To fight hate, Brooklyn nonprofit professionals wrote a comic book

(New York Jewish Week) - In the new comic book, "We Are Brooklyn: Stories of Hope," Francil Tejada shares her story about the Dominican Republic, where she was born, and the death of her grandmother, which inspired her to change how she connects with people and shows love.

It's a personal story, a Brooklyn story and an American story - one of six being told through an anti-hate project initiated by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Others tell stories about an imam's trip to Auschwitz and growing up Jewish in Germany.

Contributors to the comic are part of the third cohort of the We Are All Brooklyn Fellowship Against Hate. The project is a partnership between The Center for Shared Society at the JCRC and the Mayor's Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes.

The fellowship is open to nonprofit professionals based in Brooklyn who work to respond to bias-motivated violence, and who meet seven times over the course of six months. The 16 graduates of the third cohort, who graduated in June, represent a diverse cross-section of Brooklyn, Jews and non-Jews alike.

For participants, the fellowship has proved to be a safe place to talk about their differences and brainstorm ways to share strategies for combating intolerance, said Deborah Greenblatt, an assistant professor at Medgar Evers College, where she teaches multicultural and elementary education to future teachers.

"It really made a difference," she said, "because not only was it like my group at Medgar Evers College - a diverse group of people from different places, different than me, that I could share values with - but it brought in this Jewish community piece where not only was I meeting really amazing people that shared background with me, [who shared] Jewish values with me, but were so diverse within their Judaism."

The new comic book, released Monday night at the offices of the progressive Jewish community service group Repair the World, was created as one of the group's community-building projects. The six stories were adapted for the comic book form by one of the fellows, Julian Voloj, a graphic novel writer and executive director at Be'chol Lashon - a group that teaches and provides programming about diversity and Jews of color in Jewish spaces. The book was illustrated by Brazilian artist Wagner Willian, who agreed to take on the project at a discounted rate.

Though the group could have considered a simpler project (much of the work was chasing down the fellows to make sure they submitted their stories by deadline) the comic book came naturally, Voloj said.

"Basically it was the first proposal," Voloj said. "And, everyone was like, 'Yes. Done. We'll do it.' Okay! That was easy!" Voloj contributed his own story about growing up Jewish in Germany, and finding the name of his great-grandfather, which they share, in a copy of the text of the Torah at an old synagogue in Hungary.

(Voloj is married to Lisa Keys, the managing editor of the New York Jewish Week, who had no part in the writing or editing of this story.)

Tejada, a lead navigator at the Diaspora Community Services, a multicultural social support organization, said she wanted to meet other people in Brooklyn who were in the same line of work. Tejada filled out the application, and joined the January-to-June 2024 cohort.

One exercise from the fellowship that really stuck with her, she said, was a partner activity about exchanging points of view.

"A lot of the times, me and my partner would be completely different, and I would have a reason why, and she would have a reason why, and I would understand where she was coming from," Tejada said. "She saw a lot of things as a mom or as a woman, or as whatever ethnicity she was, and so do I. So different POVs might give you different answers. It doesn't mean that it's wrong."

Over the six-month fellowship, the group also took a trip to Washington, D.C., and some of the fellows put on a multicultural dance and music festival at the Brooklyn Children's Museum in August.

One moment that stuck out to Dani Kogan, associate director of Brooklyn Initiatives at the Center for Shared Society, was when a fellow reached out to her after the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris presidential debate. Trump repeated unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, and the fellow asked for assistance to organize a rally in support of the Haitian community and children who were being bullied in school.

"JCRC representation came, other fellows came," Kogan said during the reception for the comic book Monday. "The rally was stronger because we were there together. That's really the power of this fellowship, these kinds of connections that work all day to keep this going."

Greenblatt, who grew up just outside of New York City, said she got to learn about different Jewish immigrant groups to New York, and about the diversity within her own cultural and religious community.

"There was a lot of reflection on who I am, what being Jewish means to me, what community means to me, how to kind of be a part of a diverse community while still having a strong sense of identity and not feeling bad about that," Greenblatt said. "As someone who grew up doing a lot of multicultural work and DEI work, it's very much been like - you speak for the other. But also: Who's speaking for me?"

Medgar Evers College, Greenblatt said, has been largely spared from the campus antisemitism controversy that has roiled other campuses that are part of the City University of New York over the past year, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel and the war in Gaza began.

The fellowship, she said, gave her a place to discuss her feelings about the war, and about Israel.

"Having a safe place to talk about it, both with our Jewish and our non-Jewish folks in the fellowship, has been immensely helpful," Greenblatt said.

For now, the book is available for purchase through the JCRC with a $5 suggested donation that goes to Be'chol Lashon.

Voloj is thinking about ways to bring "We Are Brooklyn" to a wider audience.

"I have some ideas, but I think we just want to figure something out that goes really beyond," Voloj said. "But I feel like there's so much more we can do. And, yeah, we might do a Be'chol Lashon event, like a panel with some people on it or something. I mean, I think it's a perfect tool for bringing people together."