Mik Moore

I grew up in New York City. In 1989 I was halfway through high school. The Central Park Five were my contemporaries. I didn't know them, but I knew people who knew some of them. I was sure I knew kids like them.

And I knew they were guilty.

I recently watched the Ken Burns' documentary, The Central Park Five, on PBS. It is still hard to digest the magnitude of this wrongful conviction. This wasn't an obscure case, like so many of the death row inmates in Texas or Georgia who are convicted outside the public glare. This was the biggest trial in the country. All of us were watching. Almost all of us believed the police, the district attorney, the media.

There were skeptics who believed in their innocence. At the time, they were pilloried. And yet, they were right. And we were wrong.

It is not easy to be humble. I'm not even sure if I think it's a virtue to always be humble. But it is good to be humbled. To be reminded that there are things that we simply know to be true, so much so that we don't even question our certitude.

I believed Bill Clinton, not Linda Tripp. I believed Saddam had WMDs. I believed the Central Park Five were guilty.

I'm not gullible. I'm skeptical of authority. But I also can be skeptical of those challenging authority. This makes life more complicated. Ideally, it means evaluating and determining "the truth" on more of a case by case basis.

For my friends at the ACLU, a case like the Central Park Five reinforces their pre-existing cynicism about law enforcement. For true believers who support the police department, no amount of evidence will convince them that these teens were innocent.

Reality is our challenge. Reality tells us that most people who are arrested are guilty, but some are innocent. How do we remain wary of police misconduct, of police fallibility, without presuming it?

My experience as a teenager made me predisposed to believe in the guilt of the Central Park Five. At that time, New York was a violent city. More than 2,000 people were murdered each year. When you went outside your home, you were vigilant at all times. Walking down the street, riding the subway, at the school yard or park. Even in school. You kept your head up. You watched for people you thought might be mentally ill, or violent. You avoided danger.

Above all else, you avoided teenagers. Group of four, five, six or more teenagers were the worst. Mostly they would just hassle people, but hassling could move to robbery or assault in an instant. And once it started, there wasn't much one could do about it. 10 seconds. 20 seconds. 30 at most. Then it was over and they were gone.

The Central Park Five were said to be "wilding" that night. Running through the park, harassing, assaulting, and robbing people. "Wilding" was real. In 1989 it happened frequently. Usually it wasn't reported. Sometimes police would intervene.

I usually travelled with friends. You were safer with your friends. Being alone meant you were vulnerable.

Kids ran in posses, which were like mini-gangs of friends, sometimes thugs and wanna-be thugs. In an earlier era, someone would have called them "juvenile delinquents." Most were relatively harmless. Other were harmless, until they weren't. Others existed largely to cause trouble.

The police harassed teenagers all the time. I wasn't a big kid. I was white. I didn't go out looking for trouble. But even I was harassed by police. Questioned. Threatened. Intimidated. It never went farther than that, but for many kids it did. Police abuse of power was commonplace.

And yet, I still didn't believe the Central Park Five were innocent. I didn't trust the police, but i knew those kids. I had walked blocks out of my way to avoid them. Gotten off subway trains. Walked into stores or hotel lobbies. I was more scared of them than i was of the cops.

It didn't matter that Public Enemy was my favorite group. That the Autobiography of Malcolm X was my favorite book. That i knew all the lyrics to "Straight Outta Compton."

Yes, I believed racism was endemic in many of our institutions. But I knew the Central Park Five were guilty. I was sure of it.

"Why didn't Obama visit Israel?" "That speech he gave in Egypt... big mistake." "He should just say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel."

Sounds like the testimonials for the Republican Jewish Coalition's new video series, Buyer's Remorse, featuring Jewish Obama supporters who are switching to Romney.

Here's the twist. All of the sentiments above were shared by Jews who love Obama and are desperate to see him win reelection.

