I want to start by thanking the DVC faculty and administration for endorsing statements condemning the hate expressed by white supremacist groups gathering and marching in Charlottesville. In times such as these, I believe that academic institutions have an obligation to support the needs of their students who are most blatantly under attack. I appreciate statements that support those of us who have seriously begun to question just how safe we really are in today’s United States.

I appreciate even more that this statement came in support of those of us who have never felt safe in today’s United States, and with good reason.

However, I would like to say a word or two about violence and the way this term is often used by otherwise well-meaning white liberals. By condemning “violent tactics” or “violent behavior,” these individuals often delineate just what they consider to be acceptable behavior – and who they deem worthy of support. It is inappropriate and disrespectful to use the term violence when referring to groups literally fighting for our lives in the face of others specifically shouting en masse that they wish to kill us.

I absolutely do not condone (or recommend) initiating physical fights in order to assert your point, nor do I believe anyone deserves to be attacked simply for expressing their beliefs, with one important caveat: marauding groups of primarily white men shouting that they wish to murder Jews, black people, queer people and anyone else who gets in their way. Historically, this has been the lead-up to these white supremacist groups committing murder, destroying Jewish property and raping Jewish women in pogroms, or even the initial steps of genocide against Jews or previously against Native Americans. White supremacist beliefs – Nazi beliefs – are not acceptable, and must not be tolerated.

Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other groups on the far left are not collectively attempting to do physical harm to anyone. However, these groups have an equivalent right to protest to that of the white supremacists. The accounts of eyewitnesses to the events at Charlottesville make clear that the white supremacists struck first, via actions that left many injured and at least one deceased. When antifa and other groups on the left fought, they were not doing so out of rage or hatred; they were trying to defend their own, both those under physical attack from white supremacists marching, and those whom the white supremacists announced a wish to see destroyed.

Sometimes this kind of targeted, protective act of violence is necessary for creation, for the simple reason that those expressing publicly and insistently that they wish us dead are not being subtle. My grandparents lived through the Holocaust, and I have logical reason to fear experiencing the same if white supremacist beliefs are permitted to infiltrate national discourse. I have reason to fear for the lives of my POC (people of color) friends when police in this country of institutionalized white supremacism are permitted to shoot unarmed black people or forcibly perform a vaginal search or rape them, with complete legal impunity. This is unacceptable, and those who claim it is are doing me active harm. When they back up that active harm by mimicking KKK gatherings that a few short decades ago typically led to lynchings, yes, I have the right to defend myself, and so do all those threatened.

Being a white person, I recognize the extent to which these accusations of “immorality” mask deeply held prejudices and anti-racist sentiment aimed specifically at maintaining a power structure that privileges white people. I see that even white liberals do not, at their core, often wish to surrender the ill-gotten gains of slavery and the attempted genocide of the Native Americans.

Being a Jew, I profoundly condemn the false equivalencies made between “anarchists” and white-supremacists, between far-left “rioters” and neo-Nazis. I also take this moment to condemn the false equivalency made between murderous policemen, and Black Lives Matter protesters attempting to reclaim societal space and power stolen from black people via a history of oppression and exploitation in which every white person is implicated.

I stand in solidarity with members of the Allied forces who defeated the Hitler regime not with diplomacy and “understanding,” but with bullets and bombs.

I stand in solidarity with Nat Turner and every other person who used armed warfare against the perpetrators of the horrifically abusive system of slavery.

I stand with the Water Protectors of Standing Rock, and I make no judgments about the validity of their tactics because it is not my place to do so.

Mostly, I stand in solidarity with every Jew and Polish person and queer person and anyone else who ever fought an armed uprising against Hitler’s machine of death. You did not win, but your courage lives on forever.

When evil comes rising, dear white people, we have learned we cannot rely on you to rescue us. We have learned you are loathe to act until that evil arrives at your own front door, that until then, you often offer the white perpetrators of evil more respect and humanization than you offer us.

We do not need your permission to fight back. I would just appreciate it if you would get out of my way as I do so.

Thank you.