The Zionist hypocrisy that Americans United for Separation of Church and State doesn’t want you to know about

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On April 5, 2025, my boss, Andrew L. Seidel — yes, that Andrew L. Seidel — kicked me out of the Summit for Religious Freedom for wearing my keffiyeh. I had chosen to wear it to show my solidarity with the Palestinian people and their 77 years of resistance against Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide. But my taking this stance at the Summit for Religious Freedom was strictly forbidden, because I was an employee at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who organized the conference. As Americans United (AU)’s graphic designer, I helped create the Summit for Religious Freedom. It’s only fair, then, that I be the one to tell you that the people who run this conference are far more committed to upholding Zionism, colonialism, and apartheid than they are to fighting for religious freedom.

Don’t meet your heroes

I joined the communications team at Americans United for Separation of Church and State in late 2022. If you followed my blog at the time, then you may remember me gushing that “this opportunity is so perfect, I can still hardly believe it’s real.” And the fact that I was reporting directly to social media thirst-trapper and atheist attorney Andrew Seidel was “even more unreal.”

It’s almost as if it was too good to be true.

My admiration for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and of my former hero Andrew Seidel have shattered over the past year and a half. The group that I once thought had the integrity to fight religious extremism in all its forms, to be an underdog prepared to defeat Christian Nationalism against the odds, to make no exceptions and show no favor in whose freedom and whose equality they fight for… does not exist. The “leaders” of Americans United for Separation of Church and State have chosen their Zionist donors over their mission of religious freedom, and it has rotted the organization to the core.

Don’t believe me? Read on.

I had become troubled by AU’s silence by the 26th day of the genocide, November 2, 2023. Not only had we not put out a statement on social media like most of the organizations on my feed, but no one at Americans United had mentioned it on any internal channels. I wrote a message to the union, saying,

I’m hoping there is something we can do or say, either as individuals or as an organization, to show solidarity with Palestinians and call for a ceasefire. AU, including [President and CEO] Rachel [Laser]’s and Andrew [Seidel]’s accounts, haven’t said anything about this at all. But racism, colonialism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism are all related to our issue of religious freedom. My ultimate wish would be for AU to make a statement calling for a ceasefire but I unfortunately don’t see that happening. I have a couple other ideas and I’d love to know what others think. 

• showing solidarity by using the Palestinian flag emoji as a Slack status
• writing a[n AU] blog post debunking the idea that anti-Zionism is antisemitic (would love to get Jewish voices here)
• cutting ties with pro-Israel organizations, including ADL and NCJW (they sponsored SRF 2023)
• partnering instead with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace

This was a difficult time to try to get members of our brand new union to push for management to take a stance on anything, let alone on Palestine. AU Collective had not yet existed on paper for even two months, and we were years away from being protected by a contract. My comrades were hesitant on doing anything too grand, but ultimately we decided that the least we could do was propose to management that the pro-genocide Anti-Defamation League not sponsor our Summit for Religious Freedom going forward.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State refuses to Drop the ADL

April 2023 had seen the first annual conference of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Summit for Religious Freedom. (Management insists that we pronounce SRF as “surf,” which, very unfortunately, is drilled into my head. You, however, are free to call it whatever you want.) In fact, re-designing the entire SRF website was one of my first tasks at Americans United. Designing everything — and I mean everything — for the Summit for Religious Freedom, from online marketing to event decorations, name badges, and programs, has been the largest recurring project of my job for years.

SRF was and is a central part of many of my colleagues’ jobs as well, and they, too, were especially horrified to continue partnering with a Zionist organization like the Anti-Defamation League. In our initial November 22, 2023 email in which we “express[ed] our concerns about AU’s collaboration with the Anti-Defamation League,” AU Collective shared with management ADL’s October 26, 2023 letter to “the presidents of nearly 200 colleges and universities.” The letter called on universities to “investigate” their campuses’ chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), referring to SJP’s “anti-Israel propaganda” as “celebrating terrorism.”

We also shared with them the ACLU’s own letter to university presidents condemning ADL’s letter. The ACLU — ironically, another ally of Americans United — wrote in their letter,

The ACLU is a U.S.-focused civil liberties and human rights organization and, as a matter of official policy, does not take positions on other nations’ overseas conflicts. We do, however, strongly oppose efforts to stifle free speech, free association, and academic freedom here at home. In the name of those principles, we urge you to reject calls to investigate, disband, or penalize student groups on the basis of their exercise of free speech rights.

Anthony D. Romero, David Cole, Hina Shamsi, and Ben Wizner, Open Letter to College and University Presidents: Reject Efforts to Restrict Constitutionally Protected Speech on Campuses

Even clarifying that they themselves do not approve of or endorse SJP’s statements, the ACLU wrote that “such statements are constitutionally protected” and are “fully protected by the First Amendment.”

Do not forget that Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a First Amendment organization. Their entire mission is based on the First Amendment, on the freedoms of and from religion. But when an organization blatantly violates American students’ constitutionally protected freedom of speech, not only do they not condemn them, they encourage them to sponsor their conference… their religious freedom conference.

Finally, AU Collective shared the website #DropTheADL with management. DropTheADL is an “open letter to progressives” explaining that “The ADL is not an ally.” The site provides a detailed history of ADL’s actions in the following sections:

• History of targeting and surveilling progressive movements
• Support for racist, militarized policing
• Repressing Palestinian rights, smearing critics of colonialism as “anti-Semites”
• Support for actual anti-Semites, Donald Trump, and other right-wing, racist influencers
• Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Racism
• Campus repression
• Trampling anti-racist, immigrant, queer, and other justice movements

Sections, DropTheADL.org

The primer begins by saying, “Many progressive individuals and organizations partner with the ADL not knowing its ongoing legacy of supporting racist policing, surveillance, colonialism, and the silencing of social justice activism.” Perhaps Americans United for Separation of Church and State didn’t know about ADL’s abhorrent racist history when inviting them to sponsor and provide a breakout session at SRF 2023, but they sure as hell did when SRF’s owner at the time, Brian Silva, accepted ADL’s $600 to sponsor SRF again in 2024 and again in 2025.

AU Collective’s ultimate inability to persuade management to drop ADL as a SRF sponsor was not for lack of trying. On January 4, 2024, a handful of union members met with management to discuss what we had requested in our email before the holidays. Management repeatedly justified continuing AU’s relationship with ADL, saying, for example, that our President and CEO Rachel Laser had reached out to leaders of peer organizations for their input on the matter. In fact, she had reached out to the ACLU and three Jewish organizations as well as to ADL itself to “express concern” about their letter without providing any material consequences (i.e. the loss of an ally) to posting such a letter. To my knowledge, Rachel did not contact any Muslim or pro-Palestine groups on this matter.

AU Collective followed up the next day sharing more resources from The Guardian, The Nation, Muslim Advocates, Truthout, and the ACLU about ADL’s Islamophobic attacks on civil rights. No matter. Management officially informed us in a meeting on January 11, 2024 that they would not prohibit ADL from sponsoring the Summit for Religious Freedom.

Keeping the Summit for Religious Freedom “neutral”

Come hell or high water, the Summit for Religious Freedom 2024 was approaching fast, and it was my job to finalize the design of the print program. I’d featured an ad for Americans United for Separation of Church and State on the back of the program in 2023, so I refreshed the ad with a new stock photo in AU’s signature “shield shape” in 2024.

