Valley LGBT center, synagogues get grants

State program will help organizations beef up security

With activity by white supremacist groups on the rise across Pennsylvania, a handful of nonprofit groups serving diverse communities in the Lehigh Valley are planning security upgrades through a state program to guard against hate crimes.

Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown is among four LGBT organizations around the state to receive grants from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency after hate-filled flyers were left at the LGBT Center of Greater Reading last year.

The $5 million program, launched in the wake of the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, will also provide security grants for five synagogues and churches in the Lehigh Valley. Across the state, 130 religious institutions and other nonprofit organizations received grants.

Adrian Shanker, founder and director of the Bradbury-Sullivan center, said LGBT groups across the country have been targeted by hate-fueled acts of vandalism or violence more than a dozen times in the last five years.

“Unfortunately, LGBT organizations need to be keenly aware of these trends,” Shanker said. “We live in a world where hate-filled people feel emboldened.”

And white supremacist ideologues are making their presence known in Lehigh Valley. Posters and spray-painted stencils with propaganda for the white nationalist group Patriot Front have been spotted in Bethlehem in public spaces including SteelStacks. Bethlehem police said this year that the acts were under investigation.

Shira Goodman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Philadelphia, said instances of white supremacist propaganda appearing in Pennsylvania communities increased from 81 in 2019 to 238 in 2020.

“We are seeing it a lot more in your area,” Goodman said.

According to the ADL, Patriot Front is a relatively new but popular group founded by a member who split off from the white nationalist group Vanguard America, which was among the groups present at the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Daryl Lamont Jenkins, founder and director of the One People’s Project, said that although

Patriot Front has organized flash mob-style rallies in some cities, its presence is seen mainly through the placement of propaganda material such as stickers or flyers by members or supporters working alone or in small groups.

“That’s all they want to do ... someone to see the stickers and freak the community out,” said Jenkins, who tracks racist and far-right groups.

It was Patriot Front that left flyers outside the LGBT center in Reading in May, and while Shanker said the Bradbury-Sullivan center is fortunate to have not experienced such an incident, stronger security is important for members to feel they will not be targeted.

“We’re not trying to build a fortress. We’re trying to be a center that is open and accessible,” he said.

The Bradbury-Sullivan center will receive $16,500 toward security improvements. While Shanker declined to describe the security measures, he said they will be capital improvements to the center’s property.

The grant program is also providing $48,910 to Temple Beth El in South Whitehall Township and $25,000 to Congregation Sons of Israel in Allentown; $25,000 to Chestnut Hill Church United Church of Christ in Coopersburg; $10,000 to Lehigh University Jewish Student Center; and $25,000 to New Creation United Church of Christ in Easton.

Aaron Gorozinsky, security director for the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley, said a coalition of nonprofit organizations serving diverse communities went to the state seeking funding for security after the Tree of Life shooting, where a lone gunman who had expressed anti-Semitic views online killed 11 people during Saturday morning services.

Gorozinsky said the process to apply for federal funding was onerous and the money available was insufficient, so the group approached legislators, who passed a bill directing the PCCD to distribute grants to organizations serving groups that are included in categories identified by the FBI as vulnerable to hate crimes.

“They realized that if this can happen in Pittsburgh, what could happen at a smaller community out in the middle of Pennsylvania,” Gorozinsky said.

Now in its second year, the program allows organizations to perform a security assessment and apply for funding to pay for improvements to doors, locks, video surveillance systems and security consulting.

“We want to make sure that if something is happening we are prepared, not preparing after it happens,” Gorozinsky said.