{"id":12528,"date":"2007-08-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/08\/03\/hamilton-temple-arson-in-2001-leads-to-call-for-an-inclusive-community\/"},"modified":"2007-08-03T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T12:00:00","slug":"hamilton-temple-arson-in-2001-leads-to-call-for-an-inclusive-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/08\/03\/hamilton-temple-arson-in-2001-leads-to-call-for-an-inclusive-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton Temple Arson in 2001 Leads to Call for an Inclusive Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.stoneycreeknews.com\/scn\/viewpoint\/viewpoint_848125.html\">www.stoneycreeknews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">HAMILTON, CANADA, August 3, 2007: (HPI note: following is a guest editorial by Brad Clark in the Stoney Creek News of Ontario, Canada.) In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Hamilton&#8217;s Hindu Samaj Temple was torched and burned to the ground by racists. It was also during this time I heard many stories from Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs that they were afraid to walk the streets. Women and children were sworn at and spit on by bigots. It was a horrible stain on our city&#8217;s reputation. I can remember attending the fundraiser for the Hindu Samaj Temple at Carmen&#8217;s Banquet Centre. My friend, Hon. Sheila Copps and I challenged the audience to help raise the temple from the ashes. I can also remember telling the audience I have problems with the word &#8220;tolerant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The word, &#8220;tolerant,&#8221; really means to begrudgingly accept differences. I have always hoped our community could reach beyond being just &#8220;tolerant&#8221; and become an accepting, caring and inclusive community. Around the same time, Mayor Bob Wade formed Strengthening Hamilton&#8217;s Community Initiative. This group held many roundtables to plan to overcome racism wherever it is found. This excellent initiative recently joined with SISO&#8217;s Civic and Resource Center Initiative (to form Hamilton&#8217;s Centre for Civic Inclusion. HCCI&#8217;s mission is &#8220;A community-based network, mobilizing all Hamiltonians to create an inclusive city, free of racism and hate.&#8221; They also have an excellent vision, &#8220;A united community that respects diversity, practices equity and speaks out against discrimination.&#8221; Nowhere do you find the word &#8220;tolerant.&#8221; Finally, we are moving toward the creation of a caring, accepting and inclusive community.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.stoneycreeknews.com HAMILTON, CANADA, August 3, 2007: (HPI note: following is a guest editorial by Brad Clark in the Stoney Creek,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}