I had shared a near-final proof of the program with then-SRF-owner Brian Silva, only to have my own boss, Andrew Seidel, message me asking to see it. This is never a good sign. An hour later, Andrew called me (“huddling,” for my fellow Slack users) to tell me that Americans United for Separation of Church and State has to be “100% neutral on what is happening between Israel and Gaza right now.” He explained that if we didn’t maintain “neutrality,” it would be detrimental to the organization in an unnamed variety of ways. He emphasized that this “issue” had become a roadblock at every level of SRF planning.

Conversations like this one, of which there have been many, are very telling about AU’s operations in several ways. First, Andrew is always sure to communicate Americans United’s unwillingness to condemn genocide (my words, never his) on Zoom, in huddles, or in person — never anywhere that can be tracked. Andrew L. Seidel doesn’t want you to know that he takes a “neutral” stance on genocide, as if you couldn’t tell by looking at his social media where he hasn’t mentioned it once in 21 months.

Even when management met with the union to tell us that they would not turn down any offer from ADL to sponsor SRF, they shared this information only over Zoom and never in writing.

The Big Tent

Second, Andrew, Brian, and other Americans United management love to rely on the “community agreement” that “SRF is a big tent.” Their “big tent” ideology is their way of allying the Summit for Religious Freedom with pro-genocide groups like the Anti-Defamation League (and National Council of Jewish Women) while arguing that that is the only way to defeat our “common adversaries.” Groups that defend a genocidal apartheid ethnostate don’t seem to me like they are really on the side of religious freedom or any of its effects that AU claims to fight for, like abortion rights. Supporters of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and attendees of the Summit for Religious Freedom have repeatedly called on AU to disassociate from ADL, only to have the “big tent” lie thrown back at them.

In this Slack conversation with Andrew, I asked how we could “be perceived as remaining neutral” with ADL as a SRF sponsor and “giving out ADL swag” to conference attendees. It would “appear to attendees like taking a side,” I said, “especially if there’s no representation of the other side.” I pointed out that this was inconsistent with “our big tent motto” and that we need to be “as diverse and inclusive as possible.”

He made the case that under the “big tent,” anyone who wanted to sponsor the conference could sponsor it. Muslim groups were sponsoring SRF as well, Andrew reminded me. He failed to understand that a combination of pro-genocide Jewish groups and genocide-neutral Muslim groups does not come off as neutral. I had also never said anything about needing Muslim groups to balance out Jewish groups, or even about having anti-Israel groups (Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise) balancing out pro-Israel groups. There is no “neutral” between pro-genocide and anti-genocide. But allying ourselves with openly Zionist groups and no openly anti-Zionist groups, while outlawing the use of a small photo of a joyful woman in a Palestinian keffiyeh on the back of the program, makes our stance pretty fucking clear.

The “domestic in scope” myth

Beyond just asking AU to end its relationship with ADL, Americans United members and small donors also frequently ask why they haven’t made any public statement calling for a ceasefire. The answer is always that AU’s work is “domestic in scope,” or some variation of this. (Remember that in the quote I shared above, the ACLU also clarified that they do not “take positions on other nations’ overseas conflicts” either — and yet they were capable of condemning ADL’s unconstitutional and discriminatory student witch hunts.)

However, this “domestic in scope” myth is not even true. Americans United’s monthly magazine, Church & State, regularly publishes articles about international religious freedom violations and victories.

• In the December 2023 issue, Church & State covered the Polish election of the right-wing Law and Justice Party.
• In the January 2024 issue, Church & State covered a Russian court ruling that outlawed LGBTQ+ activism and resulted in police raids on queer spaces.
• In the March 2024 issue, Church & State covered a story in which Swiss lawmakers declined to fund new barracks for Vatican guards.
• In the April 2024 issue, Church & State applauded the French parliament’s passing of an abortion rights policy.
• Also in the April 2024 issue, Church & State exposed the connection between U.S. Christian Nationalist groups and anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Uganda and other African countries.

As a matter of fact, Church & State Magazine even covered a time in 2021 when a group of women was escorted by police to pray at the Western Wall in Israel. So it’s not like Americans United for Separation of Church and State never makes statements on civil rights issues in other countries. Their hands were not “too full” to condemn backwards, U.S.-backed governments in African countries or to pra ise Israeli police. But they simply don’t have the “personnel” available to call for a ceasefire, to condemn their own partner organizations’ civil rights violations, or call out the extensive and extremely relevant connections between the U.S. Christian Nationalist Shadow Network, Project 2025, Christian Zionism, and AIPAC.

The Summit for Religious Freedom 2024

My union comrades and I knew that management would not budge on their complicit silence. We knew that something had to be done and that we had to be the ones to do it. At the end of March, the union voted on actions for Palestine to take at SRF, and the winning idea by far was to wear small watermelon pins on our lanyards. The watermelon has become a popular symbol of Palestine, as the fruit’s red, green, black, and white colors are the same colors featured on the Palestinian flag.

I can’t express to you enough just how scared my comrades and I were to wear these one-inch pins. The pins didn’t say anything about Palestine, and they didn’t show the Palestinian flag or any keffiyeh patterns. Each tiny pin displayed one slice of watermelon, lovingly hand-stitched by yours truly.

We had fully expected management to ask us to remove these pins, so we were shocked when the conference came and went with no one from management saying anything about them at all. I now have reason to believe that this is just because management didn’t know what the watermelon symbolized in the first place.

The truth comes out

Management had expressed worry about a protest breaking out at SRF. They claimed that they feared right-wing infiltrations, Christian Nationalists, or Trump supporters interrupting the conference, but we know that the fears were about a staff protest, a pro-Palestine protest, or both. SRF keynote speaker Rep. Jamie Raskin had been interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters during a speech at the University of Maryland only two weeks before the Summit for Religious Freedom, and management was bracing for a repeat.

Following SRF 2024, in a 1:1 with Andrew, I shared how upsetting it was that Palestine had become a taboo subject between staff and management at the conference. I put him on the spot, asking about the “domestic in scope” myth that I shared above. Americans United talked constantly about the 2024 presidential election — in which Israel’s crimes were a major factor — and we did cover international issues. Why, then, can we just not talk about this?

Clear as if it was yesterday, I remember that Andrew Seidel asked me point blank,

“You do understand why, as an organization, we can’t take a stance on this?”

“No,” I said. “Truly. No. I don’t.”

Well, he was sure to clear up any confusion. He told me that “taking a stance” would alienate our donor base. He said that if we take a stance, there would be no taking it back. (Andrew has since denied saying this, telling me that my interpreting him as saying it was “just about donors” was “disingenuous.”)

He even brought to my attention the fact that Americans United for Separation of Church and State had not commented on Trump’s illegal move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2020, which Andrew himself said was “Christian Nationalism,” pure and simple.

So it was never about Americans United working in and covering news only in the United States. It was always about money. It was always about the donors.

Interlude: the Zionist donors and board of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

One of my favorite things about nonprofits is when they publicly display where they get their money from. Americans United for Separation of Church and State shares their donor list in annual reports. I’ve taken it upon myself to do some digging into the publicly available information I could find about AU’s biggest donors in recent years.

The Borgenicht Foundation ($1,175,000)

According to their tax filings as listed on ProPublica, the Borgenicht Foundation has donated $1,175,000 to Americans United for Separation of Church and State between 2010 and 2023.

