Statement in Support of Selam Debs

We at Trinity United Church in Waterloo Region stand in support of Selam Debs of Waterloo. Selam is an activist, antiracism consultant, business owner, and co-founder & managing director at the Antiracism Community Collective. Recently she has informed her followers that she has received through social media “thousands” of expressions of hate and threats to her, her family and business for the views she holds and her work to combat racism and white supremacy thinking in our society. These hateful messages were received after her blog suggested that the self-styled “freedom convoys” were motivated by white supremacy thinking.

We condemn these cowardly anonymous expressions of hatred and threats which in many cases appear clearly to be motivated by white supremacist and racist ideology or misogyny.

No one should make threats or express hatred of a group or person. We denounce racism and white supremacy. It is a reality that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) women and racialized communities are at a much greater risk of being targeted with violence and hatred. God’s vision of our world makes no room for this behaviour.

As we stated in June 2020, Trinity United Church believes that Christ calls us to love, to value every life because it is made in the image of God. Every person, regardless of their race, colour, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and economic status, is loved by God and should be treated with respect, fairness and compassion. We acknowledge our failures in the past to live by God’s command to love and forgive. We strive to do better and to help others toward a more just and compassionate society.

We commit to stepping into and doing the work to be allies of God’s love and forgiveness. We are open to a dialogue about privilege and how we in our faith community have benefitted from it. We join with other churches who also seek to heal and to be healed during these fear-filled times.

Social norms that marginalize groups for their race or other reasons are an injustice and must be overcome. These norms have subjugated and oppressed people in our community, preventing them from benefitting from the freedom and equality that we have built but too often fail to extend to everyone. If we have not learned Jesus’s readiness to embrace everyone, to love everyone radically, then we have learned nothing at all about God’s love.

Please read Selam’s post, and raise your voice to condemn this violence and call out these acts as hatred. Her post outlines specific ways on how you can do that:

1.      Mobilizing to share this letter to publicly condemn this violence and racism that continues to happen in Canada.

2.      Share and publicly condemn acts of white supremacy and white nationalist violence in all forms.

3.      Write a letter to your local elected officials, imploring them to publicly condemn these acts of anti-Black racism.

4.      Call and email Chief Larkin of the WRPS (Waterloo Region Police Service) to demand action. bryan.larkin@wrps.on.ca 519-570-9777 [The police have acknowledged this situation, but we continue to hold the police accountable to a thorough investigation].

Please reach out to either one of us if you would like to talk further about this.

Stay safe, stay well.

Putting Christ’s love into action,

Graham Brown, Chair of the Trinity Board

Janet Howitt, Interim Social Justice Coordinator