Bedford suspends No Place for Hate program

By Kytja Weir
Globe Correspondent

The town of Bedford has become the latest to join the growing list of area communities to distance itself from an antibias program mired in controversy over the Anti-Defamation League's stance on the Armenian genocide.

The five-member Board of Selectmen voted unanimously Monday to suspend the ADL's No Place for Hate program at the urging of the community's Violence Prevention Coalition, an umbrella group that oversaw the community's participation in the national program.

"I don't think we should be carrying the banner of the Anti-Defamation League as long as it puts their interests ahead of protecting all of us from discrimination," Selectman Gordon Feltman said to a packed room of more than two dozen who turned out for the vote.

At least eight other Massachusetts towns - including Arlington, Belmont, Lexington, and Watertown - previously had suspended or severed ties with the ADL and No Place for Hate. Read more of the Globe Northwest story here.

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