Call to Action: 2012 Hours Against Hate

Integrity USA supports the 2012 Hours Against Hate campaign and urges it's membership and supporters to take an active part.

2012 Hours Against Hate is a campaign to stop bigotry and promote respect across lines of culture, religion, tradition, class, and gender. Launched by Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith, and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department is asking young people around the world to pledge their time to stop hate—to do something for someone who doesn’t look like you, pray like you, or live like you. We are asking the next generation to work together to build a stronger, more tolerant world. No one group can do it alone

Special Representative Pandith and Special Envoy Rosenthal officially launched “2012 Hours Against Hate” at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, Austria on February 17, 2011
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Stand Up and Speak Out.

Hate is Hate, No Matter Who the Target Is.

Join the Campaign!

Email your stories & photos of volunteer efforts to 2011HoursAgainstHate@state.gov

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s is the latest voice to join the 2012 Hours Against Hate campaign. Jefferts Schori’s video message, posted Aug. 2, notes the world’s “incredible diversity,” which she said “as a scientist and a person of faith, I think that’s an enormous blessing” because “each one of us comes with a different gift.”

“At the same time, there is an ancient human tendency to distinguish oneself from people whom one understands as ‘other’,” she said, adding that such distinctions can be either a blessing to the other person, or a way to allow for viewing the other as an enemy.

“People of faith are called routinely to see the other as a person like themselves,” she said. “We are called as Christians to love our enemies, to understand every human person as carrying the image of God.”

Jefferts Schori said that the campaign is an invitation to step across artificial boundaries to discover friends among the other, and to join together to make the world a better place.