Students take part in leadership mission
The ADL Motto: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it!
As a person of color, let me assure people of color that the ADL never has the interest of people of color at heart! Never! This program serves only the ADL and the people it represents, world Jewry.
AT THE U.S. CAPITAL—Students and chaperones from the local Anti-Defamation League delegation to the National Youth Leadership Mission in Washington, D.C. include local students Emilie Maddiso, third from left; Nicole Hayes, sixth from left; Zach Mercer, seventh from left; Alexis Taneman, eighth from left and Josh Hershman, second from right.
Ten ethnically and racially diverse high school juniors from the greater Los Angeles area represented the AntiDefamation League Pacific Southwest Region on the ADL Grosfeld Family National Youth Leadership Mission in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 16 to 19, 2008.
Alexis Taneman of Oak Park High School, Emilie Maddison and Nicole Hayes of Westlake High School, and Josh Hershman and Zach Mercer of Agoura High School were among the attendees.
The mission focused on building student leadership skills to combat bias in their communities through furthering their knowledge of the Holocaust.
The delegates participated in breakout sessions that discussed on anti-bias activities, toured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and listened to a diverse group of speakers that included Maria Reyes of the Freedom Writers; African American WWII veteran Dr. Leon Bass, who participated in the liberation of Buchenwald; Nesse Godin, a survivor of Stutthof concentration camp, four labor camps and a death march, and Masha Leon, a Holocaust survivor who was saved by Chiune Sugihara, Japanese Consul to Lithuania in 1939 and 1940.
The students also attended the 14th Annual ADL In Concert Against Hate at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, featuring the National Symphony Orchestra, where they heard the stories of three people who acted in extraordinary ways when confronted by injustice and terrorism.
Delegates will now share their mission experience with their school communities through presentations, essays, or initiating clubs to raise awareness about genocide.
They will also participate in the ongoing ADL youth leadership program, Dream Dialogue, which includes a social action project chosen by the involved students.
For more information about the Anti-Defamation League or its programs, call (310) 4468000, e-mail LA@adl.org, or visit www.adl.org/pacificsouthwest.