Here are some other beneficiaries of the Borgenicht Foundation, as listed in their 990s over this same period:

• The Abraham Fund Initiatives ($1,368,025) is an Israeli organization based on “building shared society and coexistence” of Israel’s “Jewish and Arab citizens.”
• AJEEC-NISPED ($1,000,000), or the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation – Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Economic Development is a liberal Zionist organization that encourages “Arab-Jewish partnership” and promotes “a shared society.”
• P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc. ($520,000) was established by a group of Americans to “enable the direct distribution of funds to selected and approved charitable organizations in Israel.”
• United Nations Watch ($385,000), not to be confused with the United Nations, is a “leading voice combating antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at the UN.” UN Watch currently has a campaign to dissolve UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) because UNRWA “use[s] our tax money to teach Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews” and “deserves the Nobel Prize for Terrorism.”
• Hiddush ($205,000) is an Israeli organization dedicated to “religious freedom” specifically for Jewish people in Israel. Hiddush’s website has barely any mention of freedom of religion for Muslims, Christians, atheists, or anyone else.
• Hillel ($155,000), to whom the Borgenicht Foundation donated via P.E.F., is a Zionist organization that has chapters “at 850 colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and 16 countries around the world.” Hillel has a history of discriminating against anti-Israel or pro-Palestine students and even has “Israel Guidelines” for campus activities. Included in these guidelines is a refusal to “partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers” who deny Israel’s right to exist, demonize Israel, or participate in boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against Israel.

Between these and a handful of other Zionist causes, the Borgenicht Foundation’s donations add up to $3,689,525 to pro-Israel or Israel-based groups.

The Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund ($510,000)

According to their public grants database on the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund website, the fund has contributed a total of $510,000 to Americans United for Separation of Church and State between 2008 and 2024.

The Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, or the LDG Fund, is very open about the requirements for grantees to be pro-Israel. They write on the Eligibility & Fit section of their website,

In keeping with the values of the Goldman Fund’s Board of Directors, grants will not be awarded to organizations that advocate for, engage in, or endorse policies or actions that are antisemitic or question the legitimacy of Israel as a secure, independent, and democratic Jewish state.

Further down, part of their definition of “ensur[ing] a more vibrant, inclusive, and safe Jewish community” is “combat[ing] antisemitism and discrimination against Israel by advancing education, advocacy, and communication about Jews, Judaism, and Israel.”

The LDG Fund’s grantees speak volumes about their Zionist interests. They donated over $33 million to explicitly pro-Israel or Israel-based causes between 2008 and 2024. These donations include:

• Over $23 million to Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, which has its very own “Israel Action Committee” that “fulfills one of Congregation Emanu-El’s Core Missions of strengthening the connection of our members to the State of Israel and worldwide Jewry” by promoting “connection with Israelis,” “student visits to Israel,” celebrating “Israel Independence Day,” and more. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres spoke at Congregation Emanu-El in 2012. Unsurprisingly, AU CEO Rachel Laser also sat on a panel at an AU-sponsored event with Emanu-El Rabbi Sydney Mintz in January 2023.
• $2.3 million to the Bay Area’s Jewish Community Relations Council, or JCRC, who co-sponsored Congregation Emanu-El’s 2012 visit from the Prime Minister and who has a “deep love for Israel.” One $250,000 LDG donation to JCRC was dedicated explicitly to a “Campaign to Disrupt the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] Movement, to positively affect attitudes about Israel and actively block any BDS attempts at infiltrating public school districts, college campuses, churches, the corporate sector, nonprofit organizations, and local government.” Another $250,000 JCRC donation also specifically mentioned “combat[ing] . . . the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.” Likewise, a $15,000 donation to Presbyterians for Middle East Peace also contained a note of purpose to “combat the Boycott, Divest and Sanction Movement Against Israel at the Presbyterian General Assembly BDS.”
• $2,005,500 to Berkeley Hillel and $451,000 to San Francisco Hillel. The LDG Fund’s Hillel donation listings specify causes like “Israel and Community Engagement Initiative, to provide students with opportunities to examine their understanding of and relationship with Israel.”

Barbara J. Meislin, “The Purple Lady” (>$760,000)

Barbara J. Meislin, who calls herself “The Purple Lady,” is a celebrated major donor of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Having been featured in AU’s 2022 annual report as a “force for light and a harbinger of hope,” Meislin has donated at least $760,000 to AU between 2011 and 2025, including a $250,000 gift in 2022 and a $190,000 gift in 2025. (I only know about that last one because I had to design the purple-themed ads for it.)

Americans United’s annual reports for 2010 through 2016 are available online, even though they are not listed on the AU Financials page. The reason I give a range instead of an exact number is that Meislin and the following donors don’t have foundations with public 990s or grant databases. All of the following information is taken from various organizations’ annual reports, which, like Americans United, contain donor lists organized by the range of what a donor gave in a fiscal year.

Here are some fellow Meislin grantees:

• The New Israel Fund (between $346,000 and $705,000 from 2006 to 2023) is a liberal Zionist organization. It is further “left” than most other organizations that these donors have funded, but it is still Zionist. NIF opposes both the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.
• J Street (between $19,800 and $55,000 from 2013 to 2023) is a liberal “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace” organization with a PAC to elect “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-Democracy” candidates. J Street “support[s] Israel’s right to defend itself militarily and believe[s] that maintaining Israel’s qualitative military advantage in the region is one essential element of a strategy to keep Israel secure for the long term.”
• The Bay Area Jewish Community Federation & Endowment Fund (between $3,000 and $15,000 from 2021 to 2024) is a Jewish philanthropy group which “meets needs locally, in Israel, and around the world.” The Federation “does not fund organizations that, through their mission, activities, social media, or partnerships” “advocate, endorse, or promote actions or policies that would undermine the legitimacy of Israel as a secure, independent, and democratic Jewish state, including through [c]lear opposition to Zionism, the movement for Jewish self-determination in the historic homeland of Israel” or “[s]upport for or participation in the BDS movement or other movements or campaigns opposing Israel’s right to exist as a democratic Jewish state.”
• The North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, or Nacoej (between $17,500 and $35,000 from 2014 to 2020) is a nonprofit focused on relocating Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Even in 2009, “many” Ethiopians in Israel had become “IDF [sic] officers,” which is a position that “will set them in good stead for the future.”

The above donations add up to a total of somewhere between $386,300 and $810,000 that Barbara Meislin has donated to Zionist causes — and that was just what I could find online.

All the way back in 1994, Meislin was also “an active supporter of Israel’s Givat Haviva Institute, which works to improve relations between Israeli Arabs and Jews” and “Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, an Israeli village between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where Jews and Arabs live together,” according to a newspaper article celebrating her philanthropy. (Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam now features a plaque dedicated to an IOF soldier.)

Meislin’s claim to fame is sponsoring and dictating specifications for a park in Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, all the way from San Francisco, in 2000. Special attention is drawn to the rainbow arch she funded for the park. Meislin calls the park “a dream of peace” where “Arabs and Jews live together.”

Meislin has donated to several other Israeli organizations, such as the American-Israeli Cultural Fund and TRUST-Emun.

Edward (Eddie) Tabash (>$1,125,000, AU board member)

Eddie Tabash has been an Americans United for Separation of Church and State board member since at least 2010 and has donated at least $1,125,000 to the organization between 2010 and 2023.

Tabash is a past co-president of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, which “supports Israel in any way that [they] can.” He donated $4,850 to the Democrats for Israel Committee PAC between 2006 and 2014. 

Tabash also wrote an article titled “Israel Has a Right to Exist” for the April / May 2015 issue of the Center for Inquiry’s Free Inquiry magazine. Tabash made some creative claims, such as:

When Israel declared its independence, the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan (Jordan) immediately attacked. This caused the displacement of many Arabs living within what was now Israel. Had these Arab armies not attacked but rather accepted the new, small state of Israel in their midst, the violent conflicts that have raged in the area since 1948 would not have occurred. . . . 

The surrounding Arab nations could have easily absorbed the Arabs who were displaced by the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948. Yet they chose to keep them in miserable refugee camps, just so that they could have a propaganda tool against Israel.

