters as democratic and peaceful.
Police started to shut down the tent encampment after dozens of protesters marched to GW President Ellen Granberg's on-campus home on Tuesday night. Police were called, but no arrests were made.
Speakers at the conference called for Granberg’s resignation because, they alleged, she refused to meet and negotiate with student protesters.
“You keep inciting violence and ignoring the students,” Amer said about Granberg in an interview with VOA after the conference. “It will just lead to more violence. You need to talk to your students.”
GW officials warned students that they could be suspended for engaging in protests at the school’s University Yard, an outdoor spot on the campus.
"While the university is committed to protecting students' rights to free expression, the encampment had evolved into an unlawful activity, with participants in direct violation of multiple university policies and city regulations," a GW statement said.
More than 2,600 people have been arrested at universities across the country in pro-Palestinian protests, according to The Associated Press.
Students are calling on their university administrations to divest investments from Israel or companies with ties to Israel. Demonstrators have gathered in at least 50 campuses since April 17, carrying signs that read "Free Palestine" and "Hands off Rafah."
Rafah is Gaza’s southernmost city, where most of the territory’s population has clustered. The area is also a corridor for bringing humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
Israel seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday, while shutting off the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, drawing criticism from humanitarian groups. Israel said Wednesday that it had reopened Kerem Shalom.
The nationwide campus protests started in response to Israel's offensive in Gaza that began after Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel warned it could "deepen" its operation in Rafah if talks failed to secure the release of the hostages.
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