The Horizons Community Services Anti-Violence Project will join with family members of recent hate-crimes victims, civil-rights, religious, women's, and labor leaders at a press conference to launch the UnitedAgainstHate.org, an Internet-enhanced grassroots campaign promoting passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in the U.S. House.
The UnitedAgainstHate.org campaign will help support the organizing efforts of individuals and organizations in Illinois and around the nation who want to enact the HCPA. A project of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the oldest, largest, and most diverse coalition of organizations committed to the protection of civil and human rights in the U.S., UnitedAgainstHate.org represents the first time that local and national civil rights, women's, religious, LGBT, and labor organizations have collectively leveraged Internet technology to mount a coordinated grassroots online advocacy campaign.
"We're proud to be supporting this important effort to strengthen the Federal Hate Crime law," stated Lisa Tonna, Director of Horizons' Anti-Violence Project. "As an active member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, we witness on an almost daily basis the need for widening the scope of hate crime laws."
The campaign will be announced at a press conference Aug. Participants are expected to include Mayor Richard Daley, Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine, State Rep. Jeff Schoenberg, Roger Doughty of Horizons, Jacob Morowitz of the Anti-Defamation League, Sheila Luecht of the American Association of University Women, and family members of July 4, 1999 shooting victims.