Eddie Tabash, “Why Israel Has a Right to Exist,” Free Inquiry Magazine, 2015

He also stated that the reason that people claim Israel should not exist is “because that country does not separate religion from government as secularists like us would want it to.” He asks, “Why is Israel singled out as the only nation that cannot claim legitimate existence because of a built-in preference for one religion over others?”

Sam Weisman (>$413,000, AU board member)

Sam Weisman has been an Americans United board member since at least 2020 and together with Nancy J. Crown has donated at least $413,000 to the organization between 2010 and 2023.

In that same period (2011 to 2023), Weisman and/or Crown have donated at least $385,000 to the liberal Zionist organization J Street.

Charles E. (Chuck) Taylor (>$10,000, AU board secretary)

Charles E. (Chuck) Taylor has been an Americans United board member since November 2022. He and his wife Lisa also donated between $10,000 and $24,999 to Americans United in that same year.

Taylor is a former National Commissioner of ADL, where he was a member of the National Executive Committee from 2015 to 2017, according to ADL’s annual reports. He is a current life member of the board of ADL’s Southeast Regional office, where he also served as Secretary of the Board and former Civil Rights chair, according to one biography.

Together with his wife, Taylor also contributed at least $5,000 to the “ADL in Concert against Hate.” (His parents gave more than $10,000.)

Chuck Taylor’s biography also tells us that he sat on the Steering Committee of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, a massive event with an “unwavering solidarity” with Israel, whose cinema “has long been a cornerstone of our festival programming.” The Film Festival’s founder and partner, the American Jewish Committee, believes that “Israel has the right and obligation – as does any state – to defend its territorial integrity and the lives of its residents against any and all aggressors,” that a permanent ceasefire would “set the stage for continued terror attacks and doom the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace,” and that the United States has a role to “[support] Israel materially and politically.”

Taylor used to be an at-large member of the Atlanta Jewish Federation Community Relations Committee, which sends Birthright trips and “Solidarity Missions” to Israel. (Learn more about Birthright here.) He also served as vice president of the Board of the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, a partner of the Atlanta Jewish Federation.

Taylor was on the board of The Temple in Atlanta, whose website suggests donating to the Friends of the Israel Defense Force, donating pizza to the Israeli soldiers, or purchasing gear from the IOF’s Amazon Wish List.

Finally, Chuck Taylor donated at least $27,000, sometimes together with his wife, to the New Israel Fund, where he was a member of the International Council from 2019 to 2021. He was also on the Regional Advisory Board of NIF, as well as that of J Street, to which he donated at least $35,800 between 2012 and 2023.

Other board members of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Daphne Lazar Price

Daphne Lazar Price has been an Americans United board member since October 2022. Lazar Price’s Twitter feed is a stream of pro-Israel and pro-genocide propaganda. 

Unsurprisingly, Lazar Price is the Executive Director of a Zionist “feminist alliance,” which calls for prayers and monetary support for the IOF.

Sara Imershein

Sara Imershein has been an Americans United board member since October 2023. In April 2024, after a DC Abortion Fund staffer resigned over the fund’s support of Palestine and opposition to the genocide, Imershein, once a longtime DCAF donor and 2020 Donor of the Year, ended her ~$3,000 annual donations to the fund. She gave her reasoning in an email to DCAF, saying that “Hamas wants to complete [Hitler’s] plan” and “annihilat[e] Jews worldwide.” She wrote,

I can not longer support DCAF, a group that supports Palestinian terrorists and blames Jews for a defensive war, blames Jews for ‘colonizing’ our historic homeland. I cannot support a group that protects the terrorists who support the genocide of Jews worldwide- who wants ME and my people to be annihilated.

Sara Imershein in an email to DCAF, April 22, 2024

In the 837-word email Imershein referred to Palestinians as terrorists 15 times. (You can read her email in full here and here.)

Mara Keisling

Mara Keisling has been an Americans United board member since 2022. She spoke at ADL conferences in 2013, 2015, and 2018. (Wajahat Ali, who was a panelist at the Americans United Summit for Religious Freedom in 2024, sat on the ADL panel with Keisling in 2018.) Keisling also spoke at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs 2018 Annual Conference, which advocated for “a Strong Democratic America and Israel” and passed a resolution on “Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence.”

Derrick Harkins

Derrick Harkins has been an Americans United board member since October 2023. He participated in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Christian Leadership Initiative in Jerusalem in 2010. The Initiative was co-sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, the pro-genocide partner of the aforementioned Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

Brian Kaylor, AU board vice president

Brian Kaylor has been an Americans United board member since October 2022 and became vice board chair in August 2024. 

On October 31, 2023, he wrote an article on his Substack titled “A Call for ‘Biblical’ Genocide.” The article focused on Benjamin Netanyahu’s use of the words of Samuel in the Bible — “Remember what Amalek did to you” — as a call for genocide.

More powerfully, on March 5, 2025, Kaylor had Palestinian Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and a powerful speaker who I’ve had the honor of hearing live, on his podcast, Dangerous Dogma. In the episode, Kaylor says,

Let’s talk about the genocide in Gaza. Because that is obviously a really important part of why you’re writing and speaking out. And it is important to name it as that: that we have been experiencing and seeing a genocide. So, a lot of people don’t use the “G word” to describe what has happened in Gaza, so why do you — I agree with you, I think you’re right — by why do you… let’s be very clear about why we should call this a genocide.

Brian Kaylor, Dangerous Dogma podcast, March 5, 2025 (20:51–21:20)

(And Isaac is very clear.) Having seen Kaylor’s behavior that I will share in the next section, I was quite surprised in researching this post to see him so clearly argue that we need to use the word genocide to describe Israel’s current actions.

Kaylor’s publication, Word&Way, seems to be on the right side of this issue as well.

Traci Blackmon

Traci Blackmon has been an Americans United board member since October 2023, but she has been speaking out for Palestine for much longer. In 2018, Blackmon delivered a jaw-dropping keynote representing the United Church of Christ at Friends of Sabeel North America: A Christian Voice for Palestine (FOSNA)’s Prophetic Action: Christians Convening for Palestine gathering at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights conference.

More recently, Blackmon signed a petition of Black Christian Faith Leaders for Ceasefire and argued for the Democratic National Convention to allow Palestinians to speak on stage. In her pro-Palestine activism, Blackmon often focuses on a West African proverb that says, “Until the lion tells its story, the hunter will always be the hero.”

Brian Kaylor’s fear of mission drift at Americans United for Separation of Church and State

The months following the 2024 Summit for Religious Freedom were tense at Americans United. Staff and management had become increasingly divided over a number of issues which were finally revealed to the public in Bob Smietana’s exposé on Religion News Service on August 5, 2024. Central to the story were AU Collective’s allegations of a toxic work environment as well as the fact that “[Rachel] Laser has focused more on boosting AU’s public profile than on the legal and policy work at the core of the organization’s mission.”

While this post is not about the wider “troubled culture” at Americans United for Separation of Church and State as the article covers, suffice to say Smietana’s exposé caused shit to hit the fan internally at AU. The morning after the article’s publication, Americans United held a two-hour-long staff meeting in which staff were treated to board vice president Brian Kaylor’s unfiltered opinions of us.

The meeting utilized Zoom’s anonymous Q&A feature, presumably because staff had become so intimidated that management knew we would not ask any substantial questions that could be traced back to us. I took this opportunity to ask, “If AU is truly dedicated to protecting church-state separation and fighting Christian Nationalism, why have we been silent during 9 months of bipartisan US support for a genocide upheld by Christian Nationalist values?”

