Orlando Stands Against Hate

Orlando Sentinel - November 1, 2026

In late August, a symbol of hate was unfurled in downtown Orlando. Inside the Kia Center, a spectator raised a Nazi flag and others stood up and gave Nazi salutes during an event featuring an open white nationalist, bringing an emblem of antisemitism and mass murder into one of our city’s most prominent gathering places.

The spectacle made national news. Orlando’s response deserves attention, too. Arena staff immediately removed the flag. Fans spoke up. Within days, civic leaders, faith leaders and businesses across Central Florida had publicly condemned the display. Their message was clear: This is not who we are. Orlando should be proud of the people who gave those words meaning by refusing to let hatred go unanswered.

Between the two of us, we’ve spent decades in Orlando’s public life, one of us as an elected official, the other in the pulpit and in the civic work that followed. Neither of us is Jewish, but like many of the Center’s board members, staff, donors, and volunteers, we support it because the lesson it teaches belongs to everyone.

But a community doesn’t respond like Orlando by accident. It takes years of people learning, in classrooms and workshops and around kitchen tables, what the early signs of hatred look like and what a bystander owes the person being targeted.

For more than four decades, the Holocaust Center has helped Central Floridians connect the lessons of the Holocaust to their responsibilities today: recognizing antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, resisting indifference and standing up for people targeted by hate. That work gives our community a foundation for turning condemnation into action.

The Central Florida Pledge asks every signer to put those responsibilities into practice. In 2024, leaders from city and county government, law enforcement, education, business, arts, nonprofits and faith communities signed it, publicly committing to the dignity and safety of their neighbors.

The measure of that commitment is how we respond when it is tested. A new tool, the Dignity Index, offers training in how to increase respect, especially among those who are hostile or even just disagree.

There’s a reason many of our leaders shared the Holocaust Center’s statement on this incident. They trust the Center to strike the right chord on these issues and to be one of our region’s voices in standing against hatred and bigotry. And they have for a long time.

Founded in 1981, The Center opened its current museum in 1986, making it the first Holocaust museum in the Southeast. Since then, it has trained generations of our teachers to deliver the critically important Holocaust education Florida law requires in every public school and has helped tens of thousands of students carry these lessons into their own lives.

The Center’s work also reaches adult citizens. Through its CitizenU program, police officers and civic leaders learn the same thing students do: how to recognize the early signs of dehumanization and what to do about them. Hope and humanity, as the Holocaust Center likes to say, are not passive ideals, but daily choices.

The new Holocaust Museum for Hope and Humanity on Ivanhoe Boulevard will expand the Center’s physical space and, above all, its educational reach, bringing the lessons of the

Holocaust to more students, families and communities. It will anchor the northern gateway to downtown Orlando and have an award-winning design. None of this happens without public partners, and we want to thank them by name. The Florida Legislature committed $5 million. The City of Orlando provided the perfect site through a long- term lease. The Orange County Commission has committed $10 million in tourist development tax funds, a commitment Mayor Jerry Demings said he was proud to make. That is a statement from every level of government in Central Florida that this museum belongs here. The community’s donors have already matched the public commitment several times over.

Orlando’s response to the displays at the Kia Center showed a willingness to confront hate. The new Holocaust Museum for Hope and Humanity will teach the next generation how to continue to fight back against antisemitism and all forms of prejudice and bigotry. We look forward to the first school bus arriving on Ivanhoe Boulevard, and students stepping inside to learn how to stand up for one another.

Linda Chapin served as Orange County Mayor from 1990 to 1998 and is a member of the board of directors of the Holocaust Center. Dr. Joel C. Hunter is chairman of the Central Florida Pledge and a former member of the Center’s board.