Following Saturday’s white supremacist demonstration at a LGBTQ-friendly children’s event, the latest in a series of hate groups’ escalating activities, prosecutors are beginning to re-fortify civil rights defenses.
The descent of NSC-131 members on a public drag queen story hour for children and families in Jamaica Plain was “at once a disgrace and a warning,” District Attorney Kevin Hayden said over the weekend.
Hayden announced a response Monday morning. The High-Risk Victims Unit will expand to the Civil Rights/High-Risk Victims Unit and gain two new prosecutors for civil rights cases, according to a release from the DA’s office.
The move, the release stated, “is designed to better coordinate and prosecute felony and misdemeanor civil rights and hate crime cases.”
The office will continue to protect free speech “up until the point it turns into threats or violence,” Hayden said.
The leader of the white supremacist group NSC-131, Christopher Hood, is facing a misdemeanor charge of affray for an altercation at Saturday’s demonstration.
Hayden cited a troubling escalation of white supremacist activity in the area, listing recent reports of hate literature distribution in Danvers, Hamilton, Ipswich and Chatham; the neo-Nazi protest at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in February; the NSC-131 gathering at a St. Patrick’s Day parade in March; the Patriot Front march in downtown Boston on July 2; and homophobic graffiti and death threats at an LGBTQ-friendly housing project in Hyde Park in mid-July.
An Anti-Defamation League report in March found Massachusetts had the fourth-highest level of hate propaganda activity in the nation in 2021, the DA’s office noted.
Hayden also warned the upcoming congressional and 2024 presidential elections may stoke further escalation of this type.
Rachael Rollins, United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, called for community members to notify law enforcement about any concerns regarding white supremacist activity. Her office will announce a “dedicated number for the community to call in the coming weeks,” Rollins tweeted.
“When we see inequity and harm, we look the culprit in their eyes and demand that it stops,” she wrote. “If it doesn’t, we use every means at our disposal — legislatively, through the courts, and with community organizing — to end it. And that is exactly what’s going to happen here.”
Mayor Michelle Wu also said the city is taking “a zero tolerance approach to any groups looking to intimidate or harass residents in our city” over the weekend.