When the Anti-Defamation League confers its Levenson defender of democracy award on him at the nonprofit’s “In Concert Against Hate” event on Nov. 10, David Holt, the mayor of Oklahoma City, anticipates it will be doubly significant to him.
“It would be an honor in and of itself to be recognized by this organization that has so much history in our country and so many important achievements and that stands for so many critical American values,” the city’s first Native American mayor told JNS.
He added that “the specific award that I’m receiving is very meaningful to me, because it does feel like a lot of my work as mayor and as president of the Conference of Mayors has gone a little bit beyond the daily tasks put in front of any American mayor.”
The ADL will honor Holt, 46, and others at the event, which is scheduled to take place at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington. The annual benefit concert recognizes “individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary courage in standing up to hatred, antisemitism, injustice and bias,” per the ADL.
Holt told JNS that as an Oklahoma state senator, he brought the first Chanukah recognition to the state capitol. He has also attended Jewish events in the city and sought to increase dialogue with Jewish residents and met with Israeli representatives and chaired a delegation of mayors to the Jewish state.
He also held interfaith prayer services, which included a rabbi, before each of his mayoral inaugurations and held a town hall on rising Jew-hatred with the ADL at a local synagogue in February 2023, Holt told JNS.
Some of his efforts “were incorporated into the Biden administration’s official report on efforts to combat antisemitism,” said Holt, who represented the Conference of Mayors at the “United We Stand” summit, against hate, at the White House on Sept. 15, 2022.
A Republican, Holt told JNS that he cast the deciding 5-4 vote in 2022 to revive Oklahoma City’s human-rights commission, which was abolished in the 1990s over LGBT rights, he said.
“We’re in the 20th largest city in the United States,” he said. “We are presumably the largest city that didn’t have a human rights commission.”
The commission “has provided a forum for lots of important conversations,” including about Jew-hatred, Holt said. “Bigotry toward Jewish people is one of the symptoms of decaying civilizations throughout human history.”
The mayor helped draft the “Oklahoma City Declaration,” which denounces political violence, at the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in September. He told JNS that 50 mayors signed it when they were in the city for a meeting, and now about 230 mayors have signed.
“It is, I think, a pretty strong clear and concise articulation of the political culture and behaviors that are necessary to sustain a democracy that go beyond just the written law,” he said.
“The reality is that the American experiment is an outlier in the history of humanity, and maybe in recent years we’re being reminded why,” Holt told JNS. “People like me, who have a little bit of a platform in my little corner of the world, have an obligation to help explain and help articulate why this is so important, what makes it so unique and some of the obligations that each of us carry if we want to see it sustained.”