Kaylor was up front about his own criticism of Israel’s genocide and even of the Biden administration’s complicity in it, both in his own personal capacity and through his publication.

So it was beyond disappointing that he would turn around and justify AU’s silence and complicity by arguing that it’s “not really a Christian Nationalist issue.” He employed a cousin of the “domestic in scope” myth, saying that foreign policy was just not part of AU’s focus or mission, that that would be more in the wheelhouse of a generic progressive organization rather than a strict church-state organization. He finished by saying that it was the board’s responsibility to avoid “mission drift.”

(As I have demonstrated before, “mission drift” is a great dog whistle to use when you refuse to condemn racism or discrimination.)

This meeting took place before Kaylor’s aforementioned podcast episode with Munther Isaac, but still it shocks me to hear now what he and Isaac discussed seven months later. On Kaylor’s own show, Isaac tells him and his listeners,

I wanted to be clear in our voice and I think it’s about time we avoid this, what I call shallow diplomacy that the church has, or this false neutrality. That many times comes from a position which we want to present ourselves as “holier than thou.” Because we look at the conflict and we say, “We support both sides.” We don’t take sides. And, you know, again, imagine if you said this in the time of slavery. Or in the time of apartheid. And by the way, in all these, Scripture was used. Neutrality is not just… Neutrality is a position. You are empowering those committing the oppression. Given that we are watching all of this live, and given that many Christian thinkers justify it and support it, if we don’t speak out, it says a lot about us and about our Christian witness.

Rev. Munther Isaac, Dangerous Dogma podcast, March 5, 2025 (39:50–40:58)

Now read that again and replace “Scripture,” “Christian thinkers,” and “Christian witness” with “progressive values” or “allies” and tell me again what right Americans United has to be silent on this genocide.

Rachel Laser’s lies

Even though Brian Kaylor had clearly made peace with Americans United’s silence on the ongoing genocide, Rachel Laser took it upon herself to respond to an anonymous Zoom question of mine in an email to the staff two days later. I had asked, “Why didn’t staff have any say in whether we speak about Gaza?”

Rachel wrote,

Staff did have input on the Gaza question, including through meetings with the union on the matter. While I understand that some staff did not agree with the ultimate decision made, input from staff was seriously considered. In coming to the decision, we considered input from staff at all levels of the organization (which was not all aligned in favor of one position or another), the Board, and external stakeholders.

Rachel Laser in an email to Americans United staff, August 8, 2024

This was the first time that I snapped. In a 580-word email to our Human Resources director at the time, I set the record straight.

Much of what I said I’ve already written here, such as how

The only time staff had the opportunity to give input on any aspect of AU’s response to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza was through a meeting in January regarding whether ADL sponsored SRF. AU Collective was the one to bring this concern to management–not the other way around–and management immediately shot down our ideas and patronized us.

I went on, noting that

The only time AU publicly mentioned Israel was at SRF [2024] when Rachel went off-script in her opening reception remarks and lamented about Iran’s bombing of Israel (with no context, such as stating that Israel had also been bombing Iran). This was absolutely inappropriate as she does not speak for the organization with these offensive views and we certainly had no say in this.

It bears repeating that

Over time an unspoken rule was put in place that we do not talk about Palestine here, even though it is extremely intertwined with our issues of religious freedom, church-state separation, the Shadow Network, and Christian Nationalism. It is a social justice issue. It touches on feminism, anti-racism, homophobia and transphobia, immigration, democracy, the presidential election, American values — all areas of the work that AU claims are central to our cause. 

Most importantly, watching this genocide unfold has been detrimental to the mental health of AU employees who feel we are not welcome to discuss these topics at a workplace that purportedly prides itself on being progressive and inclusive.

I pointed out Andrew Seidel’s way of arbitrarily deciding which children his team should mourn:

On my team, Andrew posted in Slack following the death of Nex Benedict [in February 2024], “If anyone needs to talk about this, please reach out to me,” but has failed to create a policy for folks struggling while watching and protesting Israel’s genocide which has brutally killed tens of thousands of young people like 6-year-old Hind Rajab [in January 2024].

I shared the story of Andrew instructing me to remove the photo of a woman in a keffiyeh from the SRF 2024 program and later admitting to me that “‘taking a stance’ would ‘alienate a massive portion of our supporters,’ despite the fact that saying nothing IS still a stance.” I ended my email by saying,

So no, I do not agree that staff had input on anything regarding this matter. We did not even know that management was considering commenting on the genocide at all. And we were certainly not informed that management had made a decision to ignore it.

HR responded that they would raise my points with management, but in the months since this, management has done nothing but double down, digging the hole that Americans United now finds itself in.

However, what I shared in my email didn’t include one instance in which Andrew made AU’s — and his — stance on Israel extremely clear without having to say anything.

Monday dot com

From December 2023 to May 2024, there had been a backburner agenda item listed for AU’s weekly communications team meetings. Up until that point, Americans United had not had one organization-wide project management system to track ongoing tasks and projects, although they desperately needed one. Some of my coworkers and I on the comms team had been using Monday dot com to track our work for a few months, for some semblance of organization in an otherwise chaotic work environment. (Much of the chaos was due to Andrew’s management style. His idea of project management was scribbling down tasks and assignments onto a legal pad.)

In mid-May, my coworkers and I were tasked with presenting the benefits of Monday to all staff “to show potential and get wider buy-in for nonusers” and go into a “deeper dive for users” in the “first week of June-ish.” Despite project management not being my job, and my being the second-lowest paid employee at AU (later the lowest), I was quite excited to present the software to the staff. Andrew had more or less refused to use it, and he had tasked me and my coworkers to convince him to use this software to organize his work and his assignments for us.

Everything changed when I discovered that Monday dot com was based in Israel.

I nearly cried in frustration.

It should surprise no one, of course, that on that day — May 17, 2024 — I stopped dead in the middle of my Monday dot com research and vowed to boycott the program. I was certainly not going to promote the software to the entire staff of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. 

It was only after Andrew found out that I was opposed to using Monday because it was based in Israel that he told me in no uncertain terms that “We are using Monday.” Despite me having been the one to suggest using Monday to him, and him refusing to use it unless I persuaded him to, he told me that whether we use Monday was not up to me. It was a done deal.

Miraculously, we never ended up using Monday. Thanks to me and my coworkers, Americans United now has an organization-wide, agreed-upon and paid-for project management software. To my knowledge, Andrew has yet to sufficiently use it.

Stone-cold killers and human animals

The months after the Kaylor meeting were quiet, as AU turned its focus to urging their audience to vote for Kamala Harris under the guise of “defeating Project 2025,” while pretending to maintain the facade of being nonpartisan.

Of course, Americans United staff and management were free to use their personal platforms to promote Democrats and oppose Trump’s agenda. In a tweet from September 29 that caught my eye, Andrew Seidel shared a video of Trump using language villainizing immigrants. In the video, Trump said,

They don’t commit crimes like us. No, no. They make our criminals look like babies. These are stone-cold killers. They’ll walk into your kitchen. They’ll cut your throat.

Donald Trump, September 24, 2024

Andrew quote tweets in response,

One thing we’ve learned from studying genocides is that language like this often precedes the mass killing. Otherize, dehumanize, and fearmonger about the target group. This is well documented in Rwanda in 90s and in the 1930s Nazi regime.

This is historical fact, not hyperbole.

Andrew Seidel, September 29, 2024

Here is a statement from Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from October 10, 2023, as documented in the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 report in South Africa v. Israel:

I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against . . . Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.

Yoav Gallant, October 10, 2023

There is also footage of Gallant saying the day prior,

We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.

