MACON, Ga. — For a third time this year, someone left antisemitic flyers in a Macon neighborhood.
It's happened before in Bealls Hill, once around Temple Beth Israel and now, fliers were found on College and Monroe Street.
So, a nice walk on a fall day for Stephanie Hatcher turned out to be not very nice.
“I walk my dog every morning, usually down College [Street],” Hatcher said. “I pick up trash when I walk the dog because I like to keep my earth clean.”
She said she saw a plastic baggie filled with corn and paper. Then another and then another.
“That's when I stopped to see why I was picking up so many bags and was appalled,” she explained.
Hatcher said in two miles, she picked up 30 plastic baggies filled with anti-Jewish, racist and homophobic flyers stuffed in them.
“It's pretty easy to figure out that it's not true,” Hatcher’s husband, Kerry, said. “It also makes people feel incredibly unwelcome and fearful."
He says antisemitism has been on the rise.
“I spoke to a friend of mine who said his first response was, ‘Well I guess I need to stop telling people I'm Jewish,'” Kerry said. “That made me feel sad that my friend would feel, somehow, unwelcome in my neighborhood.”
He says he’s lived downtown for 20 years and that's not his Macon.
“I firmly condemn it because that’s not okay! I think of Macon as being a very welcoming, loving, and considerate place,” Kerry said.
Ted Goshorn, reverend for the Mulberry Street United Methodist Church, says local congregations are supporting Macon’s Jewish community.
“This is an example of how hate exists in the world, and hate begets more hate,” he explained.
Goshorn says love is more powerful. He says after an anti-Jewish protest in July, his church hosted a Unity service, which brought people together to stand up against hate.
“It was the most meaningful thing I’ve done as a pastor. It almost felt like you could reach out into the air and grab a piece of hope or love that was in that room. It's a testimony to who Macon is,” Goshorn said. “That Macon will rally around our friends, we'll take care of each other."
He says hate will always exist and spread itself. He says to combat it, we should be peaceful.
“I wish that there was some act or some way that we could do something that could erase the hate, or make it very clear that this is not welcome here. The best way to equip ourselves is educating ourselves about the lies being told about our Jewish brothers and sisters in order to be able to combat that hate,” Goshorn said.
Because it's not okay, Hatcher said.
“Let them know, don't come here. You're not welcome here,” she said.
Rabbi of Temple Beth Israel, Elizabeth Bahar, told us in a statement that the flyers demand education and antisemitism is based on irrational conspiracy theories. She says Jewish principles are based on love and kindness to human life.
Here is her full quote:
“These flyers demand education and understanding that antisemitism is a hatred that at its core is based on irrational and grotesque conspiracy theories. It is a pernicious, long existent form of hate whose best response is the Jewish principles of reaching out in love, kindness, and compassion for all human life. It demands that we remember that humanity is created in the Divine image.”