When anti-Semitism undercuts a good fight

This article from something called the American Free Press was posted over the weekend to a Facebook page for Tent City in Lakewood, the homeless encampment which I’ve been writing about for two years.

The article purports to uncover the truth about the township, but it cloaks some basic accuracies — the town is run by an insular community, engages in questionable low-income housing allotments and has used aggressive tactics to root out the homeless — in anti-Semitiic language and rhetoric that I find shocking.

Starting with its headline referencing “the final solution,” and including gratuitous stabs at Jewish names, a discussion of birth rates and a not-so-subtle comparison between the 12th-generation minister who founded the tent encampment and the immigrant orthodox community, the piece drips with hate.

The response to the piece from commenters was mostly positive — but not because the supporters of Tent City are anti-Semitic. Most are not. Most of the commenters — as with most posts on Facebook — probably didn’t read the article and just saw that Lakewood was being taken to task. That, they reasoned, is a good thing.

Two other responses are more troubling. One would fall into the category of applauding anything that takes the “right” side — i.e., the side of the homeless. To criticize the story is to make one an apologist (it is the converse of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). A smaller group — and I hope it’s a small group — is revelling in the stereotyping and Jew-baiting and probably could care less about the homeless.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps. But the nastiness must be met with a strong, reasoned response. As I said, I agree that the township of Lakewood has engaged in a concerted effort to push the homeless out of the woods without much concern for where they might end up. And Lakewood very likely is gaming the housing system.

But Lakewood is only part of the problem. Ocean County bears a great deal of the responsibility, as well — there is no shelter in the county and not much of a plan for dealing what is likely to be a growing problem. There also is the larger issue — an economy designed to create waste, which includes dumping a class of people it deems without value onto the streets or into the woods.

The showdown in Lakewood, ultimately, was a showdown between two groups fighting for a tiny piece of the pie, a showdown designed to create winners and losers and to sew mistrust and hatred. That the people who run Lakewood are relatively small sect of orthodox Jews creates a convenient set of scapegoats and easy targets. 

And now that the camp is near its end, the anger is spilling over. The result ultimately is that the Lakewood and Ocean County power structures can dismiss the people fighting to help the homeless as racists and anti-Semites and they can ignore the homeless who were not a part of the original deal. That deal — to provide a year of housing to anyone who was in Tent City in Spring 2013 — has resulted in housing for many of those who were in the woods and should be used as a foundation on which to build a long-term solution. That’s the goal of the NJ Coalition to End Homelessness. The goal here should not be to keep the tent encampment open, at least not for any longer than is absolutely necessary, but to create enough housing, services and jobs in the region to ensure that the 100 people who have been living or may have to live in the woods don’t have to.