Jim Ross, Mayor of Arlington, discusses creating his second faith-based advisory council for the city and how they will organize public panel discussions starting in July
This interview was conducted on June 29 and has been edited for clarity, grammar and length.
Marissa Greene: What drew your interest in meeting with the Congregation Beth Shalom, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Arlington? Walk me through that process.
Jim Ross: I have different types of council to help me better understand portions of our community and then the question arose during the meeting, ‘Have you ever thought about doing a Jewish Advisory Council?’ And I had not. Which made me start thinking that we need to. Our Jewish community still struggles with anti-defamation, antisemitism. I should say, issues that are critically important to them, and I wanted to be more involved in and be part of that solution of how we adequately address that within our community. So subsequent to having the American Jewish Committee come and sit down with me and visit some of the members of the Beth Shalom congregation here in Arlington, I went to Beth Shalom and spoke to them last Saturday. We now formed the Jewish Advisory Council here in Arlington that is actively involved and/or will be actively involved in meeting monthly to talk about the things that we can do as a city to better support and help the Jewish community here in Arlington.
Reform Judaism
Reformed Judaism is a branch of Jewish faith that was developed in the U.S. in the mid-19th century. Reform Judaism believes that the religion “must respond and change with the times,” according to ReligionLink, a nonpartisan service of Religion News Association. They are also the largest branch of Judaism in the U.S.
Greene: The Muslim Advisory Council was the first faith-based advisory council and then the Jewish Advisory Council was the second. What led to this approach?
Ross: Well, there’s no significance in the timing to be honest with you.
“What I’ve tried to do is say ‘Alright, listen, do I have to have an advisory council for every faith-based group out there? I don’t necessarily think that’s a problem.’ A Muslim community has been treated differently in some aspects because of their faith. They have. Whether they’re associated with terrorism, whether they’re associated with conflicts within the Middle East, whether they’re associated with whatever, they have been treated differently, because of their faith. How they dress, how they pray, how they do different things. I believe I was elected to be the mayor of everybody.”
Jim Ross
Ross: And I’m not opposed to having a Christian Advisory Council. It’s just the Christian community as a whole is a very large community that hasn’t had the same negative impact per se, as the Muslim community has, or the antisemitism maybe that the Jewish community has had.
Greene: And so tell me a little bit more about this Jewish Advisory Council. From what I understand it consists of 10 congregants from Beth Shalom and also some from the American Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Federation of Fort Worth and Tarrant County. I’m kind of curious about what your relationship with this council will look like and the goals that this council has?
Ross: So I leave the goals and the missions up to the individual councils. My goal in doing this is to learn about that particular part of the community in Arlington, the Jewish community here and around Arlington. That’s my goal. How I get that information and how we go about supporting the Jewish community within our city, a lot of that is dependent upon what information I get from the advisory council. See, the advisory council is not a policy recommending authority. It is in an advisory capacity is what it really does. It’s then incumbent upon me and city council if we identify things that need to be adjusted on a city basis to do that.
Greene: It sounds like all the advisory councils met. Is that correct?
Ross: Yeah. So we’ve started off the advisory councils by having the siloed type of council where I meet with the Blacks and the Latinos and the Muslims and everybody else. And we start addressing some of those needs within that community.
“But to really effect change, as we begin to address those needs, we have to educate other parts of the population as well. We have to have that dialogue with people who look differently than us or believe differently than us to get that understanding to have that education that helps eliminate or decrease the ignorance that we may have about why people believe the way they do, or act the way they do or look the way they do.”
Jim Ross
Ross: Now we’re entering phase two of our advisory council. In phase two, we will be having panel discussions with citizens and everybody that’s part of these advisory councils. Last night, we had close to 100 people there that were able to have that dialogue and ask questions of a panel of members of the Black Advisory Council. They’re able to ask questions about the Black community, or the Muslim community or the Jewish community to help develop that understanding as to why we do what we do and how we do it and all that kind of stuff. It’s through the dialog that we hope to really affect change in a better understanding of how people are there.
Greene: When do you expect for these panels to start happening?
Ross: July is going to be the first one. We have our Unity Council, which is our policy recommending authority. So our Unity Council is going to talk about what they do for a little bit, and then there’ll be a Q&A with that. And then our Latino Advisory Council is going to speak that month as well. And then we’re going to have another 60 days to go by so it will be July, and then September, I think and then November.
Greene: Just to make sure I have this right. The Unity Council has a hand in having discussions about policy, but these advisory councils are more of a way for you to gain a perspective of a community here?
Ross: So the Unity Council was established a number of years ago, following the George Floyd incident where we had a lot of the social unrest around the country. So the Unity Council will evaluate a lot of the information disseminated from advisory councils and things such as that.
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter at @marissaygreene.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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