Ed Emmett, Time To Pick a Side

At the vigil on Sunday evening at the Jewish Community Center, County Judge Ed Emmett spoke to the crowd assembled to honor and memorialize the victims of the horrific murders in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life Synagogue:

And even though we love to say never, never, never can we let this happen again, unfortunately, we know it will. But gatherings like this send a very clear message. That we will stand against evil. We will stand against hatred. We will stand against rhetoric. And after these candles go out, the light will still be burning, because we were all here tonight.

We will stand against rhetoric.

Well, Judge Emmett, here’s your chance.

You’ve endorsed Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, whose campaign website trumpets anti-Semitic rhetoric about George Soros.

This is, in fact, the very rhetoric you exhorted the crowd to stand against.

Will you walk the talk?

Will you stand against evil, against hatred, against rhetoric, and call upon Stan Stanart to remove this slur from his website? Will you rescind your endorsement if he refuses?

Pick a side of history to stand on, Judge Emmett.

It matters. Voters deserve to know.

Your thirteen grandchildren deserve to know.

On Saturday, a man wielding a gun entered a synagogue during a naming ceremony and murdered people because they were Jewish.

For months leading up to this heinous assault, Republican politicians from the president on down, echoed and amplified by the partisan infotainment media outlets masquerading as reputable news organizations, have grown bolder in their anti-Semitism. Using coded language that calls back to ugly anti-Jewish propaganda of the late 19th and early 20th century, they have elevated George Soros as the new enemy who stands, to them, for some nefarious and nonexistent community of Jewish people somehow powerful and rich enough to threaten American democracy and control every industry, every media outlet, every government official who refuses to march to the Republican drum.

And now, eleven people are dead.

This is not hard. This is easy, Judge.

You called upon the community to take a stand against evil, hatred, and rhetoric.

Now the community expects you to do the same.