‘An attack on all of us.’ State College leaders rally against antisemitic messages
State College leaders rallied Monday against antisemitic messages scattered through several of the borough’s neighborhoods, describing them as everything from repugnant to inhumane.
State College Mayor Ezra Nanes — the borough’s first Jewish mayor — said the messages represented “an attack on all of us.”
“We are a community founded on inclusion, welcoming and empowering all people,” Nanes said. “I want to condemn these acts, and I want to encourage all people to express their needs and their feelings and not make it about other people’s identities, but about what we need as a community.”
Borough Council President Jesse Barlow said he felt “heartbreak” for those who received the messages, as well as “an outrage that is impossible for me to overstate.”
“The kind of hatred expressed by this literature strikes at the heart of our community and in everything that we want to be,” Barlow said. “I have seen this before in other places I have lived, including when I lived in Chicago and when I lived in New York City. This kind of hate has no place in State College, no place in our society. It has no place in the United States of America. Let us join together to deny this kind of hatred a future.”
Residents, including a Jewish candidate for Borough Council, found the antisemitic messages Sunday outside of their homes. Each of the messages were placed inside a zip-close bag that contained rice to weigh them down.
Evan Myers, a former council president running for a new term in November, said the messages were distributed to others who are Jewish, as well as some neighbors that are not.
“The attack is on Jews today. Who will they attack next? The people that do this try to use our differences as a wedge. That’s the part these haters don’t get,” Myers said. “Our differences are what actually unite us, what makes our democracy strong. These differences let us see each other as we are and we learn from each other. We accept each other, we work together and move toward that more perfect union. That will never be defeated. Their hate will never overcome that unity.”
Similar messages were found Sept. 11 in downtown State College and on Penn State’s campus, Myers said. Borough police are aware of about a dozen flyers that were distributed, the department wrote in a statement Tuesday.
Borough police Chief John Gardner said antisemitic messages have “no place in our community.” He pledged his department would “do everything we can to identify those individual or individuals responsible and we’ll prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
“The police are here for you,” Gardner said. “If you get a flyer or if you feel threatened, call right away. I don’t care what time of the day or night it is. We have to bring this to the forefront.”
Similar messages were found in August in a small town about 70 miles west of Boston. The town’s police department said it believed the messages were distributed by a neo-Nazi extremist group the Anti-Defamation League calls “a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism.”
The group, the ADL wrote on its website, engages in “antisemitic stunts and schemes to troll or otherwise harass Jews.”
“What concerns me the most about events like these are that it doesn’t take a lot to normalize fringe elements of our society,” council member Gopal Balachandran said. “... As a community we all bear a responsibility to make sure that things like this do not happen and that all members of our community are welcome. Antisemitism is always the tip of the spear toward hate and then it follows with all kinds of phobias and racisms.”
State Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Rush Township, wrote Monday in a Facebook post he spoke with Myers about the messages. Stopping the spread of hate, he wrote, will take everyone standing together.
“We may not be able to eradicate anti-semitism and bigotry overnight, but we can speak out collectively, to let the world know that hate has no home in our community,” Conklin wrote. “I condemn this hatred to the fullest extent and stand in solidarity with our Jewish friends and neighbors.”
State Rep. Paul Takac, D-College Township, described the messages as vile, unacceptable and “unAmerican.”
“This is Pennsylvania — founded in freedom and tolerance — as a place where all are welcome,” Takac wrote. “Those who would deny those freedoms to others while hiding behind their own hatred disgrace the values that built this commonwealth.”
Council member Nalini Krishnankutty encouraged people to speak against any display of hate or bias.
“It’s up to us to speak up against it in every place. The seeds are sown and when we don’t speak up when they are, then they grow,” Krishnankutty said. “... We cannot wait to stand up at the moment when the extreme actions are seen.”
Added council member Divine Lipscomb: “This is not new, and it’s not changing unless we continue to stand up. ... There’s hate that continues to happen on a daily basis and we have to continue to stand together to combat this hate.”
Anyone with information about the flyers is asked to contact the State College Police Department at 814-234-7150, email the department or submit an anonymous tip through their website.
