Bank of America will be donating $10 million to the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) in the fight against hate crimes and violence against the Jewish community. FCAS is a $25 million national campaign designed to raise awareness about antisemitism with a “Blue Square” visual logo, television advertisements, and a hate incident reporting feature. The new campaign was launched by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in March earlier this year.
The announcement was made by Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan at a fireside chat with Kraft and filmmaker Ken Burns that amNewYork Metro attended on Tuesday afternoon. The fireside chat, held at Bank of America’s headquarters in Manhattan, was part of Bank of America’s Courageous Conversations sessions on race, ethnicity, and culture.
“We’ve had 350 conversations about different issues about how people should get along and how they should understand each other,” Moynihan said.
Alongside the $10 million grant and the launch of the “Blue Square” antisemitism campaign, Bank of America announced a five-year commitment that will further FCAS programs, engagement with community partners, and a state-of-the-art online antisemitism monitoring command center.
As the three discussed the campaign and several of its advertisements and the severity of rising antisemitism in the nation, Burns also presented the audience a clip of his three-part PBS documentary series, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” which was released last September.
Burns, who is known for making documentary films and series around war and American history and culture, shared his vision behind the first scene of the documentary series, which introduced Anne Frank, of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and her family — father Otto Frank, mother Edith, and sister Margot — and how everything changed when Adolf Hitler rose to power in January 1933.
“We were questioned why we would begin with probably the most familiar…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply