“With profound respect and gratitude to the 100 social justice organizations across the country that have called upon our communities to rethink our relationship to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL has a long history of working to undermine movements for justice, and this primer about its history and current practices is an invaluable resource for all our collective work.”
– Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Transnational, anti-racist feminist scholar-activist and writer
***
“If you really want to be an anti-racist, read this primer. Anyone who has followed the ADL over the years will not be fooled by its latest makeover. This is the same ADL who helped facilitate joint trainings between Israel security forces and the U.S. police forces that are killing our people in the streets. This is the same ADL that has spied on hundreds of social justice organizations, including the NAACP, the ACLU, Arab-American organizations, trade unions, environmental justice organizations, and Central American solidarity groups. This is the same ADL that regards Palestinians as a security and “demographic” threat to Israel and continues to support the illegal, colonial occupation of Palestine. This is the same ADL that promotes Islamophobia, suppresses student free speech, and virulently attacked the Movement for Black Lives as well as Black activists and intellectuals identified with its anti-racist vision for social justice. So if you think the ADL is an ally, read this text and think again. ADL Lies Matter because real Black, Brown, and Indigenous Lives are at stake. The Lies end here!”
– Robin D. G. Kelley
Historian, professor, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
***
“For too long, the ADL has masked its harmful practices behind the shield of anti-discrimination and anti-hate. To their credit, over a hundred racial, economic and social justice organizations–leading progressive voices–have put in the time and energy to expose the Anti-Defamation League. This is an important report. Everyone must read it, share it and heed the warnings about the ADL. I stand behind the efforts of the brave writers and activists who put this forward knowing full well the pressure and intimidation that would follow.”
– Deepa Kumar
Anti-racist, feminist, socialist scholar and activist, labor leader, professor
***
“#ItIsTime. In these important and fraught times when all Black Lives must finally truly matter it is urgent to rethink your alignments and commitments to working alongside, or with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Please rethink your alliance/s with the ADL because of their repeated failure to include communities of color, immigrants, Muslims and Arabs in their vision of who deserves civil-rights. In the end, the ADL too often enhances the very groups, like police and right-wing perpetrators of state violence, that actually undermine the social justice movement/s we are all so dedicated to. Be careful that your present justice work does no further harm to these communities, especially the women of color in these communities.”
– Zillah Eisenstein
Anti-racist socialist feminist theorist, writer, professor, activist
***
“In a moment of pandemics and racial uprisings, assaults on immigrant communities, spikes in evictions and food insecurity, and fortified displays of white supremacy by police, politicians, #Karens and everyday people, it is crucial that activists/educators/scholars/social justice organizations be vigilant about groups borrowing the optics of “progressive” even as they have reproduced racist exclusions and ideologies. Drop The ADL is a crucial volume for educators, activists, social justice organizations and members of all religious communities to read and teach. The report traces, in ways accessible and deeply referenced, the ADL’s historic assault on anti-racist, queer, Muslim, leftist and progressive Jewish organizations; insidious ties with the carceral state in the U.S. and in Israel; networks with far right media outlets, politicians and foundations. The report exposes how money, power and influence flow through capillaries of censorship and surveillance into the intellectual and civic life of university campuses, threatening conversations about/movements for Palestinian justice. This is a moment for radical, anti-racist and bold solidarities, and a time to scrutinize and resist organizations laminated in thinly veiled rhetoric.”
With much appreciation for the work for the 100 social justice organizations that collaborated on this volume of insight and incite,
– Michelle Fine
Critical psychologist, social justice activist, author of Just Research in Contentious Times
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“Thank you to the over 100 organizations that came together to show that the ADL is no friend or ally to those of us committed to justice. The primer shows us, in concrete terms, why our liberation is tied up together — and why our movements must be too.”
Ujju Aggarwal, educator, organizer, and co-editor, What’s Race Got to Do With It? How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality (2nd Edition)
#DropTheADL 