A group wearing masks and hats emblazoned with “131,” a symbol for the New England-based group Nationalist Social Club, demonstrated outside of the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain around midday Saturday.
The venue was hosting a drag queen story hour for children and families at the time of the group’s arrival, according to Mayor Michelle Wu’s office and witnesses at the scene.
“Pedo scum off our streets,” the group could be heard chanting in videos shared on social media from the scene. The same message was found on a banner group members held.
Three people were arrested and booked at noon on disturbing the peace and other charges, according to a Boston Police Department spokeswoman. The Civil Rights unit of BPD is investigating the targeting of the LGBTQ community members.
Those arrested are Tobias Walker, 21, of Boston, charged with disturbing the peace; Seth Rosenau, of Boston, charged with affray and disturbing the peace; and Christopher Hood, 23, of Pepperell, charged with affray and disturbing the peace.
Only Hood was a member of NSC 131, and he has widely been cited as the leader of the group the Anti-Defamation League has called a neo-Nazi group.
Walker and Rosenau were counterprotesters, of which there were 30 to 35 people, according to Boston Police.
Boston leaders including Wu and Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden condemned the presence of the group in the city.
“It’s clear that Boston is a way point in the crusade of hate launched five years ago in Charlottesville,” Hayden said in a statement.
“The presence of white supremacists at a Jamaica Plain book reading today, like their downtown Boston march earlier this month, is at once a disgrace and a warning. Society everywhere is targeted by these groups, and society everywhere must reject them,” he added.
Wu said, “It’s no coincidence that these cowardly groups from outside our city continue to target Boston as we showcase how representative leadership, empowered communities, and bold policies can have immediate impact.
“We are prepared and will not be intimidated in our work to make Boston a city for everyone. We remain ready for citywide deployment of extra public safety resources with a zero tolerance approach to any groups looking to intimidate or harass residents in our city,” she added.
The earlier event Hayden referenced is when about 100 members of the group Patriot Front arrived in the city on July 2 on the T, unloaded shields and flags from a U-Haul parked near the Haymarket MBTA station at around 12:30 p.m. and marched through the city.
They marched through the city with flags that often featured a stylized fasces symbol, which has been associated with fascism since Benito Mussolini embraced it as the symbol of his National Fascist Party in Italy. One Black man, later identified as Charles Murrell, 34, a local artist and activist, was injured at the hands of group members.
After the NSC demonstrators left, neighborhood resident Courtney Ignace, 26, held a small demonstration of her own with a few friends outside the Loring Greenough House.
She held a sign that said, “Queer is good,” that got a thumbs up from drivers and passersby.
“When it happens in your community, you have to pay attention,” she said. “I know there’s a movement in our country, and they’re in the wrong.”
Ignace’s roommate, Nicole Amidon, 29, called them “a bunch of trolls who are trying to make people feel unsafe.”
“Rage brought me out today,” Amidon said. “They feel emboldened by Trump, so we have to organize against them. … Something about him made these people feel safe in their hatred.”
Steven Walker, “just an old man from Dorchester,” who happened to be walking by, said it was “very disturbing that it’s happening here in Boston.
“What they’re saying has nothing to do with truth or the facts,” Walker said. “What about all the priests who sexually abused children?”
The Nationalist Social Club has previously conducted widely condemned demonstrations in the city, including when they unfurled a banner that read “Keep Boston Irish” at this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. In May of last year, they gathered at the New England Holocaust Memorial across from City Hall Plaza.
