An Orange County Murder Inspires the Kindness Campaign, #BlazeitForward

Orange County is one of the safest places to raise children. But still, right here in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on January 2nd, 2018, my 19-year-old son Blaze Bernstein was murdered while home for the winter holidays from the University of Pennsylvania. After an in-depth search, his body was found near our home in Foothill Ranch.  

An arrest was made of the suspected Neo-Nazi he had met up with that harrowing night and immediately we saw a huge outpouring of love and support from people all over the country. During that time, we began a kindness movement called #BlazeitForward” in order to continue our son’s legacy of kindness, asking everyone to do something kind for someone else in his honor.  

Now, each day, we promote a legacy of kindness that will forever be associated with our son and his life -- repairing the world in the same way that Blaze was committed, with simple kindness.  

Through the 26,000 member strong #BlazeitForward Facebook group, we highlight astounding acts of kindness from people everywhere, focusing on a common desire for a better world. These acts of kindness and community service vary in size and impact. Daily, we marvel at how many people glean hope from the good that has come from our family’s tragedy, motivating us to continue.  

These kind acts honor Blaze in an extraordinary way that has become very special to our family, and also take the focus away from the man who was charged with his murder.  

Blaze was gay and Jewish and targeted by hate groups. Since his death, we continue to be outspoken advocates for #BlazeitForward, LGBTQ equality, acceptance, and education for parents and teens, community service, diversity and empathy education in high schools, and have become motivational speakers for organizations that share our common goals. We do all this while we await the criminal trial that remains years away. 

While Blaze’s death was the lowest point in our lives and a moment of unspeakable pain and misery for my husband and I, we continue to have faith in humanity. 

Even when we saw how terrible human beings can treat one another; we also saw how wonderful humans can be when they see other people struggling. 

We see that most people do good things when given the opportunity and that good people tip the scales in this world with their kindness and open hearts. 

We’ve received many opportunities over the last two years that have allowed us to enlighten the world on the danger of ignorance and extremism, but we miss our son. We miss our family together and the future we saw for our family. Blaze would have turned 22 this year and graduated from UPenn, before going on to attend medical school. While we will never fully recover from his death, we accept that this tragedy is part of who we now are and is what we now do.  

We will keep his memory and legacy of goodness alive and will use the time we have left to repair what is broken in this world and hopefully inspire others to do the same. We learned that we can use our powers and strengths to destroy others or we can build them up. We’ve seen enough destruction and feel compelled to take positive action to repair what is broken: the human spirits of our divided and disenfranchised world.   

It is only possible to repair our world if we join together in a non-partisan fashion to end divisions and find a way to work together towards common goals of understanding and kindness.

Kindness has the potential to exist in everything we do and everywhere we go. 

If you want to live in a good world; you have to be the kindness. Join us as we #BlazeitForward. 

To learn more about Blaze Bernstein’s murder watch the 48 Hours special, “In the Name of Hate” or the NBC special “Uncovered: Killed by Hate.” The Bernstein’s have created multiple endowments and scholarships to ensure Blaze’s legacy of kindness continues. To learn more visit blazebernstein.org.