WE ARE WHITE PLAINS: BRIDGING, BELONGING & BUILDING COMMUNITY CHANGES ATTITUDES OF ALL AGES AT WHITE PLAINS HIGH | WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER 2,238,339 VISITS IN 1 YEAR --NEW HIGH TODAY SINCE MARCH 20, 2022, 6,132 VISITS EVERY DAY. WELCOME NEW READERS OF MARCH 20, 2023. MONDAY MARCH 20 AT NOON 595 VISITORS HAVE MADE 1,373 VISITS VISTORS HAVE MADE 1,338 VISITS.

The NEW Multi-media Showcase Exposes Attitudes, Shatters Hate, Connects Students, Shows All Ages What Hate Reaps. Public views Monday at 3 PM. Eastview and Highlands Schools Host Next

WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. By John F. Bailey. March 18, 2023:

Four hundred White Plains High School Students have seen it and come back for more.

The public gets its chance to see the exhibition Monday at 3 PM. It will move to Eastview Middle School and Highlands Middle School later in the spring. It is a meaningful hit with the students school officials related Friday afternoon at the official opening.

Mayor Thomas Roach of White Plains said that Ellen Berger had approached him with participating in the photo shoot and the idea for the exhibit to White Plains, and Dr. Joseph Ricca was enthusiastic, feeling the high school being the best place to make “We Are White Plains” message educate the children of White Plains on the consequences of hate, and the history of the Holocaust,.

**Beyete’ Ross Smith,** the photographer of the pictures of local personalities displayed in the venture explained how he learned appearances can send a negative or a positive image was in college when he and his fellow classmates dressed up for a business conference they were invited to and spoke and dressed in “business talk,” and how differently they were perceived by the executives who ran the conference.

I asked him why all the photos he took were not smiling (to show a different impression of those photographs).

Mr. Ross Smith said people do not usually smile as they see you, but the appearance of how they look leaves the impression upon which impressions are based, on which initial first impressions (fear, suspicion, coldness) are formed. He is shown with the founders of Close Circles standing in the background.

Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado,in his opening address noted that Governor Kathy Hochul has made the Holocaust history mandated in curriculum for schools in New York State.

He noted that the pictures of White Plains personalities on display in various outfits with stern faces, recalled his own youth of the rise of Hip Hop that gave expression to his generation, and observed the “traveling museum”

Founders of Common Circles , Marla Felton (Founder) and Sue Spiegel (Creative Director) who custom created the show for White Plains using school, city officials, teachers participating in the photographs, hoped to make this show a traveling museum to go across the country in the future. A previous custom show was created for the Omaha Nebraska schools.

Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Joseph Ricca in his introduction to the exhibit emphasized that we all must be vigilant and fight against hate each time it rises in the community, “otherwise they win.” Ricca said the exhibit shows “where White Plains is going.”

The founders of Common Circles introduced the ceremony before a crowd of well-wishers of approximately 75 people, Marla Felton, Founder,(left) and Sue Spiegel, Creative Director, explained how the concept came about. (This picture is shown in black and white to emphasize the visual impact point of Mr. Ross Smith’s photographs– appearance counts as how you are perceived).

Ms. Felton said her uncle was a Holocaust survivor who was liberated from the Buchenwald death camp by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. “We Are White Plains is a tool for a model for schools across the nation Four hundred students have gone through the exhibit since last Wedsneday, and they want to come back.”

WPHS Principal Emerly Martinez told me the students are thrilled with the interactive nature of the show and it is very attractive to them. He said students use their free time during the school day to come back and learn from the past in an interactive little theatre created within the White Plains High School Library, where they can listen and ask questions of Holocaust survivors:

Anita Lasker-Wallfish and Alan Moskin, survivors of the Holocaust(below)

Dimensions in Testimony is a collection of interactive survivorbiographies from USC Shoah Foundation that enable the students to have conversations with pre-recorded video images of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide.

You can read more about the exhibit at www.commoncircles.org