Roxborough High School
Racist and antisemitic graffiti was discovered over the weekend on the exterior walls of Roxborough High School in Philadelphia, including hateful symbols such as swastikas and racial epithets.
In response, school administrators and community members turned a painful moment into one of unity. Principal Kristin Williams-Smalley invited families and neighbors to write encouraging messages of love, inclusion, and belonging in chalk on the sidewalks outside the school to greet students on Monday. She said the goal was to make clear that hate would not define the school community.
Community voices reflected both shock and resilience. A local resident noted it’s upsetting that such acts still occur in 2026, while others used the incident as a teachable moment against hate speech and discrimination.
Our Lady J
Writer, actress, and producer Our Lady J spoke out this week against antisemitism in LGBTQ spaces. In an Instagram post, she urged queer communities to take Jewish hate seriously and warned that tolerating it will weaken solidarity and drive allies away. “Until the LGBTQ community distances itself from all forms of antisemitism, including antizionism, our allies will continue to fall away, and we will remain defenseless in the face of attack,” she wrote.
Our Lady J, a prominent transgender creator known for her work on Transparent, faced swift backlash for her stance. In her post, she argued that confronting antisemitism also means rejecting ideological purity tests that exclude Jews from community life. She pushed back on efforts to define Zionism only as oppression and emphasized that Jewish self-determination should not be treated as a moral failing. “Zionism is not a dirty word,” she wrote, warning that when anti-Zionism crosses into antisemitism, it undermines the culture of inclusion LGBTQ communities depend on.
Bundesliga Soccer Players
Across Germany this week, Bundesliga and second-division matches opened with moments of silence as clubs marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day and joined the global #WeRemember campaign. Players held signs honoring victims of the Holocaust, acknowledging both the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the sport’s own history of antisemitism under Nazi rule.
Organizers described the campaign as “a clear and unequivocal message of memory, responsibility and commitment to remember the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime and to remind the world this history must never repeat itself.”
