Madison Area Entrepreneur Proposes Citywide Anti-Hate Registry

In the weeks since Election Day, Donald Trump and his advisors have continued to send mixed signals about where the president-elect stands on requiring registries of Syrian immigrants and Muslim-Americans, a controversial idea the Republican both floated and backed away from at various points during the presidential campaign.

But one thing that’s clear is that it has members of those communities on edge and unsure about their future. And reported hate crimes are on the rise in the United States.

“What we noticed is that the anti-minority rhetoric transformed from (an) environment of fear to an environment of hate,” said Masood Akhtar, a Middleton entrepreneur and advisor to Madison’s Muslim community. “Not just the hate against Muslims, but Jews, other minorities, immigrant people. All these people are concerned about what’s going to happen.”

To help push back against that fear and hate, Akhtar has a proposal to create an anti-hate group, or what he calls a registry, for Madison. He’s calling on people of all different faiths (or lack of faith), races, and political affiliations to sign up on the registry as a way to stand up against hate speech and hate crimes.

“It shows that there are a lot of people that do not want to divide this country between white and black and brown and Jewish and Muslim. They don’t want that,” said Akhtar. “This is not just a message for Trump’s administration. It’s for all future presidents and all elected officials, to make sure the country is not divided, but united.”

Akhtar envisions the group starting small in Madison and eventually growing across Wisconsin and the U.S. Initially, there will be a lot of brainstorming among members on how to move forward.

Educating the public will be one key component. For starters, Akhtar said members can visit churches, synagogues, and community centers where they’ll host talks about the changing racial makeup in the country and the history of marginalized groups, like African-Americans, Japanese-Americans and Irish-Americans.

“Even if you think about Muslims, they’ve been here since the U.S. was founded,” said Akhtar. “A lot of people still don’t know that. They think we just came here now and have started all sort of problems, but no.”

Akhtar also wants registry members to engage local officials, state legislators, and federal lawmakers in conversations about hate and creating policies to protect people. He calls it a bipartisan Wisconsin caucus and he said it starts with Democrat and Republican lawmakers finding some consensus.

“The country is so divided based on ideological differences between the two parties,” said Akhtar. “But we are also hopeful that this is something that a lot of people in both parties actually want to do something about. So there could be policies at the state and federal level. What needs to be done to protect minorities, or in fact everybody?”

He dreams of building this platform on a national scale, creating a Congressional anti-hate caucus.

“So this is more like a movement that we are talking about here,” said Akhtar. “America is already great. We just have to make it better by uniting it. That’s the beauty of this country. Why is this country called the land of immigrants? The land of opportunity? We don’t want to lose that.”

Akhtar’s proposal first appeared as an op-ed in The Capital Times. He’s encouraging people interested in the group can contact him via email.