The good news for Republicans is that their message seems to be getting across. Millions of dollars in advertising reinforced by free media will do that for you. The bad news? Even among voters who agree with them, their concerns about Obama's approach to Israel are far outweighed by their affection for the president and their fear of the Republican base.

When commentators say that candidate differences on Israel do not rank high among the voting priorities of American Jews during an election, this is part of what they mean. Voters like those who repeated the RJC critique do care deeply about Israel, but their concerns (misplaced, in my view) still doesn't supersede the economy, or Social Security and Medicare, or social issues. It doesn't outweigh their fear of the Tea Party.

The 10 to 15 percent of Jewish voters who are ostensibly up for grabs during this presidential election will not be moved by videos like "Buyer's Remorse" alone. It's great that Mitt Romney is willing to stand up to the Palestinians, they say, but will he stand up to those in his own party whose seem to view Jews as un-American?

The answer is, of course not. The last time a serious Republican presidential candidate did so was in 2000, when John McCain called Jerry Falwell and others "agents of intolerance." He lost the nomination to George W Bush. In 2008, determined not to make the same mistake twice, McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. No single factor was more instrumental in convincing undecided Jewish voters to support Obama than Palin's presence on the Republican ticket.

Since then, the Tea Party has pushed the few remaining mainstream Republicans out of the party and forced others -- like Romney -- to reinvent themselves as "severely conservative," as the Republican nominee called himself.

So, what do "severe conservatives" believe that makes Jews so queasy? In short, they believe a cohort of un-American elites, based in New York and Los Angeles, conspire to keep Christian America down through their control of the lame-stream media, Ivy League universities, the ACLU and Wall Street.

Attacks on "coastal elites" or "Hollywood and New York" are heard by many Jews as attacks on us. Most Jews live in these cities and on the coasts, and many of us work in the professions (or support the organizations) so casually demonized by Tea Partiers. Many Jews aspire to Ivy League educations; we fought like hell to end restrictive quotas that kept Jews out of the Ivy League. So when the "Harvard faculty lounge" is held up for ridicule and contempt; when Obama is called an elitist snob for wanting kids to get a college education, we see an attack on both Jews and our "education first" values.

Woody Allen's Alvy Singer quote from more than 30 years ago still resonates: "Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers?"

Another wing of the Republican Party, led these days by Ron and Rand Paul, claims to be fighting against a banking conspiracy (End the Fed!) while promising to bring foreign aid home to America (why waste it on wars or aid or diplomacy?). Top that off with a desire to roll back basic civil rights protections -- laws that Jews fought for as shields against discrimination -- and you have a large number of Republicans whose agenda and culture are fundamentally at odds with most Jews.

Yes, there are some Jewish voters who may be disappointed with some of the President's decisions these past four years. But unless Mitt Romney shows a willingness to stand up to his own party's base, he will wake up on November 7 with no more than one in four Jewish votes.

Last week, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney visited Israel. While he was there he said a few things that made the news.

He vastly underestimated the income disparity between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, a gap he attributed to Israel's cultural superiority. He was bellicose towards Iran. He said Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He raised a million dollars from a small group of Americans. He declined to meet the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

All of these comments and actions were repeated, via the media, to hundreds of millions. But they might as well have had an audience of one: Sheldon Adelson.

The Republican Party has not always operated in lockstep with Israel. Reagan condemned Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor. Bush I withheld loan guarantees to pressure Israel on settlement expansion. Bush II did the same thing, and pushed Israel to allow elections in Gaza that brought Hamas to power.

Even today, a significant minority of Republicans support the isolationist policies of Ron and Rand Paul. These Republicans do not want to see a war with Iran; nor do they support U.S. aid to Israel or Egypt. Others, like Rep. Joe Walsh, undermine Israel by advocating a one-state solution that would end democracy in the Jewish state.

