MONTICELLO – The new Sullivan County Human Rights Commission, in its second meeting on July 9, discussed establishing an executive committee and began deliberating upon practical ways to help communities in Sullivan County that face discrimination. The mission of the Human Rights Commission, which was first created in 2005, is to foster good relationships among communities and groups of people in Sullivan County. 

Executive Director Ramone Wilson told members that, according to the rules of conduct for the commission, they have to establish an executive committee, consisting of a chair, vice chair, and secretary, before addressing the issues that have come to his office. “The executive committee, essentially, is put in place to move stuff up to the Legislature should it have to be moved.” However the Commission members were not all in attendance, so those present decided to vote on executive committee positions during the meeting on August 13. 

“In our next meeting we’ll have an overview of all the complaints that have been submitted to my office thus far- some are still being reviewed, as a lot of them aren’t directly human rights issues, but they still need to [be addressed].” Wilson said when they do discuss complaints, he will not give confidential information, instead allowing the commission to evaluate the essence of the complaint and decide on a course of action. 

Resident Yehuda Miller said, “There was a mention about eggs that were thrown and how ridiculous that is and how terrible that is, and I agree with that very much.” 

Because people now get their news and information from social media, Miller said, the younger generation has developed a skewed impression of Jewish people; “When you have a kid that grows up, and all he sees on social media is how terrible Orthodox Jews are, nobody talks about contributions that they do, or anything good that they do.” 

Miller said the Human Rights Commission can’t change the power or influence of social media but what they could do is encourage public officials and politicians to change the narrative. “I don’t see enough pushback from a county level on these kinds of comments,”  Miller said.

Commission member Bill Liblick said, “The amount of antisemitism that’s in the state of New York right now, I’m on the Democratic State Committee, and that’s one of the issues we’re confronting. Where are our state officials, where are our federal officials in New York State denouncing the antisemitism that’s ongoing right now?”

Wilson said, “As a Human Rights Commission, we’re here to support everybody in the community.” Wilson said it’s unfortunate that the Jewish community is facing this discrimination, and that strength happens when we come together as one community, instead of focusing on subcommunities. 

“As a black man growing up in America, I understand persecution from a different level; it doesn’t make my trauma any less or bigger than what you guys are experiencing, but we have to understand: we have to stand together when anybody from any community is facing any adversity, that’s when strength happens. When people from the African American community see the Hasidic community standing with them when they’re facing persecution, and vice-versa, is when we can really start to see change,” said Wilson.

After the meeting ended, Ramone Wilson was kind enough to sit down with the Democrat to share his vision for the challenging work that lays ahead for the Human Rights Commission.

“We do hear the cries of the community and it impacts us deeply, specifically with [what] the Jewish community is going through,” Wilson said. 

“But as I stated earlier in our commission meeting, it’s important that we stand side by side, regardless of what subcommunity we represent because what impacts one particular person impacts us all… ,” Wilson said. “We’re in the process of establishing an executive committee in our next meeting, and once that takes place, we can start to be more aggressive with getting out there in the public and making everybody aware of the work that we’re doing.” 

Wilson said community outreach will manifest in educational seminars on hate, bias, and discrimination, and that these seminars will take place throughout the community- in different towns, high schools, and religious organizations. 

“We want to invite everybody, we want to do it where anyone and everybody from any community can reach it, and it can be accessible to them,” Wilson said.

Wilson also said they will work to enhance relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve.

When asked about the segregation in Sullivan County, Wilson said, “the world, the country, is pretty segregated still unfortunately, so there’s a great task, and one of the things we want to tackle is to call out that segregation, and make sure we can do something about it because it’s not just here in Sullivan County unfortunately… 

“I come from a very diverse community. I’m from Newark, New Jersey, which happens to be the largest city in the state of New Jersey and it’s very diversified,” he said. “To come here, work in this community, and now live in this community to see the level of segregation is concerning. [Change] is gonna happen through education, through outreach, it’s not something that’s gonna happen overnight, it’s a great task put before this body, but we intend on bringing significant light to it.”