Yoav Gallant, October 9, 2023

Andrew Seidel’s response to the genocide that he has been witnessing in real time, for 21 months now, using the same rhetoric, is deafening silence.

The Summit for Religious Freedom 2025

Things were quiet between AU Collective and Americans United management as we scrambled to have the Summit for Religious Freedom 2025 ready to go by April 5 under Brian Silva’s poor planning. We hadn’t bothered to ask again to remove ADL as a sponsor, as we knew very well that management would not listen to what we had to say. (ADL again paid $600 to sponsor SRF in 2025.)

Even though I had created watermelon pins for the union to wear to SRF in 2024, and I myself had worn a pin, a keffiyeh-pattern headband, and a Palestine-shaped necklace, I had been too scared to wear my keffiyeh to that Summit. I was afraid to be confronted about it and I was afraid of what would happen if I tried to wear it.

In 2025, nothing was going to get in my way. If I was going to attend the Summit for Religious Freedom, I was going to bring my solidarity with Palestine with me.

April 5, 2025

April 5, 2025 may have been the longest day of my life. I flew from Pittsburgh to D.C., arriving around noon, while AU didn’t need me to help set up SRF until 7:00. Fortunately, I was able to keep myself busy during that time by attending the March for Palestine on Washington alongside thousands upon thousands of other comrades.

Exhausted by the march, but more motivated than ever to fight for Palestine, I arrived at the SRF venue at seven to quickly eat and help set up.

In my keffiyeh, a t-shirt, and leggings, I entered the staff room where a small handful of AU employees from both management and the union sat resting and eating.

It took less than five minutes for Andrew Seidel — who I hadn’t seen at all until this point — to come in and tell me that my keffiyeh was “against the dress code” and that I had to remove it before representing AU.

I said no.

He told me once again that I had to take it off. He was not prepared for an employee of his to refuse a direct order. I had to prompt him to figure out what would happen next, knowing now that nothing he would do would change my mind.

After leaving to consult with someone more senior to him, Andrew came back and told me that if I didn’t want to “comply with the dress code policy,” I had to leave. Immediately. I could not even finish my cookie in the private staff room. Andrew expressed hope that I would return in the morning for the official start of the conference in compliance with the dress code, a hope which I very quickly and politely crushed. I told him not to be surprised when I wouldn’t show up.

That was the last time I ever saw Andrew Seidel.

April 6, 2025

The rest of the Summit for Religious Freedom was… just weird.

I spent the next day sitting in the hotel lobby wearing my keffiyeh and my AU staff lanyard with the conference name badge I had designed. Union comrades came to visit me and bring me snacks, and in return I gave anyone who wanted one a homemade watermelon pin.

There came to be an excess in watermelon pins, however, because as soon as management would see anyone wearing one, they would ask them to remove it. At least 11 people were told to remove their watermelon pins. Everyone complied.

One union member was even told to remove a single, small watermelon earring.

One of my comrades, who had also shown up in a keffiyeh the previous day until ordered to remove it, had also worn elaborate nail art featuring watermelon and keffiyeh motifs. She was shocked to learn upon arrival that the new Human Resources director had brought nail polish that this comrade was forced to cover her art with. She was not even allowed to wear a watermelon hair clip.

Alarm bells rang as we learned that management would go so far as to bring nail covers, without ever telling staff that any pro-Palestine iconography — even a plain watermelon — violated the dress code.

Why, we thought, would HR have brought nail covers, of all things? My jaw dropped when I realized that it was because this comrade had shared her beautiful nail art in the organization’s arts and crafts Slack channel the week prior.

The Summit for Religious Freedom dress code

The staff dress code for the 2024 Summit for Religious Freedom read,

Please do not wear t-shirts supporting political candidates, partisan slogans, issue advocacy etc. (AU shirts/gear are the exception) — Americans United is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we cannot be seen to be endorsing political campaigns, candidates, parties, issues, etc.

Summit for Religious Freedom 2024 Staff Info document, dress code section

Contrast that with the 2025 Summit for Religious Freedom staff dress code:

Please do not wear any items supporting political candidates, partisan slogans, issue advocacy etc. AU is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we can’t be seen to be endorsing political campaigns, candidates, parties, or non-AU issues. Wearing AU shirts / AU gear / or items aligned with AU’s issue positions are the exception. (emphasis in original)

Summit for Religious Freedom 2025 Staff Info document, dress code section

Management continues to argue that their dress code policy was crystal clear, and that the differences to the 2024 dress code were emphasized to us repeatedly. In reality, the policy was in the middle of a long document with the logistics of the conference. While Brian Silva went over the document in meetings leading up to SRF, he never drew special attention to the change in the dress code, provided examples of exactly what issues are “aligned with AU’s issue positions,” or elaborated on what the punishment would be for employees who would dare to break this vague and authoritarian policy.

The watermelon pins

My comrades who attempted to wear watermelon pins on their lanyards were especially shocked when told to remove them, since we had all worn these exact same pins to the same conference last year.

Between the pins and the nail art, management knew exactly what “items” staff would wear to the conference and what cause those “items” supported. Instead of telling us ahead of time not to even try it, they decided to ruin the conference for everyone by pulling their own employees aside one by one and making them remove these pins. (And if you cross stitch, then you will believe me when I tell you that each pin took me more than 90 minutes to create. Between 2024 and 2025, I made 29 watermelon pins.)

Speaking for myself, I would have worn my keffiyeh even if Andrew had told me directly beforehand that I would be told to remove the keffiyeh or leave. I didn’t want to be at a liberal Zionist, authoritarian conference masquerading as a religious freedom conference anyway. Make no mistake: AU management’s Big Tent only extends in one direction.

The Summit for Religious Freedom keynote hypocrisy

While I sat banished in the lobby, Jemar Tisby, who I had pushed for years to have as a SRF keynote speaker, and whose speech I had advertised, delivered his address.

In December 2023, Tisby had written that “Staying silent on the tragedies that continue to unfold in Palestine stands in direct opposition to what it means when I say that justice takes sides. Justice always chooses the side of the disempowered. Justice always chooses liberation.”

In his “JUSTICE TAKES SIDES” t-shirt paired with a blazer, Tisby delivered his speech. One line is a bitter reminder of the staff dress code at SRF which says staff cannot endorse “non-AU [political] issues”:

And I contend that if preaching and teaching the full humanity, dignity and personhood of people is political, then be political. If looking out for the prisoner, the orphan, the widow, the children, the vulnerable is political, then be political.

Jemar Tisby keynote at the Summit for Religious Freedom 2025

Tisby’s speech focused largely on true, holy Christianity versus hijacked, White Christian Nationalist “Christianity.” As with Munther Isaac’s message I shared earlier, I believe there is a clear parallel about what Tisby says here about the church and about social justice nonprofits.

. . . I want to make sure that we see it here, contrasting the Christianity of Christ and White Christian Nationalism. . . . One champions justice and righteousness. The other follows the principle of might makes right. One seeks unity in diversity. The other promotes uniformity and assimilation. One advocates for the oppressed, one seeks to dominate others.

Jemar Tisby keynote at the Summit for Religious Freedom 2025

He ended by repeating Fannie Lou Hamer’s famous line three times.

Nobody is free until everybody is free.

Nobody is free until everybody is free.

Nobody is free until everybody is free.

Jemar Tisby keynote at the Summit for Religious Freedom 2025, quoting Fannie Lou Hamer

Tisby did not say a word about Palestine.

Perhaps Tisby sensed that advocating for Palestine wasn’t welcome at SRF. Maybe these were meant to be subtle references that would fly under the radar. I wouldn’t be surprised if his contact at AU management had told him beforehand not to speak of the genocide.

