This past week, gunmen have taken black elders from the American community who lived through the Jim Crow era, and Jewish elders who remembered the Holocaust.

This summer, there was a mass shooting at a newspaper, by a man who wanted to punish the media. There have been several recent mass shootings by men taking revenge on women who’d upset them.

The victims have all been peaceable people going about their daily activities, their lives stolen prematurely by men who decided that their inflamed grievances or convictions justified murder. Each of these men seemed to have convinced himself that he was so threatened by the disagreement of others, or by their mere existence, that he was entitled to massacre peaceful strangers. It is only our extreme good fortune that prevented another man who mailed pipe bombs to public figures from taking the lives of any of his targets, or hurting any postal workers who handled his hateful weapons.

Our hearts are broken for all those terrorized and harmed.

We oppose the use of dehumanizing or eliminationist rhetoric, towards anyone, in the strongest terms. We encourage a recommitment to aspire to democratic values, and the rejection of dishonest bigotries that hold entire classes of people as being less worthy of life, respect, and dignity.

With love,

The WoLF Board