But in 2012, it is Sheldon Adelson who is setting the boundaries of acceptable discourse for the Republican Party. In the primary he single-handedly kept alive Newt Gingrich's quixotic campaign. Adelson was rewarded when the former House Speaker raised the bar of anti-Palestinian rhetoric, describing them as "an invented people."

Romney's assertion that Palestinian cultural inferiority is responsible for their economic situation shared key characteristics with Gingrich's early statement. Both rely on a selective view of history in which Israeli Jews are uniformly righteous and Palestinian Arabs are irredeemably wicked. Both embrace a version of Jewish exceptionalism that is neither true nor helpful. Both reveal a bias so deep as to be debilitating; neither candidate seems to care much about American credibility in the region.

I believe Barack Obama should be reelected. He has my full support. But I would raise my voice in protest if I felt like he was allowing one donor to dictate policy, particularly foreign policy where the President has tremendous latitude to act without action from Congress.

Republicans are not the monolithic pro-Israel party they claim to be (see: Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan). They surely are not unified in support of Adelson's vision. Yet Republican voices of protest are muted. This is bad for the GOP, for Israel, and yes, for America. Fingers crossed that they find those voices soon.

There are many reasons to be concerned about the role that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has come to play in the current election cycle.

Sen. John McCain recently questioned the propriety of Mr. Adelson's donations, given that most of his money comes from casinos in Macau and foreign citizens are not allowed to contribute to U.S. campaigns. In June The New York Times editorialized that Mr. Adelson is "spending sums greater than any political donation in history to advance his personal, ideological and financial agenda, which is wildly at odds with the nation's needs." His views on Palestinians, which have been mimicked by candidates he supports, are far outside the mainstream of American Jewish opinion and his Middle East policy agenda runs counter to Israel's long-term interests.

According to Sheldon Adelson, AIPAC is helping Israel "commit suicide" and therefore no longer receives his significant support. Palestinians, he argues, are an "invented people."

Yet these concerns about Adelson are not being raised in our community. Instead, over the last few days, several prominent Jewish leaders rushed to his defense when the National Jewish Democratic Council called on Mitt Romney to stop taking the casino billionaire's money. Their rationale? NJDC had smeared Adelson by repeating accusations detailed in a recent Washington Post article that he had approved of prostitution in his Macau casinos.

The irony here is overwhelming. Adelson has personally smeared the entire Palestinian people. Repeatedly. He reportedly has mocked President Obama in front of a crowd of young Jews at a Birthright event. His money has been responsible for some of the most vicious attack ads of the entire election cycle to date. Yet somehow, according to some Jewish leaders, it is NJDC who stepped over the line. In the meantime, under intense pressure, the NJDC has backed off.

Americans generally, and American Jews in particular, reject both Adelson's views and his undue influence. If we really want a political process that reflects American opinion and our own values, we have to counter Adelson's millions of dollars with our millions of voices. We have to state clearly and unequivocally that his opinions are simply beyond the pale, and no dollar amount can change that fact. Allowing one wealthy man to buy the next American election will undermine everything this country stands for. It will also prove dangerous to Israel, the very country Adelson's acolytes claim to be supporting.

I think the allegations made against Adelson, in this lawsuit and others, are serious. But I am more concerned with the effect his money is having on our democracy, today. That's why the Jewish Council for Education & Research is picking up the NJDC effort and is calling on Mitt Romney, the entire GOP, and anyone involved with the upcoming elections to reject his influence and his dollars.

On Sept. 23, Stephen Colbert appeared on Good Morning America. While discussing the March to Keep Fear Alive, Colbert was asked what we should be afraid of. His response: "Muslims, immigrants, gays and robots."

Robots aside, Colbert accurately represents the rhetoric currently perpetuated in our political and news media landscape. While politicians and pundits may not say it so bluntly, nor deliver it with such impressive comedic timing, the idea is the same. As Nov. 2 approaches, Americans are urged to succumb to deep-seated and dangerous fears.

