HARTFORD — On Friday, April 30, the YWCA Hartford Region will host its second annual Stand Against Racism event across communities throughout the capital area.

Stand Against Racism is a program of the YWCA aimed at raising awareness that racism still exists in our communities and how we can address it. In response, the YWCA created the Stand Against Racism event to combat the spread of division and intolerance and to honor and celebrate the richness of diversity.

In 2009 in the Hartford area, 32 organizations were part of the Stand that drew over 1700 participants pledging a lifetime of promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all people. The Stand Against Racism is a collaboration of numerous YWCA associations throughout the United States. This powerful, unified effort will help raise awareness that racism hurts everyone.

Again this year, AHCC will participate by hosting an exhibit titled “All of Us Are Related, Each of Us Is Unique.” The exhibit graphically shows how much alike humans are, and how our differences are clearly not “racial” in any biological sense of the word. “Tolerance flags” made by our youth are also on display. The exhibit is free and runs from April 24 – 30.

For more information, contact Tony Mein, director of Outreach Ministries, 860-525-5696.

By Ann-Marie Adams

HARTFORD — In a recent poll, more than 80 percent of people in the Greater Hartford area and beyond believesd the hatred directed at President Barack Obama is a symptom of racism.

According to a poll on the Hartford Courant website, 82.2 percent of the almost 5,000 people who voted online at about 2 p.m. believed racism is at the crux of angry outbursts like that of South Carolina Republican Senator Joe Wilson.

Wilson was in Congress while President Obama talked about health care reform and shouted: “You lie”

The question posed by the Courant’s poll is: Is racism a factor in the anti-Obama protests?

The reasons stated that the “anger directed president Obama shows some people can’t accept a black man being in the White House” got the most votes.

 Hartford community activist,Charles Barrow in an email to The Hartford Guardian said that the debate is a akin to previous national debates on Brown v Board of Education.

“What they have done to this President is unprecedented and seriously wrong and is all racially motivated,”  Barrow said. As I have said in the past the Right -Wing is treating this health care issue just like they treated equal education with Brown -v- Board of Education.   They do not want to level the playing ground for poor people and especially people of color.”

Barrow might just be right.

Rep. Joe Wilson is a man known  for being one of the last hold-outs for keeping the confederate flag flying over the Capitol in South Carolina, reports Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo. He continues: “And you didn’t have to wait for the night of the speech though. The day before the speech, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia said Obama needed to show some “humility” when he showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. I’ve heard presidents criticized, pilloried, even [vilified] for lots of things. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard one warned to show some humility.

 New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was among the first to find the courage to link racism with Obama’s opposition. She writes: “Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”

The question now is will Connecticut get the courage to enter the discussion about racism.

There are no signs of that yet.  Besides, the “opposing forces” of Obama believes the left is making much ado about Obama’s race as a factor.

National Review columnist Count Victor Davis Hanson is one of those who do. He writes that Dowd “alleges that racism is behind the growing suspicion of the Obama administration and its initiatives. But almost everything we’ve seen so far has a parallel with liberal attacks on George W. Bush. By 2005, Democrats were booing him openly during his State of the Union address. Rep. Pete Stark called him a liar on the House floor. In fact, the response so far to Obama is mild in comparison to what Bush endured. That does not excuse the boorishness of Joe Wilson, but his tirade is symbolic of our loss of decorum since 2002/2003.

As we all remember, novels were published outlining dreams of killing Bush; a film on that theme won an award. Al Gore, John Glenn (of all people!), and Robert Byrd compared Bush to a brownshirt or Nazi, and they were echoed in the popular culture by the likes of Linda Rondstadt and Garrison Keiler (”brownshirts in pinstripes”). There was no liberal outcry in response.

The Guardian published a sick column by one Charles Brooker, who asked out loud, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?” Howard Dean, head of the Democratic party, raged, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.”