By Kytja Weir
Globe Correspondent / November 25, 2007
The town of Bedford has become the latest to join the growing list of area communities to distance itself from an antibias program mired in controversy over the Anti-Defamation League’s http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1588 on the Armenian genocide.
The five-member Board of Selectmen voted unanimously Monday to suspend the ADL’s No Place for Hate program at the urging of the community’s Violence Prevention Coalition, an umbrella group that oversaw the community’s participation in the national program.
“I don’t think we should be carrying the banner of the Anti-Defamation League as long as it puts their interests ahead of protecting all of us from discrimination,” Selectman Gordon Feltman said to a packed room of more than two dozen who turned out for the vote.At least eight other Massachusetts http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2089 – including Arlington, Belmont, Lexington, and Watertown – previously had suspended or severed ties with the ADL and No Place for Hate.
The Medford City Council also recently suspended the program. Community members there re sponded early this month by gathering in an impromptu ceremony to take down a prominent outdoor sign declaring the community a No Place for Hate location.
The program, once certified in more than 60 Massachusetts communities, provides grant money and expertise for educational activities fighting discrimination.
Bedford officials had discussed the issue earlier in the fall but chose to wait and see whether the ADL’s national board would endorse a resolution before Congress about the Armenian genocide in its Nov. 2 meeting.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/25/town_suspends_ties_to_no_place_for_hate/