White supremacist flyers dropped in Rocky Hill spur call for antiracist action

Antiracist organizations in Rocky Hill are mobilizing this week after a white supremacist group papered a neighborhood in town with tiny flyers reading “Black Crimes Matter.”

The papers, the size and shape of cookie fortunes, include the email address of a racist and antisemitic group that papered several other Connecticut municipalities with flyers this and last year. The small papers also include a call to “defend white communities.”

In response, the Rocky Hill Commission on Inclusion and Innovation put out a call for the community to participate in its meeting Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. in the council chambers at Town Hall, 761 Old Main St.

“Sadly, the darkness of hate reared its ugly head in Rocky Hill last week, and we call on all of our residents to respond with kindness and unity,” the commission stated in an announcement April 20 on the town’s official page.

“Take the time to reach out to your neighbors and let them know you care about them. Speak words of support and compassion for all members of our community,” it read.

Tom Cosker, chair of the seven-member commission, said “Our goal as a commission is to bring people together. We look forward to hearing the public’s thoughts on the issue and go from there.”

He said people who can’t make the meeting can email their concerns to commissioninclusioninnovation@rockyhillct.gov.

Cosker also encouraged citizens to voice their concerns in an online survey at tinyurl.com/bdhxpcnk.

The propaganda drop happened April 13. Valerie Triblets, of the Racial Justice Steering Committee at Rocky Hill Congregational Church, said the papering appears to be in response to an incident on Valley View Drive on April 10, in which four men beat a man in his driveway in an apparent attempt to steal his car. Video of the incident, taken by the victim’s home surveillance camera, was posted on the town police department’s Facebook page.

“They were distributed generally in the same neighborhood as the assault, Valley View Drive,” Triblets said, adding that the supremacist group is “using it as an opportunity to spread hate.”

Triblets also wrote a statement on behalf of her church that was posted on Facebook: “We call out the evil behavior of those who chose to scatter hate through our neighborhoods in an attempt to create moral panic and convince good people that there is a connection between race and criminal behavior.”

An April 11 statement by Sgt. Jeffrey Foss-Rugan, posted on Facebook, describe the suspects as “three younger in age black males and one younger in age white/Hispanic male.”

Derek Caelin, of Sustainable Rocky Hill, acknowledged the coincidental timing of the assault and the propaganda drop, but said he disagrees that they are related.

“My own impression is that the flyer drop is part of a longer campaign,” Caelin said. “Yes, there was that attack and attempt to steal a car, but this group has been around for a while campaigning for more visibility. This is a long-term project, not something new.”

News reports from around the state show that the same racist and antisemitic hate group, the New England Nationalist Social Club or NSC-131, has been for the past year using flyer drops in an attempt to recruit in the state.

In April 2022, flyers were dropped in East Hartford, Southington and West Hartford. In May 2022, they were dropped in Enfield. In June 2022, the group dropped flyers in Bristol, and July in Berlin. The group left flyers in Newington in January, in Stamford last month and in New Haven and Hamden this month.

Kate Schramm, who lives near Valley View Drive, noticed the slips of paper when she was walking her dog.

“I was surprised to see them. They looked like little pieces of trash,” Schramm said. “I picked one up. I was just disgusted.”

She said many of the papers are still scattered throughout the neighborhood. “They’re really tiny. You wouldn’t notice them unless you were looking for them,” she said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center refers to New England Nationalist Social Club as “a neo-Nazi group based in New England whose activities consist of staging protests and distributing hate literature.”

The Anti-Defamation League cites that the group “espouses racism, antisemitism and intolerance via the Internet, propaganda distributions and the use of graffiti.”

In a report issued last month, ADL logged 207 incidents of white supremacists propaganda in the state in 2022. This is a 115% jump from the previous year, which places Connecticut ninth in the nation in the number of incidents, ADL states.

“Incidents of white supremacist propaganda distribution in Connecticut are at a historic high,” ADL Connecticut Regional Director Stacey Sobel said in the report. “Everyone must come together to reject hate and extremism and work towards creating a better community that does not exclude, marginalize, or target any person.”

Trumbull resident Wayne Winston, of Anti Racism Coalition of Connecticut, said it is important for social justice organizations to work with each other to fight propaganda campaigns.

“These guys are attacking us all across this state. We need all the organizations in the state to know that are fighting this together, that we are not working in silos. We are sharing information,” Winston said.

Winston is working with town resident Brian Donahue, of the social justice advocacy group Not Just Us, to organize an anti-hate rally in town this coming weekend.

“We were thinking Saturday, but we want to include Jewish individuals, who are not able to do things on Saturday. So maybe it will be Sunday,” Donahue said. “There are no synagogues or mosques in Rocky Hill, but it’s important to include people of other faiths.”

The statement from Rocky Hill Congregational Church also was a call to action: “Find the courage to share your power and call out a racist act or comment,” it said. “Join or organize a rally. Call on your municipal and religious leaders to speak up and stand up. Support legislation that promotes equity for all people.”

Caelin said activists groups need to work vocally and visibly to fight the spread of hate.

“This is an attempt to recruit within the town. We as a community need to respond to this actively, by saying we embrace diversity, we are committed to addressing systemic inequality,” he said. “It’s a mistake to assume Rocky Hill or any particular town is immune to these sort of broader national forces that are going on.”

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.