More than 50 people from at least seven different Naperville-area faith communities gathered Thursday night with law enforcement and community leaders for what organizers called a ‘Dialogue on Hate Crimes’ at the Wesley United Methodist Church.
United for Peace and the Naperville Interfaith Leaders Association organized the event after the alleged failed shooting plot at Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora on October 11th.
A 19-year-old man from Palatine faces terrorism charges for allegedly planning the attack, which police said was foiled due to information shared by his co-worker and his rifle jamming.
Naperville Hindu community leaders respond to failed attack
Saily Joshi, a Naperville resident and member of the Hindu community, spoke about how she felt after hearing about the attempted attack.
“To see that happen so close to home,” said Joshi, “it was scary, that’s a temple that our family goes to, many of my friends are integral parts of it. Our celebrations, our weddings are there.”
Board member of United for Peace Shalini Gupta said it was important to bring all community stakeholders together, including elected officials, faith leaders, and community members, along with Naperville and Aurora police.
“The manifesto the shooter had expressed hate towards many communities and the Jewish community, African Americans, Indians, and others,” said Gupta, “and so we felt that we needed to have a gathering and have a dialog and talk to each other about incidents like this and what we could do collectively to stop things like this happening in the future.”
Showing solidarity with the Hindu community
Faith leaders from multiple Christian denominations, as well as Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Hindu and Jewish communities spoke about ways to find common ground and keep each other safe.
Rabbi David Eber of Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville shared how his faith community already puts a heavy emphasis on security in light of past attacks on Jewish people, such as the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.
“So it felt important to be here tonight to stand with them, and also to be able to share with the Naperville community a bit of what we as Jews are experiencing,” said Rabbi Eber, “not just here at our synagogue, but really synagogues in America are all taking the kinds of security measures that I spoke about tonight, that sadly are not uncommon, and we have to think a lot about.”
The response from elected officials and police
Mayor John Laesch of Aurora attended the meeting along with Naperville Mayor Scott Wehrli, who stressed the importance of Naperville responding to what happened.
“There was an attempted attack on our residents, members of our community, who were at a Hindu temple in Aurora,” said Mayor Wehrli, “by somebody who was full of hate and all sorts of ideas that our community just does not tolerate.”
Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres outlined what actions local police are taking to prevent attacks like these from happening, such as adding extra patrols at religious sites.
He also encouraged leaders to take part in free training the department offers, such as its Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events course.
“We have a group that will come in and does assessments of your places of worship,” said Chief Arres. “Everything from where you have cameras, if you need them, where you may even trim bushes or add lighting to keep [your facility] safe, all kinds of free things that we’ll do to help the security of our community.”
Chief Arres said he hopes meetings like this will help develop relationships with community members where they won’t be afraid to call police if something seems off.
“If you see something suspicious, if you’re worried about something, you’re not bothering us, and it’s okay to call 911 in those situations,” said Chief Arres.
Looking to the future after the meeting
Organizers like Gupta said in the future they want to schedule more training for leaders on how to make reports to police and find ways of detecting early warning signals online.
She also stressed the need to learn more about each other.
“I hope that different faith institutions really open their doors to the community in the future and invite people to come in and learn about them,” said Gupta.
That sentiment was reflected by members from the community at the meeting and Mayor Wehrli.
“I think we have to be intentional when things like this happen to show up, to show support for each other, but that intentionality also has to continue past today,” said Joshi, “and that’s what I hope that we use all of these connections, the people that we met today, the information that we gathered, and we share it, we spread it, and show to the rest of the community that people care.”
“I find it ironic that hate has brought us together here to have real community conversations,” said Mayor Wehrli, “but those conversations have to continue not just when tragedies occur.”
Stay in the know – sign up for our daily news update!
