Residents in Chicago’s Beverly and Mount Greenwood neighborhoods are taking a stand after more than 100 racially-charged flyers were placed on car windshields earlier this week.
The flyer, which was titled “No White Guilt,” listed several websites that openly support white supremacist movements, and were placed under the windshield wipers of cars on West Beverly and Mount Greenwood streets in the overnight hours Tuesday morning.
Residents in the area are horrified at the fliers.
“It’s hate. It’s ugly. It’s horrible,” resident Dwight Wilson said.
In response, people in the neighborhoods where the fliers were placed are putting up signs of their own. The blue posters, which read “Hate Has No Home in the 19th Ward,” are being put in front yards and windows throughout the area.
The posters, created by Alderman Matt O’Shea, were also deployed after someone placed hateful stickers on lightpoles along the route of the South Side Irish Parade earlier this year.
“Having seen this before, this is an organized effort from an organization that looks to be divisive and send panic and scare people,” O’Shea said. “It won’t work here. We won’t tolerate it in our community.”
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Witnesses say the fliers were placed on cars by a white man in his 50s or 60s, and residents say the man was driving a black pick-up truck around the neighborhood.
For now, most neighbors say they’re doing what they can to make everyone feel welcome, safe, and wanted in the area.
“That’s a message I want to give to the rest of my community,” neighbor Charline McGrath said.
Chicago police are investigating the incident, and the city’s human relations commission will conduct a meeting on Friday. A public meeting with the community is expected in the near future to discuss the incident.