What is most striking is the hypocrisy of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and its Summit for Religious Freedom. Tisby said all these things at a conference, which he probably had no idea a staff member had been kicked out of for wearing a keffiyeh not 15 hours earlier. But I’m sure Andrew Seidel, Rachel Laser, Brian Silva, and others in management were sitting in that keynote smiling and clapping. I’m sure they were simultaneously moved by Tisby’s words while also hoping that no one would go down the steps into the lobby and ask why there was a staff member who was not allowed to step foot in Tisby’s keynote to even hear them.

The hypocrisy continues at Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Before the conference, I had had the smallest hope that I would be able to wear my keffiyeh and go on living my life, seeing the fruits of what I had labored all year long to create. After all, it is a scarf. It symbolizes a fight against apartheid and genocide. This message should be expected, even encouraged, at a religious freedom conference.

But I had other reasons for thinking I would be allowed to wear my keffiyeh.

Just as my comrades and I had donned our watermelon pins in 2024, I had been wearing pro-Palestine symbols for over a year to AU events.

I’d worn my keffiyeh-pattern headband, and my Palestine-shaped necklace, to SRF 2024 as well as to the event that I had staffed in June.

Even more astonishing, however, is that I had been creating short-form content for Americans United’s TikTok and Instagram wearing my keffiyeh and/or with my keffiyeh and a Palestinian flag in the background, since January 2024.

I had created an entire series of reels covering an interview I had conducted with Jemar Tisby in February 2025, with my keffiyeh and Palestinian flag in the background of every single one. But what I really can’t comprehend is how Andrew Seidel said nothing when our social media manager reposted a reel I had created in August 2024 where I am wearing my keffiyeh, on April 4, 2025 — the day before he would kick me out of our own conference for wearing that same keffiyeh.

But it’s not just about me and my keffiyeh. Americans United had used a photo of one of our youth fellows wearing their keffiyeh in an email advertising SRF that same day, April 4. (This is the page it linked to.)

I had also used a photo of a comrade in their watermelon pin on the front page of the SRF website, where it had sat undisturbed since at least August 2024, until late May 2025. It’s worth noting that it had always been my responsibility to create this collage photo, but curiously, I was not the one tasked with updating it sans pin post-SRF 2025.

It’s also been interesting to find out that the first finalized Summit for Religious Freedom 2025 recap video (created by an outside agency, not by me) must have cause a panic in management. The original version of the video, which was sent to all staff when it was published on May 20, was private by the time that I even got around to clicking on it. As an admin of the AU YouTube channel, I logged in to see that it showed — you guessed it — one second of footage of a union member wearing a watermelon pin. This was an impossible detail to notice unless one goes frame by frame looking specifically for pins.

The now-live version, a reupload from June 13, is exactly the same except that shot is zoomed so that the pin is cropped out.

Suspension for Gaza is the highest honor

As if banning me from the conference that I dedicated years of my life to was not enough, Americans United management made the decision to suspend me from work without pay for seven business days, from Thursday, April 24 to Friday, May 2. In other words, my punishment for wearing a keffiyeh to the Summit for Religious Freedom was a $1,326 fine.

Making sure that no one would get behind in their work waiting for me to complete any tasks that week, I sent this polite email to the full staff following the suspension meeting.

Good morning AU,

I am writing to inform you that I have been suspended from my duties without pay today, tomorrow, and all of next week. This is my punishment for wearing a keffiyeh — a symbol of Palestinian resistance to 77 years of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide — to the Summit for Religious “Freedom” on April 5-7, 2025.

If you need graphics during that time, contact Andrew Seidel and he’ll get that sorted for you.

Anyways, Free Palestine.

Rebekah Kohlhepp

Management has never acknowledged this email.

Grieving

When I returned on May 5, my union representative and I quickly got to work filing a grievance requesting that management remove the suspension from my record and asking for the $1,326 that I was owed for my unpaid suspension. For us, this grievance process meant holding a meeting between me, my union rep, management, and HR, in which my rep and I made the case for why my punishment was unjust and should be removed.

On Monday, May 19, I had the pleasure of starting off my week with an intense grievance meeting at 9am sharp. I was in no way surprised when it became an hour of gaslighting from Andrew Seidel and his boss Mariko (Mari) Hirose, towards me and my rep, bolstered by COO Cynthia (Cyndi) Hess, while the HR representative observed in silence.

I had already been looking for jobs for over six months by then, but this meeting was the point at which continuing to work for these people every day became near impossible. Every time Mari would assign me work after that, all I could hear was her exasperated tone saying, “Whatever you want to call it,” when I corrected her and Cyndi after they repeatedly called the genocide a war.

Andrew is more clever than that, though. His demons will never catch up to him if he only ever says egregious things over the phone, or if he never utters a word about a genocide, refusing to call it anything at all. To him, when he is forced to talk about it, it is always “what is happening between Israel and Gaza.” He thinks that his employees — not to mention his fans — are dumb enough to think that he is pro-Palestine when he tells us that deep down he does care about “what’s happening.” He thinks that leaving the genocide at the door is a sign of professionalism instead of what it really is: a total lack of humanity.

I know that for an empty and image-obsessed grifter like Andrew Seidel or an emotionally destitute nonprofit executive like Mari Hirose, there wasn’t anything I could say that would make them begin to care about a genocide after 592 days of mass murder. But Mari was especially eager to hear my reasoning for wearing my keffiyeh to her conference, as if it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. And besides, the whole reason for the meeting was for me to justify my daring to openly oppose genocide in their presence. So this is what I said.

When Andrew told me that my keffiyeh went against the dress code and that I would have to remove it or leave, I told you that I didn’t know why it goes against the dress code. You said it’s because we don’t have a stance on Palestine. I said I didn’t know why we don’t have a stance on Palestine. You became irritated and said “we’ve been over this.”

You then asked me to tell you why I wouldn’t take it off. I was exhausted and exasperated, and I said no. I didn’t think I had to tell you again why I was not going to remove my keffiyeh. But I’ll tell you now.

You say “we’ve been over this” like you can’t believe I still want to talk about Palestine. Like I need to get over this. But us “going over” this last year was me saying, much like on this day, April 5, that I know of no good reason for us not to take a stance on the genocide happening in Palestine. And it was you saying that if we take a stance, it would alienate our donors.

That was not a conversation. That was you shutting me down.

Americans United has made it clear that it is taking the stance of complicity in this genocide by choosing to be silent. Because a lack of a position while hundreds of thousands of people, more than half of them children, are bombed and starved is a position. It is a very clear position.

There are a lot of topics that AU has positions on that some of our more moderate donors don’t like. But we speak about them because they are necessary battles to fight if we want religious freedom.

AU has a position on Christian Nationalism. But we are silent when Christian Nationalists like Mike Johnson use their faith to justify using our tax dollars to send weapons of war to an occupying force that is going to use them indiscriminately against a civilian population.

AU has a position on reproductive rights. But we are silent when women and menstruating people in Gaza have no access to reproductive healthcare, including prenatal care, abortion, labor and delivery care, or postnatal care.

AU has a position on anti-trans hate. We spoke at length about the despicable environment that caused 16-year-old Nex Benedict to die by suicide, but we were completely silent when 5-year-old Hind Rajab sat for days calling for help in an ambulance surrounded by the bodies of her loved ones who had been murdered by the Israeli Occupation Forces before they killed her too.

AU has a position on public schools and on book bans. But we are silent when universities in Gaza are bombed and professors are murdered in their homes.

