Four days after this month's Atlanta spa shootings, I gathered on the town common with what looked to be at least a few hundred of my fellow Needhamites for a vigil to show support for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
As an American, I am disgusted by the unrelenting and inexcusable hate and misogyny in our country, and as someone who grew up in Needham and has spent somewhere in the ballpark of three decades of my life living in this town, I am ashamed that we let it happen here too.
It was just two years ago that a yet-to-be-caught arsonist set fire to the Chabad Jewish Center, a year ago that our police were accused of racial profiling, and here I sit now, just a few days removed from a white woman disrupting the vigil by repeatedly driving around the common's perimeter with both Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" and her raised fist pumping out her open car window.
The speeches at the vigil were as powerful as they were unsettling. Older Asian Americans talked about the prejudice they faced growing up while current Needham high schoolers shared personal experiences that were nearly identical to those of the older generations. Decades later and seemingly nothing has changed.
We have addressed how hate influences nutrition before, but occasional reminders are warranted. And sometimes we need to remember that hate is still here, even if we have not seen it for ourselves - at least not yet. We, as a community, still have a lot of work to do.
The connections between cults and nutrition might not be immediately apparent, but they nevertheless exist. Mike Fallek, from the Big Weasel Lil Weasel production company, interviewed Jonah for their Hashtag Cult project last summer, and the video recently became available. Watch their wide-ranging discussion here.