With many Americans stressed and stretched by economic uncertainty, political leaders and media personalities are stoking our fears of outsiders, the perpetual "other," and whatever election-time boogiemen they can conceive. The use of fear to drive voters to the polls or away from the polls is nothing new. And in some ways, who can blame the politicians? What else are they going to talk about? The perceived failure of the bailout that the majority of both parties supported? How about all those specific programs that so many candidates plan on cutting? Politicians on both sides of the aisle really don't have too much to talk about right now, at least nothing as compelling as fear. And with so much at stake in this election, the culture of fear has gotten out of control. In fact, it has created a monster.

The Fear Monster's rants have been impossible to escape:

Immigrants bringing leprosy across the southern border!
Gay marriage threatens straight marriage!
Terror mosques being built at Ground Zero!

Some Americans respond to this fear-mongering by getting angry and engaging in the political process. Others have the opposite response, withdrawing from civic life and despairing of the future of our country.

The Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, DC on Saturday is one response to the politics of fear. This mammoth beast, the Fear Monster, is growing and gaining followers at a frightening pace. Colbert caricatures it, while Jon Stewart lampoons it. Both are important and necessary. And hilarious.

However, the Rally will not be enough to combat this plague of fear-mongering. We all have to do our part. A creative new project from Jewish Funds for Justice is turning, for inspiration and guidance, to two other figures with something to say about fear: God and Yoda.

When the heroes of biblical times despaired, from Abraham to Moses to Hagar to the Israelites, God would speak to them. "Al Tirah! Fear Not!" God commanded. Good advice then, good advice now.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Jedi Grand Master Yoda, known for his idiosyncratic object-subject-verb word order, shared this pearl of wisdom. "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

We have all heard this wisdom before. After all, Al Tirah is the most frequently articulated commandment in the Hebrew Bible, a message God delivers 122 times. And Yoda is almost equally ubiquitous. But in the next seven days, their words bear repeating.

Today, to help deliver this message, we introduce a new monster to fight the all too common Fear Monster. Today we share with you, the Empathy Monster.

Since we are no longer operating in Biblical times, both the Fear Monster and Empathy Monster are on Facebook.

As in life, on Facebook, the Fear and Empathy Monster do not exactly see eye to eye. The Fear Monster continues to disseminate hateful and simple-minded imagery on it's Facebook page but the Empathy Monster is no slouch. Across various social media platforms you can spot the Fear Monster and Empathy Monster battling it out:

EmpathyMonster: Why is FearMonster so afraid of people who are different. Perhaps he was once mugged by a gay, Muslim, immigrant?

FearMonster: Let's just be safe and send Muslims, immigrants AND gays back to their country of origin.

The Fear and Empathy Monsters will be hitting the proverbial campaign trail in these final days leading up the elections, fueled by the voices of a rotating roster of comedic talent, from the actress/comedienne Charlyne Yi to the former Daily Show writer Rob Kutner.

The monsters premiere their short feature film on Oct. 27, so be sure to check back when Fear and Empathy come to life on the little screen. The video features Rabbi Sharon Brous, the spiritual leader of the Los Angeles-based community Ikar, and is built around an excerpt from her sermon, "A Spiritual State of the Union." In it she makes a powerful argument against the politics of fear and in support of what she calls "radical empathy." It is an important message we think should resonate with all voters, regardless of ideology or political party.

As this battle between the Fear and the Empathy Monster rages on, we need your help.
There is a lot of important work to do before Election Day to get people to the polls. All of us should do what we can to talk to our neighbors, inform people about the important issues at stake and encourage folks to get out and vote. But for those of you who aren't able to knock on doors or make phone calls, you must do something to help change the tone of our politics: Remind your friends and neighbors and classmates and co-workers that they must try to push past their despair and not succumb to fear and cynicism. Tell them, Al Tirah! Fear Not!
And then give them two buttons: one to wear, and one to pass on.

To learn more and get involved, visit the Al Tirah website.