AU condemned Ryan Walters for spending millions of taxpayer dollars to put bibles in Oklahoma public schools. But when Joe Biden sent $22 billion in military aid to Israel, so that they could bomb every hospital in Gaza, we ignored it and applauded the Biden administration for protecting health care access by rescinding a denial of care rule.

That is why I wear this keffiyeh. That is why I keep this Palestinian flag in my Zoom background. Because you act like this isn’t happening. And it is my moral duty as a human being, as an activist, as someone who cares about people, as someone who fights for marginalized people when they aren’t there to do it themselves, to make you look at it even though you don’t want to. It might not be in my job description but it is my job as a human being to show you what your silence does, and not to be silent myself.

This, by the way, is the meeting in which Andrew told me it was disingenuous for me to say that he had told me in April 2024 that the lack of a stance was just about donors. What he had actually said in that 2024 meeting was that it would alienate “donors,” “supporters,” and “our coalition.” To me, that just sounds like donors but with more syllables.

The dress code, or burning down the house to kill a spider

The suspension notice that I received on April 24 had stated that

Upon your return, you must demonstrate adherence to all organizational policies, including the dress code, complete your responsibilities as
assigned, and engage with colleagues and leadership in a professional and respectful manner at all times.

Any future incidents of insubordination, policy violations or failure to perform assigned job duties will result in further disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

Andrew Seidel, unpaid suspension notice to Rebekah Kohlhepp, 4/24/25

Unfortunately for management, with SRF over, the only dress code in place on April 24 was the one in our employee handbook that said merely that Americans United “maintains a business casual environment” and that attire should be “appropriate for business interaction.” If I were to continue wearing my keffiyeh to work as I often did, there would be nothing in the dress code for me to break!

Not a problem. Management got to work creating a new staff-wide dress code. You’re welcome, AU.

On May 6, Cyndi Hess sent our union representative a new “attire and virtual meeting policy” that was to be implemented on May 21. Our rep forwarded it to the union the next day. Cyndi invited us to “discuss the effects of these policies on employees in the bargaining unit,” but provided no avenue for union members to actually collaborate on what the already-written dress code said. And you already know what it said.

To avoid confusion about AU’s mission, employees should ensure that in any external-facing work, all attire, accessories, and personal items are free of any advocacy messaging outside of AU’s issue positions, as well as references to other organizations (unless approved for the
circumstance). External-facing work includes, but is not limited to, virtual or in-person meetings, events, or interviews with external stakeholders such as donors, members, consultants, vendors, coalition partners, trustees, elected officials, job candidates, and chapter members.

Advocacy messaging is defined as supporting or recommending a political candidate or political party, or messaging about social, public policy, or global causes.

Accessories and personal items include, but are not limited to, stickers, posters, buttons, pins, lanyards, belt buckles, face coverings, hats, scarves, rings, earrings, bracelets, tattoos,¹ water bottles, and profile images and email signatures.

Americans United proposed attire policy from 5/6/25

My first thought when I read the dress code and background policy on May 7 was, “I am going to be fired for breaking the dress code.” If it wasn’t because of my frequent wearing of my keffiyeh and pro-Palestine t-shirts, then it would be for my Zoom profile picture. If not over my Zoom picture, then I certainly would be fired for my Slack picture.

These were my Zoom and Slack profile pictures, respectively.

But that wasn’t all. The virtual meeting policy ensured that there was no anti-genocide messaging in anyone’s Zoom backgrounds, either. It said,

To ensure a professional setting that is not distracting to the meeting, employees have the option of using their initials or headshot complying with AU’s dress code for the profile picture, and any of the following for their virtual background:

• Showing their surroundings without blurring, so long as the surroundings are professional, neutral, and otherwise suitable for a business meeting. In external-facing meetings, the surroundings should not display any issue advocacy messaging outside of AU’s issue positions.
• Displaying AU-approved virtual backgrounds. Employees should not use any other virtual background and should not personalize or otherwise alter any AU-approved background.

Americans United proposed virtual meeting policy from 5/6/25

For reference, this is my Zoom background and something I would wear on a typical day.

One doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out what Americans United management’s goal was when creating dress code and background policies calling out “advocacy messaging” and “global causes” almost immediately after my suspension notice. The notice had threatened that insubordination regarding dress code could lead to my termination — which, after suspension, would be the next step for me in the disciplinary process.

But the dress code, which I have reason to believe was targeted at me, would affect the entire staff. Besides one other staff member who wore a keffiyeh to the Summit for Religious Freedom and the several more who donned watermelon pins — and all of them removed these pieces when asked! — no one else had done anything “wrong.”

This impending dress code led to what I can only call mass panic in the staff. No one knew how to interpret the many mentions of “professionalism,” the need for any virtual background to be “AU-approved,” or whether their current profile pictures were compliant. Were t-shirts and jeans still allowed? How could someone determine if the presence of their pet (referenced elsewhere in the policy) was “disruptive”? Why did the policy mention pets and not kids? What about the several other employees with bookshelves in their backgrounds? What about employees without the privilege of a dedicated office space? What about Black employees who are most likely to be targeted by unnecessary and biased corporate rules about appearing “professional”?

One employee — my comrade who had worn the watermelon nails and keffiyeh to SRF, and who wrote this scathing review of Americans United for Separation of Church and State on Glassdoor — pinpointed the impending dress code as her final straw when she submitted her resignation on May 21.

Fortunately, due to intense backlash that resonated with some of the less numb members of management, that dress code did not go into place on May 21. As I write this on July 22, it is still being worked on, thankfully with some consideration for how it affects staff. The one thing I am positive of is that pro-Palestine imagery will most certainly remain forbidden, whether it is ever specifically mentioned or not.

Americans United for non-disclosure agreements

On Friday, May 30, management shared their response to my grievance with my union rep. I hadn’t thought that anything at Americans United for Separation of Church and State could surprise me anymore, but the two legal documents sitting in my inbox on Monday, June 2 actually caught me off guard.

Likely wanting to end the reprimands about their complicity in genocide, management proposed that we just put this whole thing to bed. They had not been able to get rid of me as quickly as they wanted with the new dress code. They sent two legal-looking documents, which I was to sign so that:

• “all matters” between us would be “resolved”;
• we would “mutually agree” that my last day at AU would be Friday, June 6;
• AU would pay me a lump sum of $11,180.80, approximately 8 weeks’ salary;
• I would “agree not to make any false or disparaging statements” about Americans United or “any of its officers, directors, or employees”;
• I would not “disclose any information regarding the existence or substance of this Agreement”.

The fact that you are reading this post right now will tell you that I did not sign this agreement. (Mind you, at this point I had already written everything up to the section about the grievance process.) No amount of money would stop me from sharing my firsthand experience of the complicity of Americans United for Separation of Church and State in genocide and its mistreatment of workers like me and my comrades.

I am done

But I did want to publish this post at some point, as I had started writing it in early May during my suspension. And I wasn’t going to publish it while I was still employed at Americans United. While I still believe that I would have been fired when the dress code eventually goes into effect, I could no longer wait. I simply could not stand to create one more advertisement for a self-aggrandizing Rachel Laser speech at a Zionist synagogue (such as Temple Aliyah, Congregation Adath Jeshurun, and Temple Beth Zion), encourage registration for a conference that I had been kicked out of, or take another order from Andrew Seidel or Mari Hirose. I was at the end of my rope. I was done. I am writing this after my last full day at Americans United, July 22, 2025.

Despite searching for a new graphic design job for eight months, with a stellar portfolio and praise from several colleagues, nothing has come to fruition. Americans United was so awful that I left without another job lined up, and I am still continuing to search.

It’s not going to be easy, but I can take a breath now. I am done.

I will no longer be complicit in genocide.

Free Palestine.