4 minute read
Jeanne Pepper - Women of COAST 2020
ADVOCATE FOR TOLERANCE – MOTHER OF BLAZE BERNSTEIN ● CO-FOUNDER OF BLAZE IT FORWARD
Why her, why now: No one would blame Jeanne Pepper – or her husband, Gideon Bernstein, their son or their daughter for that matter – if she were to withdraw from the world and become bitter and fearful. Over two years ago there was a nationwide search for their son Blaze Bernstein, who went missing after coming home to Orange County for the end-ofyear holidays on break from his studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
But on Jan. 10, 2018, Pepper and her family had to confront the unimaginable: Blaze’s body was found buried at a park in Foothill Ranch. Blaze, who identified as LGBTQ and was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, had been stabbed multiple times in what prosecutors determined was a hate crime.
Pepper and her husband decided to replace bitterness with empathy, withdrawal with outreach: They seized the media platform in the wake of their son’s murder to create a movement called “Blaze It Forward,” encouraging a national conversation around tolerance and kindness. Pepper keeps it going through public speaking engagements and a Facebook community of 26,000 and growing.
“When you have been through something as existential as the death of a child, it makes you reevaluate what we are doing here and why these things happen,” says Pepper. “How are we all connected to each other? Peel off our skin and you can’t even tell us apart. It’s really just so funny that people think they are so different from other people. They’re not.”
Pepper explains: “I knew we could use that same platform to encourage people to do good things. People wanted to know, what can we do for you? What can we do to make this better? And the only thing that would make us feel better is if everybody does something good. And if you do it because of Blaze, then we will know his life made a difference.”
In the years since her son’s killing, Pepper has been on a quest to understand what motivates people, particularly young men, to join hate groups and to educate herself about the proliferation of online neo-Nazi groups. “When we take that time to really get to know people and be empathetic, then you really start to see the connectivity between people and problems,” she says. The next evolution is, “How do we fix these? How can we be the most impactful that we can be?”
This counterintuitive move comes easy to Pepper, who has a law degree and says she’s been a “different thinker” since she was a little girl growing up in Huntington Beach. “When all the other little girls wanted to play Barbie, I wanted to play soccer, and then take the Barbies out on the soccer field to show the boys how to play with them!” she says with a laugh. “I never really thought that there were limits to anything people could do.”
Her refusal to let the hatred that caused Blaze’s death kill her own resolve has inspired many.
“None of that negativity will ever make my life good. I won’t allow that to happen. I think the greatest revenge on people who seek to bring you down is to rise above – and take everyone else up with you. Don’t leave them behind. That’s my goal. We are just going to keep going in a different direction completely until this movement of hatred means nothing. That will be the greatest justice I can ever hope to have.”
What women inspired you? “My two grandmothers and my great grandmother were influences on me. My dad’s mother was an orphan in Poland and came here alone when she was 14 and supported herself. Nobody ever knew she wasn’t educated or that she grew up with nothing – she was a socialite and she was very charming. My mom’s mother was the daughter of two Russian immigrants who hardly spoke a word of English, and she was collegeeducated. She supported the family as a teacher and was a tremendous musician.”
What do you wish you’d known sooner? “I think it would have been really super helpful if I had understood that a lot of things we do, who we are – whether we are social or not, logical or emotional – they are really just part of our DNA. I wish I had known these things before I became a parent. Everybody is different and has their own path. Let’s just let people be their authentic selves.”
She adds, “And, I feel like I should have been more worried about the kinds of people Blaze was meeting online – it was so unsafe. In (the LGBT+) community, many don’t meet each other in a normative way; they’re meeting on these anonymous apps. People can go on these apps and have really mal intentions.”
What do you wish for other women? “We are so hard on ourselves. We judge ourselves so much. I was so hard on myself for years because I didn’t have this illustrious legal career, when I could have. Friends would ask me, ‘Are you going back? Do you miss it?’ And I would think, ‘Is there a reason I need to do that to be validated as a person?’ Do what you need to do to make sure your family is happy, whatever that happy looks like for you, and feel good about your decisions.”
