Peace Activists Shout Down Neo-Nazi Group
By Erin Toner
September 3, 2011 | WUWM | Milwaukee, WI
Peace activists shouted down a neo-Nazi group on a rainy afternoon in West Allis Saturday. Members of the National Socialist Movement rallied in front of West Allis City Hall in response to a mob attack at State Fair Park last month in which black teenagers attacked white people. Metal fences and dozens of police in riot gear separated the NSM members and citizens who came to protest the event. WUWM’s Erin Toner covered the rally and has this report.
“We’re here on the streets of Wisconsin in defense of white people. We’re on the streets of Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago, every city across the land the National Socialist Movement and our allies are there.”
That’s Jeff Schoep, commander of the National Socialist Movement based in Detroit. He told the crowd that victims of the State Fair mob attack invited his group to West Allis to “stand up for white people.” Schoep told reporters similar racially motivated attacks are happening in other parts of the country.
“It’s happening in Philadelphia. It’s happening in Iowa, in cities all over this nation and nobody’s doing anything about it. They’re saying ‘Oh, it was just a bunch of kids.’ Kids dragging people off motorcycles. Kids attacking unarmed women and children. There was a 13- or 14-year-old boy that was being kicked and beaten on the ground. And the black community quite often is saying, ‘Well, it’s just kids. It’s just children doing these things.’ Really? If it was any of us doing it, we’d be locked up for hate crimes,” Schoep says.
As a few dozen NSM members waved flags displaying the swastika, Schoep denied they are hateful or bigoted.
“There’s nothing hateful or racist about our message. The swastika is a symbol of white pride. The swastika goes back many generations and that is our symbol. It is a white symbol,” Schoep says.
Schoep’s group was met by more than 1,000 people who protested the event by shouting, chanting and waving signs. Peace activists held a counter rally an hour earlier, advocating equality for people of all races, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations. George Martin is a member of Peace Action Wisconsin, one of the organizers of the anti-Nazi demonstration.
“This message is to give the other side to the story of hate. This message is to hear from speakers who represent our community in terms of race, in terms of faith and in terms of age, old and young, to talk about how hate language leads to violence and how we stand together as a community against that hate. We are here to drown out, literally drown out the words of hate and after our rally we look forward to making as much noise as we can so that those words don’t spread through our community,” Martin says.
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