The impetus for the tour, according to Chad Dion Lassiter, PHRC executive director, was what had been happening throughout the state and the challenges to democracy.

“We know that the Southern Poverty Law Center, we know that the anti-Defamation League, we know that the PA State Police all would have Pennsylvania over the years in the top 10 as it relates to hate groups…whether that’s white nationalist groups, white supremacy groups, fascist groups, neo-Nazi groups…” Lassiter said.

He described the beloved community as a community of people that comes together made up of multiple identities.

“The Beloved Community is a term popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Yeshua Heschel, that calls on each of us to take responsibility for the common good. It is a group of residents usually within one geographic area, that work together across racial, gender and ethnic lines, through the guiding principles of unity and love for humanity,” Lassiter said.

PAT CROSSLEY/Sun-Gazette Chad Dion Lassite, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, chats with members of the audience at the Lycoming College visit of his 67-county tour to bring the concept of the Beloved Community across the state to help combat discrimination.

“The Beloved Community doesn’t say ‘Stay out.’ It says, ‘Come in.’ You’re a Trump sympathizer, come in. You’re an atheist, come in. You’re a Scientologist, come in. You’re LGBTQ+, come in. Whatever you are, come in. But there has to be a level of civility,” he said.

He shared a situation that had developed in York where the Ku Klux Klan was placing flyers on vehicles outside a movie theater where the movie, “The Black Klansman” was playing, in order to recruit people. The PHRC was notified and asked to visit and meet with the people in the community.

“Which we did, and we launched something called ‘No Hate in Our State’ town hall,” Lassiter said.

During the town hall panel discussion, the Grand Dragon of the KKK asked to speak, making, as Lassiter put it, “a lot of folk nervous.”

“I said let him speak. Not because of the Second Amendment. I wanted him to speak because I saw his humanity. A lot of people were upset that I allowed him to speak,” he said.

Lassiter cited a concept coined by Democratic strategist James Carville, which states that Pennsylvania is made up by the Philadelphia area in the southeast, the Pittsburgh area in the southwest and Kentucky through the middle — or, as some call it, “Pennsyltucky.”

“What I decided to do was to say, ‘I think there’s more to Pa. than that.’ There’s good people in Pa.,” Lassiter said.

“All of us have an inherent bias, and it doesn’t make us bad people. Let’s talk through your xenophobia. Let’s talk through your homophobia. Let’s talk through your anti-semitism. Let’s talk through your AAPI (Asian-American Pacific Islander) hate. Let’s talk through your anti-Black racism,” Lassiter said.

He urged the people who attended the event to look for people who are fighting for peace and justice.

The PHRC, according to Lassiter, is the top civil rights enforcement agency in the Commonwealth and has been around since 1955. They have three regional offices, in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Under the Shapiro administration, the commission received a complement that allowed it to launch a civil rights division called CROC — the Civil Rights Outreach Coordinators.

Like a crocodile, the group seeks to “sink our teeth into the festering of the hate that we see in this state,” he explained.

This in turn gave rise to the Beloved Community concept for the 67 counties, he said.

The tour is designed to listen to residents of those counties and hear the unique issues they are facing, such as environmental racism, anti-semitism, lack of access to affordable housing.

“PHRC wants to listen. Once we listen, we learn. Once we learn, we lead,” he said.

“The fourth L — not everybody likes what I’m going to say — we listen, we learn, we lead and, for me, my teaching is we have to love the people. We have to love the people with the highest form of love, which is that of agape,” he said.

For Lassiter, the Beloved Community begins with the individual examining their own attitudes toward those who are different.

“We keep hearing, make America great. Yeah, let’s make America great, but let us start with Chad Dion Lassiter, with each individual,” he said.

“It’s always convenient to talk about what others need to do. They need to work on racism in France. No, we need to work on racism in our home. They need to work on bigotry in Bolivia. No, we need to work on bigotry in this community,” he said.

Pennsylvania law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religious creed, ancestry, age, sex, national origin and familial status.

It protects people from being discriminated against in employment, obtaining a job or working at one, education, attending a public or private college, trade school or university, housing, renting, bullying, buying or selling or getting a loan, a commercial property and public accommodations.

Discrimination does not center on one particular racial group refusing to retain an individual because of race, sex or religion, Lassiter pointed out.

“Refusing to serve a customer wearing religious headgear, creating school policies that could provide different treatment for students of different races, religions and sex, school-to-prison pipeline, expulsion, disciplinary race. We often talk about dropout races, push out. I’m Jewish and I don’t see myself in the curriculum. I’m LGBTQ+ and you’re trying to ban books that have my identity…” he said, offering examples of various forms of discrimination.

“Whites have a strong ethnic identity, where you from, Germany, Slovenia … It’s OK to have a strong racial identity, but it can’t be rooted in white superiority, nor can Blacks be rooted in Black superiority, and whites should not feel inferior. They should not be in a space where it’s a form of white guilt because someone’s saying, you know, racism. You weren’t around to create some of the conditions,” he said.

If someone does feel they have been the victim of illegal discrimination, he encourages them to file a complaint or report a bias incident to the PHRC.

“We say three things about this: It may be real, it may be perceived, it may be imagined. Trust us to get to the bottom line,” he said.

“A dedicated, trained, unbiased PHRC investigator will walk you through the process and help you prepare your claim,” he added.