A lavish international buffet coupled with unseasonably warm weather attracted about 1,000 area residents to the Woodstock Square Sunday to mark this year’s edition of Diversity Day, an annual celebration of the racial, religious and ethnic traditions of McHenry County.
But more than the food and the mariachis, the speeches and the politicians, this year’s event signaled the start of a yearlong crusade, dubbed Stamp Out Hate, to be taken to the county’s schools, churches, businesses and civic organizations to promote tolerance and understanding.
Events such as the one in Woodstock give people the chance to do more than just react to incidents of intolerance, Pat Murfin, president of the Interfaith Council for Social Justice said.
Buttons, bumper stickers, T-shirts, posters and fliers will be circulated throughout the county, Murfin said.
Churches, synagogues and other religious institutions will be encouraged to spread the word through bulletins and newsletters. A speaker’s bureau will be established.
But the campaign’s primary goal is to bring its message to the county’s classrooms, an idea endorsed by Cindy Bloom, who is on the McHenry County Human Relations Council.
“The prejudices that exist in some people in the county won’t ever change,” Bloom said. “But we can make it clear that those prejudices are unacceptable here.” One of the first places to start, she said, is the classroom.
“It’s like recycling. The kids go home and say, `Mom, you’re not going to throw that pop can in the garbage, are you?'” Bloom said. “They can teach their parents about tolerance the same way. If you can instill it in the kids, maybe you can get to their parents.”
Taking a break in the food tent, which offered a smorgasbord donated by 20 McHenry County restaurants, Plum Garden restaurant owner Perry Moy explained why Diversity Day and the Stamp Out Hate program are close to his heart.
“Our industry employs more minority men and women than any other industry in the country,” Moy said. “As an industry we’ve hired people of color and gender and offered the most upward mobility. I guess we’ve always supported diversity without ever realizing it.”
Regional School Supt. Donald Englert applauded the Stamp Out Hate campaign as a way “to just get people together.”
The schools already have some tolerance programs in place, he said, but “what we can do formally with instruction in the classrooms is enhanced informally with events like this.”
Moy recalled the day in 1964 when he and his immigrant mother leased the Plum Garden space in McHenry. He was 13. She spoke only Chinese.
“He said `How about 70 bucks a month and I’ll throw in the utilities? You can live upstairs.’ He took a chance on a woman–a single mother who couldn’t speak a word of English,” Moy said. As a result “I know that one person does make a difference, and you have to reach out and embrace the community,” he said.
To Rev. Robert Sherry, pastor of the Church of the Holy Apostles in McHenry, the messages contained in the Diversity Day and Stamp Out Hate programs are both tragic and necessary.
“It’s a shame that after all these thousands of years we have to have a year committed to stamping out hate,” Sherry said. “But it’s better to do this than to say it doesn’t exist.”
